“And what’s it doing on a volcanic island off the coast of Africa?” Étienne asked.
Ward looked at the symbols again. That was the question, wasn’t it? “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I’m going to find out.” He reached into his Indy-pack and retrieved a high-resolution scanner. “I’m going to document this. Line for line, by depth, angle, and orientation. You get your student back to the water and don’t let anyone else near this until I’m done.”
René hesitated. “You’re staying here alone?”
“Yes. And if either of you so much as breathe a word about these symbols to anyone before I finish the initial trace, I will ruin your entire academic career with one phone call. Go.”
René scampered back with a mumbled, “Yes, sir.” Étienne gave Ward one last look—a mix of annoyance and amusement—then followed the kid down the trail.
Ward watched them until they disappeared, then settled in and turned on the scanner. “Alright,” he murmured. “Let’s see what secrets you’ve been keeping.” As he stepped into the cave, he paused and glanced over his shoulder as a sound filtered from the depths.
What the heck was that?
Is it a ship’s horn?
He listened for longer than he should have, but when the sound didn’t come again, he figured it had come from a ship or a boat on the other side of the island and entered the tunnel.He couldn’t wait to get started. He needed to know what those glyphs were. Needed. To.
Please let there be something freaking epic in here.
CHAPTER THREE
Damn it.
Viper shoved aside a low-hanging vine and scrambled over the fallen tree. This kind of terrain was his least favorite to work in. A jungle didn’t give a damn about military precision or deadlines. It didn’t care how elite your training was, how many hours you logged in combat zones, or how many wars you’d survived. It didn’t give a shit about call signs or kill counts or how many languages you could curse in. The jungle chewed all that up and spat it out with a vine around your throat and biting insects in your boots.
He pushed through another tangle of razorleaf, the blade of his machete slick with sap and sweat. The heat was thick enough to choke on, and the air tasted like mildew and something he was more than a little sure he didn’t want to know the cause of. Every breath stung his lungs like inhaling steam through gauze. The jungle floor sucked at his boots, sucking each step into a carpet of rotting leaves and unseen roots.
“Left rise,” Reaper grunted behind him. “Shallow outcrop. We’ll take it.”
“Copy.” Anything to get them out of this hellscape. He angled his trajectory a little and started carving a narrow path toward the ridgeline. “Maintain line. Push through.”
They were ten hours deep into the green hell that was Île Saonae, and the island hadn’t let up once. What was supposed to be a two-klick hike had turned into a knife fight with the terrain. There were no trails, and clearings were few and far between. This fucking jungle offered them nothing but mud, vines, volcanic scree, and nature doing its best to kill them with every fucking inch.
They had considered having Trace shift into Bran, but two minutes from the beach had nixed that plan in the butt. Instead, Trace had stripped to his tactical base layer. The last thing they wanted was to lose gear because he shredded them if he needed to shift on the fly.
Viper paused to take a breath and check his men. Trace ducked low under a hanging curtain of vines that shimmered with moisture. Behind him, Juice almost stepped on his mate’s heels, his eyes constantly moving. Zero and Kaze brought up the rear, their gear slick with sweat, their breathing tight through comms.
“Tell me again why this guy couldn’t hide in a desert like a normal psychopath.” Kaze swiped at a spider web that stretched across his face.
“Because sand gets in your ass crack,” Zero replied. “Jungle’s more personal.”
The corners of Viper’s lips curved upward. Even with the shit they had to deal with, his brothers in arms found the energy to bitch and complain.
When they stop bitching. I start worrying.
Al-Rami, you asshole. Enjoy these last few hours of freedom, because today you die.
Every step, every fucking swing of his blade, was one step closer to putting that bastard in the ground. He could still hear the screams from Aleppo. He was never going to be able to get the smell of the burned concrete out of his nose. His nightmares would be forever haunted by the last breath of Gabe Lansing, one of the best damn SEALs Viper had ever served with. The sound of Gabe choking out in his arms while smoke curled around their boots and the embassy crumbled like paper behind them played in his mind and fueled his determination not to be beaten by this fucking island.
He hacked through a wall of underbrush and stumbled into a sudden clearing—a slope of collapsed volcanic rock, slick with moss, and the remnants of some ancient lava flow now buried in vines. He raised a fist. The team froze behind him.
“Checkpoint Bravo,” he said over comms. “Elevation gain, thirty-two meters. Hold perimeter.”
“Copy, actual,” Juice answered, already dropping to one knee and scanning with his scope.
Viper tapped his HUD and checked the satellite overlay. They were still tracking the heat signature. It was still moving slowly to the northeast as if Al-Rami was taking his time or constantly doubling back.
Smart. But not smart enough.
