There will be a delay in any upcoming chapters. I am rewriting issues 1-4 into complete chapters

Issue #1 – The Knock at Fort Ambush

By Boats

Previously on Fire in My Eyes: Eric Hardy—Boats—grew from a wild Maine kid into a Navy sailor and firefighter. Husband, father, protector. He thought he’d left the storms behind. He was wrong.

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He thought he had it all figured out. A wife with a cast-iron pan deadlier than a .45, a daughter with alien fire in her eyes, and a house named Fort Ambush that stood like a fortress at the edge of the world. Life was supposed to be calm after years of steel decks and burning buildings.

But calm is a liar.

It was a fog-heavy night on the river when I heard it. A sound no homeowner wants to hear, but every sailor knows too well. A knock. Not on the door—on the goddamn sign. The one that reads: Welcome to Boats’ House, shut the fuck up.

At first, I figured it was some drunk kid testing their luck. Until I saw what was left behind. A thick Manila envelope, edges salt-stained, sealed with a rope knot that only one man ever tied—a man who shouldn’t be alive.

The last time I saw that knot was twenty years earlier, in a storm off the North Atlantic. A night when five-foot seas felt like mountains, and our ship nearly didn’t come home. A night where choices were made, and debts were sealed in blood.

I opened the envelope and found a single word written on faded Navy stationery:

PAYBACK.

Keri stirred inside the house, the cast iron still in reach. Britney was asleep, headphones in, dreaming about a world where her old man wasn’t part of something bigger. I slipped the note into my pocket before they could see. Some ghosts aren’t for family.

I stepped back onto the porch. The motion light flickered once, then went black. Through the fog, I caught a silhouette by the shed. Whoever it was, they knew where I lived, what sign to knock on, and how to bring my past roaring back to life.

I cracked my knuckles and whispered to the night:

“You picked the wrong damn house.”

 

Issue #2: Fort Ambush Breaches

I stepped back onto the porch. The motion light flickered once, then went black. Through the fog, I caught a silhouette by the shed. Whoever it was, they knew where I lived, what sign to knock on, and how to bring my past roaring back to life.

I cracked my knuckles and whispered to the night:

“You picked the wrong damn house.”

The fog curled around the figure like it was conspiring with them, dragging their shape just out of focus. I couldn’t tell if it was a man, a ghost, or worse. But the way it stood—shoulders squared, head cocked—wasn’t random. That stance belonged to someone who already knew my weight, my reach, my scars.

A shard of memory cut through: Dick’s silhouette in the kitchen doorway, belt dangling, drunk and ready to paint the walls red. My jaw clenched hard enough that I could hear the enamel grind. That was the trick of trauma—every shadow wore the faces of old enemies.

“Show yourself,” I growled, stepping off the porch. Gravel crunched beneath my boots like bone.

The silhouette didn’t move.

The Obelisk’s voice slipped through the fog, cold as stone: “This is no stranger. This is a summoner. A herald. One knock to stir your marrow, one shadow to measure your resolve.”

“Yeah, thanks for the pep talk,” I muttered. “But heralds bleed like the rest.”

I reached the edge of the yard. The shed loomed ahead, its door hanging half-open, hinges rusted and groaning in the night breeze. The figure slid back into the darkness as if swallowed whole.

That’s when the first sound hit me—not a knock this time, but laughter. Low, broken, familiar. The kind of laugh that dripped gasoline on old fires.

I froze. My fists curled, my breath caught fire in my chest.

Because I knew that laugh. And it wasn’t supposed to exist anymore

Maybe an illustration of 1 person

# Issue #3 – The Herald Names the Debt

Black Pen: Calm packed its bags and left a note on the fridge—“Back never.”

Obelisk: —Debts are doors; pay with the correct key or bleed.

The river wore fog like a bad disguise. You could still see its bones if you knew where to look—eddies that tugged at the hull, the black belt of current sliding east like a conveyor for sins. The PAYBACK note rode my pocket like a second pulse.

I killed the outboard and let momentum talk. Fort Ambush sank behind me until it was just three lit rectangles on the bank—the kitchen, the hall, Britney’s room—then the motion light blinked awake like it remembered a chore and died like it forgot. Jeff’s fix. Ninety percent miracle, ten percent roulette. Without him, I had no sensor. With him, I had a strobe for ghosts.

*—Obelisk: All unfinished things seek finish.*

The meeting point was an old channel marker someone had decapitated. All that was left was the creosote stump, leaning like a drunk priest giving last rites to the tide.

“Boats,” a voice said from the fog. Not loud. Not eager. A taxman on Sunday.

I turned my head but not my shoulders. The Navy taught me how to look without offering. The firefighter taught me how to breathe on stairs—four in, six out, make the smoke do what you want.

“Knocker,” I said. “You bring the laugh or just the invoice?”

He laughed once. Wintergreen rode the air like a bad hymn.

*—Obelisk: Scent is scripture in the ledger of men who survive.*

A shadow drew itself into a boat-length shape off my starboard, no running lights, just the suggestion of a man who sat too straight in the stern. I kept my hands visible and my weight toward cover. Speaking of which—

A jon boat shouldered my transom with the grace of a shopping cart. BAD Jeff popped out of the mist like optimism with a dent.

“Buddy!” he said, standing on a milk crate was a religion. He raised a Bud Light as if to bless the scene. “Heard a motor and a bad decision heading riverward. Figured you were negotiating something dumb without me.”

“Sit,” I said.

He sat. The jon boat squeaked like a dog toy losing faith.

“Also,” he added, “minor situation. Got court in the morning for a municipal misunderstanding regarding a fence post that was apparently a boundary marker. I can make it unless we get murdered.”

“You can’t move those,” I said.

“I learned that.” He tapped his temple twice, posting the memo where concussions lose things. “Also, I meant to come back and finish the ground on your motion light. It’s philosophical now.”

“Noted.”

The other boat drifted closer. I could see gloves, the kind you wear when you like your fingerprints and want to keep them.

“Two days,” the man said. “Bring what you owe.”

“What is it I owe?” I asked.

“To remember right.”

Wintergreen again. He wasn’t chewing; it was like the night had picked a flavor to bother me.

“Memory’s expensive,” I said. “I’ve been making payments since the North Atlantic.”

“You made a choice,” he said. “You got paid in life. Others got paid in salt.”

*—Obelisk: Storm-nights write contracts with the spine.*

He slid a rectangle across the water—a plastic sheet protector, sealed with tape. It bumped my hull like a fish with bad news. I pinched a corner and lifted.

Inside was a photo of Fort Ambush from the river. Last night, by the look of the sky. A red circle bled around Britney’s window. Taped beneath the photo: a knot tied in old rope. Sloppy. Half-done. Not mine.

Jeff leaned forward until his boat squeaked a protest. “That…not your work,” he said.

“No,” I said.

“Two days,” the man repeated. “Or I collect in pieces.”

I tied off to the leaning stump and stared at the photo until the ink felt hot. The red circle looked like someone had pressed a coffee cup to the page with rage in it. Jeff drifted up alongside and handed me a headlamp that had lost an argument with tape.

“Let’s talk through this,” he said. “Step one, we don’t tell Keri until we have a plan. Step two, we build a plan anyway. Step three, I show up to court and charm the pants off the Commonwealth.”

“You don’t own pants that charming,” I said.

“I own tape,” he said, producing a roll like a magician pulling scarves from his sleeve. “Also, I can start any plan.”

“Start is not finish.”

He saluted with the tape. “Half-done is a head start.”

The knot scraped my finger through the plastic. Even with the bad tie, the muscle memory bit my skin. The man knew enough to be wrong on purpose.

“Who knows that knot?” Jeff asked.

“Too many,” I said. “And one who shouldn’t.”

The river pressed at the hull with ungentle fingers. Somewhere downshore, a dog barked once and changed its mind.

