Page 67 of Under Pressure
In the past, they’d always been able to stay emotionally detached from their missions. It was part of what made their unit of twenty-three men so effective. But now it was just the six of them plus one retiree, Ryker. They’d spent the better part of a year looking out for, protecting, and becoming friends with Ryker, learning about his people and to care for them, and searching for this treasure that would save their country from being overrun by a dictator.
Finding this huge part of Isola’s treasury wouldn’t fix all of the problems happening in the country, but it would be a big step in the right direction. And they were invested now in making sure that happened.
So, they now had a little less than thirty-six hours until the hurricane hit, and another shorter timer, maybe another two minutes, counting down to when they would have to go off course if they were really being followed.
“That’s not Titan?” Gray said.
Sean shook his head and gritted his teeth. While the boat was almost too far away to make out details, Sean could tell that thiswas not one of Titan Green’s black boats. This boat was light—maybe white or yellow.
They were all tense as that second clock counted down to the turnoff, and that tension was made even worse by the group’s exhaustion. As soon as they’d finished preparing for the dive, they’d all split off to help the community prepare for the hurricane for a couple hours. They’d spent the afternoon being called helpful Marines and it grated on their skin. The only consolation he had was that Titan’s boat had a sign on it that read: Closed for Repairs. Looked like they still hadn’t figured out where those loose screws came from. Ha!
His neighborhood was chock full of people who needed help.
After taking care of his neighborhood, he’d called Axel to see how they were doing with Grandpa. They’d apparently finished taking care of Grandpa’s place hours before and helped around The Palms after Grandpa disappeared to meet up with his friends.
Even with Diamond Cove going on alert, and their mission becoming critical, he hadn’t been able to get Blue out of his mind. The thing that haunted him, was that she smiled when she was with the poser, but it wasn’t her real smile. It was that lip-stretching thing she did for the rest of the world in college, the mask that she hid behind so no one would know the real her. It took him two weeks of five a.m. study sessions and front-row seats at Axel’s concert to break through that smile to see the real her.
And she wanted to marry a man who hadn’t gotten behind the mask. It gutted him.
“Look,” Wolfe said. They all glanced back at the boat in the distance. It turned off, heading in a different direction.
A collective release of breath sounded. Sean slowed until the craft in the distance was long out of sight.
“That was weird, right?” Knox asked. “I could have sworn they were following us.”
“Me too,” Wolfe said.
That had been Sean’s gut instinct as well, but given their time crunch, he wasn’t going to waste time worrying about it.
“Better keep an open eye for it just in case,” Gray said.
They nodded in agreement. Sean gave it another minute, then put the boat into full gear, pushing her as fast as he could to make up for lost time.
They reached the dive site a little under half an hour later. Following the coordinates of the boat’s underwater GPS, Sean lined up directly above the shipwreck. When they dove here a couple days ago, they’d parked a ways off, and he’d barely seen the wreck before running out of air. They’d been lucky.
Working with the precision of a team who’d spent years together, they prepared everything in silence. Sean and Wolfe went to the back of the boat to suit up, while Gray and Knox prepared the video gear, tanks, and other equipment. They’d be taking bolt cutters, a wrench, headlamps, and mini-torches just in case.
Gray handed Sean his tank, and Knox handed Wolfe his. “You have forty-five minutes.”
Sean grinned at the serious expression on Gray’s face and took the tank. “Then I turn into a toad?” If Sean’s resting face was happy, Gray’s could be considered nothing but resting-I-give-up-on-life face . . . and occasionally resting-jerk face.
Wolfe’s lips quirked up just a little on the side. His resting face was nothing. Literally. No expression at all. “Not that far off.”
“How about we just avoid turning into toads today, yeah?” The resting smolder face of the group asked. Knox turned on the live feed of the video cameras Sean and Wolfe had attached to their headlamps.
Gray spoke into his mic, creating a reverb that had them cringing. “How are your dive mics?” His voice came through loud and clear.
Sean and Wolfe gave him a thumbs up.
“We’ve got you,” Knox said.
They made their way to the back of the boat, and Sean stared down at the water—they had forty minutes, tops before the sun dropped below the horizon. An hour before they lost all light. Thankfully the water was crystal clear and perfect. Already, he could feel the tightness in his chest easing up. He stepped off the back, Wolfe following close behind.
The moment the icy ocean water wrapped around him, the tension from the last few days drifted away on the current. This was his element. The thing he loved doing most. It’d taken joining the SEALs and fully immersing himself to survive losing Blue. It was his only escape, the only time he really felt at home and at peace with himself these days. The only other time he’d felt that way was when he’d been with Blue.
They descended to the wreck as fast as diving parameters allowed with Gray and Knox chattering away in their ears as they fiddled with the video gear and such.
“Can you see it yet?” Gray asked.
