Wooden crates sat in rows beneath tarps marked BAIT SUPPLY and COMMERCIAL NETTING.
Cannon ripped back the first tarp and issued a low whistle. “Doesn’t look like fishing gear.”
“Christ. They must be dumber than we thought. Just like drugs coming in disguised as kids’ toys and athletic shoes,” Archer muttered.
Archer ran a gloved hand over faded stenciling on the can. Old military markings, the numbers partially painted over.
“Could be ours,” he said.
“Could also be made to look like ours,” Cannon countered. He moved to the next crate and pried it open. Foam packing surrounded disassembled rifles.
Townie popped up over Archer’s shoulder to peer down at the find. “Hell of a catch.”
Archer strode back to the man he’d captured in the wheelhouse. He grabbed him by the collar and hauled him halfway upright. “Who loaded this vessel?”
The man shook his head. “No English.”
Archer switched to Spanish. “Who loaded the cargo?”
Fear flickered in the man’s eyes, but still he didn’t answer.
Archer shoved him back down.
“I got something.” Cannon’s tone made them all freeze. Their CO reached inside a crate and picked up a grenade packed in rock salt.
No one spoke for a second.
Cannon looked to O. “Signal the Coast Guard. We got what we came for.”
Over the water came the distant thrum of approaching engines. Blue lights flashed across the craft as the Coast Guard approached and the operation became an official seizure.
Sierra faded back out, once again ghosts. Wherever these weapons came from, they were important. Whether from Echo’s missing armory or another source, somebody had built a pipeline, and tonight they’d stopped one of the leaks.
The question was who was behind it. He was no longer certain it felt like Cipher himself. More that it was, on some level, connected to the terrorist.
This was Cipher’s kind of damage—but not his kind of control. Cipher liked noise. Whoever hit the Echo armory went in quiet and almost cleaned up after themselves.
Rome stepped up beside him. “Anybody else starving again?”
Jolie surfaced in Archer’s mind. Her in that thermal shirt. Her smile when the team walked into the kitchen.
And the way her eyes went soft when they were alone.
They might have seized illegal weapons on that ship, but Jolie had seized every other thought he had.
* * * * *
Whether this place was a military base, underground alien lab or cult bunker, the silence was getting on Jolie’s nerves. An hour after the guys left, she couldn’t stand it anymore.
First, she’d napped in Archer’s bed, because apparently exhaustion could overpower anxiety if given enough time. Then she’d wandered the halls again, book in hand, reading only every third page because her mind kept leaping to more ominous things.
She had found an old transistor radio tucked on a shelf in the common room and after fifteen minutes of tuning the dial and adjusting metal rabbit ears, the thing had finally…thankfully…stuttered to life.
Now a classic rock station crackled through the space, tinny but cheerful enough to push back the silence that had been unsettling her for hours.
She’d been alone too long. Where could the team be?
What if they were hurt?