*—Obelisk: The night measures your breath to judge the hour.*

“Here’s what we do,” I said. “We go home

 

Issue 4: Digital Ghosts and Dirty Laundry

Every line cuts. Every panel bleeds. Every scar remembers.

COLD OPEN, MONACO

Money’s favorite laundromat wears a tiara and smells like diesel and sin. I am babysitting a rental SUV that costs more than my childhood when Jeff LaPointe, Fed and quilter and Sinatra karaoke terrorist, finds forty million euros doing laps through governments and an OnlyFans account.

Relax, he says. I used your alias, MrBlackpen69.

Gunfire, one clean crack. The laptop blinks awake. THE NEEDLE BREAKS crawls across a dead blue like a grim little screensaver. My deposit breaks first. The message is not a taunt. It is a receipt. Somewhere, a bookkeeper is smiling.

THE EMBASSY WITH NO COUNTRY

No flag, plenty of guns. We go through a door that has only ever pretended to be strong. Jeff yawns the cameras to sleep and pockets a lipstick drive because his procurement has kinks and his hands never shake.

Every monitor bleeds the same sentence: THE NEEDLE BREAKS. Stop, then the EMP sneezes the room into red. Boots hit tile in perfect sync. They move like invoices, swift and correct. We angle left where right would make sense and leave by the service corridor that smells like lemon and cordite. The first pursuit is polite. The second is policy.

THE NEEDLE, THE MAP, THE LIE

In the van that feels reassigned more than stolen, Jeff overlays deletion logs on a quilt grid. Spiral inside a square, from the heart to the horizon. His grandmother taught him the pattern, how a square can be a promise and a trap, how a spiral can be a route in and a route out.

Someone is using my pattern, he says. Auditor.

He says the word like it owes him something, and maybe it does. The grid translates a dead network into a living road. Money exists in France, turns twice, pauses to dry its hair, then heads for a warm rock where secrets grow in limestone. Malta again. That rock is a magnet for ledgers with headaches.

Jeff watches me in the glass. You run toward fire and then rent it, he says. I shrug. Pain tolerance disguised as comedy is not a strategy, but it keeps conversation light.

CHAMPAGNE PROBLEMS

A casino built like a sin keeps the night at perfect body temperature. The chandeliers look like crystallized bribes. I steal a waiter’s coat that fits like a confession. Jeff wears a quilt like a scarf because, of course, he does, a code you can mistake for fashion if you are soft enough to get robbed by it.

The Quiet Man kills the lights with professional boredom. Microdarts kiss the air with neat little sighs. I step in and introduce my forehead to his nose. Cartilage makes the same sound as cheap glass when it learns humility.

He drops a red square stitched with a spiral. It lands against marble and drinks a little of my blood on the corner—a calling card for people who hate phones.

He knows where we live, Jeff says.

He knows where we owe, I say, and my teeth hum with that old engine that lives under my ribs. The Obelisk likes its metaphors carved in stone and paid in full. The first quilts were maps. The first maps were prayers. The elders led the first prayers. I can feel a page turn.

SAFEHOUSE, SOFT THINGS, HARD TRUTHS

Storm on the glass. Mint tea because heat keeps the shakes from making policy. Jeff drapes a quilt over my shoulders. I sew our ghosts, he says. That is not poetry. His stitches are tighter when he lies, and tonight they are loose.

A doctrine pings the air with a simple signature, the letter A.

YOUR FRIEND THINKS IN THREADS. YOUR ENEMIES THINK IN KNIVES. WE THINK IN LEDGERS. THE NEEDLE BREAKS WHEN THE DEBT COMES DUE.

Jeff’s mouth makes a flat line. A for Auditor, he says.

Or Architect, I say. The word lands heavily. The room listens—the Obelisk hums, a buried turbine under a cathedral floor. The first debt is a name. Say it, and doors remember their job. I do not say the other names I know. Not yet.

FIELD TEST

Nice Airport is honest about its lies. Bright, clean, and full of people moving money by pretending they are moving bodies. First-class tickets, bad intentions, and smiles that have been serviced recently.

Destination, Malta, Jeff says. I leaked France. Everyone blames everyone.

And the Auditor.

He will blame me. That is why you are here.

Hot towels, I say—hot war.

Both can be true, he says, and slides the red spiral square into a pocket that used to hold a badge and now has the proof that he still wants absolution he will not get. He can sing Sinatra like a saint and still be a man who keeps ledgers in his sleep.

MALTA, THE LEDGER OPENS

Valletta breathes like an old boxer—stone lungs, slow and sure. Incense moves through naves and side alleys like a current of the air. In St. Paul’s, the candles burn with the patience of people who have already won.

Her voice is a scalpel, Eleanor Hale. She does not step out of the shadow as much as she makes the shadow choose a new shape. The eyes say calculation, and the breath says calm, and the stance says she has already picked the exits that belong to her.

A drone drifts through the nave like a bored angel and sets a box on the altar rail. The ribbon is lavender satin, the square on top is red, and the spiral is precise and familiar.

Seventy-two hours until your accounts, alibis, and allies stop existing, she says. Then the audit begins.

Jeff pockets the satin like a confession he plans to deny later. Eleanor watches the pockets, not the hands. She learned that somewhere serious.

Who do you work for? I ask.

The people who remember, she says. Her mouth does not move much when she speaks. This is not theater. This is bookkeeping with incense. She looks at me as if measuring my forehead like a weapon she could rent at market rates.

The Obelisk turns under my ribs. Names arrange themselves in a pattern I do not like. The Architects built things that taught people how to forget. The Betrayers broke the machines and called it mercy. The Watchers took notes that outlived their eyes. I do not know which faction signed this letter, but I see a ledger when it breathes.

The doors of the church do not open so much as they admit their mistake. Two men enter in gray suits who do not forgive dessert. They are not hers. They are no one’s. They serve the kind of balance sheet that eats its own.

Eleanor glances once, and the men decide to be problems later. That is a talent. She looks back at me. You will choose the debt you can live with, she says. In seventy-two hours, your friend will choose differently.

We leave by separate doors. The box stays on the rail, empty now. That is the trick. Gifts that are really receipts.

 

THE HOURS

Malta counts time in bells, not seconds. Jeff and I work the island like a grid. He sews a map in my notebook, spiral inside a square, heart to the horizon. Old bunkers salt the shoreline. Under one of them, we find the van we did not steal. It followed us here by habit.

We inventory our lies. Jeff keeps the small ones and offers me the big ones because he still thinks honesty is a currency you can exchange for mercy. I let him. He sleeps for twenty minutes with his eyes open and his hands crossed like a man who prays in stitches.

At dawn, the first account closes. A charity in Lyon loses its donors and, in turn, its purpose. The phone that rings is already compromised. The voice says the words for seizure like a lullaby. Jeff listens and nods and bleeds a little at the nose. The ledger is not just numbers. The ledger is a saw.

By noon, I take a hit meant for him and pay for it with skin I will not miss. The alley smells like oranges and brake dust. My forehead wins the argument, and the man who brought the argument decides to learn a new career.

By evening, a woman with eyes like wet glass steals our shadow and leaves a note. Not Eleanor’s handwriting. The same letter. A.

YOUR CLOCKS DO NOT MATTER. Ours do.

 

ELEANOR

I meet her above the harbor where the water wears a halo of oil. She stands with her back to a wall that has survived wars by not taking sides.

You are not a cop, she says.

Not anymore.

You are not peace, she says, and there is no heat in it—just arithmetic.

What is the debt, I ask.

Your friend thinks he can balance the book he wrote, she says. He cannot. I am here to make sure the book gets read. There is a difference.

There are old names for this kind of work. Some people call it an audit. Some call it absolution. She does not pick either. She lets the silence pick for her.

