"Roger, copy."
He motioned for Jug to join him, the silent communication flowing between them effortlessly, having developed over years of training and working together. "I'll take hold seven. We need to clear the rest of the decks and get a crew on this ship to work on that equipment. The cargo is too valuable to lose. If the pirates have signaled for help, it could be a long fucking night." Jug nodded and retraced his steps, heading for the stairs leading to the lower decks. Hammer and Stryker had heard him direct Jug, so there was no need to announce his presence. The less chatter, the better.
Talon moved down the hallway to the hold on deck seven that Stryker had found suspicious. Each step took him deeper into the ship's belly, farther from fresh air and safety.
The air was cooler here, like the ship had been specially chilled on this deck. The temperature difference raised goose bumps on his arms, despite his tactical gear. He stepped into the hold and swept his light across the space, the beam cutting through darkness thick as velvet. There were smaller containers at all angles, stacked hastily like a child's blocks. Tarps hung over openings of containers that had been broken into.
One emergency light, obviously powered by a dying battery, blinked and dimmed as he watched, casting everything in intermittent yellow pulses. The ceiling and walls were slick with condensation that dripped steadily, creating a constant percussion against the metal floor.
He walked carefully through the maze of containers and found what Stryker had called weird. A steel container, about six feet by six feet square, was pushed toward the aft bulkhead. Talon scanned his memory for any indication of a steel container on the shipping manifest. To his knowledge, there was none. This could very well be where the yellowcake uranium was being stored. Which was the reason they were all there, risking their lives in a floating graveyard.
He approached silently, his MK18 barrel sweeping the area as he moved. Every shadow could hide a person with a weapon, and every sound could be the last thing he heard. Stryker was dead-on. Something was off. The floor directly outside the container was immaculately clean. There were no prints, no scuff marks, no blood stains. Someone had taken great care to sanitize this area. On the edge of the door frame, there was a dark red smear. Blood. Not thick enough to bemortal injury, but an injury, nonetheless. Talon scanned the area one more time before kneeling and examining the red stain with his tactical light. It was almost like a handprint had brushed against the steel. Perhaps someone had touched or grabbed at the side of this door while bleeding. A struggle? He nodded to himself. Someone didn’t want to be put in this cage.
He glanced at the door itself. A thick chain with a massive padlock secured the door tightly. Not standard shipping procedures. Maritime cargo didn't require prison-grade security unless it was hiding something that shouldn't be found. Or perhaps something the pirates wanted to lock up and forget. He swept the area one more time, his training demanding absolute certainty of his security, before he reached back to his pack and pulled out his bolt cutters. The tool felt solid and familiar in his hands. It took two bites, one on the shackle and one on the secondary link, before the chain released and slithered through the steel handle of the door with a metallic wail. The sound echoed in the hold. Talon slid back into the shadows and waited in case the noise pulled a pirate from a hole.
Nothing. He slowly secured the bolt cutters, raised his rifle, and moved out of the shadows toopen the door. The hinges protested with a groan that seemed to echo through his bones.
The stench hit him first. It was the smell of human filth and sweat, encased in stale metal and the absence of fresh air. The odor was overwhelming, concentrated in a space too small for human habitation. The interior was utterly dark, a void that seemed to swallow his light. He switched on his tactical light and swept it to the left, the beam cutting through darkness as thick as tar. Nothing.
He swept right.
A figure curled in the far corner moved, huddling closer to the steel wall like a wounded animal seeking shelter. Talon looked behind him one more time, ensuring he was alone, before stepping forward into the container.
A woman. Barefoot and shaking, arms wrapped around her knees in a defensive posture that spoke of prolonged terror. Her wrists were zip-tied, the plastic restraints so tight that dried blood caked the plastic and the skin around the ties, creating dark dried rivulets down her hands. Her hair hung in wet, sweaty ropes around her face, and her clothes were in tatters—stained with blood, dirt, and filth that told a story of brutality and neglect.
