Created by Eric “Boats” Hardy

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.

 

Part 1 — 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.

 

NEXT WEEK: Block Ops & The Ferry Line — where reconnaissance becomes reckoning.