Chapter 8 - The Target on My Back
Within three hours of the gunfight at the homestead, the full machinery of the federal government had turned against us.
Sarah’s laptop, linked to a burner hotspot on our run through the desert, pinged with an emergency national news bulletin:
“BREAKING NEWS: Former Navy Captain Evelyn Mercer is wanted for the armed abduction of three high-risk military attack animals, the assault of Department of Defense contractors, and the homicide of two base personnel in San Diego. The Department of Homeland Security warns that Mercer is armed, highly trained, and mentally unstable following a combat-related psychological breakdown.”
My face flashed across the screen—an old dress-blues photograph from five years ago, followed by mugshots of Marcus Dole labeled with the tag: DISGRACED SPECIAL OPERATOR INVOLVED IN TREASON PROBE.
"They're scrubbing our identities in real time," Parker said from the passenger seat of an old flatbed farm truck we had purchased for cash from an off-grid mechanic outside Barstow. "They’re using the standard counter-intelligence playbook. If they make you look like a psychotic cop-killer who snapped under PTSD, nobody will listen to Marcus’s files even if you post them on every news outlet in the country."
"The media won't save us anyway," I said, steering the rattling truck down the back roads toward the coast. Thor sat in the narrow space between my seat and Sarah’s, his chin resting calmly on my elbow as I shifted gears. Ares and Zeus lay curled together in the footwell, their breathing synchronized. "Whitfield controls the narrative in Washington, but he doesn't control Coronado."
"Why Coronado?" Sarah asked, clutching the decrypted flash drive around her neck like a talisman. "That’s the belly of the beast. The entire base will be locked down under ThreatCon Delta. You’ll never get through the gates."
"We aren't going through the gates," I said, looking down at Thor’s scarred muzzle. "Marcus didn't train these dogs at Lackland or Coronado’s main facility. He trained them at the North Island Amphibious Training Ground. There’s an underwater intake canal built in the 1960s to cool the old power station. It leads directly into the utility basement beneath the Naval Special Warfare headquarters."
"An underwater pipeline?" Parker stared at me as if I had truly lost my mind. "Evelyn, that pipe is flooded half the time, pitch black, and restricted by security grates."
"It's wide enough for a diver with a rebreather," I said. "And wide enough for three Belgian Malinois trained in combat maritime infiltration."
"They've been out of the water for eight months," Sarah warned softly. "They're still recovering from their trauma, Evelyn."
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I looked down at Thor. I reached out and touched his muzzle. His amber eyes met mine with a clarity that no human could counterfeit. He didn't look broken. He looked like a warrior who had finally been given a mission with a clear objective.
"They aren't recovering anymore, Sarah," I said. "They're ready to finish Marcus's patrol."
