Chapter 5 - The Harbor Run
The crawlspace was a claustrophobic maze of electrical conduits, ancient copper plumbing, and fiberglass insulation that made my skin crawl instantly. The air was thick, hot, and smelled of decades of accumulated dust and trapped humidity.
"Keep moving! Don't stop!" Miller's voice echoed ahead of us through the dark, punctuated by the dull, rhythmic thumping of his tactical boots moving across the wooden roof joists.
I scrambled on my hands and knees, clutching the steel lockbox tight against my chest with one hand while dragging my veterinary trauma bag with the other. Ghost moved like a ghost—silent, fluid, his claws clicking softly against the old timber as he navigated the pitch-black obstacle course with instinctive precision.
"How much further?" I called out, tasting copper and dust in my mouth as my lungs burned from the lingering traces of CS gas.
"Fifty feet! There's an old maintenance hatch leading out to the flat roof above the fish market!" Miller yelled back.
A moment later, a bright rectangle of gray daylight broke through the darkness ahead as Miller shoved open a rusted metal hatch, letting a rush of cool, rain-washed ocean air flood into the crawlspace.
We spilled out onto the gravel-strewn flat roof of the commercial block overlooking the historic Norfolk waterfront. Below us, the gray expanse of the Elizabeth River churned under the heavy morning drizzle, dotted with the hulks of retired naval vessels and commercial tugboats cutting through the chop.
To the east, the sprawling gray sprawl of Naval Station Norfolk loomed under a low, bruised sky.
"We're exposed!" Miller hissed, dropping into a tactical crouch near the edge of the parapet, scanning the street below. "If they have thermal optics or a drone up, we're sitting ducks!"
"They won't use a drone over a civilian commercial zone in broad daylight—not without risking FAA tracking flags," I said, catching my breath as I stood up, wiping soot and fiberglass from my gray scrubs. I pulled the military satellite transceiver out of the lockbox and flicked the antenna upward, watching the LED screen cycle through secure cryptographic handshakes.
"You sound awfully confident for a vet who was stitching up a golden retriever's ear at eight-thirty this morning," Miller muttered, keeping his Sig raised as he watched the alleyway below.
"I told you, Miller, I wasn't always a vet," I replied sharply, my fingers flying across the ruggedized keypad of the sat-com. I punched in a twelve-digit broadcast frequency—a dead-drop channel that hadn't been active since the final days of Operation Obsidian Shield. "And you still haven't answered my question. How did you find Ghost? And more importantly, how is a dog that was supposedly incinerated in a classified bunker seven years ago walking around looking like he hasn't missed a single square meal?"
Miller slowly lowered his weapon barrel, though his eyes remained glued to the street below where two black Suburbans had just screeched to a halt in front of the clinic, their doors flying open.
"Because he wasn't in the bunker when it went up," Miller said quietly, his voice dropping so low I almost missed it over the sound of the wind whipping off the harbor.
My fingers froze over the sat-com keypad. My heart slammed against my ribs with terrifying force.
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"What did you say?"
"I said," Miller turned around, his eyes shining with a dark, haunted mix of fear and lingering adrenaline, "Ghost was never in the bunker. Neither was Ethan."