If I move now, I can put her on the stones and make the conversation more straightforward. The Obelisk hums no. The hum is not a command. It is a reminder. The first debt is a name. I say hers. Eleanor Hale. The night takes a step back. She permits herself a slight nod as if a problem has finally shown its face.

Seventy-two hours, she says again, but now there is something else in it. Not a threat. Curiosity. She wants to see what kind of animal we are when the cage is accounting.

CLOSING THE DAY

We walk the Upper Barrakka, where tourists take pictures of cannons that retired with full benefits. Jeff leans on a balustrade and breathes in fours, the way he learned after a bad year. He tells me about the first quilt he finished, how he stitched a spiral so tight the fabric puckered like scar tissue, how his grandmother laughed and said That's how you know it will hold.

He asks me what I believe.

I believe in rent, I say. People pay, or something gets taken.

He nods once and looks at the water. In the reflection, I can see the red square in his pocket like a second heart.

Night arrives without ceremony. Somewhere, a bell chooses a number. I touch the scar on my brow and feel the hum under it, the buried engine turning. The account is opening. Eleanor has the pen. Jeff has the pattern. I have the part that breaks and then keeps going.

Tomorrow we start spending hours like they grow back.

 

Chapter 5 — The Dorm and the Abduction

Karachi, 1990. The air was thick with heat and dust and the stubborn scent of cumin that clung to every corridor of St. Mary’s Mission House. The dormitory’s ceiling fans turned like tired propellers. Beneath them, eighteen girls in khaki skirts and cotton shirts leaned over metal trays of lentils, rice, and tea so sweet it could disguise homesickness.

Jessie Martin—no one there knew her real last name—sat with her back to the window. The candlelight caught the freckles on her nose, the kind of minor imperfection that made her human instead of a headline. “You think they’ll ever let us go downtown?” she asked, twisting her spoon.

Lila Parker grinned, her accent half-Virginia, half-restless curiosity. “They said maybe next weekend. If we don’t get ourselves kidnapped first.”

Jessie laughed too loudly. The joke hurt. Behind her smile was the ghost of an old surname, the kind that still opened doors in Washington. Her guardian had told her never to use it. Eisenhower was a magnet for the wrong type of attention.

At the doorway, Thomas Graves leaned against the frame, cigarette balanced between two fingers. His hair was going gray at the edges, his eyes always counting exits. To the girls, he was “Mr. Graves,” the quiet teacher who handled logistics; to the small office in Ottawa that had sent him, he was a security officer on loan—a man paid to blend in.

Outside, twelve local guards circled the perimeter. They were good men, mostly. Paid weekly and armed with tired rifles and strict orders not to draw attention. Karachi had learned to survive by pretending everything was fine.

Inside, the girls tried to pretend along. They talked about school back home, about parents and crushes and pop songs. Jessie wrote a letter she’d never send. Lila asked if Graves had ever been in a war. He said, “Only the kind that doesn’t end.”

Night settled unevenly across the city. Call to prayer echoed off concrete walls. From the dorm window, Jessie could see the streetlight flicker like a failing heartbeat. She whispered, “It’s beautiful here,” and half-believed it.

Then the glass behind her exploded.

A shriek of sound—metal on tile, boots on concrete, the crash of a door kicked inward. Graves was moving before anyone else understood what had happened. The guards outside shouted in Urdu; their voices cut off almost instantly.

Jessie froze. Lila pulled her down behind the table. The air filled with dust, the metallic taste of panic. Men in black scarves swept the hallway in disciplined silence. They didn’t fire wildly; they moved like people who’d rehearsed.

Graves shouted for the girls to stay low. A figure stepped into the doorway, rifle leveled. Graves fired once; the intruder staggered—but another shadow behind him answered with a single shot. Graves fell backward, hitting the wall like punctuation.

Jessie grabbed Lila’s hand. “Run!”

They stumbled toward the back door. Smoke, shouting, the heavy rhythm of boots closing in. Jessie’s scarf caught on a broken chair. She turned to free it, and a hand closed around her hair. For an instant, she saw the man’s eyes: calm, confident, as if her capture were merely the last line of an equation.

He said something in Urdu that she didn’t understand. Lila screamed her name. Jessie tried to pull away, but the world tilted and went dark.

The trucks outside roared to life. One of the guards crawled toward his radio, whispering a call that would reach no one in time. By the time sirens began to wander the distant streets, the dormitory was silent again—just overturned chairs and the smell of spent gunpowder mixing with spice.

In the wreckage, Graves lay with one hand outstretched toward the table, as if still trying to protect the girls he couldn’t save.

In a garage half a world away, the only sound was the tick of cooling metal. A socket wrench clinked onto concrete, and the man crouched beside the engine bay, ran a forearm across his brow, streaking grease down to his jaw. Boats worked best when the world was quiet. He could lose himself in the symmetry of machinery: everything fit if you turned the bolt the right way.

The phone on the workbench cut through the silence like a small explosion.

He didn’t move at first. The only people who called that number were ghosts with credentials.

It rang again.

He wiped his hands on a rag and lifted it. “Yeah.”

The voice on the line had the accent of someone who never said where they were from. “Boats Hardy?”

“You know it’s me.”

“Karachi. Nineteen hundred local, last night. Eighteen hostages were taken from a school dormitory. Mixed Canadian and American nationals.”

“Who’s calling?”

“Doesn’t matter. You built some good block-op templates back in the Gulf. We need eyes, not flags.”

Boats stared at the dark window; outside, the ocean was just a rumor. “Recon only?”

“For now. One of the girls is special. No one will say why. Ottawa’s nervous, Washington’s pretending they’re not involved. You understand the dance.”

He lit a cigarette and listened to the line hum. “Send me what you’ve got.”

A file arrived ten minutes later—grainy photos, time stamps, a map with red circles. He didn’t have to read far to know what kind of mess it was. The guards are dead. No ransom note. No claim of responsibility. A group calling itself the Brotherhood of Ala whispered in intelligence briefings, but nothing concrete.

He closed the file. “How soon?”

“As soon as you can disappear.”

He stubbed out the cigarette, grabbed a duffel from under the bench, and started packing. The kit hadn’t changed in a decade: notebooks, a cheap camera, a battered compass, three shirts that didn’t draw attention. At the bottom of the bag lay a folded napkin with ink-stained words: If the world won’t look, I will.

By dawn, he was on a transport through Frankfurt, seated by the window, watching cloud tops bruise purple. He told himself it was just another survey, a favor for a friend. But the truth itched under his skin: he wanted to see what kind of people stole children and thought they could vanish.

Karachi met him with heat that tasted of diesel and metal. From the air, the city had looked endless, gray roofs stitched together by brown rivers. On the ground, it was a pulse—horns, prayer calls, and the sea pressing its breath against the harbor.

Two local fixers waited near the arrivals exit. The older one, Bashir, wore a pressed shirt and the expression of a man who’d stopped being surprised years ago. The younger, a translator named Rahim, held a cardboard sign that said “Consultant.” They moved quickly, keeping conversation to a whisper. The embassy liaison had arranged a room in Clifton, above a grocery that sold imported biscuits to expatriates.

Inside, a fan turned the air into soup. Boats spread the satellite photos across the table. “These are the pickup routes?”

Bashir nodded. “Three vehicles. All north-bound. Two changed plates before leaving the city. No witnesses, only rumors.”

“And the police?”

Rahim shrugged. “Busy with other things.”

Boats traced the map with their fingers. Dormitory. Market. Port. A thin line drawn in pencil connected them, and beside it a single word: Ferry.

He closed the folder. “We’ll start there.”

That night, they drove through the market district, headlights off. Bashir handled the wheel like a grown-up in prayer. The city’s power grid blinked in and out; every time the lights failed, a thousand candles flared behind windows.

Boats watched the street through a camera hidden in a thermos. Vendors packed away their goods. A single pickup idled two blocks away, its engine too clean for the neighborhood. A man leaned against the tailgate, smoking. Not a local. Wrong posture, wrong shoes.

