Chapter 7 - The Sixth Manifest
"Drop your weapons! Do it now or you'll be terminated under direct executive authority!" the lead tactical operative barked, stepping forward with his rifle locked onto Cole's chest.
Cole didn't drop his weapon. Instead, he slowly lowered his stance, his eyes narrowing into cold, calculating slits. "You're operating outside the Uniform Code of Military Justice, soldier. Stand down. We are active naval command."
"There is no active command for ghosts, Commander," the operative replied, his voice flat and robotic behind a black ballistic visor. "Secure the targets. Leave the girl."
Before the operative could squeeze the trigger, Henderson suddenly lunged forward with a sharp combat knife, driving it into the shingle between the operative's boots and shoving him off balance.
"Get in the boat! Go!" Henderson screamed, turning his weapon toward the second operative and firing three rapid shots into the dark.
"Henderson, no!" I yelled, reaching out to grab him, but the heavy kinetic fire from the second tactical operator tore through the air.
A dull, sickening thud echoed across the beach. Henderson jerked violently, dropping his rifle as a dark stain bloomed across the front of his field jacket. He staggered backward, his legs giving out beneath him as he collapsed onto the wet stones.
"Hang on!" Brooks screamed, pulling the engine cord of the utility boat until the outboard motor roared to life with a deafening whine.
"Cole! Get him!" I shouted, dropping to my knees beside Henderson and pressing my hands against the massive wound in his chest, trying desperately to stem the hot flow of blood.
Cole fired two covering shots toward the cliffside, keeping the operatives pinned behind a jagged boulder, then lunged back to help me drag Henderson’s heavy, lifeless-feeling body over the gunwale of the boat.
"Push us off, Hayes!" Cole roared, shoving the bow hard away from the rocky shore.
I scrambled over the side, landing heavily on the aluminum deck as Brooks slammed the throttle forward. The boat surged backward into the dark water, kicking up a rooster tail of white foam and freezing spray just as a hail of bullets skipped off the surface of the water where we had been sitting a second before.
The helicopter’s searchlight swept wildly across the inlet, trying to reacquire us, but Brooks swerved the hull hard into the jagged shadow of a towering sea stack, plunging us into total darkness.
In the stern of the boat, Henderson lay flat on the aluminum floorboards, his breathing shallow, rattling, and dangerously weak. I ripped open his medical pouch, tearing away the blood-soaked fabric of his jacket.
"He's bleeding out internally," I said, my hands covered in warm, dark blood as I pressed down with a trauma dressing. "We won't make it back to the mainland in time."
Henderson’s eyes fluttered open. He reached out with a weak, trembling hand, grabbing my wrist with surprising strength. His fingers felt like ice.
"Rebecca..." he whispered, coughing up a dark bubble of blood. "Listen to me... the ledger... it's not a book."
"Save your breath, James," I urged, tears blurring my vision for the first time in twenty years. "We're getting you to a trauma surgeon."
"No time," he rasped, his grip tightening painfully on my wrist. "The sixth manifest... wasn't a soldier. It was a payload. A hard drive containing every name, every off-the-books extraction, and every civilian settlement wiped out by Aegis during the black operations. It's hidden... inside the old weather station floorboards... beneath the floor safe."
Henderson’s eyes stared up past me into the dark, starless night sky, the frantic light fading from them in a slow, tragic drift.
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"Find her, Rebecca," he whispered, his hand sliding off my wrist and hitting the metal floorboards with a dull, final thud. "Find our daughter... before they do."
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