The woman didn't scream, nor did she flinch ashe approached. She did blink against the light, squinting as if trying to understand what she was seeing. Her eyes held the hollow look of someone who had given up hope, who had retreated so far into survival that recognition came slowly.
"Dude, I have a live female held in a metal container. Standby."
He moved forward, lowering his rifle but keeping it ready. His voice dropped, becoming gentle in a way that felt foreign. He hadn’t had to be gentle since he was in civilized company back in the States. "You're safe now. I'm not here to hurt you."
Her breath hitched. It was a small sound that cut through him like a blade, but she didn't speak.
Talon crouched, keeping his weapon pointed toward the door, ready for anything. Terrified eyes tracked his every movement with the hypervigilance only trauma could produce. Her eyes were wide and bloodshot. Her pupils dilated with shock and possibly dehydration. She looked young, maybe mid-twenties, though suffering like this would age her in ways that time alone never could. Talon knew that for a fact. He’d lived the suffering. He’d watched it play out with his mom and his aunt. Snapping his attention back to the woman, he noted a jagged cut marking the line of her jaw and bruises spanning herneck in the distinctive pattern of fingers. Someone had choked her, tried to snuff out her life with their bare hands.
The sight hit Talon like a physical blow. His chest tightened, and rage—cold and methodical—began building in his gut. He'd seen this before, witnessed what men could do to women when they thought no one was watching. The memories of the Siege tried to surface, but he pushed them down. Not now. This woman needed him to be present, needed him to be calm.
"I'm going to reach forward and cut those ties, okay?" he said, his voice steady despite the fury building inside him. The woman just stared at him with mostly blank eyes. Shit, did she understand him? "Do you speak English?" Talon asked.
She gave a tiny nod, the movement barely perceptible.
"Okay, I’m going to cut these ties, and then we're going to get the hell out of here. Do you understand?"
She nodded again, slightly more confident the second time. He pulled his tactical knife, the blade catching the light, and carefully sliced through the plastic bindings on her wrists. The zip ties fell away with small clicks that seemed unnaturally loud. Herarms fell to her sides, and she winced. No doubt her circulation was returning, accompanied by painful pins and needles.
"What's your name?" Talon asked as he sheathed the knife. He glanced down at her, taking in the full extent of her injuries with the clinical eye of someone trained in battlefield medicine.
Her mouth opened. Her lips were cracked, bloody, and raw from dehydration. No sound came out at first, then, barely audible, she said, "Riley."
She cleared her throat, and the noise cracked in the silence like a flare gun in the darkest void. It was small but impossible to ignore—the acknowledgment of his words and her response told him she had cognition, and she had will because she was still conscious and fighting. Despite everything that had been done to her, she was still fighting.
He leaned in slightly and lowered his voice even further. His mind flashed back to what his mother and aunt had endured during the Siege. Finding her here, in this condition, he melted. Jesus, what had happened to her? It was instinct that kicked in. Feral, real, and demanding, his gut told him this woman was something special, and he wasn’t going to fuck with gut instinct. "Okay, Riley. My name is Talon.I'm with Guardian Security. You're safe now. Do you understand?"
She gave a small nod, but her eyes were still wild, locked in that primal state between disbelief and terror. He had seen many people in this abyss. It was a place where hope had been beaten out of them so thoroughly that rescue seemed like another form of torture. Her fingers twitched on the metal floor, reflexively curling and extending like she was testing whether she could still move them.
Talon's pulse raced, his heart hammering against his ribs. He was fucking pissed. Not at her, never at her, but at what had been done to her. The bruises, the swelling on her jaw, the deep red lines around her wrists that still bled, the trembling that hadn't stopped even after the restraints were gone. Someone had beaten and choked this woman and then locked her inside a steel tomb, and from the stench and filth and her state of dehydration, they’d forgotten her and left her to rot like garbage.
The rage in his chest was a living thing, fed by memories of his own past—images of his mother's bruised face, the sound of her muffled cries through walls when she awoke with night terrors. The feeling of helplessness that had carved itself into hisbones when he was too young to act. But this time was different. This time, he could do something.
