Chapter 5
Triton
“WHAT DO YOU THINK THAT is?”
Carter looked out over the water, his arm stretched towards the lines that should have been buried deeply but were not.
“Underwater Internet cables.” My reply was flat, the information turning grimly in my head like moving puzzle pieces. All the information intelligence had gathered started coming together in my mind, the strange boats, the odd flickers seen in Japanese and Kuril power grids over the past weeks, the odd comings and goings of unknown boats from the contested islands.
This was bad. Very bad.
“Yeah?” Carter’s glance towards me was cautious, his words following the same pattern as his eyebrows inched closer to his hairline. I could tell he was thinking the same thing I was or at least some approximation. Was he also imagining the chaos that would erupt if we failed this mission and the people we were after achieved their goal?
Miller whistled, his gaze on the black cables undulating with the movement of the water. “Well, crap, that’s not very good, is it?” He said the first smart thing I’d heard from him all day, even if it was an understatement. Beside him, Mercer made a sound of agreement, his lips pulled into a thin line, the angles of his face hard.
It was the four of us against an unknown terror cell. We weren’t sure what awaited us on the island, how many there were, what they wanted, or what kind of fortification and power they had. Intelligence hadn’t been able to find much information on those subjects. Or maybe they had but no one had made it out alive to report back.
Which didn’t bode well for our future well-being.
The satellite images from my briefing flashed into my head—the boats floating in the waters of the Pacific and the Sea of Okhotsk, nation unknown. Intelligence had picked up chatter of concern from both Japan and Russia, talk of strange sightings of unmarked ships caught on film by both fishing vessels and satellites. Unless it was an action of some fringe part of their governments, kept secret from the rest, the responsibility didn’t lie with either country, just as they claimed.
Ocean monitors had also picked up unhealthy levels of radiation, concerning levels. Russia would never let on until a disaster happened, but intelligence suspected there were several reactors scattered among the islands and along the east coast that were in trouble.
And those cables were the reason why.
“All right, boys.” Carter jerked his head towards the island. “Reconnaissance time. Let’s see what’s going on.”
The four of us moved together, strapping our gear into place and securing our goggles and breathing apparatuses over our faces before doing a final check. We slipped into the water one by one, leaving the boat behind, anchored where it would wait for us to return.
If we returned.
Even at the height of summer, the water was still frigid, and I could feel it as a chilled pressure against my wetsuit. Sunlight filtered from above, beds of kelp shifting and swayed with the currents, fish zipping through the giant leaves as small darts of light.
We stopped at the black tubing floating in the water, lengths of black interspersed with rings. The four of us clustered around one, Carter signaling and pointing to the places where tampering was evident.
These should have been buried under the sea floor, but someone—whatever group or terrorist cell we were about to face—had uncovered them, brought them closer to the surface. The first part of their plan seemed to have been to uncover the cables, and the next to destroy them to cut the lines. We were just lucky they hadn’t reached their goal yet.
I signaled for the rest of the team to continue, but I wanted a closer look at the casing. I could see machine marks and what looked like strike markings, as though someone had tried to bust it open with a chisel, hammer, or something blunt. Then more scratch marks, like someone had taken a knife to it. The hard shell had resisted, but I knew these underwater cables were surprisingly vulnerable for their extreme level of importance. Whoever had started the job would undoubtedly come back to finish it with something that would be able to break through the shell, exposing the all-important core within.
How could something this innocuous threaten to send the world into an all-out war? It never failed to surprise me.
Turning from the tubing, I followed my teammates' path toward the shore. I knew they would turn inland, through the forest of trees and low brush towards the small building just visible from the boat. Whether that was their headquarters or not, we didn’t know, but it was a start.
I heard the explosion just as I crested the water.
The echoes bounced off the far side of the shore as a deep rumble I knew all-too-well, traveling away from the explosion and racing back towards it. Which meant it had come from the direction of the rest of the team.
I scrambled to the shore, the water sucking at my legs, making it difficult to pick up the speed I needed. Then I was out, my footsteps heavy over the soft sand, sinking in, slipping, until I reached more solid ground.
The sound of gunfire erupted, the sharp tat-tat-tat of repeated machine gun fire, yells, voices rising and falling in alarm, anger, and orders.
There were moments in a mission when everything seemed to start. When time went careening forward, the mission tumbling with it to its end, whatever that would look like. This was that moment, one we hadn’t anticipated. But this was when my years of training kicked in, the training that sent a surge of adrenaline pumping through me, followed by a wave of detached calm. I could hear everything, see everything, and understand what had to come next. I moved without thought, without fear, without feeling. I was less than human, more than human, a well-tuned machine that would get the job done because failure wasn’t an option.
A bag stood near the shore, a pack dropped by one of my teammates. I tore off my breathing apparatus and goggles, replacing my wetsuit with tactical gear and a vest, strapping the extra weaponry on with practiced speed and efficiency. But it wasn’t fast enough, because I could still hear the firefight—my teammates needed me, and they needed me now.
Cursing under my breath, I took the extra weapon from the pack and tore off in the direction of the fighting. Large, sharp rocks jutted out into the water, cutting off the beach on which we’d landed from the one where I heard the gunfire. I would have to go through the forest to get to my teammates.
The foliage of the boreal forest wasn’t as dense as some of the jungle I’d encountered on my missions around the world, but it was dense enough. Trees, low, thick bushes, and tall grasses made the going tough, and I had to fight my way through it.