Rahim whispered, “That plate—same series from the report.”

Boats kept his voice low. “Film it. Slow pan.”

They moved once the truck rolled toward the docks. No sirens, no chase. Just a quiet observation. He’d learned long ago that watching was more dangerous than fighting; it meant you’d have to remember.

The next day, he delivered the footage to the consulate. The attaché, a man in an ironed shirt who smelled of fear, watched it twice.

“Where are the girls?” Boats asked.

“We’re still confirming. Negotiations are delicate.”

He almost laughed. “Delicate? You don’t even know who to call.”

The attaché straightened his tie. “You were sent for reconnaissance, not commentary.”

Boats left without another word. On the street, the humidity hit him like a wave. He stopped at a stall, bought a cigarette from a boy who couldn’t have been older than ten. The lighter flickered once before catching.

Across the road, the same pickup from the footage turned a corner and disappeared toward the docks.

He exhaled smoke and said quietly, “Delicate, my ass.”

That night, alone in the rented room, he opened his notebook. He wrote dates, routes, and times until the page blurred. Then, in the corner margin, he added one line:
They took girls the world won’t chase. If God’s busy, I’ll go instead.

He closed the book, lay back on the bed, and let the ceiling fan spin the heat into dreams of salt water and fire.

By the third night, Karachi had learned to pretend again.
Headlines promised cooperation, embassies traded carefully worded expressions of sympathy, and the markets reopened as if nothing had been stolen from them.
But for Boats, the city had shrunk to a set of coordinates and faces—three trucks, one ferry line, and the ghosts of eighteen girls.

He rose before dawn, poured what passed for coffee into a cracked mug, and studied the port through the broken window of his rented room. From here, the harbor looked like a chessboard missing half its pieces. Cargo containers, cranes, a scatter of fishing boats with names written in fading Urdu script. Somewhere beyond that horizon was the ferry.

He met Bashir and Rahim at a tea stall. The younger man spread new photos on the table. “Same ferry every night. Leaves at midnight. Manifest lists fruit. No fruit.”

“Crew?” Boats asked.

“Foreigners. Egyptian, maybe Sudanese. Paid cash, no questions.”

Boats nodded. “Good. We’ll be asking.”

They moved that evening under a bruised sky. Rain threatened but never fell. Karachi’s alleys pulsed with the smell of diesel and salt. They parked near the shipping lane, pretended to be men waiting for cargo that would never arrive.
The pickup appeared again, same plate, same impatient driver. Behind it, a flatbed with a tarp that sagged like it was hiding breath. A guard waved it through the checkpoint without a glance.

Rahim whispered, “The guard—new uniform, no patch.”

“Bought,” Boats said.

They watched the vehicles roll onto the ferry, felt the ramp close with a hollow clang. Engines rumbled, ropes slithered loose. The vessel drifted into the black water, its running lights swallowed by haze.

Boats filmed until there was nothing left to see.

The next morning, he delivered the footage to the embassy. This time, the attaché didn’t look him in the eye.

“We can’t move without confirmation,” the man said.

“You’ve got confirmation,” Boats snapped, throwing the photos onto the desk. “Trucks, ferry, crew. You can follow it before it reaches open water.”

The attaché’s hand trembled on the papers. “Do you know whose name you’re really chasing?”

Boats stared at him. “Enlighten me.”

The attaché hesitated. “One of the girls. Her file was sealed even from us. American lineage, military heritage. You understand why we can’t—”

“Say her name?” Boats interrupted. “Yeah. I understand politics.”

He turned to leave. The attaché called after him, voice barely audible. “Just don’t make this official.”

Boats didn’t answer.

That night, he drove alone to the docks. The sea pressed against the concrete wall, black and patient. Cargo nets swung in the breeze. He walked until the noise of the city faded into the thrum of the tide.

A child’s sneaker lay beside the pilings, half buried in silt. He knelt, turned it over in his hand. Size small, a charm bracelet looped through the lace. It could have been Jessie’s. Or Lila’s. Or any of them.

He set it gently on the wall and lit another cigarette. The match flame burned too bright in the wind. He thought of his daughter back home, of the way she still called every Sunday to tell him about school. He thought about the girls, vanished into cargo and silence.

The city behind him buzzed with generators and denial.

He spoke softly, as if the ocean were listening.
“Hold on, kid. I’m coming.”

In the days that followed, he built a map of motion: trucks, ferries, checkpoints. A geometry of guilt. Each line pointed toward the same destination—a private dock on an island used by smugglers and men with untraceable money.

He knew what came next. He’d seen it in too many countries: a government delay, a ransom that wasn’t money, a trade that turned human lives into leverage.

He filled his notebook with sketches, wrote names he might need to call, and debts he could still collect.
Then, at the bottom of the page, he wrote the only truth that mattered:

Some debts aren’t paid in money. They demand men like me.

He closed the book, and with it, the illusion of detachment.

Obelisk Field Note — DOVE-17

Recovered fragment, Karachi Port Authority intercept, 1990.

“One of the girls carried a seal not of ink but of bloodline.
The men who took her wanted ransom but are willing to turn it in to silence.
The Guardian died before she could speak..
They called her the Dove. Classification: Eisenhower.”

 

Boats looked out over the water until dawn. The horizon bruised itself purple, then gold. In the distance, the faint outline of a ferry slipped toward the open sea.

He crushed his cigarette beneath his boot, picked up the sneaker, and walked back toward the waiting city.

Caption: We found the taillights. The ledger found us.

 

 

Chapter 6 — The Team

The apartment window was cracked at the corner, a spiderweb fracture that split the view into fragments. Through it, Boats watched the building across the street the way a sniper watches breath—patient, counting rhythms, cataloging the small betrayals of routine.

Four stories, concrete the color of old teeth, balconies cluttered with laundry and satellite dishes that pointed at nothing. The third floor, second window from the left. Curtains drawn since yesterday morning. A guard rotated past every forty minutes, smoking the same brand of cigarettes, checking his watch like a man paid by the hour.

The heat pressed through the glass, thick enough to taste. Karachi in summer didn't cool; it just changed flavors from diesel to salt to the particular funk of a city that had learned to survive by ignoring its own decay.

Boats sat on a wooden chair that creaked when he breathed. The rotary phone on the floor beside him was olive green, the kind that could survive a war or a divorce. He'd borrowed it from the landlord downstairs, a man who asked no questions because Bashir had paid him in American dollars and silence.

He lifted the receiver. The dial tone hummed like a distant engine. His finger found the holes, turned the dial with the deliberate pace of a man who knew that once he made this call, the cost would compound.

—Obelisk: Every number dialed is a door opened. Some doors have teeth.

The line clicked, rang twice. A voice answered, rough with sleep or whiskey or both.

"Yeah."

"Hello, dick head," Boats said. "I need a team for Karachi. No more than six assaulters, and I need some women for visual proof of life confirmation, and I need them in less than thirty-six hours, Skipper. Oh, and happy anniversary. Where are you taking the bride tonight?"

Silence. Not the empty kind—the kind where a man was doing math in his head, calculating distance, risk, and the particular weight of a favor that couldn't be refused.

Captain Pete McLarsson—Skipper to anyone who'd earned the right—exhaled slowly. "You're calling from a number that doesn't exist, asking for people who don't exist, on the one night my wife actually believes I'm retired."

"So that's a yes."

"That's a 'you're lucky I love you, you son of a bitch.'" A pause. Ice clinked in a glass. "Karachi. Hostage recovery?"

"Eighteen girls. Taken four days ago from a mission school. Mixed nationals, but one of them's got a file so sealed even the embassy won't say her name. They're holding them in a building in Saddar. I've got eyes on it now."

"Local support?"

"Two fixers, solid. And a kid."

"A kid."

"Eleven. Smart as hell. Knows the streets better than the maps."

