Reeves glanced at Lin, who nodded. He instructed one of his soldiers to accompany Peyton, and they set off down a stone path, walking as quickly as she could manage. Her lungs still ached, but hope drove her on.
The administrative building was a charred ruin. The entire top two floors had burned down. Trails of smoke rose from orange embers crackling in the night. A half dozen of the camo-clad special forces—members of Zulu and Bravo teams—waded through the wreckage, turning the blackened pieces with the barrels of their rifles, searching.
Ahead, a Navy SEAL motioned for Peyton to come quickly. She swallowed, dreading what she would see. She repeated the words over the comm in her mind: We’ve got a live one. Alive, but in what condition? And who?
She knew who she wanted it to be. In the moment, she was completely honest with herself. She wanted to see Desmond’s face. She wanted to leave the island with him more than anything in the world. In the Boxer’s mess, he had said the things he needed to say, but she hadn’t. She knew that had been a mistake—one she might live to regret.
Twenty feet away, beyond the Navy SEAL, lay a burned-out crater, nearly smooth in the center. A ring of bodies circled it. In hot zones around the world, Peyton had seen pathogens rip through a population, leaving death behind. This was an altogether different form of carnage. Men lay in pieces. Dead eyes stared up at her, or out into the forest. Severed limbs lay alone, remnants of the slaughter strewn about without care or mercy. Rivulets of blood flowed into the crater like the veins on the back of a dark earthen monster. As Peyton descended into the hole, steam rose from it, as if the spirits of the lives lost were drifting toward the yellow moon above.
The Navy SEAL told her that he was a corpsman. He had stopped the bleeding, but the patient needed an infusion quickly. A medevac was inbound with blood, but it would be close. The Boxer had a capable operating room; unfortunately, it would be almost an hour before the patient reached the table.
As the SEAL shifted to the side, Peyton held her breath.
Avery lay on the ground, dirt plastered across her pale face and in her blond hair. Her breathing was shallow. Peyton knelt at her side. A six-inch gash ran across her abdomen. The corpsman had done a good job; the wound was packed tight. Splinters from shattered trees dotted her body. Avery murmured a phrase Peyton couldn’t make out. The corpsman had loaded her up with a painkiller. That was good. There wasn’t much else Peyton could do. In truth, the Navy medical officer was better trained to treat battlefield injuries than Peyton was. There was only one thing she could give the young woman, and for that reason, she sat silently, waiting.
Avery cracked her eyes, mumbled again. Peyton gripped her hand. “You’re going to be okay, Avery. Medevac is on the way. Surgeons are already prepped and waiting on you.”
An amused grin formed on Avery’s lips. “You taking care of me now?”
Peyton smiled back at her. “Yeah. I am. You know how I am about that. About my people.”
“Then I know I’m going to make it. You’re a real pain in the ass.”
Peyton laughed—a nervous, cathartic laugh, like a pressure valve releasing the tension from her body. “Look who’s talking,” she shot back.
More seriously, Peyton asked, “Did you get it?”
Avery nodded. “Yeah, we got it.”
We. The word filled Peyton with hope.
Avery’s smile faded. “What did you find in the labs?”
Peyton considered what to say. “Nothing that’ll be a problem.”
A soldier searching the building called out, “Got another one.”
Instinctively Peyton’s head snapped around, seeking out the caller. She desperately wanted to rush over, but she returned her focus to Avery. The blond woman released Peyton’s hand. “Go. That’s one of our people. They need you too.”
“I’ll see you on the Boxer, Avery.”
Peyton stumbled over the bombed-out ground, weaving around bodies and into the ruined building. Up a stairwell littered with debris, she found soldiers pulling wreckage away, revealing more of a body. It was limp. The torso came into view. The chest was caved in. Not breathing.
The moment Peyton saw her father’s face, she closed her eyes. Tears flowed. Her legs gave way. She sank to her knees, letting them dig into the ash-covered floor. Her eyes settled on a half-burned picture frame. The picture was of a short, white-haired man with a cold, blank expression. He matched Desmond and her father’s description of Yuri Pachenko—and Peyton had no doubt that was exactly who it was. This was Yuri’s office. He killed my father.
Her entire life, she had blamed fate and bad luck for the loss of her father. Now she had a name to put with the rage that consumed her: Yuri Pachenko. He had taken her father from her. She would make him pay. Yuri had wanted to change the world—and he had certainly succeeded in changing her.
She would be the end of him. In the burned remains of the building, with her father lying dead ten feet away, she swore it.
Another soldier’s voice called into the night. “Got another one.”
Chapter 131
Elliott held his wife’s head in his lap. The RV sitting in an alley off Marietta Street was warm from the small heaters and the people crammed inside. Ryan was with them, as well as Sam and Adam, and a dozen of Elliott’s neighbors and their loved ones. At the table, a mother was reading Charlotte’s Web to four children packed in around her. The kids were leaning in, gazing at the pictures. Two teenagers were stretched out on opposite ends of a couch, playing games on tablets, headphones in their ears. Three adult couples snacked on protein bars and sipped bottled water while they tuned a handheld radio, searching for any signal on the AM band.