Page 98 of Boomer
Around them, there was a soft murmur, quiet agreement, the echo of remembered chaos and what they'd all survived.
Breakneck looked down, jaw clenched. Something sharp twisted low in his gut. He didn’t want to admit it. He felt left out, a bit jealous. If anything happened to Boomer…if they came back without him… He wasn’t sure he could recover from that. “Hoo-yah, Ice,” Breakneck said, voice hoarse. “I won’t let him out of my sight.”
At 2200 on day one,they kicked off Phase One, the initial sweep and only the beginning. The first target, theBlack Warden. Once a NATO-designated K130 Braunschweig-class corvette, the now floating bunker had been decommissioned and sold to a private maritime contractor, then quietly reflagged and refit under a shell company tied to Arkan Holdings. Still lean, low, and fast, with sloped radar-dampening angles and sealed launcher ports, she was a warfighter turned rogue. The missile tubes were gone, but the reinforced bridge, hardened hull, and twin 30mm mounts made her more than just a threat. She was a deterrent. Asnapping dog straining at the leash, now let loose and hunting in the dark, silent waters.
Taylor sat at the bow of her RHIB, the water a black vein slicing through the Atlantic, churning with wind-blown chops and the early hints of a cold front pressing in from the northwest.
TheBlack Wardendrifted twenty nautical miles south of Cape Espichel, riding low and quiet in violation of every maritime protocol. Comms silent. AIS dark. Heat signatures suggested at least eight tangos onboard, with the possibility of more below deck.
The op launched fast and without ceremony, their four RHIBS peeling off in formation beneath a sliver of moon and a thick wash of stars. Night vision glowed green across helmets. Earpieces silent. Heartbeats synced with engines.
The escort ship was the priority, armed, hostile, and crawling with blind corners.
Boomer hit the portside ladder first, boots clanging against steel, while Breakneck provided suppressive fire from the RHIB. Shots cracked upward toward the mid-deck. Rounds smacked the hull inches from their position, but Boomer kept climbing. Skull and Bones followed, the breach team stacking tight behind him.
They reached the ops deck under fire. Muzzle flashes flared from the bridge rail, three, maybe four shooters, spraying blind—amateurs or guards too wired to aim.
Boomer reached the hatch. One breath, one charge, and then a controlled thermite cut lit up the steel like a fuse line to hell. Smoke poured. Boomer slid through first, barking commands.
Inside were weapons, encrypted comms, and the first names on a kill list they didn’t recognize yet.
No casualties. Just dead cartel. They exfiltrated fast.
Without pause, they were back in the RHIBs, intel putting theSanta Meridatwelve nautical miles off the coast of Sines, far enough to dodge patrol lanes, but close enough to run shore cargo if they needed to move fast. The vessel loomed ahead, just a dark block on the horizon, no lights, no flags, but she rode low, too low for a vessel running empty.
Once a commercial M/V flagged out of Panama, she had the bones of a legal freighter. But her lines were wrong. Her stack had been cut down. Her deck gear was welded shut, and she was too quiet.
Taylor didn’t like quiet. She pressed her comms. “Approach soft. She’s a lab. Heat signature confirms at least five inside.”
TheSanta Meridawasn’t a carrier. She wasn’t a mule.
She was thesource.
The stench barreled into them before their boots hit the deck, chemical sharp, copper-rich, and cloying with sweat. The fentanyl press lab had been running for weeks, maybe longer. Tabletop mold machines. Bags of filler. Half-filled capsules in crates labeled Agricultural Treatment.
Bash and Boomer went in together this time, Taylor third in the stack, close enough to watch Boomer’s clean, silent breach and the way Bash ghosted in behind him, deadly and fluid. Inside, the corridors stank of solvents and chemical heat.
They moved through the ship like twin phantoms, clearing tight hallways and chemical stations by breath and rhythm.
A shout rang out, followed by two sharp bursts. One of the SBS operators staggered with a graze to the upper arm but didn’t slow. The guards were young, underarmed, scared. They fired from cover but had no idea who they were dealing with.
Boomer didn’t hesitate. He cleared the press room with two fast entries, neutralizing the last shooter with a single suppressed shot to the shoulder.
They secured the space. The pill compressor was still warm, its power cell humming.
“Hot,” Bash muttered, crouching near the press. “They were running batches hours ago.” Whatever had been made here was already en route to shore or worse, in hands already itching to sell it. She turned the information they found in the bridge over to the ground teams.
Taylor stepped over a downed table, already issuing orders into her mic. “Copy payload extraction. Secure the tech. Grab every label, tablet, and file. We’ll build from here.”
Each ship would be towed to an impound dock and searched more thoroughly, then broken down for scrap, unusable for any future illicit activities, and eliminating the hazard to legitimate ships moving through the area.
When they approachedSeverina’s Ghost, exactly where she’d been tagged, thirty-two nautical miles west of the Setúbal Peninsula, Taylor’s dread began to rise. The sea around her was unnaturally still, as if it wanted no part of what floated there.
She was a converted deep-sea trawler, once registered as F/VSeverina, her name now half-eaten by rust. The hull listed slightly to port, her paint peeled to bare steel, and nothing about her moved, no lights, no crew on deck. Just a bloated silhouette on black water, drifting like a graveyard. AIS dark. No comms. No callsign. But the thermal told a different story. Small heat signatures. Clustered. Low to the deck. Something was alive in there.
Skull’s RHIB pulled alongside first. Bones started whining before they even climbed.
“It’s people,” Kodiak muttered, staring at the thermal overlay. His voice was low, tight, already in triage mode. “They’re packed in somewhere. Holding below…maybe bilge level.” He clenched his jaw. “Goddamn animals.”