Skipper made a sound that could've been a laugh or a sigh. "You're running an op with a fifth-grader."

"He's got better instincts than half the officers I worked with in the Gulf."

"That's not a high bar, Boats." Another pause. "Six assaulters, two women for proof of life. I can have them wheels-up in eight hours. They'll route through Bahrain, land under commercial cover. You'll need to handle ground transport and a safe house for staging."

"Already done."

"Of course you are." Skipper's voice softened, just a degree. "This off-book or ghost?"

"Ghost. No flags, no after-action. We go in, we get them out, we vanish."

"And if it goes loud?"

"Then it goes loud. But I'd rather it didn't."

Skipper was quiet for a moment. Boats could hear the television in the background, the murmur of his wife asking a question. Skipper covered the receiver, said something soft, came back. "She says you owe us dinner when this is done."

"I owe you a lot more than that."

"Yeah, you do. But dinner's a start." His tone shifted, all business now. "I'll send you a roster in two hours. Encrypted drop, usual place. You'll get four assaulters I trust with my life, two more I trust with yours. One of the women is former Agency, the other's SAS-adjacent. Both speak enough Urdu to pass in a crowd."

"Good."

"Boats." Skipper's voice dropped. "If this goes sideways, I can't pull you out. You know that."

"I know."

"And you're doing it anyway."

"I've seen the sneaker, Skipper. I've seen the ferry. These girls don't have thirty-six hours. They've got whatever time I can buy them."

Skipper exhaled again, longer this time. "Then buy it well. And Boats—don't get dead. My wife likes you more than she likes most of my friends."

"Tell her I'll bring wine."

"Bring the girls home. That's the wine."

The line went dead.

Boats set the receiver down and stared at the building across the street. The guard had rotated again, a new man, younger, with a rifle slung too loose across his back. Amateur hour. That was good. Amateurs made mistakes.

He lit a cigarette and let the smoke curl toward the cracked window. The city hummed below—horns, prayers, the distant clatter of a train that ran on hope and inertia. Somewhere in that noise were eighteen girls who'd been swallowed by men who thought they could trade lives like currency.

—Obelisk: The first rule of rescue—know what you're willing to lose.

He crushed the cigarette and checked his watch. Thirty-four hours.

---

The boy appeared an hour later, slipping through the door like smoke. Pashi was eleven, maybe twelve—small enough to be overlooked, sharp enough to see everything. He wore a Manchester United jersey two sizes too big and sandals held together with wire and optimism.

Bashir had introduced them three days ago. "My sister's son," he'd said. "Knows every alley, every shopkeeper, every cop who takes money. You want eyes, he's got six."

Boats had been skeptical. Then Pashi had rattled off the guard rotation, the delivery schedule, and the name of the man who owned the building—all without notes, all without hesitation.

Now the kid set a paper bag on the floor and pulled out a mango, a bottle of warm Coke, and a folded map.

"Three new guards today," Pashi said in English that carried the rhythm of the street. "Different uniforms. Not police, not military. Private."

"Mercenaries?"

Pashi shrugged. "Men who get paid to stand. Same thing."

Boats unfolded the map. Pashi had marked the building in red, the surrounding blocks in blue, escape routes in green. "You drew this?"

"My cousin did. He drives a rickshaw. Knows all the ways out."

"Smart."

Pashi grinned, gap-toothed and proud. "You pay me, I'm smart. You don't pay me, I'm still smart, but I work for someone else."

Boats almost smiled. "What else?"

"The girls. I heard them."

That stopped him. "You got close?"

"Close enough. Third floor, like you said. I climbed the building next door, listened through the wall. They were singing."

"Singing?"

"Quiet. Like a prayer, but not a prayer. English words I didn't know." Pashi's face went serious. "One of them was crying. The others told her to stop."

Boats felt something tighten in his chest. "How many guards inside?"

"Four, maybe five. Hard to hear. They talk in Arabic, not Urdu. And there's a man who comes at night. Big car, driver. He doesn't stay long."

"You see his face?"

"No. But the guards stand different when he's there. Like they're afraid."

—Obelisk: Fear is a currency. Spend it wisely.

Boats handed Pashi a folded bill—American, twenty dollars. The kid's eyes went wide. "That's for the map and the intel. You want more, you keep watching. But you don't get close again. Understand?"

Pashi nodded, pocketing the bill like it might evaporate. "When do your people come?"

"Tomorrow night."

"And then?"

"Then we go get them."

Pashi looked at the building across the street, then back at Boats. "My cousin says you're American military. Says you've done this before."

"Your cousin talks too much."

"He says you don't leave people behind."

Boats met the kid's eyes. They were old eyes, the kind that had seen too much too soon. "I don't."

Pashi nodded once, satisfied. "Good. Because if you did, I'd tell everyone you were a liar." He paused, then added, "You want to see the neighborhood? From the street, not the window?"

Boats checked his watch. Four hours until the next guard rotation. "Show me."

---

The heat hit like a fist the moment they stepped outside. The afternoon sun had turned the street into a furnace, the asphalt soft enough to take fingerprints. Pashi moved through it like he was born to it, weaving between a fruit vendor's cart and a cluster of men smoking bidis in the shade of a corrugated awning.

Boats followed, keeping his head down, his gait loose. He'd changed into local clothes—a worn shalwar kameez that Bashir had provided, sandals instead of boots. His beard was three days old, long enough to blur his features. From a distance, he could pass. Up close, his eyes would give him away. They always did.

"Stay behind me," Pashi said over his shoulder. "Walk like you belong. Not like you're looking."

"I know how to walk."

"You walk like a soldier. Soldiers stand out here."

The kid had a point. Boats adjusted his stride, let his shoulders slump, adopted the shuffle of a man with nowhere important to be. Pashi nodded approval.

They turned down a side street, narrower, the buildings pressing close enough to block the sun. Laundry hung between windows like prayer flags. A woman in a black burqa watched them from a doorway, her eyes sharp. Pashi raised a hand in greeting. She didn't respond, but she didn't look away either.

"She's the widow of a police captain," Pashi said quietly. "She sees everything. Tells no one. But if you pay her, she remembers."

"You pay her?"

"My uncle does. She told him about the girls the day they arrived. Said they came in a truck with no windows. Said they were crying."

Boats filed that away. "Who else knows?"

"Everyone knows. No one talks." Pashi kicked a stone, sent it skittering into a gutter thick with refuse. "The men who took them, they pay the right people. Police, shopkeepers, the imam at the mosque. Money makes people blind."

"But not you."

Pashi stopped, turned to face him. His expression was older than his years, carved by something Boats recognized—the weight of seeing too much and being too young to do anything about it. "My sister was taken two years ago. Different men, different building. My uncle paid everything we had to get her back. They sent us her scarf and a finger."

The street noise seemed to fade. Boats crouched down, eye level with the kid. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry doesn't bring her back." Pashi's voice was flat, matter-of-fact. "But maybe it brings these girls back. That's why I help."

Boats held his gaze. "We'll get them out."

"You said that already. Now you have to do it."

They kept walking. The street opened into a small market square—vendors selling vegetables, spices, cheap electronics that probably didn't work. The smell of frying samosas mixed with diesel exhaust and the sweet rot of overripe fruit. A radio somewhere played a cricket match, the announcer's voice rising and falling with the rhythm of the game.

Pashi led him to a tea stall at the edge of the square. The owner, an old man with a white beard and hands stained dark from decades of brewing, nodded at Pashi and poured two cups without being asked.

"From here, you can see the building," Pashi said, settling onto a wooden bench. "The guards, they come to this square every day. Buy cigarettes from that shop." He pointed to a small storefront across the way. "They think no one notices. But everyone notices."

Boats sipped the tea. It was sweet enough to make his teeth ache, but it was cold, and that was enough. He studied the square, cataloging exits, sight lines, the flow of foot traffic. The building was visible two blocks north, its upper floors rising above the surrounding structures.

