Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Jonus
The breach goes sideways almost immediately.
Intel said six to eight hostiles. Intel was wrong.
We move on Kelt’s signal, sliding through the perimeter like shadows. The first two guards go down before they even know we’re here. Then a door opens in the hillside, a door the drone never saw, and hostiles pour out like hornets from a kicked nest.
“Contact! More hostiles, northwest!” Cole’s voice crackles through comms.
Suddenly we’re not extracting. We’re fighting for our lives.
Training takes over, muscle memory I haven’t used since basic training on the commune, the part of orc education that prepares us for exactly this kind of violence. Every second we’re pinned behind this crumbling structure is another second Sloane is in that pit.
“Where the hell did they come from?” Aldar’s voice in my ear, strained. “New signatures are emerging from some kind of underground structure. Bunker, maybe. Their thermal signatures were masked by the hillside.”
Hidden barracks. Great. The intel we paid good money for missed an entire building full of armed humans.
Something explodes to my left, a grenade or gas tank, I can’t tell. The compound is chaos now, flames licking up the side of a storage building, smoke everywhere, muzzle flashes in the darkness.
And somewhere in that chaos, fifty meters away, is the pit.
I can’t see it from here. Too much smoke.
And all these armed humans are between me and my female.
A growl rumbles in my chest. What if these criminals are moving her right now?
They could decide she’s a liability and put a bullet in her head.
Or they could be dragging her out to use as a human shield and I’m stuck behind this fucking wall.
“Jonus. Stay focused.” Kelt snarls.
“I am focused.” The words come out cold and flat, nothing like my usual tone.
Another hostile pops up and I drop him without thinking. Then another. Our team attacks the mercenaries with precision. There are more of them than us, with lots of weapons. But three orcs in our team still makes us infinitely stronger than a group of humans.
“Bunker’s clear,” Aldar finally reports. “We’ve got maybe ten minutes before someone calls for backup. If they haven’t already.”
I’m already moving I tell the others. “I’m going for her.”
“Go,” Kelt responds. “We’ll secure the rest, do a sweep to make sure they don’t have additional hostages, and meet at the pit.”
I run across the compound, boots pounding dirt, weaving between burning structures and bodies. The smoke burns my eyes but I don’t slow down. The wooden slats come into view and my heart stops. One board is pushed aside, hanging from a single corner.
No.
I drop to my knees at the edge and look down.
Empty.
Just dirt, dead grass and a filthy bucket in the corner. Scratches on the wall which I realize are tally marks counting down her days in captivity.
My mind spirals. Did they move her before the assault? Did someone drag her out a back way while we were fighting? Did they already—
No. I force myself to think. If they’d killed her, there would be blood. A body. Signs of violence.
I look again at the wall. Shallow grooves carved into the dirt.
The board above, pried loose. Nails bent and pulled free.
She got herself out. During the chaos of the breach, while we were fighting off hostiles from a hidden bunker, Sloane climbed out of this pit and ran.
She didn’t wait to be saved. She saved herself.
Pride hits first. Then terror.
She’s out there in the jungle, thinking she’s running from more danger, not toward rescue.
I scan the area, extending my senses. There…her scent trail, leading toward the tree line. It’s only minutes old. I also scent blood, leaving a trail any tracker could follow.
“Pit’s empty.” I’m already moving toward the jungle as I speak into comms. “She escaped during the breach. Trail leads east into the jungle. I’m going after her.”
“Copy,” Kelt responds. “We’re still mopping up. How fresh?”
“Minutes. I’ve got her scent.”
“Go. Check in when you have her.”
The tree line swallows me. Smoke and gunfire fade, replaced by thick vegetation, insects, night birds and the drip of moisture from the canopy.
I move fast. What would be nearly impenetrable terrain for humans is manageable for me.
My night vision cuts through the darkness, turning shadows into shapes.
I can see the broken branches, disturbed undergrowth and the subtle signs of someone crashing through in panic.
Her scent is mixed with blood and fear, like a beacon pulling me forward.
Blood on a root. She fell here.
A broken vine. She pushed through here.
Her trail weaves and stumbles. Sloane must be weak, disoriented and probably dehydrated but she kept going.
I move faster, surprised by how much distance she covered in pitch darkness.
Most humans would have collapsed after a hundred meters.
She’s gone at least two kilometers. My admiration grows with every step but so does my worry.
I’m alone in the jungle, just me and the trail. Comms are quiet. The others are handling whatever’s left back there while I track the female who refused to wait for rescue.
Her scent gets stronger. I slow down because she’s close now. In fact, I can hear her breathing, fast and ragged. She’s stopped moving and now she’s hiding from whoever followed her from the compound into the jungle.
Smart. Of course she heard me coming, I’m not exactly subtle, crashing through the jungle after her. For all she knows, I’m cartel.
“Sloane.” I say her name into the darkness. We’ve never met in person, but we’ve talked for hours. She knows my voice.
Silence. For one horrible moment, I think I’ve lost her. That she bolted again, or I was tracking the wrong trail, or—
“Sloane.” My voice cracks on her name. I can’t help it. Twelve days of fear and fury pour out of me. “I’ve got you.”
Still nothing.
Then I see her pressed against a massive tree trunk, trying to make herself invisible.
Holding a rock in her fist like a weapon.
