Chapter 62 - Return to the Water
By midnight, the subterranean boathouse doors slid open, and our high-speed interceptor slipped silently out into the dark, moonlit waters of Lake Tahoe. We hadn’t dismantled the vessel after all; in the world we lived in, true finality was always a temporary illusion.
We loaded our tactical gear into the aft lockers—suppressed sidearms, breaching charges, and portable EMP spikes—before securing ourselves into the carbon-fiber shock-mitigation seats.
“Coordinates punched into the digital waypoint tracker,” Ethan called back over the throaty purr of the twin supercharged inboard engines. “We have a private transport waiting at Reno-Tahoe International to fly us directly to a staging base in the Azores. ETA to the target zone is less than fourteen hours.”
“Let’s move,” I ordered, strapping my tactical vest across my chest.
The interceptor accelerated smoothly, tearing across the dark expanse of the lake before being loaded onto our private transport aircraft under the cover of a pre-dawn flight plan. The transition from the peaceful pines of the Sierra Nevada to the salty, mist-draped air of the Azores was swift and disorienting.
By the time our transport touched down on a secluded airstrip on Faial Island, the Atlantic was alive with churning white-capped swells and a howling coastal gale that mirrored the storm we had faced outside The Pacific Horizon weeks earlier.
Julian Moreau, our old French intelligence contact, was waiting for us by a heavy-duty maritime utility truck parked near the hangar, holding a steaming cup of espresso against the biting wind.
“Avery, my friend,” Julian greeted us with a wry, tired smile as we stepped out of the aircraft cabin. “When Marcus Vance calls half of Europe looking for an unregistered black-ops team, everyone knows exactly who he’s talking about. You never stay retired for long, do you?”
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“It wasn't a retirement, Julian,” I replied, shaking his hand firmly. “It was an intermission. Where is the Prometheus?”
“Drifting thirty miles north of the Azores trench,” Julian said, handing us updated satellite telemetry folders. “Her engines are dead, but her auxiliary generators are still pulsing a localized radio frequency. And she’s not empty—our acoustic sensors are picking up at least a dozen active thermal signatures moving inside the lower engineering decks.”