"The guard rotation," Boats said. "You said every forty minutes. They always come through here?"

"Not always. Sometimes they use the back alley. But the ones who smoke, they come here. They like the cigarettes from that shop. Turkish, expensive."

"How many smoke?"

"Three. Maybe four."

"And the others?"

"They stay inside. Except for the one who comes at night. The one the others are afraid of."

Boats watched a man in a crisp white shalwar kameez cross the square, talking on a mobile phone the size of a brick. Money. Authority. The kind of man who didn't belong in this neighborhood but moved through it like he owned it anyway.

"That him?" Boats asked.

Pashi shook his head. "No. But men like that, they know him. They work for the same people."

"What people?"

"The ones who make the rules." Pashi drained his tea, set the cup down with a clink. "My uncle says they're connected to the government. To the military. To the men who decide who lives and who disappears."

—Obelisk: In every city, there are two maps—the one they print, and the one that matters.

A guard appeared at the edge of the square, young, maybe twenty, with a rifle slung across his back and a cigarette already between his lips. He walked with the swagger of someone who'd been given a gun and told he mattered.

Pashi's hand shot out, gripped Boats' wrist. "Don't look."

Boats kept his eyes on his tea, watched the guard in his peripheral vision. The man crossed to the cigarette shop, exchanged words with the owner, bought a pack. He lit a fresh cigarette from the one he was finishing, then turned and walked back the way he'd come.

"He's new," Pashi said once the guard was out of sight. "Started yesterday. Younger than the others. Nervous."

"How do you know he's nervous?"

"He checks his rifle every five minutes. Keeps touching it like he's afraid it will disappear. The others don't do that."

Boats filed that away too. Nervous guards made mistakes, but they also made noise. "What about the delivery schedule? You said there was one."

"Every morning, six o'clock. A truck brings food, water, supplies. Two men unload. They use the side entrance, the one that leads to the service stairs. They're in and out in ten minutes."

"The same men every day?"

"Same truck. Different men sometimes. But they all wear the same uniform. Blue shirts, no names."

"You get close enough to see what they're delivering?"

Pashi grinned, that gap-toothed smile that made him look like the kid he was. "I helped them carry boxes once. Told them I needed money for school. They gave me ten rupees and told me to get lost."

"What was in the boxes?"

"Rice, lentils, bottled water. Medicine too. Bandages, pills. One of the boxes had chains."

That stopped Boats cold. "Chains."

"Small ones. Like for animals. Or people."

The market noise pressed in—vendors shouting prices, the hiss of something frying, a child crying somewhere close. Boats forced himself to breathe, to stay present. "Anything else?"

"The girls, they're on the third floor, but I think some are on the fourth too. I heard footsteps above when I was listening. Heavy, like men. But also lighter. Like someone small."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

Boats drained his tea, set the cup down. "We need to go. Now."

Pashi didn't argue. They stood, left a few coins on the bench, and melted back into the crowd. As they walked, Boats felt eyes on them—the widow in the doorway, the tea stall owner, a cluster of men playing cards in the shade. Everyone watching, everyone knowing, everyone silent.

They were two blocks away when a police truck rolled past, slow, deliberate. The officer in the passenger seat scanned the street with the bored efficiency of someone who'd done this a thousand times. His eyes passed over Boats, lingered for half a second, then moved on.

Pashi didn't break stride, but his hand found Boats' wrist again, squeezed once. A warning.

They turned down an alley, narrow enough that Boats had to turn sideways to fit between the walls. It smelled like piss and rotting vegetables and something else, something chemical. Pashi moved through it like water, his sandals barely making a sound.

At the end of the alley, they emerged onto a quieter street. Pashi finally stopped, leaned against a wall, breathing hard.

"That cop," Boats said. "He see me?"

"He saw you. But he didn't care. If he cared, we'd be in the truck."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure." Pashi looked up at him, those old eyes measuring. "You're good at this. Moving, watching. But you're not invisible. Not here. You need to be more careful."

"I'll be more careful when your people are out."

"They're not my people. They're just girls."

"They're somebody's people. That makes them worth it."

Pashi studied him for a long moment, then nodded. "My uncle was right about you."

"What'd he say?"

"That you're the kind of American who doesn't leave. The dangerous kind."

Boats almost smiled. "Your uncle's a smart man."

They walked back to the apartment in silence, taking a different route, longer, through streets that twisted and doubled back on themselves. By the time they reached the building, the call to prayer was echoing across the city, a reminder that the world kept turning whether you were ready or not.

Pashi stopped at the door. "When your people come, I want to help."

"You've helped enough."

"I want to help more."

Boats crouched down again, met the kid's eyes. "You've got a family. An uncle who needs you. You've done your part."

"My part isn't done until those girls are out."

"Pashi—"

"I know the streets. I know the people. You need me."

Boats wanted to argue, wanted to tell the kid to go home, to stay safe, to let the professionals handle it. But he'd seen enough to know that Pashi was right. They did need him. And more than that, the kid had earned the right to see this through.

"Okay," Boats said finally. "But you do exactly what I say. No improvising, no heroics. Understand?"

Pashi's grin could've lit the whole street. "I understand."

"Good. Now go home. Get some sleep. Tomorrow's going to be a long day."

The kid slipped away, back into the shadows where he lived.

Boats climbed the stairs to the apartment, his mind already working through what Pashi had told him. Chains. A fourth floor. Nervous guards and a man who made the others afraid. The pieces were coming together, but the picture they made was uglier than he'd hoped.

He sat back down at the window, lit a cigarette, and watched the building across the street. The sun was setting now, painting everything in shades of rust and blood. Somewhere inside, eighteen girls—maybe more—were waiting for a rescue they didn't know was coming.

He crushed the cigarette and checked his watch.

Thirty hours.

---

The team arrived in pieces, the way ghosts always do.

The first two came through the airport at dawn, posing as engineers for a telecom company. Boats met them at a chai stall three blocks from the safe house. The taller one, callsign "Wrench," had the build of a man who'd spent his life carrying heavy things and the eyes of someone who'd seen what happened when you put them down too soon. The other, "Petey," was compact, quick, with hands that never stopped moving—checking pockets, adjusting his watch, cataloging exits.

"Skipper says you've got a building and a timeline," Wrench said, stirring sugar into tea that didn't need it.

"Both," Boats said. He slid the map across the table. "Four stories, third floor, second window. Eighteen hostages, five to seven guards, rotation every forty minutes. Proof of life needed before we move."

Petey studied the map, tracing routes with his finger. "Exfil?"

"Bashir's got two vans staged a block south. We load fast, move to the docks, transfer to a boat. Skipper's arranging a pickup offshore."

"And if the guards don't cooperate?"

"Then they don't cooperate. But we go quiet as long as we can."

Wrench nodded. "Who else is coming?"

"Four more. Two women for proof of life, two assaulters. They'll be here by tonight."

Petey looked up from the map. "You trust the local support?"

"With my life."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting."

Wrench grinned. "Fair enough."

---

They moved to the safe house an hour later. Wrench spent the first ten minutes taking apart the door lock with a precision that bordered on religious. He laid each pin and spring on a cloth like a surgeon arranging instruments, examined them, then reassembled everything in half the time it took to dismantle.

"Problem?" Boats asked.

"Cheap Chinese knock-off. Wouldn't stop a determined twelve-year-old." Wrench pulled a small leather pouch from his bag, selected a different cylinder, swapped it out. "Now it'll stop a determined twelve-year-old with a hammer."

"We expecting twelve-year-olds with hammers?"

"We're expecting everything." Wrench tested the lock three times, nodded satisfaction, then moved to the windows. He checked each frame, each hinge, running his fingers along the seams like he was reading Braille. "This one's loose. This one doesn't lock. This one opens onto a fire escape that'll collapse if you breathe on it wrong."

