24. Lucas
LUCAS
The tunnel had been designed for one purpose.
Escape.
Not comfort.
I lowered Wynn through the opening first.
She disappeared into the darkness beneath me.
“I can’t see anything,” she called.
“That’s normal.”
“I hate this tunnel.”
“You’ve been inside it for three seconds.”
“That was enough.”
Another explosion rocked the observation post.
Dust poured into the opening.
Adam pushed the injured pilot toward me.
“Move faster!”
I climbed down and found Wynn pressed against the stone wall.
The tunnel was barely five feet high, forcing the men to hunch.
Water ran across the floor.
I switched on the flashlight attached to my vest.
Wynn blinked.
“You had a light?”
“Yes.”
“And you let me stand in the dark?”
“You said you couldn’t see.”
“I was making conversation.”
“This seems like a bad time.”
“Your timing has never bothered you before.”
Despite everything, I smiled.
There she was.
My Wynn.
Above us, the Brave entered the tunnel one by one.
Hawk brought the radio.
Russ and Boone helped the pilot.
Adam came last.
The moment he dragged the loose section of flooring over the opening, the world became silent.
Dark.
Claustrophobic.
We could still feel the explosions through the stone.
But Meridian no longer knew exactly where we were.
Not yet.
I took the lead.
“Stay close.”
Wynn’s hand found the back of my vest.
“I’m touching you.”
“I noticed.”
“Good.”
The tunnel sloped downward.
Water rose from our boots to our ankles.
Then our calves.
Boone groaned somewhere behind us.
“I officially hate mountains.”
“You’ve complained about the helicopter, the trail, the river, and the tunnel,” Russ said.
“I’m trying to be thorough.”
“You’re succeeding.”
The humor helped.
The tunnel felt smaller with every step.
The air grew colder.
Wynn’s grip tightened.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Perfect.”
“You’re breathing too fast.”
“So are you.”
“I’m carrying equipment.”
“I’m trying not to imagine being buried alive.”
I stopped.
She nearly walked into me.
“You’re claustrophobic.”
“No.”
“Wynn.”
“I strongly dislike confined spaces.”
“You used to take elevators.”
“They had buttons.”
“What difference does that make?”
“I could open the doors.”
“You could not open elevator doors.”
“I believed I could.”
Another explosion shook the mountain.
Wynn flinched.
I turned as much as the narrow tunnel allowed.
Her face had gone pale.
This wasn’t stubbornness.
She was genuinely terrified.
I took both her hands.
“Look at me.”
“I’m looking.”
“Not at the walls. Only at me.”
Her emerald eyes locked on mine.
“That’s it. Breathe.”
“I am breathing.”
“Slowly.”
I inhaled.
She followed.
Then exhaled with me.
Again.
The panic began to leave her eyes.
“Better?”
“No. But I can move.”
“That’s enough.”
Her fingers remained wrapped around mine.
I turned and continued through the tunnel.
She didn’t release me.
Neither did I.
After nearly ten minutes, the passage widened.
The sound of rushing water grew louder.
Cold air moved across my face.
“Exit ahead.”
“Thank God,” Wynn whispered.
The tunnel ended behind a curtain of vines.
I pushed them aside.
Moonlight reflected off the river below.
We stood on a narrow ledge nearly twenty feet above the water.
A steel ladder had once connected the ledge to the riverbank.
Most of it had rusted away.
Boone looked over my shoulder.
“That seems safe.”
“Compared to what?” Hawk asked.
“Excellent point.”
Adam examined the cliffs.
“Can we move along the ledge?”
“For half a mile. Then it connects to an old service road.”
“Will Minser know?”
“He knows everything about this post.”
“Then yes.”
“We need communications.”
Hawk lifted the radio from the cache.
“He gave us one.”
Adam stared at him.
“And you trust it?”
“No. But I can rebuild it.”
“With what?”
Hawk opened his pack.
Boone shook his head.
“Don’t ask. He’ll have a satellite in there.”
“Not a good one,” Hawk said.
Russ helped the pilot sit against the rock wall.
The man’s breathing had worsened.
