Page 51 of Boomer (SEAL Team Tier 1, #7)

Taylor stepped over a downed table, already issuing orders into her mic. “Copy payload extraction. Secure the tech. Grab every label, tablet, and file. We’ll build from here.”

Each ship would be towed to an impound dock and searched more thoroughly, then broken down for scrap, unusable for any future illicit activities, and eliminating the hazard to legitimate ships moving through the area.

When they approached Severina’s Ghost , exactly where she’d been tagged, thirty-two nautical miles west of the Setúbal Peninsula, Taylor’s dread began to rise. The sea around her was unnaturally still, as if it wanted no part of what floated there.

She was a converted deep-sea trawler, once registered as F/V Severina , her name now half-eaten by rust. The hull listed slightly to port, her paint peeled to bare steel, and nothing about her moved, no lights, no crew on deck.

Just a bloated silhouette on black water, drifting like a graveyard.

AIS dark. No comms. No callsign. But the thermal told a different story.

Small heat signatures. Clustered. Low to the deck. Something was alive in there.

Skull’s RHIB pulled alongside first. Bones started whining before they even climbed.

“It’s people,” Kodiak muttered, staring at the thermal overlay. His voice was low, tight, already in triage mode. “They’re packed in somewhere. Holding below…maybe bilge level.” He clenched his jaw. “Goddamn animals.”

Breakneck swore under his breath.

Skull’s hand hovered near Bones’ collar, but the dog had already gone tense, whimpering soft and low.

“They’re alive,” Kodiak added, more to himself now. “I don’t know how, but they’re alive.”

No one spoke after that.

Boomer’s hands tightened around the ladder rail.

They climbed.

Most of the resistance was on deck and holed up on the bridge. The operators, grim, lethal, hellbent, swept through with no hesitation. While the bridge was being taken, Taylor and her team breached the cargo hold in a triangle formation, expecting resistance.

What they found instead stopped them cold.

Cages. Dozens. Some welded shut, others latched with cheap padlocks. Girls. Boys. Two women. All silent. All staring like they couldn’t believe what they were seeing.

Hazard’s voice broke on comms.

“Fuck. It’s a trafficking ship.”

Taylor didn’t answer at first. When she did, her voice was a whisper, steel beneath it. “Secure them. Medevac is incoming. Record everything. We’ll get to the top of this filthy organization before this mission is complete.”

Boomer moved first, bolt cutters out, hands shaking as he snapped steel, one lock at a time. Breakneck covered. Skull, Kodiak, and the SBS started pulling kids out with a gentleness Taylor had never seen from men that dangerous.

One little boy wouldn’t let go of Boomer’s neck.

They gave him ten minutes. That was all they could spare.

As the transport ship glided up to the hull, they left twenty-seven living souls, a hull full of horrors, and something in all of them cracked wide open.

As 0300 came and passed, the RHIBs were quiet on the ride back.

No one spoke.

Even Bash was subdued.

The ocean stretched black and silent around them, the first hints of gray bleeding into the eastern horizon. Salt and rot clung to their skin. Grief settled in their chests like waterlogged stone.

But the mission wasn’t over. Nine ships remained.

Somewhere out there, Málaga’s Reach was still slipping through the dark.

As the RHIBs sliced through the pitch dark toward the Lisbon House docks, Taylor caught sight of Boomer, body hunched, eyes forward, hands flexing like they didn’t know how to let go.

But in the low churn of the waves, she felt the weight of him like an anchor. She crouched beside him, her fingers brushing his forearm. When he raised his head, she said quietly, “Come on. Let’s get some chow and a short respite before we get at it again.”

He nodded, and her throat tightened because the pain of what they’d just seen was etched into his face.

“You gave him the first taste of freedom and safety he’s had in a long time,” she murmured. “That’s going to stay with him.”

He didn’t answer. But the look in his eyes said everything .

His unspoken thanks settled over her like a weight, one she didn’t mind carrying, as they stepped off the boat together.

They had thirty minutes. Just enough for a quick rinse, protein, coffee, and a new op brief.

Boomer sat at the long metal table, still wearing a towel around his neck, his food untouched. Taylor stood across from him, dressed down to her black undershirt, her hair pulled back into a tight knot. She passed him a sealed pouch and a look that said, eat it or I’ll make you.

“Five minutes, then we’re briefing.”

He nodded. His fingers brushed hers as he took the pouch. Her warmth lingered. That quiet tether hadn’t frayed, even after everything they’d seen.

She didn’t say anything else. She didn’t need to.