"Can you fix them?"

"Can I fix them." Wrench said it like the question was an insult. Twenty minutes later, every window was secure, every hinge oiled, every weak point reinforced with materials he'd scrounged from God knew where. He worked in silence, his hands moving with the kind of confidence that came from doing the same thing a thousand times in a hundred different places.

When he was done, he sat on the floor and started fieldstripping his rifle. Boats watched him work—each movement economical, practiced, the kind of muscle memory that didn't require thought. Wrench's hands were scarred, the knuckles thick, the fingers blunt. Working hands. Hands that built things and broke things with equal competence.

"Skipper says you pulled him out of Mogadishu," Wrench said without looking up.

"Skipper talks too much."

"He says you carried him three miles with a bullet in your leg."

"It was two miles. And it was shrapnel, not a bullet."

Wrench looked up, met his eyes. "He says you're the reason he made it home to meet his wife."

Boats didn't answer. Some debts didn't need acknowledging.

Wrench went back to his rifle. "So when Skipper calls and says he needs me in Karachi in eight hours, no questions, I don't ask questions. I just pack."

"Appreciate it."

"Don't appreciate it yet. Wait until we're wheels-up with the hostages. Then you can buy me a beer and we'll call it even."

---

Petey Larsson arrived at the safe house carrying a duffel that looked like it weighed more than he did. He was younger than Boats expected—mid-twenties, maybe, with his father's eyes and his mother's jawline. He moved like Skipper too, that same economical grace, the same way of entering a room like he was already planning how to leave it.

"Petey," Boats said.

"Sir." The kid—because that's what he was, a kid—set the duffel down and extended a hand. His grip was firm, dry, the handshake of someone who'd been taught to make it count.

"Your dad didn't mention he was sending you."

"He didn't mention it to me either until six hours ago." Petey's smile was tight. "Said you needed bodies and I was available."

"You done this kind of work before?"

"Depends what you mean by 'this kind.' I've done three rotations in the Gulf, two in the Horn. Hostage recovery, direct action, the usual." He said it casual, like he was listing items on a grocery list. "But I've never worked with you, if that's what you're asking."

"That's what I'm asking."

Petey met his eyes. "My dad says you're the best he's ever seen. Says you've got instincts that can't be taught. Says if I'm going to learn how to do this right, I should shut up and watch you work."

"Your dad's setting you up for disappointment."

"My dad doesn't set people up for disappointment. He sets them up for reality." Petey unzipped the duffel, started pulling out gear—body armor, comms equipment, medical supplies, all of it organized with the kind of precision that spoke to someone who'd packed and unpacked a thousand times. "Look, I know what this is. I'm the boss's kid. I've got something to prove. So I'm going to prove it by doing my job and not getting anyone killed. That work for you?"

Boats studied him. The kid had his father's confidence, but there was something else there too—an edge, a hunger. The need to step out of a long shadow and cast his own.

"Yeah," Boats said. "That works."

Petey nodded, went back to unpacking. His hands moved fast, efficient, checking each piece of equipment with the kind of attention that suggested he'd learned early that sloppy work got people killed. When he pulled out a battered Motorola radio, he paused, ran his thumb over a dent in the casing.

"This was my dad's," he said quietly. "From Desert Storm. He gave it to me before I shipped out the first time. Said it kept him alive, maybe it'd do the same for me."

"Has it?"

"So far." Petey clipped the radio to his belt, tested the squelch. "He also said if I ever worked with you, I should tell you he's sorry."

"Sorry for what?"

"For not being there when you needed him. For letting you go dark. For—" Petey stopped, shook his head. "He didn't say exactly. Just said you'd know."

Boats knew. The debts ran both ways, always had. "Tell him we're square."

"Tell him yourself when we get back."

"Deal."

---

The women arrived separately, six hours apart. The first, callsign "Sparrow," came through the port on a cargo manifest, posing as a medical supply inspector. She was lean, mid-thirties, with the kind of face that could blend into any crowd or stop one cold depending on what the job required. Former Agency, Skipper had said. Spoke four languages and knew how to lie in all of them.

She walked into the safe house like she'd been there before, scanned the room in two seconds, and dropped her bag by the door. "Boats?"

"That's me."

"Sparrow. Skipper says you need proof of life on eighteen hostages, third floor, hostile environment, limited time." She said it like she was confirming a lunch order. "What's the cover?"

"NGO aid workers. Bashir's got the paperwork—International Relief Committee, based out of Geneva. You're doing a welfare check on displaced persons."

"And if they don't buy it?"

"Then you smile, apologize for the confusion, and walk away. We'll find another angle."

Sparrow pulled a pack of cigarettes from her jacket, lit one, blew smoke toward the ceiling. "I've done this before. Mosul, Grozny, a village outside Kandahar whose name I can't pronounce. The trick isn't selling the cover. The trick is reading the room fast enough to know when the cover's blown before they put a bag over your head."

"You good at reading rooms?"

"I'm still here, aren't I?"

She moved to the window, looked out at the street below. Her posture was relaxed, casual, but Boats could see the way her eyes moved—cataloging, measuring, filing away details. She smoked like someone who'd learned to do it in places where stopping to think could get you killed.

"The hostages," she said. "What do we know about their condition?"

"One of our local assets heard them singing. Said one was crying, the others told her to stop. That was two days ago."

"Singing's good. Means they're conscious, coherent, organized enough to comfort each other. Crying's expected. It's when they stop crying that you worry." She turned from the window. "What's the demographic?"

"Mixed. School-age, mostly. One high-value target, file sealed, embassy won't confirm."

"So someone's daughter. Someone important." Sparrow crushed her cigarette on the windowsill, pocketed the butt. "That changes the math. If she's in there, this isn't just a rescue. It's a political calculation. Someone's going to want credit, someone's going to want deniability, and we're going to be stuck in the middle."

"We're already stuck in the middle."

"Fair point." She pulled a small notebook from her pocket, flipped it open. "I'll need photos if you have them. Names, ages, any identifying features. Medical conditions, languages spoken, anything that'll help me confirm identity fast."

"Bashir's working on it."

"Good. And the other proof-of-life operator?"

"Frost. SAS-adjacent, medic, speaks Urdu. She'll be here tonight."

Sparrow nodded. "I'll take point on the approach, she can handle medical assessment. We go in, we count heads, we confirm condition, we're out in under ten minutes. Clean and fast."

"That's the plan."

"Plans are great until someone starts shooting." She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "But yeah. Clean and fast. I can do that."

---

Frost arrived after dark, dressed like a graduate student researching urban development. She was younger than Sparrow, late twenties, with an accent that could've been London or Edinburgh depending on who was listening. She carried a backpack that looked academic—notebooks, a camera, a worn copy of some book about post-colonial architecture—but when she set it down, it landed with the weight of something that held more than paper.

"Frost," she said, extending a hand. "You're Boats."

"I am."

"Skipper says you're running a proof-of-life op on eighteen hostages with a thirty-hour window and local support that includes an eleven-year-old. That about right?"

"Close enough."

She grinned. "Brilliant. I love a challenge."

Frost unpacked her bag with the kind of care that suggested she'd done this in worse places under worse conditions. Medical supplies came out first—bandages, antibiotics, IV kits, all of it organized in clear plastic bags. Then comms gear, a sat phone, a tablet in a waterproof case. Last came a Glock 19, suppressor already attached, which she checked and holstered in one smooth motion.

"I'm guessing you're not really a graduate student," Boats said.

"I'm guessing you're not really a telecom engineer." She sat on the floor, started sorting the medical supplies. "I did two years with Médecins Sans Frontières before the SAS recruited me. Turns out being able to treat a gunshot wound and speak four languages makes you useful in places where the shooting hasn't stopped."

"Four languages?"