“We need extraction.”
“We need a hospital.”
Hawk opened the radio casing and removed the compromised transmitter.
“I can block its outgoing signal.”
“Can you contact the air base?” Adam asked.
“If the antenna survived.”
I pulled the folded wire antenna from the false compartment.
Hawk connected it.
Static filled the speaker.
He adjusted the frequency.
Nothing.
He tried again.
A voice broke through.
Faint.
Unclear.
“Guardian Control…”
Adam took the handset.
“Guardian Control, this is Brave Actual.”
Static.
“This is Brave Actual. Emergency channel Indigo Seven.”
A pause.
Then a voice answered.
“Brave Actual, authenticate.”
“Courage runs deep.”
“Secondary response?”
“Love runs deeper.”
Every man exhaled.
The encrypted emergency channel had confirmed our unit credentials.
The words were the private secondary challenge Colonel Hayes had assigned to the operation.
Wynn looked at me.
“You still use that?”
“Yes.”
Her expression softened.
“That was written inside our wedding bands.”
I remembered.
Her ring had carried the first half.
Mine the second.
We had chosen the words before the team.
Before the war.
Before everything went wrong.
“Colonel Hayes selected it as our emergency duress phrase after you left.”
Wynn stared at me.
“Why?”
“Because I needed to remember the second half.”
Love runs deeper.
Her eyes filled.
The voice over the radio returned.
“Brave Actual, authentication confirmed. Report position.”
Hawk entered the coordinates.
“We have multiple wounded,” Adam said. “Hostile force in pursuit. Need immediate extraction.”
The operator hesitated.
“Negative.”
Adam’s expression hardened.
“Repeat.”
“No aircraft authorized in your sector.”
“Override authorization.”
“Unable.”
“By whose order?”
Another pause.
Then the voice became quieter.
“Commander, all rescue operations involving the Brave have been suspended.”
No one moved.
“Suspended by whom?”
“General command.”
Adam stared at the radio.
“Give me a name.”
“I can’t.”
“Give me the damn name.”
The operator lowered his voice further.
“General Robert Kane.”
I knew the name.
Every member of the Brave did.
Kane oversaw special operations coordination across three continents.
He had access to mission rosters.
Aircraft assignments.
Medical teams.
Classified routes.
Everything Meridian needed.
Adam looked at me.
“Either Kane is compromised…”
“Or he controls Meridian,” I finished.
The operator continued.
“You were declared missing after the helicopter crash. Search and rescue was canceled twelve minutes ago.”
“Reason?”
“Command reported no survivors.”
Wynn stared at the radio.
“They knew we survived.”
“Yes,” Hawk said. “And they want the official record to say we didn’t.”
The mountains seemed to close around us.
No aircraft.
No rescue.
No official support.
If Meridian killed us here, the world would believe we died in the crash.
Adam raised the handset.
“Guardian Control, listen carefully. We have evidence of a security breach at the highest level. Do not retransmit our coordinates. Do not contact General Kane.”
“Understood.”
“Find Colonel Hayes. Tell him the Brave is alive.”
The radio operator hesitated.
“Sir, Colonel Hayes has been detained.”
Adam stopped breathing.
“By whose authority?”
“General Kane.”
The line went dead.
Hawk checked the equipment.
“They cut the transmission.”
Wynn moved closer to me.
“What happens now?”
“We get off the mountain ourselves,” Adam said.
“How?” Boone asked. “A prayer? A miracle? A very long walk?”
I looked toward the river.
Lights moved across the opposite ridge.
Vehicles.
Meridian had found the service road.
We had minutes before they reached the ledge.
Then a different voice came through the radio.
Low.
Distorted.
“Brave Actual.”
Adam lifted the handset.
“Identify yourself.”
“An old friend.”
I froze.
I knew that voice.
Not Minser.
Someone else.
Someone I had believed was dead.
“Call sign?” I demanded.
A pause.
Then the man answered.
“Ghost.”
The air left my lungs.
Ghost had served beside me at the observation post eight years ago.
He had supposedly died three months later in an explosion outside Kandahar.
I had carried his casket.
