Page 76 of Code Name: Ember
A beat.“I’d stake those too,” he says, and his tone has shifted—no humor in it now.“It works, Cole.Go get her.”
I toggle on the suit and a faint vibration moves through the fabric, there and then gone.Sully does the same, then Reid.We check one another without being asked, an old habit that doesn’t require instruction.
Sully drops the tailgate and we work the cargo straps in the dark, four of them securing the drone case to the truck bed.The latches release with a series of soft metallic clicks that seem loud in the mountain quiet.The case is custom—Dozer’s design, like most items that come out of the equipment division—a matte-black shell that looks like it could survive a vehicle rollover, which it has, once, in circumstances none of us talk about anymore.
“Drone is free,” Sully says.
Marcus Webb is our drone operator sitting back at headquarters in Seattle and he came to Jameson from the air force, where he flew surveillance missions over terrain that made the western Cascades look like a city park.
“Systems good,” he says quietly, reading the electronics remotely.
The rotors spin up—a low hum and a small gust of wind—then the drone lifts off the truck bed in a smooth vertical rise.It hovers for a moment at chest height and then it climbs again—straight up, fast, gone into the dark above the tree line in under ten seconds.
“Drone is up and over the cabin,” Josie says in my ear, her voice controlled and precise.“Holding at four hundred feet, outside audio range.Thermal feed is live and I’m counting signatures now.”
“Copy,” I say.
Reid sets up a monitor on the tailgate, and we watch the drone’s thermal camera render the property below in the false color palette of heat imaging—cool blues and greens for the environment, the bright orange-white bloom of human bodies moving through it.
Six signatures.I count them myself, even though I know Josie is doing the same in the sub-basement of the Jameson building.
“Malik,” I say.
“Here,” he says, his voice holding steady because he’s been in worse situations than this and knows panic is just wasted energy.Five months in a Syrian desert hole will do that to a person.“We have the same feed you have.Talk me through your read when you’re ready.”
I do a final check of my own kit.My primary is a suppressed assault rifle with a clip-on, night-vision adaptor, and I’ve got a Glock as my sidearm, strapped to my thigh.Two flash bangs on the left side of my vest, a breaching ram at my back.I run my hands over everything once in the dark—magazine seated, safety off, suppressor tight.Reid and Sully are similarly armed except Sully carries a fixed blade on his left forearm.
“We’re on the move,” I tell Malik.
We move into the tree line using specialty goggles, the world rendered in the flat green monochrome of night vision.The ground is soft with years of needle fall, which helps with sound.Branches reach across our path and we move under them rather than push through them.We place our feet with intention and despite my desperate need to reach Tessa, we don’t rush.We move slowly and we move correctly, because surprise is going to be the difference between our three versus their six.
“Okay… I’ve double-checked and verified six heat signatures on the property, all human,” Josie says, and I’m grateful we don’t have to deal with guard dogs.“Two exterior.Four in the structure.”
Tessa’s one of them, so that means we’re dealing with five hostiles before I can get to her.
“One signature is stationary,” she says.“Inside the cabin, north room.The others are all mobile.”
Tessa.
Stationary means restrained.I know exactly what that means and I file it in a place I’m not going to open until this is over, because if I open it now, I won’t be able to do what needs to be done.She needs the operator right now.She needs me cold, precise and functional.
“Exterior positions?”Sully asks, his voice barely above a breath.
“One covering the access road,” Josie says over the comms.“Northeastern corner of the property.One on the south side, mobile, running a patrol pattern.Cycle looks like approximately four minutes.”
We’re close enough now that the cabin is visible through the trees—a low structure, single story, one light burning behind blackout curtains on the north side.A black SUV sits in the clearing near the front.
I’m doing the math on approach vectors, on the patrol cycle, on how long it will take Sully to cover the distance to the access road guard, when it happens.
A scream.
It cuts through the dark and the trees and the two hundred yards between us and the cabin and it hits me like a physical impact—one short, raw sound that is unmistakably Tessa and then silence, which is somehow worse.
I’m moving before I’ve decided to move, intent only on barreling through the door and saving her.I’m brought to a dead stop by two sets of hands on me.Reid’s got my upper arm in a vise grip, Sully locked around my waist.
“Don’t do it,” Reid says, voice low and hard.
“They’re hurting her.”The words come out flat, scraped clean of emotion.