Recharged, the teams went after the Tarnów Sky for Phase Two at around 0630 on day two, a rust-shouldered cargo freighter registered to a shell company in Cyprus, drifting twenty nautical miles west of Nazaré.

Her decks were cleared, her cranes cut down, but her lower holds hummed with heat, jury-rigged stills and chemical tanks hidden behind false bulkheads.

Boomer and Forge took point. One guard opened fire with a short-barreled carbine. Bash put him down hard. Inside, the place reeked of acetone and ammonia.

They tagged vats, lifted memory cards, and watched Forge dismantle a half-melted control panel with surgical dismay.

“They were refining here. Bulk precursors. Possibly for secondary lab use,” Taylor said.

The next one was also smooth and easy. Vila Nova Dawn , flagged under a defunct registry and sitting low in the water fifteen clicks off the coast of Peniche.

She was low, fast, and too clean, an ex-fishing trawler turned arms mule.

Taylor clocked the onboard crates from the drone feed, Russian origin, factory-stamped, nothing local.

Resistance came light but twitchy. The crew dropped weapons fast, too fast. They were decoys. The ship was running light, just a transfer point.

Breakneck tagged a shipment manifest scrawled on the back of a cigarette carton.

No serials. No customs. This one never went near a port.

Their last interdiction for this phase was the Laurel Blight , anchored listlessly near the edge of Portugal’s economic exclusion zone, just skimming legal distance from international waters.

A floating coffin, her cargo holds were full of half- dissolved boxes, spoiled pill packs, tainted tablets intended for low-income market testing.

Boomer breached the aft hold under Taylor’s cover. Inside, nothing but rust, rot, and a digital ledger duct-taped to a stripped forklift.

GQ hacked the tablet on deck. It was GPS-tagged. A recurring route. One warehouse address in Lisbon. No official registry.

Taylor’s voice was low. “That’s our ground target. It’s active, and it’s close.”

Thirty minutes later, Boomer stood shoulder to shoulder with Forge, crouched behind a wall of stacked shipping containers at the far end of the lot.

They were at the Tagus River Port Industrial Zone in Lisbon, concrete, steel shutters, low profile.

One look told him it was built for containment.

This was an extension of Phase Two, dubbed 2A. The time 1100, still on day two.

“One main entry. Likely rigged. I’ll take center, you pivot low,” Boomer said, eyes scanning the exterior like it was a blueprint.

“Kill switch?” Forge asked.

Boomer nodded. “If it goes hot, we drop him fast.”

Taylor, voice calm in his ear, said, “Thermals show six tangos. Inner heat bloom is running high. Possible chemical cache or server stack. Boomer, this could be the nerve center.”

On Iceman’s mark, the team moved. The breach was clean. The resistance wasn’t.

SBS and the SEALs moved as one well-oiled machine. The warehouse was tango-heavy, and a fierce firefight erupted around them, close-quarters chaos, no margin for error.

Inside, it was a drug logistics site meeting a high-end security node. Surveillance feeds, route manifests, encrypted phones. Boomer and Forge were on point, ignoring the fight, looking for their target, who bolted like a scared puppy and ran for the server room with a remote clutched in his hand.

Forge hit him center mass before his thumb could reach the button.

Boomer crossed to the stack and yanked the hard drive while it was still spinning. GQ had a field drive ready while everyone else mopped up.

“This’ll take hours to crack,” he muttered, already pulling cables. “But this? This is big.”

Taylor’s voice came low over the comms. “Bag everything,” she said. “Our cleanup crew is inbound. They’ll rip this place apart, floor to rafters.” When he came back into the main area, she was standing there in a shaft of early morning light.

“You good?” he asked, taking in everything, seeing fatigue and determination. “This is what they were protecting. The network. The money. The leverage. We’ve got them by the short hairs now. Let’s get busy and cut the head off this snake.”

“I love it when you get all predatory,” he said softly. She gave him a sharp and steely smile.

Boomer watched her, back straight, boots planted, eyes locked on the battlefield they’d just turned inside out, and knew it in his bones this operation was going to change Taylor’s life.

She’d built the plan. Carried it. Fought for it. She’d challenged brass, calculated every contingency, and pulled a damn multinational task force together like it was routine.

She hadn’t just led this op. She’d owned it and yeah, he was impressed as hell.

Breakneck nudged Boomer’s arm. “Your girl is fierce, Boomie. I like the hell out of her. She gets her hands dirty with the rest of us.”

Boomer let out a breath but didn’t answer.