Watched his wife receive a folded flag.
“You’re dead,” I whispered.
“That was the idea.”
“Where are you?”
“Closer than you think.”
Headlights appeared on the service road below.
A dark convoy rounded the bend.
Boone raised his rifle.
“We’ve got company.”
The vehicles stopped.
Doors opened.
Armed men poured out.
I pushed Wynn behind me.
Then the lead vehicle flashed its headlights.
Two short flashes.
One long.
Two short.
An old recognition signal from the observation post.
One only Ghost and I should have known.
The radio crackled again.
“If you want to reach Geneva alive, Spencer, get your team into those vehicles.”
Adam took the handset.
“How do we know this isn’t a trap?”
Ghost laughed softly.
“You don’t.”
The first enemy shots struck the cliff above us.
Rock rained across the ledge.
The dark vehicles below returned fire.
Not at us.
At Meridian.
Ghost’s voice filled the radio.
“You have thirty seconds.”
Adam looked at me.
The headlights waited below.
Enemy soldiers closed in from above.
No rescue was coming.
No one knew we were alive.
I took Wynn’s hand.
“Do you trust me?”
She looked toward the vehicles.
Then into my eyes.
“With my life.”
I led her toward the broken ladder.
The others followed.
Bullets struck the rocks behind us.
Boone and Russ secured the injured pilot in the climbing harness and began lowering him toward the road.
Hawk covered the ledge while Adam fired toward the approaching soldiers.
I clipped the safety line to my harness and climbed down first.
When I reached the ground, Wynn started after me with the rope secured around her.
Halfway down, the rusted ladder tore free.
She fell several feet before the safety line snapped taut.
I caught her against my chest and steadied her while Adam lowered the remaining rope.
The impact drove me to one knee, but I held on.
Always.
We ran toward the convoy.
A man stepped from the lead vehicle.
Tall.
Broad-shouldered.
A scar crossed one side of his face.
Older than the soldier I remembered.
But alive.
Ghost looked at me.
“Hello, brother.”
I raised my weapon.
“You’d better have one hell of an explanation.”
“I do.”
He opened the rear door.
“But if you want to save Elise Moreau, it’ll have to wait.”
Wynn climbed inside.
I followed.
The rest of the Brave piled into the vehicles.
Ghost took the wheel.
The convoy accelerated along the river as Meridian’s men poured onto the road behind us.
Wynn sat pressed against my side.
Her fingers still held mine.
I looked down at her mouth.
She noticed.
“Lucas…”
“I promised you something.”
Gunfire struck the back of the vehicle.
Ghost swerved around a boulder.
Boone shouted from the rear seat.
“Are you seriously considering kissing her now?”
I didn’t look away from Wynn.
“Yes.”
Her lips curved.
“Still terrible timing.”
“Still want me to stop?”
“No.”
That was all I needed.
I cupped the back of her neck and kissed her.
Six years disappeared.
The mountains.
The gunfire.
The conspiracy.
All of it vanished.
Wynn’s hands gripped my shirt as her mouth opened beneath mine.
The kiss wasn’t gentle.
It wasn’t cautious.
It was every lonely night.
Every word we hadn’t said.
Every moment we thought we had lost forever.
She kissed me as though she had been waiting six years.
Because she had.
So had I.
When we finally pulled apart, her forehead rested against mine.
Tears shone in her eyes.
“I missed you.”
My thumb traced her swollen lip.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to come back.”
She touched the metal tag beneath my shirt.
“You’re here now.”
Gunfire shattered the rear window.
Boone ducked.
“I hate to interrupt this touching reunion, but we’re still being chased!”
Wynn looked over my shoulder.
“You survived thirty seconds.”
Boone glanced at his watch.
“Barely.”
Ghost drove faster.
The vehicle tore through the darkness with Meridian’s forces close behind us.
Ahead waited an aircraft that didn’t officially exist.
Beyond that…
Geneva.
Elise.
The box.
Fate.
And an enemy powerful enough to erase the Brave from the world.
I pulled Wynn against my side and raised my rifle toward the shattered window.
They wanted a war.
They had one.