Page 3 of Echo: Burn
Before Crete and Kandahar, there were all the other operational theaters—Syria, Yemen, Iraq, too many to name. The fire that gave me these scars. We'd hit a Taliban compound, standard operation turned sideways when someone triggered an IED inside the building. The explosion turned the world into a furnace. I remember the smell more than the pain—burning flesh has a sweetness to it that you never forget, something primal that makes your brain scream warnings your body can't obey.
My team pulled me out. Stryker, Mercer and Rourke dragging me through flames while I screamed. Three months in a burn unit at Landstuhl. Skin grafts. Physical therapy. Psychological evaluation that I lied my way through because the alternative was a medical discharge, and I had nothing outside the teams. No family. No home. Just the brotherhood and the mission.
They cleared me for duty. I went back. Did six more years of operations across four continents before Crete taught me thatbrotherhood has an expiration date, and the mission is whatever keeps politicians comfortable at night.
My hands shake. I force them still, gripping the edge of the sink until the tremor stops. Control returns one breath at a time. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Delta Force taught me that. Panic is just bad oxygen management.
I make another pot of coffee, measuring grounds the way I measure everything else—exact, controlled, no room for error. While it brews, I run through weapons maintenance. The HK416 first, fieldstripping it on the table with movements I could perform in total darkness. Every part accounted for. Every spring checked. Every surface cleaned. The ritual calms something in me that has nothing to do with actual weapon readiness.
The Glock 19 comes next, then the backup Sig. By the time I'm done, the coffee is ready and the sun has fully risen. Seven-thirty. The world is awake now, people going about their lives, thinking they're safe because they can't see the shadows moving beneath the surface.
I pour coffee and stand at the window again, looking out at the forest. Somewhere down there, in towns and cities I left behind, people are worried about mortgage payments and traffic jams. Their biggest threats are imaginary—what their neighbors think, whether their kids will get into good colleges, if their marriage can survive another year of quiet erosion.
They sleep in unlocked houses. Trust their governments. Believe the system protects them.
I used to be one of them. Before Crete. Before Kandahar. Before I learned that the system protects itself, and everyone else is acceptable collateral.
The satellite phone buzzes. Stryker's encrypted line.
"Kane."
"Status check." His voice sounds clear. Sober. Three weeks without a drink, and he sounds like a different man. Purpose does that. Gives you a reason to stay functional.
"Green. Perimeter's clean."
"Tommy's picking up Committee chatter. They're mobilizing assets west. Could be nothing."
"Could be everything." I watch a hawk circle above the tree line, hunting. "How's Sarah?"
"Stable. Rourke says another week before she's fully operational."
Sarah, the intelligence analyst who discovered the truth and nearly died for it. Another responsibility. Another person depending on Echo Ridge to keep her alive.
"And the recruitment?"
"Hayes is in. Thompson's still thinking. Mercer's working on him." Stryker pauses. "We're building something, Kane. Something that matters."
"Don't get philosophical on me."
He laughs, rough but genuine. "Three weeks ago, I was drunk in a mill waiting to die. Now I've got a reason to stay sober. That's worth something."
"Stay sharp. If the Committee's moving assets, they're planning something."
"Copy that. Kane?" Another pause. "You good out there? Alone?"
The question catches me off guard. I look around the cabin—the comfortable furniture, the weapons, the carefully maintained isolation that keeps me alive but doesn't let me live.
"I'm fine."
"That wasn't the question."
"It's the only answer I've got."
Stryker doesn't push. He knows better. "Check in at eighteen-hundred."
The line goes dead.
I set the phone down and return to the window. The hawk has found something—it dives with lethal precision, talons extended. A moment later it rises, a small rodent clutched in its grip. Efficient. Clean. No hesitation.
