I swallowed the surge of anger. Cyclone wasn’t wrong. He was doing his job, which included reminding me that weweren’t just chasing a woman I’d failed—we were chasing the head of The Ascendancy’s European node.
I just wished it didn’t feel like I was walking into the same nightmare I’d already lived once.
“I know the mission,” I said. “Pierce out.”
We parked the truck beneath a stand of twisted pines, disguised it with a camo tarp, and shouldered our packs. The rest of the ascent we did on foot, boots crunching over ice-crusted rock, breath fogging in the air.
Aaron fell into step beside me. “You never talk about that op,” he said quietly. “Morocco. Your team.”
“Nothing to talk about,” I said.
“Bullshit,” Miles called softly from ahead.
Jase glanced back, one brow ticking up. That was as close as he got to joining in.
I tightened the strap on my pack. “We walked into a trap. They died. I didn’t. End of story.”
“But this guy on the intercom.” Aaron watched me from the corner of his eye. “The one in Tunisia, at the Ascendancy hub. The one who said you were still cleaning up your last mistake. He’s tied to what happened.”
It wasn’t a question.
My teeth ground together. “His name’s Viktor Markov. Ex–Russian intelligence, freelance butcher. Hydra used him for their blackest work. Ascendancy inherited him.”
“And he’s in this facility,” Miles added. “Or at least connected enough to use Lena as leverage.”
The thought made the air colder.
Snow started to fall in fine, hard pellets, stinging my face.
“I’m not going to let him touch her again,” I said, surprising myself with how raw it came out. “Not one more time.”
Aaron’s jaw flexed. “Good. Because if he does, we’ll kill him twice.”
Jase nodded once, the mountain wind tugging at his hood. “Eyes up,” he murmured. “Shed, ten o’clock.”
The structure emerged from the fog like a bad memory—a squat concrete box, half-buried in the slope, painted the same dull gray as the rock. An ancientAVALANCHE CONTROLsign hung crooked over the door, bullet holes rusted around the edges.
To anyone else, it looked like a forgotten utility building.
To us, it looked like a problem waiting to be solved.
We dropped into a crouch behind a cluster of boulders. I pulled out Cyclone’s thermal print. The shed glowed faintly—just enough to be wrong.
“Two guards inside,” I said. “Heat signature below ground—big. This is our hatch.”
Miles rubbed his gloved hands together. “So we knock?”
“Too loud,” Jase said.
“Too slow,” Aaron added.
“I wasn’t actually serious,” Miles muttered.
I slid my rifle into a more comfortable position and exhaled, letting the mountain, the cold, and the mission settle over me like armor.
“Jase, take the left door angle. Aaron, right window. Miles, you’re on overwatch the second they realize their avalanche hut doesn’t avalanche anymore.” I met each of their eyes in turn. “We go in silent and we stay silent until we’re below ground. No alarms. No hero shit.”
Aaron smirked. “We’re SEALs. Hero shit is kind of the job description.”
