Page 50 of Boomer (SEAL Team Tier 1, #7)

Bash said, “I volunteer to go with the BoomMon…Boomie. Yanks need someone who’s not a cowboy.” He smirked.

Breakneck leaned over, stage-whisper loud enough for the entire room to hear. “You cheating on me, Boom Boom? I thought I was your one and only bromance.” He pulled a face, deadpan, then turned to glare at Bash. “You trying to steal my battle boo?”

“Focus up,” Iceman said.

Breakneck chuckled and followed the group out of the room. Boomer paused when his cell chimed. He pulled out his phone and saw he had a text message from Ansel. He opened it. What do you think of the progress so far, Boomer? He touched the image, and it opened fully.

The sculpture stopped him cold. It was a clay rendering, still rough around the edges, still in progress, but the emotion punched straight through the screen.

Ansel had sculpted his father from memory, or maybe from feeling, sitting on a low stool in front of an easel.

The posture was quiet, slouched just slightly, as if the weight of the world lived in his spine—but the hands. ..

God, the hands .

They were oversized, not perfectly scaled, but alive, frozen mid-brushstroke, caught in the act of turning thought into color.

One hand cradled the palette, smudged and layered in textured markings Ansel must’ve pressed in with tools or fingers.

The other hand extended toward the canvas, not yet touching it as if he was hesitating.

As if he was reaching for something he wasn’t sure he deserved to finish.

There were no facial features yet. Just the soft planes of a face bowed in quiet concentration. But the body, lean, vulnerable, wholly human, radiated focus, longing, and that unmistakable ache of someone who lived for what he could create, not who he could be.

Boomer swallowed hard, his throat thick.

This wasn’t just a boy sculpting his father.

This was a boy trying to keep him alive .

Taylor came up beside him, her voice low. “What is it?” she asked, her fingers brushing his forearm like she couldn’t help herself.

The contact, the way she touched him like he was irresistible , sent his gut twisting with all the emotion still bottlenecked in his chest.

He turned the phone toward her. “Look at what your nephew’s done,” he said, voice gravel-rough. “Taylor…it’s?—”

Her breath caught.

Tears surged into her eyes, sudden and unrestrained. She looked at the screen, then away, blinking rapidly, shoulders trembling as she tried to hold it together.

“Oh, Emil…” she whispered. She took a breath. Then she looked back at Boomer. “Thank you,” she said, voice thick. “For what you’ve already done for him.” Then she leaned in, eyes shimmering, her hand sliding from his forearm to his chest. “I love you even more for it,” she whispered.

He grabbed the back of her neck, his grip firm, and locked eyes with her. “Meir Ein und Alles ,” he whispered. She was his one and only.

Her hand tightened on his arm. Without a word, she pulled him back into the room, arms sliding around him like she couldn’t stand the space between them.

She pressed her mouth to his, a kiss with no heat, but all heart. Soft. Tender. Somehow more overwhelming than anything they’d shared before.

When she pulled back, her eyes glistened. “I’ll be watching your gorgeous back out there.”

Boomer exhaled, chest tight. “And I you.”

Breakneck didn’t like it. Not one fucking bit. Iceman kept everything close to the vest, always had. He hardly ever gave anything away. But right now, he looked worried.

Boomer and Taylor disappeared back into the debrief room for a private moment before the op, and whatever passed between them had shifted something. Breakneck wasn’t the only one who saw it.

He glanced at the others, Hazard, Kodiak, Skull, GQ, Preacher. None of them had missed it either.

He walked over, lowered his voice. “Boss?”

Iceman exhaled. Long. Controlled. His eyes scanned the team, and Breakneck noticed it then, that look.

Every single one of them had it. Something silent.

Something he wasn’t part of. “I want you to watch him,” Iceman said.

“And her.” Breakneck’s stomach clenched.

“He’s compromised,” Ice added, voice flat. “She’s his life.”

The words detonated something inside Breakneck. He could barely contain the savage heat that rose in him. “Then why the hell is he going on this op?”

Iceman’s jaw twitched. “It’ll kill him if he doesn’t, and we need him.

” There was a pause. Something old and haunted flickered behind Iceman’s eyes.

“In Paris…with Rose…” he murmured. “Fuck. I walked around in a constant daze.” He shook his head like he could still feel it.

“You all got me through that goatscrew with No Safe Haven. Rose…she did things to me that altered my life. Changed my thinking. Gave me a future I didn’t know I was allowed to have. ”

Around them, there was a soft murmur, quiet agreement, the echo of remembered chaos and what they'd all survived.

