Chapter 5 - The Father Who Never DiedFor twenty-three years, I had remembered my father as a forty-one-year-old man.
Then there are truths that make you wish you had remained ignorant.
Rebecca and I stood inside the combat information center of USS Resolute while my father’s final message glowed across every monitor.
ASK REBECCA WHAT HAPPENED IN THE CAVE.
I faced her.
“You were ordered to leave me behind?”
Rebecca’s voice was barely audible.
“Yes.”
“By who?”
“Your father.”
I stared at her.
“That’s impossible.”
“No.”
“He had been dead nine years.”
“So we thought.”
Everything inside me went quiet.
Not calm.
Quiet in the way the world becomes quiet before something collapses.
“My father was alive in Afghanistan?”
Rebecca nodded.
“At least three months before the ambush.”
Mercer stepped closer.
“You have evidence?”
Rebecca ignored him.
She kept looking at me.
“After our unit was hit, I dragged you into a cave system north of the valley. You had a collapsed lung and shrapnel in your thigh. We were out of ammunition. I thought we had maybe twenty minutes before the mercenaries found us.”
Fragments returned.
Dark stone.
Blood.
My own breathing.
Someone pressing gauze against my ribs.
A voice.
I had always assumed it was Rebecca.
“You were unconscious,” she said. “Then a man came through the rear tunnel.”
“My father.”
“Yes.”
My knees weakened.
“What did he look like?”
“Older. Thin. Gray hair. Burn scar across the right side of his neck.”
I remembered my father’s funeral.
Closed casket.
They said the training accident had made viewing impossible.
My mother had sobbed for three days.
“He told me I had to leave you.”
“Why?”
“He said Voss needed you alive.”
That matched the recording.
The person who needed me alive was more dangerous.
Rebecca continued.
“Your father said the ambush wasn’t meant to kill you. It was meant to isolate you.”
“For what?”
“He didn’t tell me.”
“And you just walked away?”
Her face broke.
“He put a gun against my chest.”
I said nothing.
“He gave me a Lazarus token and coordinates for extraction. He said if I stayed, we both died.”
“You left me unconscious.”
“I came back.”
“When?”
“Six hours later.”
I remembered waking alone.
Crawling through darkness.
Finding water dripping from stone.
Hearing men outside.
“I came back and you were gone.”
“You never searched after that?”
“For four years.”
I stepped away.
It was too much.
Blackwood watched me with a face full of shame.
“You knew he survived?”
“For a while.”
I spun toward him.
“How long?”
“Daniel contacted me twelve years after his supposed death.”
My hands trembled.
“Everyone knew except me.”
“No,” Blackwood said. “Almost no one knew.”
“That is not better.”
Mercer interrupted.
“We need to deal with the compromised ship.”
He was right, which made me hate him for saying it.
Technicians were isolating the remote access device.
Captain Reyes ordered physical disconnection of external communication links.
For several minutes, it appeared to work.
Then alarms sounded.
A lieutenant rushed in.
“Captain, unauthorized launch sequence detected.”
“What system?”
The lieutenant’s face was white.
“Vertical launch cell nineteen.”
Reyes ran toward the console.
“Abort.”
“No response.”
“Manual override.”
“Locked out.”
Every person in that room knew what sat inside those cells.
Weapons.
Real ones.
We had less than ninety seconds.
“Destination?” Mercer asked.
“Unknown until guidance handshake.”
Rebecca stared at the screen.
“This isn’t an attack.”
“What?”
“They’re proving control.”
I looked at the remote device.
“No. They need a distraction.”
I turned toward Reyes.
“What is physically located near cell nineteen?”
“Maintenance corridor. Magazine controls. Cooling systems.”
“Anything classified besides ordnance?”
His expression shifted.
“The prototype targeting module.”
There it was.
“Someone’s stealing it.”
Reyes ordered Marines toward the compartment.
Rebecca and I went with them.
We reached the lower deck as alarms screamed.
The hatch to the prototype storage room had been cut open.
Inside, two Navy technicians lay unconscious.
Not dead.
A transport case was missing.
We ran for the aft access ladder.
Above us came three sharp pops.
Gunfire.
A Marine fell backward through the hatch.
Rebecca caught him.
I drew the pistol Mercer had issued me.
“Contact!”
A masked man fired downward.
I returned two rounds.
He disappeared.
Rebecca and I climbed.
We reached the weather deck.
Rotor wash exploded across us.
A helicopter hovered beyond the stern.
Not military.
Civilian markings.
Two masked men were attaching the stolen case to a hoist.
I fired.
One dropped.
The second cut the line.
The case fell onto the deck.
The helicopter pulled away.
Then I saw him.
Standing inside the open side door.
Adrian Voss.
The man who had supposedly been arrested less than an hour earlier.
He smiled.
Lifted one hand.
And displayed his handcuffs.
Open.
Rebecca fired.
The helicopter banked away.
“Where are the MPs holding Voss?” I shouted into my radio.
Static.
Then Mercer answered.
“He escaped during transfer.”
Of course he had.
On the deck, the stolen case sat ten yards away.
I started toward it.
Rebecca grabbed me.
“Wait.”
The case was beeping.
Not explosive.
A small display counted down.
00:19.
00:18.
“What is it?”
Rebecca shook her head.
We backed away.
At zero, the case unlocked.
The lid opened automatically.
Empty.
Except for a photograph.
I approached slowly.
Picked it up.
My family.
Not Rachel.
Not my nephew.
An older photograph.
My father.
My mother.
Me at fourteen.
Rachel at nine.
Taken outside our home in Virginia.
Across my father’s face, someone had written:
HE CHOSE YOU.
On the back:
SAN CLEMENTE. 21:00. COME ALONE IF YOU WANT HIM ALIVE.
My breathing stopped.
Rebecca read it over my shoulder.
“No.”
I stared at the words.
“If this is current—”
“It’s a trap.”
“I know.”
“Your father could still be dead.”
“I know.”
“And you’re still going.”
“Yes.”
Rebecca grabbed my shoulder.
“Evelyn, that’s what Voss wants.”
“Then he gets me.”
Mercer arrived moments later.
When he saw the photograph, he immediately refused.
“Absolutely not.”
I handed it to him.
“He may have my father.”
“Or he wants you to believe he does.”
“Either way, Voss has been moving us around like pieces on a board.”
“Which is exactly why you don’t walk into his next move.”
I looked at him.
“General, I survived seven years because people kept telling me what not to do.”
He stared back.
“I’m ordering you not to go.”
I took out the black coin.
Placed it in his palm.
“Then I’m no longer operating under your authority.”
Mercer looked down at it.
“You don’t get to resign from being classified.”
“Watch me.”
I walked away.
At the gangway, Blackwood was waiting.
He held car keys.
“I’m coming with you.”
“No.”
“You’ll need someone Voss hates more than he hates you.”
I almost laughed.
“Is that supposed to reassure me?”
“No.”
He handed me the keys.
“It’s supposed to keep you alive.”
At 8:43 that night, we reached an abandoned coastal communications station outside San Clemente.
No backup.
No lights.
No visible guards.
Only ocean wind and rusted fencing.
Blackwood and I entered through a broken service door.
Inside, a single bulb burned.
A chair sat in the center of the room.
A man was tied to it.
Thin.
Gray hair.
Burn scar along his neck.
My heart forgot how to beat.
He lifted his head.
His eyes found mine.
The same blue eyes I saw every morning in the mirror.
“Evie?”
I stopped breathing.
May you like
My father began to cry.
And behind us, the steel door slammed shut.
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