He’s done.
Just like I promised.
Rest easy, brother.
Until we meet again to feast in the halls of Valhalla.
Reaper stepped over a body and crouched beside the laptop. “Clean hit. No pings on uplink. This was off-grid.”
Zero scanned the horizon. “Perimeter clear. One runner almost made it to ground, but we got him before he spooked the trees.”
Kaze paced the edge of the camp, eyes sharp. “Three down. Plus the target. Six bodies total.”
Viper didn’t speak. He knelt beside Al-Rami’s corpse, staring down at the asshole’s open eyes and the blood pooling beneath the man’s head. It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. But it was done. He reached into his vest and pulled out a small, battered patch. SEAL Team Five. Gabe’s old team. He pressed it into the blood-soaked fabric on Al-Rami’s chest. “Payback’s a bitch, motherfucker,” he whispered. “Fuck you and fuck your cause.” He straightened and glanced at the guys. “DNA them. Gather all the intel, and leave the assholes to rot.” He gave the area one last sweep and moved to help the guys get everything they could from the camp. But as he moved behind one of the tarps, something shifted under his boots, and he stilled.
It wasn’t much—just a subtle tremor, a vibration low in the soles of his feet, as if the jungle had taken a deep breath and hadn’t decided whether to exhale yet or not.
Trace moved to his right. His head snapped up, and his eyes narrowed. “You feel that?”
“Yeah.” Viper shook himself to remove the echo of the memory of Mount St. Helens, but the ground shook again. This time it was hard and sudden, like a freight train barreling beneath the surface. It lasted less than four seconds, but it was enough to send horror through his veins.
Shit.
Two of the gear crates tumbled over, dust rose in a sudden puff from the forest floor, and every member of Volcano Team snapped into readiness like goddamn lightning rods.
“What the fuck was that?” Reaper growled, coming up from his crouch.
“Earthquake?” Kaze pointed to the flock of birds that had risen from the treetops and were rapidly disappearing from view. “But it didn’t feel right. Almost like it was kinda too shallow or something. It moved hella fast, too.”
Viper dropped to one knee and pressed his palm to the moss. “It’s not moving now.”
“That didn’t feel like it was tectonic.” Trace’s voice was low and tight.
“You’re saying this was a coincidence?” Zero asked. “We kill the bastard, and ten minutes later the island hiccups?”
“No.” Trace looked at them with ancient eyes—deep, unreadable, like something half-forgotten had stirred behind them. “I’m saying it feels like there is something on this island and it’s waking up.”
Viper caught the glance and shoved it aside. He didn’t have time for fairytale shit. But hell, life as he knew it was already on its ass. He was standing here on an unmapped island with a manwho could turn into a wolf on a fucking whim. He glanced up at the peak of Mount Abalos. It didn’t look like it was about to do anything. But what did he know? He wasn’t a volcanologist. He turned to his second in command. “Juice, get the drone in the air. I want a thermal read on that volcano. Reaper, sweep the perimeter. Kaze, double-check gear integrity. We need to know if this was a one-off or a warning shot.”
They moved fast. Every man there was running the same math in his head: if that volcano blew… the chances of getting off this island were slim to none.No comms would matter. No evac would make it. It would be ash, death, jungle, and a raging mountain breathing fire around their ears.
Viper stared up into the canopy as the silence pressed in around him. Something deep in his gut curled into a cold, hard knot. Warning him. Screaming at him to run. “Leave it.” He yelled the order. “Leave everything. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Ward stoodat the mouth of the chamber. The humid air clung to his skin like oil, his headlamp casting long shadows across the rocky floor. He could feel the weight of the mountain above him. If he ignored the fact that there were metric tons of volcanic rock suspended above his skull like a hammer waiting to drop, then he’d be fine.
Fine, my ass.
It’s a hole in the ground waiting to swallow me whole… no pun intended.
He knew he really should be more cautious. He should wait for a team to be with him, and he most definitely should have left the island with Étienne. But logic had abandoned him the second he confirmed the symbols were there, and thus far, they looked legit.
They aren’t just similar to the ones in Ireland. This first one, at least, is identical to one of them.
Now, he was two hundred meters in, surrounded by rock that, besides the people who had called him here, another humanhadn’t seen in—what? A thousand years? Two? He didn’t know. That was the point. This place wasn’t in any records or on any maps. There were no oral traditions or environmental logs to go off. Yet, the symbols were here. Laid out on the stone like they had been waiting for him.
Or waiting for someone dumb enough to read them.