Even now, after everything, she was ready to fight.
She looks terrible and beautiful at once.
Filthy clothes hanging loose, her hair matted with dirt and leaves.
Her feet are wrapped in bloody rags. But those glorious blue eyes are sharp, aware and alive, looking at me like she’s not sure I’m real.
“Jonus?” Her voice is small. Disbelieving.
“Yeah.” My voice comes out rough. “It’s me.”
The rock falls from her fingers.
“You’re real.” She stares at me. “You’re actually here.”
“I’m here.”
“How—”
“You listed me as your emergency contact.” I move closer, slowly, carefully. “Of course I came.”
Something breaks in her expression. All the strength she’s been holding onto for twelve days — the determination, the survival instinct, the sheer stubborn will that got her out of that pit and through two kilometers of jungle — it all lets go at once.
She moves from her spot against the tree and I meet her halfway.
My female collapses against me and I catch her, wrapping my arms around her, holding her up.
She’s shaking. Or maybe I am. Probably both.
I bury my face in her dirty hair. She smells like twelve days in a pit, but I don’t care. All that matters is that she’s alive. “I’ve got you,” I say again, because I don’t know what else to say. “I’ve got you.”
She doesn’t respond. Just holds on.
The comms crackle in my ear and reality crashes back. “Jonus, we’ve got a problem.” Aldar’s voice comes in, sharp with urgency.
I don’t let go of Sloane, but every muscle in my body tenses. “Talk to me.”
“What’s wrong?” my females whispers.
I point at my ear so she knows I’m listening to the team.
“Multiple vehicles inbound from the south. I’m counting at least three trucks. Armed.”
“Shit,” I mutter.
Kelt’s voice cuts in, “How long?”
“Five, maybe six minutes.”
“This compound was just an outpost, a holding location but not the main operation. Someone called for help before we took them down, and now the real force is coming,” Aldar says.”
“I have Sloane,” I let them know.“We’re approximately two clicks east of the compound.”
“Two clicks?” Kelt sounds surprised. “She got that far?”
I look down at Sloane, still leaning heavily against me. “She got herself out. She ran.”
Brief pause on comms. Then Kelt, with something like respect, “Good for her.”
“What’s her condition?” Cole asks.
I glance at the remains of the bloody rags on her feet, the way she’s barely standing, most of her weight against my chest. “She can’t move fast. Maybe not at all.”
“I can—”
I give a curt head shake of dismissal.
Silence on comms while Kelt calculates. “You’re already two clicks east,” he says. “If you try to link up with us, you’ll slow us down and we’ll all get caught.”
I know he’s right. “So what’s the play?”
“We planned for separation. Secondary extraction, 0600 hours. You know the coordinates.”
I do. “That’s forty clicks from my current position.”
“But you won’t have cartel on your tail if you swing wide. Go east another click, then arc north. Quieter route. Longer, but safer.”
Aldar’s voice cuts in, “Drone’s got maybe twenty more minutes of battery. I can keep eyes on your route until it dies.”
“We’ll move fast,” Martinez says. “Draw attention if we have to.”
“Get her to the extraction point,” Kelt says. “0600. Helicopter won’t wait past 0615.”
“Copy.”
Kelt’s voice goes quieter. Just for me. “Get her out, Jonus.”
“I will.”
Comms go quiet.
I can faintly hear the distant sound of trucks approaching the compound. Engines growling through the jungle. We need to move. I look down at Sloane. She’s been listening to my half of the conversation, those sharp eyes assessing even through exhaustion.
“There’s more coming,” she says.
“Yes. We need to go.”
“Who are the others?”
“Kelt and Aldar came with me. We also hired two former Navy SEALS. They are taking a different route out. We’ll meet them at the extraction point.”
She nods, processing. Then pulls back slightly, testing her own legs.
“Can you walk?”
I see her weighing the answer, pride versus reality. Then she takes a step and nearly falls. I catch her arm before she goes down.
“I can—” she starts.
“I’ll carry you.”
“For forty kilometers?” A flash of that wry humor I remember from our video calls. Even now.
“If I have to. Sloane, I’m not human, I’m an orc.
Carrying you that far is nothing to me. You will be light as air.
I must carry you because we need to move fast to create distance from us and the cartel, also we have a lot of terrain to cover in order to reach the extraction point in time.
If we move slow, we’ll miss our window.”
She looks at me for a long moment. “Okay,” she says quietly. “I understand.”
I lift her easily, as promised she does indeed weigh nothing — even less than she should after twelve days of starvation. She doesn’t argue any further and doesn’t continue to insist she can walk. That tells me more than anything how bad off she really is.
I adjust her against my chest, one arm under her knees, one supporting her back. “Hold on to me.”
Her arms go around my neck. Her face against my shoulder. I can feel her breath warm through my tactical vest.
I head east, away from the approaching cartel force.
Behind, I can hear the distant sounds of vehicles arriving at the compound. Shouts. Gunfire. I force myself not to think about it. Kelt can handle himself. Cole and Martinez are professionals. Aldar’s the smartest person I know.
My job is her. Only her.
Sloane’s breath is warm against my neck. I need to get her out of here so she can be safe and receive medical attention. Forty kilometers of jungle between us and the extraction point. I hold her tighter and start moving. We’ve got a long way to go.