Ward stared at him for a long beat, then smiled faintly and nodded. “Same.”
They reached the main clearing to find the others already up and moving. Kaze was shirtless again, going through a kata with two short blades as if the feast had never happened. Reaper waspacking gear like a man possessed. Zero had traded his usual stone-faced stillness for a quiet kind of tension, like he was already running scenarios in his head.
Trace and Juice stood near the fire pit, speaking low and fast. The tension between them was wrapped in urgency.
“What’s the sitrep?” Viper asked, voice steady. There was no room for anything but straight-up business from here on out. “What’s the plan for touchdown?” He hoped like hell someone had a plan, because he didn’t. He had exactly nada, zip, nothing at all.
Trace turned to him, his jaw clenched so tightly Viper could almost see his teeth grinding together. The shifter shook his head and pointed to his Grá Croí.
Juice lifted a hand and scrubbed it over his head. “We’re working that out now. Trace’s Dolmen in upstate New York has accepted the anchor, but we’ve still got a logistics issue.”
Viper raised an eyebrow. “Which is?”
Juice exhaled. “Getting us from rural New York back to the fucking Indian Ocean without the United States Navy wondering how we survived a volcanic blast that should’ve killed us.”
“Great,” Ward grumbled. “All we need for that to happen is a freaking miracle.”
“We’re not getting a miracle.” Viper scratched at his beard. “So we manufacture one.”
Juice nodded slowly. “I was thinking the same. Smoke and mirrors. We’re shit hot at smoke and mirrors.”
“Talk to me,” Viper ordered, stepping closer to the makeshift map Juice had etched into the dirt with a stick—two continents, a portal symbol marked in the forests of New York, and a wide arc drawn across the Atlantic toward the Horn of Africa. “How do we fake this?”
Juice’s mouth was grim. “We tell them the satellite data was wrong. The blast radius was off. We say we got pushed clear by the shockwave and holed up in a natural lava tube for forty-eight hours.”
“And that we made a land trek through hell to get picked up by a fishing vessel,” Reaper added, rolling his shoulders. “We fabricate radio contact from a third-party vessel. One with no incentive to contradict our story.”
“It won’t hold under full investigation,” Trace warned with his arms crossed. “Not if they do deep scans.”
“They won’t,” Zero said without looking up from where he was adjusting the straps on his blade harness. “Because the brass won’t want to dig into this too deep. We were on a Black Op with plausible deniability. They can’t pin shit on us without opening themselves up to courts of justice shit.”
Reaper nodded. “If they declared us dead. Black bags, folded flags, the whole nine. Resurrecting us would mean questions, political heat, and the liability they marked as denied for the mission. It might raise some eyebrows and they’ll call us lucky bastards, but it’ll still be easier to accept our miracle than investigate how the hell it happened.”
“So it’s agreed?” Viper asked. “We tell them we holed up for what’s the time frame you said passed back home, Trace?”
“Just under forty hours now. By the time we hit the IO, it’ll be at least forty-eight, maybe slightly more.”
“We’ll have to make it work.” Viper looked at Ward. “Will the door be stable enough to move back and forth when or if we need to?”
Ward hesitated. “I can’t swear to it. I’ve never done this before. But Fionn seemed to think so.”
Viper nodded. “We’ll move carefully. One crossing at a time and give it a few days to refuel its power in between.”
“I’m coming back,” Trace said. “I can’t stay away. Bran’s part of this place. Part of them.” It wasn’t a surprise to anyone that The Hound of the Fianna would want to come back and forth to visit his brethren.
Juice’s hand dropped to his back. “And I go where you go.”
Viper was trying to wrap his head around what needed to happen as soon as their boots hit the real world. “Once we’re back, we’ll need to run black for a couple of hours and get our asses to that island.”
“Already on it,” Reaper said. “I have a guy who owes be a huge favor. He can probably ghost us in and out. But I can’t call him until we are back and I have access to a phone.”
Kaze rubbed the back of his neck. “You think the Fianna are gonna let us walk without a hundred more toasts, hugs, and mystic blessings?”
“We’ll take the blessings,” Viper said. “We’ll need all the help we can get.”
Ward’s hand found his. “And we’re doing it together.”
“Always.” He squeezed back. “Let’s bring it home.”
