Chapter 105 - Shadows over the Mendocino Ridge
The armory of the USS *Hampton* was small, utilitarian, and smelled of weapon lubricant and cold steel. In front of me stood six operators from SEAL Team Seven, attached to the submarine for deep-reconnaissance trials. Their leader, a broad-shouldered Lieutenant named Sean Reyes, dropped a black tactical chest rig onto the steel workbench before me.
"We heard about the Tahoe op, Master Chief," Reyes said, his voice quiet, stripped of bravado. "Heard what your old man pulled. We’re with you."
"This isn't a family dispute anymore, Lieutenant," I replied, inspecting the suppressed SIG MCX carbine he handed me, checking the bolt carrier and locking a thirty-round magazine of sub-sonic ammunition into the receiver. "My father and sister sold Fleet acoustic codes to an offshore syndicate. If those drives on Prometheus broadcast their payload to an adversarial satellite constellation, every nuclear sub along the Pacific shelf is compromised."
Reyes pulled up a holographic wireframe of Platform Prometheus on a tactical tablet mounted to the bulkhead.
"Prometheus sits in eight hundred feet of open water," Reyes briefed, his finger tracing the platform's four massive structural legs. "The upper deck is two hundred feet above the surface, equipped with a helipad, a decommissioned derrick, and automated radar suites. But the real target is beneath the splash zone."
"The underwater dry-well," I noted, recognizing the engineering schematics from Julian's seized logs. "The syndicate hollowed out the central ballast column. It’s an enclosed, atmospheric dry-dock designed to service covert submersibles without surfacing. That's where the escape capsule docked."
"The storm topside is working in our favor," Reyes said. "A Category 2 gale is tearing through the surface right now. Forty-foot swells, forty-knot winds, zero visibility. We launch from the *Hampton* at a depth of sixty feet using closed-circuit rebreathers, swim the four hundred yards to Leg Charlie, and ascend via magnetic climbing rigs through the secondary drainage shafts."
"What about security?" one of the team members asked.
"Heavy," I said. "Julian’s network uses private military contractors drawn from Eastern European maritime security firms. They carry thermal optics, automatic weapons, and they have no interest in taking prisoners. They know an arrest warrant equals a lifetime in ADX Florence for treason."
I racked the bolt of the MCX, the sharp mechanical click echoing off the steel bulkheads. I strapped on the combat knife, checked the waterproof seals on my radio headset, and pulled the tight neoprene dive hood over my head.
For months, I had given everything to my family. I had poured $110,000 of my hard-earned military hazard pay into saving their failing business, buying their groceries, paying their debts, only to be thrown out like garbage while they drank vintage champagne on my patio. They thought I was just an obedient soldier who would quietly disappear into the dark.
May you like
They were about to learn what happens when the soldier comes home to collect the debt.
"Let's move," I ordered.
