Page 100 of Boomer
“Five minutes, then we’re briefing.”
He nodded. His fingers brushed hers as he took the pouch. Her warmth lingered. That quiet tether hadn’t frayed, even after everything they’d seen.
She didn’t say anything else. She didn’t need to.
Recharged, the teams went after theTarnów Skyfor Phase Twoat around 0630 on day two, a rust-shouldered cargo freighter registered to a shell company in Cyprus, drifting twenty nautical miles west of Nazaré. Her decks were cleared, her cranes cut down, but her lower holds hummed with heat, jury-rigged stills and chemical tanks hidden behind false bulkheads.
Boomer and Forge took point. One guard opened fire with a short-barreled carbine. Bash put him down hard. Inside, the place reeked of acetone and ammonia.
They tagged vats, lifted memory cards, and watched Forge dismantle a half-melted control panel with surgical dismay.
“They were refining here. Bulk precursors. Possibly for secondary lab use,” Taylor said.
The next one was also smooth and easy.Vila Nova Dawn, flagged under a defunct registry and sitting low in the water fifteen clicks off the coast of Peniche.She was low, fast, and too clean, an ex-fishing trawler turned arms mule. Taylor clocked the onboard crates from the drone feed, Russian origin, factory-stamped, nothing local.
Resistance came light but twitchy. The crew dropped weapons fast, too fast. They were decoys. The ship was running light, just a transfer point.
Breakneck tagged a shipment manifest scrawled on the back of a cigarette carton.
No serials. No customs. This one never went near a port.
Their last interdiction for this phase was theLaurel Blight, anchored listlessly near the edge of Portugal’s economic exclusion zone, just skimming legal distance from international waters. A floating coffin, hercargo holds were full of half-dissolved boxes, spoiled pill packs, tainted tablets intended for low-income market testing.
Boomer breached the aft hold under Taylor’s cover. Inside, nothing but rust, rot, and a digital ledger duct-taped to a stripped forklift.
GQ hacked the tablet on deck. It was GPS-tagged. A recurring route. One warehouse address in Lisbon. No official registry.
Taylor’s voice was low. “That’s our ground target. It’s active, and it’s close.”
Thirty minutes later, Boomer stood shoulder to shoulder with Forge, crouched behind a wall of stacked shipping containers at the far end of the lot. They were at the Tagus River Port Industrial Zone in Lisbon, concrete, steel shutters, low profile. One look told him it was built for containment. This was an extension of Phase Two, dubbed 2A. The time 1100, still on day two.
“One main entry. Likely rigged. I’ll take center, you pivot low,” Boomer said, eyes scanning the exterior like it was a blueprint.
“Kill switch?” Forge asked.
Boomer nodded. “If it goes hot, we drop him fast.”
Taylor, voice calm in his ear, said, “Thermals show six tangos. Inner heat bloom is running high. Possible chemical cache or server stack. Boomer, this could be the nerve center.”
On Iceman’s mark, the team moved. The breach was clean. The resistance wasn’t.
SBS and the SEALs moved as one well-oiled machine. The warehouse was tango-heavy, and a fierce firefight erupted around them, close-quarters chaos, no margin for error.
Inside, it was a drug logistics site meeting a high-end security node. Surveillance feeds, route manifests, encrypted phones. Boomer and Forge were on point, ignoring the fight, lookingfor their target, who bolted like a scared puppy and ran for the server room with a remote clutched in his hand.
Forge hit him center mass before his thumb could reach the button.
Boomer crossed to the stack and yanked the hard drive while it was still spinning. GQ had a field drive ready while everyone else mopped up.
“This’ll take hours to crack,” he muttered, already pulling cables. “But this? This is big.”
Taylor’s voice came low over the comms. “Bag everything,” she said. “Our cleanup crew is inbound. They’ll rip this place apart, floor to rafters.” When he came back into the main area, she was standing there in a shaft of early morning light.
“You good?” he asked, taking in everything, seeing fatigue and determination. “This is what they were protecting. The network. The money. The leverage. We’ve got them by the short hairs now. Let’s get busy and cut the head off this snake.”
“I love it when you get all predatory,” he said softly. She gave him a sharp and steely smile.
Boomer watched her, back straight, boots planted, eyes locked on the battlefield they’d just turned inside out, and knew it in his bones this operation was going to change Taylor’s life.
