River grinned faintly. “Remind me never to get on your bad side.”
“You already are,” Elara said, and the corner of her mouth lifted just enough to make him laugh.
Cyclone pointed to the digital map. “We’ll insert here—coastal edge, two klicks from the main dockyard. Hydra’s security grid runs along the outer perimeter. We’ll cut power, slip through the maintenance route, and hit the command building first. Once the main servers are down, their comms go black. We isolate the lieutenant, extract what we can, and torch everything they can’t carry.”
Oliver spoke for the first time, his voice even, deliberate. “How many civilians?”
Cyclone hesitated. “Maybe two dozen. Most in transit. Hydra doesn’t keep their victims long.”
I looked at Elara. Her hands tightened around her belt.
“We get them out first,” she said.
It wasn’t a question.
“Agreed,” I said.
The plane jolted as we hit turbulence. Somewhere below, the Mediterranean shimmered under the stars, the dark waves a mirror for the kind of mission we’d stepped into—deep, cold, and merciless.
Cyclone leaned toward me. “ETA—ten minutes.”
Everyone fell into silence again, that pre-mission quiet where breath feels heavier and the heart beats slower.
I reached for Elara’s hand, just once, before we stood. “You stay on my flank. If anything happens—”
She cut me off. “We walk out together. You already said it.”
I almost smiled. “Guess I did.”
The ramp lowered, wind slamming through the bay, the roar of the ocean rising to meet us. We were ghosts again—six soldiers stepping into another country’s shadows.
Tunisia sprawled below us—lights glimmering along the coast, the harbor alive with cranes and cargo ships, the kind of industrial sprawl that could swallow whole armies.
Cyclone’s voice came through the comms, steady and calm. “Welcome to Tunisia, boys and girl. Hydra’s open for business.”
And as my boots hit the sand, rifle ready, I looked toward the port lights in the distance and muttered,
“Let’s shut them down.”
76
Elara
We moved like water—low, silent, and everywhere at once.
The maintenance route Cyclone had mapped out wound beneath the dockyard like a ribcage: service tunnels, rusted catwalks, and a smell that was a mix of salt, diesel, and old fear. Our boots made no sound on the metal grating; River led with the lightest step I’d ever seen him take, as if he’d taught his body how to be invisible. Oliver kept us tight on the left, eyes cutting angles, while Gage shadowed the rear with a grin that was more steel than humor. Cyclone was two paces back, earbuds in, fingers working a hacked interface on a pocket rig. I was beside Beckett—close enough to feel him—rifle angled, every muscle ready.
The first gate was a lattice of chain and padlock. Cyclone slid the rig against the access panel and worked his fingers the same way he picked keys off keyboards—an intimate, practiced thing. Metal relented with a faint hiss; the lock unlatched like a secret. We flowed through.
Outside, the yard smelled of freight and electricity. Cranes cast long, skeletal shadows. Containers were stacked like sleeping giants. The guard patrols were predictable—two men onthe outer lane, a camera tower with limited sweep. River clipped the first guard’s throat with a suppressor shot and caught the falling body silently. Oliver moved like a shadow to the second, performed a clean choke, and quickly checked—no pulse, no noise. No bodies on the asphalt, no alarms in the air. Our kind of night.
Cyclone dropped into a crouch by the power box, fingers flying. “Give me sixty,” he breathed. “Sixty and I can blackout the whole yard.”
“Make it fast,” Beckett whispered.
He did it in forty-two. Lights winked out like a galaxy snuffed. The cranes paused mid-reach, red hazard LEDs blinking like sleepy eyes. The harbor went from functional to frozen. For a heartbeat, the world held its breath—then we spread.
We used the darkness as armor. Beckett and I slipped between containers, the cold metal pressing against our shoulders. Elara—me—felt the hum of adrenaline settle into a steadier rhythm. My hands didn’t shake. The fear was there, a dull hammer at my ribs, but it was useful. Sharpening.
