Was Max real? Could she trust him? If the cleaning crew had been sleepers, what about everyone else?
“Max—”
“Run Chief. GO!” Max lunged at the first man, driving his shoulder into the gun barrel and slamming both of them back against the bulkhead. A shot rang out—deafening in the confined space.
Smith and Cutter abandoned the stretcher and went for the other two. Smith got an elbow up into one man’s throat. Cutter grabbed for a weapon, fingers closing on the barrel.
She didn’t wait to see who’d been hit.
She swerved to avoid a grasping hand. Behind her, another shot. She didn’t look back.
Max’s voice echoed in her head.You can lock them out.
If they reached the launch systems in Missile Command before she did, there’d be nothing between sixteen interceptor missiles and whoever these people answered to.
Jen ran.
2
Wyatt Meyer trustedchaos a hell of a lot more than he trusted calm.
Calm meant something was about to break. And today’s drill had way too much fucking calm.
Below him, Mike Rey hit the Pacific like a dropped flare, bright orange against the gray. The universe liked to haze new guys. Today’s swell was ugly—cross chop, wind shear, cold enough to kill a man in twenty minutes.
“Swimmer in the water,” Jake Henley called from the cabin.
Ben Bishop steadied the MH-60 Jayhawk at forty feet, knuckles easy on the collective. “Sandra’s holding smooth.” He patted the control panel. “Let’s keep her sweet.”
Wyatt sat right seat. Co-pilot today—part of their rotation—but Bishop always made jokes about Wyatt hogging the stick whenever things got interesting.
Down below, their rookie, Rey, surfaced, already fighting the rotor wash. He raised one gloved hand.
Not bad form for his first helo-SAR evolution with the team.
Henley lowered the hoist—basket first, then hook. “Rey, retrieve your patient,” he radioed. “Victim is unconscious, suspected spinal injury.”
A mannequin bobbed fifteen yards away, half-submerged, pitching from swell to swell. Rey swam for it, got slammed by a crosswave, and had to recover fast.
Wyatt’s knee bounced. He pinned it down with his palm.
This was the part he hated. The stillness and waiting that left too much room inside his own head—where a whiff of diesel could ghost in from nowhere and drag half the desert in after it. Training evolutions crawled. Seconds stretched. His mind filled the gaps with threats that weren’t there—engine vibration that didn’t exist, a shadow under the surf that vanished, a wind gust that didn’t match the forecast.
Bishop shot him a glance. “You scanning for alien kraken again?”
Wyatt didn’t look away from the water. “Eyes out.”
Henley snorted from the cabin. “Meyer, you’re a riot.”
Wyatt ignored that too.
He wasn’t built for small talk. Not anymore.
“He’s fumbling the harness,” Henley muttered, half-hanging out the cabin door. “Rey, under the arm—no, the other one—yep, you got it.”
Rey finally secured the mannequin and signaled. Henley initiated the hoist.
The motor whined as Rey rose through the spray, spinning gently. Halfway up, his foot snared the tagline.
