"—In all your accounts, Captain, 'Hassan' appears at far too convenient a moment… I believe you've noticed that yourself."
"—I don't follow."
"—What I mean is… you've been trying to prove Hassan was there, but in reality he wasn't, was he?"
"—I'm certain he was."
"—Yet you can't provide specifics."
"—He was the last person I saw. I pushed him into the sea myself. That's how he survived."
"—No. From every possible angle, he did not survive."
"—Gray Horse detachment fielded exactly seven men for that phase of the operation. No one knows that better than I do."
"—Yes. Seven. Six multi-national operators on the official manifest… and one 'ghost' who exists only in the narrator's testimony."
John Hastings had once heard the sensation described by others, but he never truly understood what it felt like to be on the receiving end of an RPG blast until that unheralded ambush, delivered by unidentified frogmen.
It begins with a brutal, invisible hammer-blow: no sound, just raw overpressure slamming face, torso, and limbs simultaneously.
The body is launched backward, weightless, tumbling uncontrollably.
Only then does the nervous system catch up: lightning pain surging into the skull, vision strobing, a high-pitched ringing that drowns everything.
Beyond the threshold of tolerance comes the blank. Not blackness—more like frames torn from a film reel, washed over by tidal surges inside the cranium, accompanied by a chaotic cocktail of terror, rage, and uncontrollable violence.
"—Captain…"
The voice is distant, muffled. He tries to move, but his body feels fused to the concrete wall at the very bottom of the load-bearing structure.
"—John!"
Through drifting dust and smoke, Logan crawls toward his captain.
"—Wake up!"
He grabs the drag handle of John's plate carrier, fingers clamping around a neck caked in blood and grit. Pulse slow, thready.
"Where's Hassan?"
John forces his eyes open. He's slumped in a smoking pile of shattered rebar and concrete. Blood and saliva drip from the corner of his mouth.
A searing heat blooms across his chest. He rips open the Velcro cummerbund, yanks the front SAPI plate free—several glowing fragments of shrapnel are embedded in the ceramic—and tosses it aside with a clatter.
His hand instinctively checks the chest rig pocket. The bio-weapon sample is still there; the insulated case is intact.
"Stay with me, Captain."
Logan, one hand clamped over his own mangled knee, reaches inside John's carrier, pressing, probing for wounds.
One of John's left ribs has snapped under the blast wave and caved inward. Pray it hasn't punctured a lung.
"Hey!"
The lingering concussion jolts John back. Pain floods every nerve; he gasps between frantic heartbeats.
"I'm good, Sergeant…"
He drags his battered Mk 18 across his lap, uses the wall to stand. Blood pressure bottoms out; the world tilts.
He sucks in lungfuls of pulverized concrete, burning petrol, and hot metal.
"Where's the Claymore?!"
He has to scream over the ringing in his ears. He scans—no sign of their interpreter, Hassan.
"Here!"
Logan, also using the wall for support, digs bullet gouges with his fingers and produces the M18A1 from behind his back. John takes the mine, shoves it into a cargo pocket.
"Centrifuge isn't the only thing that'll cook it… high-explosive heat works too."
Too weak to manipulate it properly, he pulls an epinephrine auto-injector from his kit, slams it into his thigh, and depresses the plunger.
Vision sharpens. Muscles lock back in. Heart rate climbs into the red.
Logan tries to stand on his MPX, but his leg buckles. His face drains of color.
"Captain… I can't feel my legs."
John drops beside him. Logan's trousers are soaked dark crimson.
In the distance: boots on deck plates, shouted commands in a language he doesn't recognize.
John's eyes, crusted with blood, go wide.
"John—go! I'll hold them!"
Captain Hastings wrenches the comms cable from his ear and bellows:
"Negative, Logan—no man left behind!"
He draws the M17 from his drop-leg with his strong hand, grabs Logan's plate carrier drag handle with his weak, and starts hauling him backward.
Two fireteams of frogmen have located them. Fire pours in.
Under a storm of ricochets and snapping rounds, John drags Logan across the concrete while blindly dumping rounds one-handed from the pistol. Logan, sliding on his back, braces the MPX against his boot and rips bursts at the advancing enemy.
Bullets spark inches from their heads. John finally heaves Logan around the corner, drops to apply a tourniquet—only to have the dying sergeant seize his wrist.
"Hey… Captain."
Logan's hand comes away from his own neck slick with arterial red.
"Take my kit. Put a few more in the ground for me, yeah?"
His eyes lose focus, then slide shut forever.
From behind the wall, muzzle flashes bloom against the pre-dawn horizon. Masked frogmen advance.
John Hastings tears the dog tag from his last teammate's neck, squeezes it until his palm bleeds.
Teeth grinding with grief and fury, he takes Logan's MPX, slaps in the final mag, slings it.
He pulls the Claymore from his vest, glances at the THIS SIDE TOWARD ENEMY stamping, then slides it inside his chest rig so only the pull-ring protrudes. Zips the pocket.
Arm screaming from embedded shrapnel, he steps to the edge of cover, looks back one last time.
"Wait for me there, Logan."
He racks the charging handle on his Mk 18 to clear a stoppage, steps into the open, and advances into the converging fire.
Blade-thin profile, perfect trigger resets. Two-round bursts drop target after target.
Bodies fall in the sulfur-yellow dawn. More keep coming, stepping over their own dead without breaking stride.
A grenade arcs overhead and detonates at his feet.
The blast flips him sideways. He eats concrete.
Adrenaline surges; he pushes up—only to eat two center-mass hits to his back plate, slamming him down again.
The remaining fireteam closes, weapons lowered to confirm the kill.
John rolls, snatches the empty MPX, and hoses the last forty rounds full-auto across their knees and faces.
He drops the dry weapon, lunges, tackles the final frogman, drives him into the deck, draws his sidearm, and delivers a terminal failure drill at contact distance.
Panting, snarling, he rises over the corpse and raises both empty hands toward the last approaching element.
He backpedals, boot by deliberate boot, toward the edge of the platform.
Black waves crash against the legs far below. Dawn has broken.
The enemy team leader steps forward, breathing mechanically through his rebreather, extending a gloved hand for the bio-sample.
Seabreeze stirs John's blood-crusted hair. Beneath scarred brows, eyes that have cried themselves dry stare out.
He lowers his right hand. Index finger finds the zipper, pinky hooks the Claymore's pull-ring.
John Hastings smiles—small, terrible, at peace.
"See you in hell."
A sun-bright fireball erupts, the front-directed blast of steel balls scything through the clustered mercenaries in a roaring golden cone.
The overpressure hurls the broken, burning man backward off the platform and into the void.
Across his chest, the shattered sample vial leaks pale vapor, consumed by flame, soaked by seawater, threading into slack muscle and stilled heart.
He falls.
Tiny bubbles rise toward the glittering surface.
He sinks into the tar-black cradle of the seabed.
Then—one heartbeat after clinical death—his heart kicks again.
He strips away the weight of armor and weapons.
And swims toward the golden dawn.