The waves answered with a long slow break along the shore.
He shifted his gaze around the gathered. “Now I see the ones who carry the torch forward. Dragon. Pitbull. Hemingway. Mad Max. Dodger. 2-Stroke. Saint. Professor. Gator. Blitz. D-Day. Buck. Zorro. Bear. You rose from our shadow and you surpassed us. That is the legacy we fought for.”
He took in the beach, the ocean, the men who had survived beside him.
“Today I take a new rank. A new role. A battlefield made of decisions instead of bullets. But hear me clearly. Stepping back doesn’t mean walking away.” He touched his star. “This doesn’t change who I am. I will always be one of you.”
Silence rippled out, deep and reverent.
“You had my back,” he said quietly. “Every damn time. I will carry that until my last breath. You’re the brotherhood. The best men I ever knew, and none of you will ever walk alone.”
He stepped back.
“Hoo-yah,” lifted from every throat, ringing out strong and true. They moved toward him.
Kid was first, slapping a hand to his shoulder. “I told you the Navy would let even your crazy ass wear a star.”
Cowboy pulled him into a fast, strong hug. Tank clasped his hand with quiet pride. Blue embraced him with trembling emotion. Scarecrow offered a wicked grin. Wicked nodded once, which meant more than a paragraph. Hollywood clasped his shoulder
Then the next wave moved in. Dragon. Pitbull. Hemingway. Max. Dodger. Saint. The next, and the next. Bear stood last. He approached with a calm that belonged to someone carved from earth and spirit.
“Congratulations, Admiral,” Bear said.
“Brother,” Ruckus replied.
The surf rolled in. The sky opened. The men who had built his life stood around him in a circle carved by fate and fire. Ruckus looked at the ocean and felt the shift settle deep in his bones. He had begun here. It was fitting he would move on here. He walked forward, carrying every man who had ever walked beside him.
His brotherhood. One bond. One mission. One unbreakable line.
Bowie Cooper would carry them all into whatever came next.
Thunderhawk Field Operation: San Diego County
The scent of eucalyptus clung to the night as Bailee crouched behind the rusted trailer, her breath steady, her pulse slow. The air vibrated with distant music from a roadside bar, but here, in the abandoned storage lot, the world had tightened to a single point. One door. One lock. One chance.
Ten girls waited inside, their ages ranging from twelve to twenty. Northern Cheyenne. Navajo. Yurok. Girls stolen from their families, funneled toward the border, vanished into the pipeline she had dedicated her life to ending.
Bailee’s path into her current San Diego post hadn’t been a straight line, but a blaze she carved through every agency that underestimated her. She left the CIA with scars still healing and walked straight into the DOJ’s MMIWG task force, dragging inter-agency cooperation into alignment by sheer force of will. Her work caught the attention of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, where she pushed for funding parity and jurisdiction clarity until no tribal officer under her watch was left fighting without backup. From there, she built the Global and Domestic Special Investigations Unit, GDSI sub-branch inside the FBI, leveraging overseas pipelines she knew too well. Right now, there was a Thunderhawk Bill before Congress that would make her unit permanent with funds and power, guaranteeing Indigenous voices have a federal investigative home. She chose San Diego as her headquarters. It kept her close to Bear’s world, close to the water, and close enough to the border to strike fast when the girls needed her.
A sliver of light cut under the door as someone moved inside. A voice barked an order. A girl whimpered. Bailee’s jaw clenched hard enough to ache.
She motioned to her team. Quiet advances. No unnecessary noise. The new federal branch she built moved like a shadow around her, men and women trained for this exact moment. Not soldiers. Not spooks. Seekers. Guardians.
Bailee rose from her crouch, the sand and gravel shifting beneath her boots. She reached the door and whispered one command, “Go.”
The battering tool hit the lock with a deep metallic thud. The door flew back. Bailee swept inside first.
The room smelled of sweat, fear, chemical perfume. A narrow bulb flickered overhead. The girls huddled in the back corner, wrists bound. Their eyes locked onto her, wide and terrified. “Federal agents. Don’t move.”
One of the traffickers lunged toward her with a curse in Spanish. Bailee moved before her team reacted, her elbow snapping into his jaw, her knee slamming into his ribs. He collapsed with a hard grunt.
The second man bolted toward the window. Two agents took him down before he reached it.
Once everything was under control, Bailee ignored the men. Her attention went to the girls. “It is all right,” Bailee said, voice steady as stone. “You’re safe now. We have you.” She knelt slowly, lowering herself until she was eye level with them. She kept her hands visible. Soft. Open. “No one is taking you,” she whispered.
The oldest girl stared at her, tears tracking through dust on her cheeks. “I thought we were lost.”
Bailee felt the word settle through her ribs, heavy with something sacred.
