Page 33 of Love for Thea

Data point, she thought, her pulse jumping to 102 bpm as they broke into a jog toward the final ridge. The probability of me moving into that cabin is ninety-nine percent. The remaining one percent is just me waiting for him to ask me to stay.

The team moved as a shadow through the yellow haze, five predators and one scientist, racing the mountain to the only ride left in the valley. Ahead, the metallic predator of the Vanguard complex finally sharpened against the horizon.

“Going dark,” Ben whispered into his mic.

Thea took a deep, shaky breath and followed him into the silence.

NINETEEN

GRIZZLY

08:30 Hours (Day 2) (Time Elapsed: 16 hours, 00 minutes)

The final ridge wasn’t a ridge anymore; it was a tilting graveyard of limestone and ash. From his position behind Thea, Grizzly watched the world warping. The morning sun was a bruised, sickly gold, struggling to pierce the stratospheric injection of grit that turned the valley into a sepia-toned nightmare.

Ahead, the Vanguard landing pad sat like a scar on the granite. Thorne’s personal helicopter, a sleek, white AgustaWestland, idled, its rotors cutting a slow, lazy rhythm through the haze.

Grizzly clicked the master power on his bone-conduction headset to Off. He saw Picasso, Reef, Hurricane, and Wyatt follow suit. The tactical Net went dead. No radio chatter, no electronic handshakes for Thorne’s sensors to find. They were officially ghosts.

He tapped his throat and made a flat cutting motion: Silent running.

They began the descent, a hazardous negotiation with a mountain that had stopped playing by the rules. The air was a thick slurry of ash and steam that coated Ben’s throat like ground glass, making every breath a rasping struggle. They moved in a staggered column, Thea picking the path while he acted as the armor at her back.

Halfway down the slope, the ground-truth failed.

Reef was three paces to the left, his eyes scanning the ridgeline for any sign of the drone, when the solid granite beneath his boots simply vanished into a sudden, vertical sink.

“Reef!” Hurricane hissed, a jagged sound that barely cleared his teeth.

Hurricane lunged, his knees hitting the ground with a bone-jarring thud as he reached for the disappearing splash of Reef’s tactical vest. He managed to snag the drag-handle just as Reef disappeared waist-deep into a pocket of boiling mud. The suction of the slurry was immense, a wet, heavy gravity that fought to swallow them both.

The momentum was too much for the slick terrain. Hurricane’s boots skidded on the greasy layer of ash, losing their bite entirely. He was pulled forward, his chest slamming against the lip of the sinkhole as he slid on his stomach. Before he could find an anchor, the shelf of ash buckled.

Hurricane’s upper body pitched over the edge, his torso dangling precariously over the bubbling pit. He was face-to-face with the sulfurous heat, his arm straining nearly out of its socket as he refused to let go of the younger SEAL. Only his hips and legs remained on the solid ground, his boots kicking frantically for purchase against the slick ash as the weight of Reef, doubled by the mud, threatened to pull him the rest of the way in.

Grizzly and Picasso were on them in a heartbeat. Grizzly’s iron grip catching Reef’s harness while Picasso grabbed Hurricane. With a muffled grunt and every ounce of strength, they hauled both men out and slammed them onto a stable shelf of granite before the geothermal heat could melt through their boots.

Wyatt was there before they could even find their footing. The PJ shoved them toward a patch of dry rock, his hands moving with clinical speed. He didn’t ask if they were okay as he checked the structural integrity of their gear.

“Boots are holding,” Wyatt mouthed, his voice barely a vibration. He splashed a tiny bit of sterile water over a raw, bloody scrape on Hurricane’s elbow where the grit had stripped the skin, then squeezed Reef’s shoulder. He felt for the heat radiating from their lower legs. “Medical check is green. Can you run?”

Reef took a shaky, jagged breath. Grizzly saw the Mexico chill return to his teammate’s eyes: the dilated pupils of a man who could still feel the phantom weight of a collapsing city. Reef looked at the bubbling pit that had almost claimed him, then up at Wyatt. He bared his teeth in a forced grin

Reef signed quickly, “Now I guess I need to add volcanoes to that ‘Most Hated’ list, huh?”

The joke was thin, but the SEAL’s focused mind was back online. Reef gave a quick nod of thanks to Grizzly and Picasso, checking to make sure his Glock was still in the holster, and signaled Ready.

They closed the final hundred yards inch by grueling inch, their bodies pressed low as they hauled themselves through clinging mud and choking ash. Every movement was deliberate, muscles straining against the slick, unforgiving ground. Grizzly signaled the team to drop into the lee of a massive service crate on the edge of the tarmac, offering a brief shelter from the bitter wind.

Wyatt looked at the helicopter, then met his brother’s gaze and signaled toward the cockpit: I can fly it.

He followed with a series of quick, sharp gestures, a hybrid of official PJ signals and a private Adams dialect they had refined over a decade of shared leaves. They had used that silent language to navigate everything from high-altitude rescue drills to crowded bars in San Diego when they were nineteen and trying to vet potential dates without saying a word.

Grizzly felt a fleeting ghost of a grin. He knew that specific snap of Wyatt’s wrist. His brother was cocky enough to know he could fly it even if the engine was “unvetted” and the flight computer likely “brick-locked.” He also had a PJ workaround that would get them off the ground.

Picasso signaled back with a sharp, downward slice: Negative. He tapped his ear and mimed a locking motion, warning that the FADEC system would be useless without a diagnostic handshake from the console.

Wyatt countered with a slow, deliberate thumbs-up, followed by a gesture that meant Trust the Air Force.