“Are you Miller or Mercer? I’ve already met Carter.”
“Miller.” The man stuck out his hand, and I took it, despite my lingering annoyance. “You’re Rusev, right? Any relation to the major general?”
“My father,” I admitted, feeling my jaw clench, waiting for the next set of questions that were bound to come up. But instead, Miller just continued to gaze out at the endless expanse of water before he nodded.
“I’ve heard about the Rusev boys but never met any of them. Good guys. Or so they say.” Miller winked as he turned away from the railing, and I had to grit my teeth to let him walk away without saying something.
No, he hadn’t said it, but he’d implied it—my brothers and I had gotten to our positions through our father’s name and connections.
That wasn’t the truth, of course, but it didn’t matter—enough people believed it that I’d heard the same refrain, both as rumor and said to my face, many times since I’d joined the Navy at eighteen. Never mind, it wasn’t the truth, that we’d all worked twice as hard thanks to our well-known name just to prove to skeptical higher officers we weren’t skating by. Never mind the years of my father’s training we’d had to endure to gain our physical and mental strength. Never mind that I had been learning survival skills in some remote forest when this Miller guy was probably hitting a T-ball off a stand for the promise of a popsicle after the game. I’d heard it enough times that I could grit my teeth and get through it, ignore it, be the bigger man. It hadn’t always been that way, and I had my fair share of scrapes and scars and write-ups on my record to attest to that.
I was just glad all I had to do was work with him. Nothing about being a Navy SEAL said you had to spend any more time than that with the other guys on your team.
I hunted for another protein bar, then found an out-of-the-way corner to rest briefly. By the time I opened my eyes again, the sun had peaked. Standing to look over the water, I watched as a sea bird fell from the air, its entrance into the water a small, white splash. It bobbed to the surface a heartbeat later, a small fish in its mouth.
Land hadn’t appeared, but we were close.
“Should be pulling up to the coordinates in about half an hour.”
I looked over my shoulder to find Carter standing just outside the small cabin, arms crossed over his chest, his gaze far out over the water.
“Time to get suited up,” I said, passing him into the cabin, and he followed, his bootsteps heavy behind me. Mercer was already down there, and I figured Miller had come down already and was steering the boat.
We shed our disguises and suited up, strapping on weapons and gear with quick efficiency. There was no chatter, no joking, only focused silence as the mission became less fact on paper and more an ever-growing reality.
The large island grew closer, first a gray mound in the distance, then a large piece of land rising out of the water behind a haze, green and verdant for the summer. As the four of us discussed the final points of the mission, Carter steered us to the coordinates where we would leave the small fishing boat and drop the anchor. Miller took down the Japanese flag to avoid an international incident with a “Japanese fishing vessel” while we carried out our mission.
For a long moment, we watched the island in silence. But it wasn’t just silence between our team members—it was an odd silence, a void where there should have been some evidence of humans and animals. Where there should have been netting and fishing traps, other signs of locals living the way they always had, only thick powerlines remained, the kind fish stayed away from, the kind that should have been buried deeply.
They were laying right out in the open.