The Caribbean.The heat hit before the door of the transport even finished opening, thick and wet, clinging to Alan's skin the moment he stepped onto the tarmac. Silver Lace had its own humidity, but nothing like this. This was the kind of heat that made a man's shirt stick to his back within thirty seconds and didn't let go for the rest of the day.Pietro came down the ramp behind him, already squinting against the sun. "I forgot how much I hate this part of the world.""You've said that on every Caribbean rotation," Alan said, then paused for seconds as he came to a certain realisation. He frowned, “What the hell are you doing here?" “Oh, yeah, right. The Colonel hauled my ass from Silver Lace just after you left the house," Pietro heaved a sigh. “Apparently, he has placed some people around to keep watch over Hazel.”"Tch. He should have at least told me first," Alan felt betrayed. He wasn't even sure if he'd be able to truly focus on the mission at hand. Hazel's safety was his to

The new route ran straight through a fishing channel the satellite maps had flagged as "low traffic, civilian," which on paper sounded simple and in practice meant slow, careful movement around boats that hadn't gone out yet and nets drying on stakes along the shoreline. Alan split the team at the rendezvous point, sending Ghost and Hunter north toward the radar relay while he, Pietro, and Reaper cut west toward the primary objective. Nobody complained about the pace, which was its own kind of message. Pietro especially, moved through the shallows without a single word about how long it was taking, because he understood exactly why it mattered. That told Alan more about how seriously the team had recalibrated than any briefing could have. They moved for nearly two hours before Ghost's voice came through the earpiece, low and clean. "Asset secured." Hunter added nothing after that, which meant the entire approach had gone exactly as planned, and there was nothing more useful to sa

Back on the main island, Alan, Pietro, and Reaper circled round and stealthily approached the small radar base.Alan took the lead, putting up hand signs to signal a stop or to hide. It took quite a while, roughly forty minutes, but they eventually made it to their destination, a rusty-looking tower that dwarfed every other structure in the base.Pietro studied the rotating dish on top with his binoculars, his brows creasing slowly, “This is their communication tower? It looks like it was dug up from Atlantis. The U.S are really stingy with their resources, huh?" “What does it matter? It works, that's all we need to know," Reaper stepped in front of him, his left eye deep in his sniper's scope.He quickly scanned the area, switching to infrared, picking up several heat signatures from enclosed spaces. Lowering his sniper, he crouched down and faced the others, a slight frown on his face, “Something's off. No one's guarding the tower; they're all concentrated inside their tents and a

The explosion had taken the top half of the tower and everything above the third rung of the ladder with it.What saved them was three things, in order: Alan had already been moving when Reaper's voice hit the comms, so his instinct was already engaged before his mind caught up. He'd grabbed Pietro's collar with both hands and thrown them both sideways off the ladder, into the small gap between the tower's base strut and a concrete drainage block that had no business being that close and yet was exactly what kept the falling debris from landing directly on top of them. The rubble had done the rest, a section of the upper platform crashing down at an angle that formed a crude roof over the space they'd wedged themselves into.They'd still taken the heat. The suits had taken most of it, but most wasn't all, and when Alan finally dragged Pietro out from under the wreckage his own shoulder was steaming faintly and Pietro had lost an entire section of outer casing from his left side."Stim

The soldiers at the base entrance saw him coming from a distance and straightened up without being told to.It wasn't a conscious decision on their part, more like a reflex, kind of like when the body makes when something large and unconcerned is moving in your direction and your instincts decide that standing properly is the wisest available response.John Bones walked through the gate without breaking stride, the fighting gloves still on his hands, and the two men flanking the entrance gave him a wide berth and said nothing.Word had moved through the base faster than he had. By the time he reached the inner courtyard, the remaining soldiers had reorganised themselves into something resembling order, and the ones closest to his path found reasons to look busy with things that were nowhere near his route.A sergeant fell into step beside him, slightly too far back to be walking with him and slightly too close to be coincidental."Mr. Bones, sir. We've prepared the communications room