Chapter 4 - Fire on the Rocks
The crashing surf echoed like rolling thunder inside the mouth of the concrete drainage tunnel, masking their whispers but doing nothing to hide the lethal tension hanging in the air.
Just outside the exit, the four black-clad operatives moved with chilling coordination. Two secured the shoreline, sweeping their suppressed rifles across the jagged rocks, while the other two cut the engines of the RHIBs and tied off the mooring lines to a rusted iron bracket embedded in the cliff face.
“They’re fan-out searching,” Clara whispered, her cheek pressed against the stock of her carbine, the red dot resting steadily on the chest of the nearest operative. “Admiral, if we stay in this tunnel, we’re fish in a barrel. They’ll just drop a flashbang or a tear gas canister down the tube and wait for us to choke.”
“I know,” Thomas replied, his eyes calculating the distance, the wind, and the exact positioning of the enemy. He looked back at his son. Colin was motionless, his eyes barely half-open, fighting a losing battle against the severe trauma and the remnants of the chemical suppression.
“Colin,” Thomas murmured, reaching out to squeeze his son’s cold shoulder. “We’re going to make some noise. Hold on.”
The admiral didn't hesitate. He pulled a heavy tactical smoke grenade from his belt, ripped the pin with his teeth, and hurled it with pinpoint accuracy out of the tunnel mouth.
Clank-hiss.
A thick, blinding cloud of slate-gray smoke instantly erupted across the rocky shoreline, swallowing the operatives in an impenetrable fog.
“Contact!” a muffled shout rang out from the smoke. Rat-tat-tat-tat!
Suppressed gunfire erupted blindly toward the mouth of the tunnel, chewing up chunks of concrete and sending white-hot shrapnel flying into the darkness.
“Now!” Clara roared.
She stepped out of the shadow of the tunnel, her carbine barking twice in rapid succession. Thup-thup. The lead operative spun hard and hit the wet rocks, his rifle clattering away into the surf.
Admiral Thomas Whitmore surged forward right behind her, using the concrete lip of the tunnel as a barricade. He acquired his target through the shifting smoke, squeezing off two controlled shots that forced the second operative to dive headfirst behind a slab of jagged granite.
“Push the gurney! Move, move, move!” Thomas yelled over the gunfire.
Clara grabbed the front of the medical rig, hauling it at a dead sprint across the slippery, seaweed-covered rocks toward the idling RHIBs. The violent motion caused Colin to groan in agony, his fingers twitching instinctively against the mattress rail.
Tap-tap.
“Hang on, Lieutenant!” Clara gasped, dodging a burst of incoming fire that chewed up the sandbags lining the boat’s gunwale.
Two more operatives emerged from the thick smoke near the cliff wall, night-vision goggles glowing a faint, eerie green in the fog. One of them shouldered a compact grenade launcher, raising it directly toward the fleeing gurney.
“Incoming!” Thomas bellowed.
Without missing a beat, the admiral dropped to one knee, steadying his breathing, and squeezed the trigger of his carbine in a three-round burst. The rounds caught the operative square in the tactical vest, spinning him off balance just as he pulled the trigger.
The grenade went wide, detonating harmlessly against the cliff face high above them in a deafening roar of falling rock and stone.
“Get him in the boat!” Thomas roared, laying down a relentless wall of suppressive fire that pinned the remaining operatives behind the rocks.
Clara vaulted into the stern of the lead RHIB, grabbed the heavy medical gurney by its frame, and hauled it violently over the gunwale just as the boat’s hull scraped against the jagged shoreline. She scrambled to the console, ripped the ignition tether, and slammed the throttle forward.
The twin outboard motors roared to life with a deafening whine, biting hard into the churning white foam of the Pacific surf.
“Admiral! Get in!” Clara screamed over the roar of the engines.
Thomas fired his last magazine into the rocks, keeping the enemy pinned, then leaped backward into the bouncing boat just as the craft surged forward into the open sea.
Behind them, the two remaining operatives broke through the smoke, firing uselessly into the churning wake as the RHIB cut a sharp, violent arc away from the cliffs and vanished into the stormy darkness of the open ocean.
Inside the bouncing hull, spray soaking their clothes and salt stinging their eyes, Clara dropped her rifle and immediately fell to her knees beside the gurney.
She checked Colin’s pulse. It was erratic, spiking dangerously high, but he was breathing.
“He’s stabilizing,” Clara panted, wiping seawater from her forehead. “Adrenaline crash, but he’s holding.”
Thomas stood at the stern, scanning the dark horizon behind them with his binoculars, his jaw set in a hard, uncompromising line. There were no pursuit boats following them yet—the tactical team back at the mansion would take precious minutes securing the bunker and realizing their targets had slipped through the old drainage pipe.
“Where to, Admiral?” Clara asked, her voice steady and professional despite the chaos. “We can’t go back to the estate, and every civilian hospital tied to the military network is compromised.”
Thomas lowered the binoculars and turned around. The harsh wind whipped his silver hair across his forehead, but his eyes were clearer and sharper than they had been in fourteen months.
“We’re not going to a hospital,” Thomas said, his voice dropping to a low, lethal register. “We’re going to the old naval listening post on San Clemente Island. It’s decommissioned on paper, but the secure comms vault is still wired directly to the Joint Chiefs' emergency override network.”
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He walked over to the gurney and looked down at his son. Colin’s eyes slowly fluttered open, staring up at the stormy night sky with a look of fierce, unyielding recognition.
“You gave them a message, son,” Thomas whispered, gripping Colin’s hand tightly. “Now we’re going to broadcast it to the entire Pentagon.”