Breakneck looked down, jaw clenched. Something sharp twisted low in his gut.

He didn’t want to admit it. He felt left out, a bit jealous.

If anything happened to Boomer…if they came back without him…

He wasn’t sure he could recover from that.

“Hoo-yah, Ice,” Breakneck said, voice hoarse. “I won’t let him out of my sight.”

At 2200 on day one, they kicked off Phase One, the initial sweep and only the beginning.

The first target, the Black Warden . Once a NATO-designated K130 Braunschweig-class corvette, the now floating bunker had been decommissioned and sold to a private maritime contractor, then quietly reflagged and refit under a shell company tied to Arkan Holdings.

Still lean, low, and fast, with sloped radar-dampening angles and sealed launcher ports, she was a warfighter turned rogue.

The missile tubes were gone, but the reinforced bridge, hardened hull, and twin 30mm mounts made her more than just a threat.

She was a deterrent. A snapping dog straining at the leash, now let loose and hunting in the dark, silent waters.

Taylor sat at the bow of her RHIB, the water a black vein slicing through the Atlantic, churning with wind-blown chops and the early hints of a cold front pressing in from the northwest.

The Black Warden drifted twenty nautical miles south of Cape Espichel, riding low and quiet in violation of every maritime protocol. Comms silent. AIS dark. Heat signatures suggested at least eight tangos onboard, with the possibility of more below deck.

The op launched fast and without ceremony, their four RHIBS peeling off in formation beneath a sliver of moon and a thick wash of stars. Night vision glowed green across helmets. Earpieces silent. Heartbeats synced with engines.

The escort ship was the priority, armed, hostile, and crawling with blind corners.

Boomer hit the portside ladder first, boots clanging against steel, while Breakneck provided suppressive fire from the RHIB.

Shots cracked upward toward the mid-deck.

Rounds smacked the hull inches from their position, but Boomer kept climbing.

Skull and Bones followed, the breach team stacking tight behind him.

They reached the ops deck under fire. Muzzle flashes flared from the bridge rail, three, maybe four shooters, spraying blind—amateurs or guards too wired to aim.

Boomer reached the hatch. One breath, one charge, and then a controlled thermite cut lit up the steel like a fuse line to hell. Smoke poured. Boomer slid through first, barking commands.

Inside were weapons, encrypted comms, and the first names on a kill list they didn’t recognize yet.

No casualties. Just dead cartel. They exfiltrated fast.

Without pause, they were back in the RHIBs, intel putting the Santa Merida twelve nautical miles off the coast of Sines, far enough to dodge patrol lanes, but close enough to run shore cargo if they needed to move fast. The vessel loomed ahead, just a dark block on the horizon, no lights, no flags, but she rode low, too low for a vessel running empty.

Once a commercial M/V flagged out of Panama, she had the bones of a legal freighter. But her lines were wrong. Her stack had been cut down. Her deck gear was welded shut, and she was too quiet.

Taylor didn’t like quiet. She pressed her comms. “Approach soft. She’s a lab. Heat signature confirms at least five inside.”

The Santa Merida wasn’t a carrier. She wasn’t a mule.

She was the source.

The stench barreled into them before their boots hit the deck, chemical sharp, copper-rich, and cloying with sweat. The fentanyl press lab had been running for weeks, maybe longer. Tabletop mold machines. Bags of filler. Half-filled capsules in crates labeled Agricultural Treatment .

Bash and Boomer went in together this time, Taylor third in the stack, close enough to watch Boomer’s clean, silent breach and the way Bash ghosted in behind him, deadly and fluid. Inside, the corridors stank of solvents and chemical heat.

They moved through the ship like twin phantoms, clearing tight hallways and chemical stations by breath and rhythm.

A shout rang out, followed by two sharp bursts. One of the SBS operators staggered with a graze to the upper arm but didn’t slow. The guards were young, underarmed, scared. They fired from cover but had no idea who they were dealing with.

Boomer didn’t hesitate. He cleared the press room with two fast entries, neutralizing the last shooter with a single suppressed shot to the shoulder.

They secured the space. The pill compressor was still warm, its power cell humming.

“Hot,” Bash muttered, crouching near the press. “They were running batches hours ago.” Whatever had been made here was already en route to shore or worse, in hands already itching to sell it. She turned the information they found in the bridge over to the ground teams.