Page 60 of Boomer
Preacher chuckled. “Oh, brother. You are never hearing the end of this.”
Boomer sighed. Loudly. “I swear to God,” he muttered, “if one of you makes it your damn ringtone…”
Breakneck grinned. “Too late.”
Taylor gave Boomer one last look, a little glint in her eye, then turned and walked off, calm, composed, lethal in black tactical gear and no doubt fully aware of the chaos she’d just left in her wake.
Boomer was still watching her go, jaw tight, chest tighter when Skull leaned in, arms crossed, deadpan as a gravestone.Bones gave Boomer the equivalent look of deep doggie sympathy. “Sprengmeister,” he muttered, loud enough for the others to hear. “Is that code for your dick?” He helpfully added a vague, vertical hand motion.
Boomer didn’t look at him. “Don’t.”
Skull raised his brows. “What? It’s a legit question.”
Breakneck snorted hard enough to choke. “Jesus, Skull.”
Preacher, serene as ever, tilted his head. “I think it means explosives expert.”
Skull grinned. “So…yeah. His dick.”
Kodiak’s eyes twinkled, arms folded across his chest. “You get sprung, Boom Boom?”
Breakneck groaned and rubbed a hand down his face. “God,whyare you all like this?”
Skull grinned. “He’s ourSprengmeisternow. We’re just trying to understand whatexactlyshe’s detonating.”
GQ chimed in from the side. “Hedidcome out of that blast zone looking like a man who’d been…compromised.”
Boomer exhaled through his nose and glared at no one in particular. “I hate all of you.”
Preacher, unbothered, offered serenely, “You realize we’re getting this embroidered on your duffel now, right?”
Breakneck added, “The comms callsign? Probably getting updated.”
Hazard pretended to depress his comm. “Sprengmeisteractual, this is Explosive Lust Team One, over.”
Skull laughed softly. “Boom Boom, prepare to breach.”
“Just pretend you didn’t hear it.”
Hazard walked by, deadpan. “Nah. Not when your girlfriend calls you ‘my handsome bomb god’ in front of witnesses.”
Boomer closed his eyes. “This is never gonna die, is it?”
GQ was already texting. “Nope. Group chat’s renamed.”
Boomer just looked skyward. “Fuckers, every last one of you.”
10
Smoke still lingered,low and oily, a haze that hadn’t yet lifted from the twisted wreckage of what used to be a fentanyl lab. Metal groaned intermittently under stress, a heat-twisted beam ticking as it cooled. The sun was sinking, casting a coppered wash across the debris field. Generators hummed softly in the distance. Voices had mostly gone quiet.
Bash moved slowly over the rubble, boots crunching over char and plaster dust, a pry bar tucked under one arm. His shoulder ached, his throat raw from the smoke he’d inhaled when they breached the east wall. He ignored it, kneeling to flip a collapsed cabinet with a grunt.
Out of the corner of his eye, movement, boots approaching.
Boomer. The SEAL moved like a storm held barely in check. Quiet on the outside. Chaos just under the skin.
Bash looked away, out toward the sea beyond the warehouse, visible now through a ragged hole in the rear wall. The waves looked calm, but he knew better. Beneath the surface, they were just as restless as he was. To the untrained eye, he looked detached. Observing. Unbothered. But inside, he was sinking.