"English, Urdu, Arabic, and enough Pashto to get myself in trouble. The Urdu's rusty, but it'll pass in a crowd." She held up a bag of IV fluids. "What's the expected condition of the hostages?"

"Unknown. We know they're alive, we know at least one is distressed. Beyond that, we're guessing."

"So I should prep for dehydration, malnutrition, possible physical trauma, and psychological distress. Standard hostage package." She packed the supplies back into her bag with the same care she'd used to unpack them. "I'll need five minutes alone with them if possible. Long enough to do a visual assessment, check for obvious injuries, get a sense of who's in the worst shape."

"You'll have it."

Frost looked up at him. Her eyes were sharp, clinical, the eyes of someone who'd learned to see past the surface. "Skipper says you don't leave people behind. Says it's not a motto for you, it's a religion."

"Skipper talks too much."

"He also says you've got a habit of taking on impossible jobs and making them look easy. Says you're either the luckiest man alive or the most competent, and he's not sure which."

"What do you think?"

She smiled. "I think luck runs out. Competence doesn't. So let's hope he's right about the second part."

---

Mack arrived an hour later, carrying a Pelican case that looked like it could survive a nuclear blast. He was older than the others, maybe forty, with a scar that ran from his ear to his collarbone and the kind of stillness that came from spending too much time in places where movement meant death.

He set the case down, popped the latches, and revealed a comms setup that looked like it belonged in a military command center. Radios, encryption modules, a laptop with more antennas than a radio tower, all of it packed with the kind of precision that suggested he'd done this a thousand times.

"Mack," he said, not looking up. "Comms and signals. Skipper says you need a net that can't be intercepted and a backup plan for when the primary net goes down."

"That's right."

"Then you've got it." He pulled out a radio, started running diagnostics. His hands moved fast, but there was a rhythm to it, a pattern. Every third check, he'd tap the radio twice with his knuckle. Every fifth, he'd mutter something under his breath.

"You okay?" Boats asked.

"Fine. Just checking." Tap tap. Mutter. "I've got a thing about threes and fives. Superstition, I guess. But it's kept me alive this long, so I'm not stopping now."

"Fair enough."

Mack looked up, met his eyes. "I lost a team in Beirut because the comms went down at the wrong time. Primary and backup, both dead. We were blind, deaf, and scattered. Three guys didn't make it out." He went back to his diagnostics. "So yeah, I've got a thing about redundancy. And threes. And fives. And making sure the radios work."

"I appreciate the thoroughness."

"Appreciate it when we're all drinking beer on a boat in international waters. Until then, let me work."

Boats left him to it. Mack spent the next two hours building a comms network that could survive an artillery barrage, testing every frequency, every encryption key, every backup system. He worked in silence, his hands moving with the kind of nervous energy that suggested he wouldn't sleep until everything was perfect.

When he was done, he lined up six radios on the floor, each one labeled with a callsign. "Primary net is encrypted, frequency-hopping, damn near impossible to intercept. Backup net is analog, old-school, works even if someone drops an EMP on us. Tertiary is sat-phone, but that's last resort because it's slow and everyone can hear it."

"Good work."

Mack tapped each radio twice. "Don't thank me yet. Thank me when everyone's talking and no one's dead."

---

Tino was the last to arrive, slipping through the door like he'd been there all along. He was compact, wiry, with the kind of face that looked like it should be teaching high school algebra. But he moved like a man who'd spent time in places where teachers didn't last long, and when he shook Boats' hand, his grip had the calluses of someone who'd spent years on a rifle.

"Tino," he said. "Assaulter, entry specialist, and general problem-solver. Skipper says you've got a building that needs opening and a timeline that doesn't allow for subtlety."

"That's about right."

"Good. I hate subtlety." He dropped his bag, pulled out a small toolkit, and started laying out shaped charges, det cord, and breaching tools with the care of someone arranging flowers. "What's the entry point?"

"Side door, service stairs. Needs to be quiet until it can't be quiet anymore."

"So we go mechanical until we go explosive. I can do that." He held up a small charge, no bigger than a deck of cards. "This'll take a door off its hinges without waking the neighbors. This one"—he held up something twice the size—"will take the door, the frame, and anyone standing behind it. Your call which one we use."

"Let's start with the first one."

"Smart." Tino packed the charges back into his bag with the same care he'd used to unpack them. "I did three tours in Fallujah, two in Ramadi. Kicked in more doors than I can count. The loud ones work, but they also get people killed. The quiet ones take longer, but everyone goes home."

"You got a preference?"

"I prefer everyone going home." He looked up, met Boats' eyes. "Skipper says you're good at that. Getting people home."

"I try."

"Then we'll get along fine."

---

The team gathered in the safe house that night, all of them, the room suddenly smaller with six bodies and enough gear to start a small war. Boats spread the map on the floor. They gathered around it—Wrench, Petey, Sparrow, Frost, Mack, Tino—and for a moment, they were just shapes in the dim light, shadows with callsigns and histories he didn't fully know.

But Skipper had sent them, and that was enough.

"Here's what we know," Boats said. "Eighteen girls, third floor, guarded by five to seven men. Rotation every forty minutes. A high-value target visits at night—big car, driver, doesn't stay long. The girls are alive. We heard them singing."

Sparrow looked up. "Proof of life protocol?"

"You and Frost go in first. Pose as aid workers, NGO cover. Bashir's got the paperwork. You get visual confirmation, count heads, assess condition. If they're mobile, we move tonight. If not, we adjust."

Frost frowned. "And if the guards don't buy it?"

"Then you smile, apologize, and leave. We'll find another way in."

Wrench tapped the map. "Breach points?"

"Front door's too exposed. Side entrance here"—Boats pointed—"leads to a service stair. Pashi says it's used for deliveries. We go in quiet, two teams. Wrench and Mack take the stair, Petey and Tino cover the rear exit. I go with the women for proof of life, then signal the breach."

"And exfil?" Mack asked.

"Fast and dirty. We load the girls into the vans, move to the docks, transfer to Bashir's boat. Skipper's got a ship waiting twelve miles offshore. We're ghosts by sunrise."

Tino looked up from his comms rig. "What's the contingency if it goes loud?"

"We don't let it go loud."

"But if it does?"

Boats met his eyes. "Then we finish it fast and live with the noise."

The room went quiet. Outside, the call to prayer echoed through the streets, a reminder that the city had its own rhythms, its own rules.

Sparrow broke the silence. "When do we move?"

Boats checked his watch. Twenty-two hours left. "Proof of life at dawn. If they're good, we breach tomorrow night. Questions?"

No one spoke.

"Good. Get some sleep. We've got one shot at this."

---

That night, Boats stood at the window again, watching the building. The guard rotation had changed. The new man was older, more careful, checking corners before he lit his cigarette. Professional. That was bad.

Pashi appeared beside him, silent as always. "Your people are here."

"Yeah."

"They look like soldiers."

"They are."

"Will they get the girls out?"

Boats didn't answer right away. He thought about Jessie Martin, about the sneaker by the pilings, about the sound of singing through a concrete wall. He thought about the debts he'd collected and the ones he still owed.

"Yeah," he said finally. "We will."

Pashi nodded, satisfied. "Good. Because I told my cousin you don't leave people behind."

"I don't."

The kid slipped away, back into the shadows where he lived.

Boats stayed at the window, watching the building, counting the guards, memorizing the rhythms. Somewhere inside, eighteen girls were waiting for a rescue they didn't know was coming. Somewhere offshore, a ship was moving into position. Somewhere in Virginia, Skipper was probably lying to his wife about where he'd sent his people.

The city hummed below, indifferent to all of it.

Boats lit a cigarette and let the smoke curl toward the cracked window.

—Obelisk: The cost of asking is measured in the debts you'll owe. The cost of not asking is measured in the lives you'll lose.

He crushed the cigarette and turned from the window.

Twenty hours.

Time to move.