Page 49 of Viking
I followed him down a hallway to a smaller office.Unlike the control center with its technology and maps, this room was sparse -- just a desk, a chair, and a wall of photographs.My blood ran cold as I recognized the subjects.Kris in civilian clothes, walking down a street.Karoline leaving her preschool, arms full of craft supplies.And most chilling -- Athena playing in a park, her copper curls catching sunlight, oblivious to the camera documenting her movements.
“They’ve been watching them for months,” Flicker said, disgust evident in his voice.“Before Kris was even killed.”
I stared at the photos, rage building anew in my chest.These men hadn’t just killed Kris and targeted Karoline.They’d been stalking Athena -- an innocent child -- treating her like collateral damage in their corrupt game.My fist slammed into the wall beside the photos, pain shooting up my arm from already damaged knuckles.
“Take them down,” I ordered.“All of them.We’ll burn them with everything else.”
Back in the main hallway, we regrouped.Everyone was upright, though the toll of the night’s violence was evident in bloodstained clothing and grim expressions.Bull was wrapping a fresh bandage around Prophet’s neck wound.Saint was helping Flicker with his reopened leg injury.Sarge checked his ammunition, movements careful with his injured arm.
I checked my watch.“Plant the charges on your way out.Standard pattern, thirty-second intervals.”
They nodded, breaking off to complete their final tasks.I returned to the control center alone, drawn back to the body of the man who’d ordered Kris’s death.In death, Colonel Mercer looked smaller somehow, his cold eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling.I felt nothing looking at him -- no satisfaction, no remorse, just the hollow certainty that one threat had been eliminated.But as Mercer himself had said, there were others.The senators.Their operatives.The corrupt system that had allowed Operation Ghostwalk to exist in the first place.
The intelligence we’d gathered tonight would expose them all.Kris’s evidence combined with what we’d found would be enough to bring down the entire operation.Wire would make sure it reached the right people -- journalists, federal agents Kris had trusted, oversight committees that couldn’t be bought.
I knelt beside Mercer’s body.I thought of what this man had represented -- the faceless threat that had hung over Karoline and Athena since I’d brought them to the compound.With him gone, they were safer.Not completely safe -- never that, not in this life -- but the immediate danger had passed.
“Time to go,” Prophet called from the doorway.
I stood, taking one last look around the room where justice had been served.Then I followed Prophet out, moving through hallways now silent except for our footsteps.Bodies lay where they’d fallen, blood pooling on concrete floors.The smell of death hung heavy in the air, familiar from my military days but no less disturbing.
Outside, the night air felt clean in comparison, cooling the sweat on my face and easing the tightness in my chest.My brothers waited by the tree line, charges set, weapons shouldered.In the distance, our bikes waited.
“Thirty seconds,” Saint said, holding up the detonator.
We moved away from the buildings, putting safe distance between ourselves and the charges.When we reached the edge of the clearing, Saint pressed the button.For a moment, nothing happened.Then the first explosion rocked the administrative building, blowing out windows in a shower of glass.The second followed seconds later, then the third -- a chain of destruction designed to leave nothing but ashes.
I watched the flames begin to climb, eating through walls and roofs, consuming the evidence of our presence along with the last remnants of Operation Ghostwalk’s operational base.The fire reflected in my brothers’ eyes as they stood beside me, faces grim with the weight of what we’d accomplished and what it had cost us.
“Let’s ride.”We made our way through the woods in silence, each man lost in his own thoughts, as we made our way back to our bikes.My body ached with every step, injuries making themselves known now that the adrenaline was fading.But beneath the pain was a lightness I hadn’t expected.
At our bikes, we performed quick field dressings on the worst injuries.Prophet’s neck wound had stopped bleeding, but the skin around it was angry and red.Flicker’s leg needed proper stitches.Sarge winced as Bull tied off a bandage around his arm.It looked like someone had already patched up the big guy.Saint, the least injured among us, helped me clean my knife wounds, then wrapped gauze around the one on my forearm.
“You good to ride?”he asked quietly, eyeing my various injuries.
I nodded, flexing my fingers to ensure I could still operate the throttle and brake.“I’ve ridden with worse.”
We mounted our bikes, the familiar rumble of Harley engines, and Flicker’s Indian, breaking the pre-dawn silence.I took point, leading my brothers away from the burning compound and back toward home.Toward Karoline and Athena.
Epilogue
Karoline
Sunlight streamed through the kitchen window, painting golden stripes across the counter where I stood kneading dough for biscuits.Three weeks since the raid on Operation Ghostwalk’s compound, three weeks of waking up in this house, and somehow it already felt more like home than my rental ever had.Maybe it was the way Athena’s toys had migrated into every corner, or how Viking’s leather cut now hung beside my cardigan on the hook by the door when we were home.Or maybe it was simply that here, for the first time since Kris died, I could breathe without looking over my shoulder.
“Momma, look!”Athena sat cross-legged on the kitchen floor, arranging her stuffed animals in a semicircle around her.Hopper the rabbit sat prominently in the center, wearing the tiny leather vest Tank had given her for the toy.“They’re having church.”
I smiled, dusting flour from my hands.Since the big fight, Athena had started talking more.She’d also decided to call me Momma and Viking Daddy.“Church, huh?Are you the preacher?”
She shook her head, copper curls bouncing.“Hopper is.He’s saying be good or the bad men come.”
My hands stilled on the dough.Even after everything, those shadows lingered in her three-year-old mind.But instead of waking screaming every night as she had those first weeks, now she processed it through play.Progress, the child therapist had called it when we’d driven into town for her appointment.
“No bad men are coming anymore, sweetie,” I said, keeping my voice light.“Viking and his friends made sure of that.”
She nodded solemnly, already moving on to rearranging her stuffed congregation.In the three weeks since Viking had returned, bloodied but victorious, from the raid that had sparked the end of Operation Ghostwalk, Athena had blossomed.
I returned to the biscuits, cutting circles from the flattened dough.The silver locket containing Kris’s photo hung around my neck, a familiar weight against my skin.
