Page 28

Zorro wandered in, fresh from a cool shower, his towel still around his waist, hair still damp, then grinned his signature mess-with-you grin.

Buck stood in the corner of the locker room, towel around his waist, hair dripping, arching his back like it was aching. Steam clung to the cracked tile like it didn’t know where else to go.

Buck clocked it immediately. “No,” he said.

Zorro leaned against the doorframe. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re thinkin’ it. Loud.”

“That you look like a drowned bison in that towel? Never crossed my mind.”

Buck’s jaw tightened. “Try me.”

Zorro held up both hands. “Fine. I’ll keep it professional. You’re the most graceful man I’ve ever seen if we’re talking about refrigerator delivery.”

Blitz choked from across the room, stifling laughter beneath the T-shirt he was pulling over his damp head.

Buck pointed a dripping finger at Zorro. “That’s it.”

Zorro’s brows lifted, eyes dancing. “Oh no, Buckaroo. What’re you gonna do? Slow-walk me into submission?”

But Buck wasn’t answering.

He’d turned. Stalking, half-naked but determined, toward the supply rack.

“Oh, hell no,” D-Day muttered. “He’s going full Yellowstone.”

Zorro straightened. “What is he—?” He stopped cold. Buck was holding a coil of rope. Actual rope. Thick. Coarse. Military-grade. God only knew why BOPE had it hanging from a rack like it was waiting for this exact moment.

Zorro backed up a step. “Buck….”

“You had your fun,” Buck said, testing the weight of the rope in his hands. “Now it’s my turn.”

Zorro turned, holding up his hands like he was fending off an out-of-control steer. “Don’t be rash.”

“I was born rash,” Buck drawled. “And raised by a rodeo queen.”

Blitz was laughing so hard he collapsed against a bench.

D-Day warned, “Don’t run, Zorro. It’ll only spark his cowboy instinct. I’ve seen what my brother-in-law can do from horseback. Flat-footed. You don’t stand a chance.”

“What is he, a T-Rex? Only sees movement?” Zorro asked. “I think I’m fucked anyway.”

Professor, to no one in particular, muttered, “Whatever you do…don’t moo.”

Zorro bolted.

The door slammed open behind him.

Barefoot and still damp, he sprinted into the yard, shouting, “I take it back! I take it all back!”

BOPE operators turned toward the commotion, more than a few grinning as the gringo ran buck wild.

Buck was right behind him, rope in hand, swinging it with a rhythm that should not have been possible under any civilized code of conduct.

“I warned you!” Buck shouted. “I told you what’d happen if you made that bison crack again!”

From across the compound, Joker’s voice rang out, dry as sin.“If I come out there and someone is hogtied…again….”

Laughter erupted from the BOPE side. One of the operators muttered, looking at his friend. “ Os Americanos .” Zorro just huffed out a laugh. These fucking Americans.

D-Day followed Buck out, squinting into the sun, sliding into full rodeo-announcer drawl.

“Well, folks, what we got here is a rare sightin’, a wild American SEAL in his natural state, damp, defiant, nothin’ between his rope and the burn but terry.”

He raised one hand like he was tipping an invisible cowboy hat. “Comin’ up behind him, that there’s the Buckaroo himself. Rope’s high, hips square, wrath of God in his eyes. Look at that form—hoo boy, you can’t teach that.”

Blitz coughed from somewhere out of sight.“Jesus Christ, he’s color-commentating the lasso-calypse.”

Zorro’s towel unraveled mid-turn and flung off like a white flag of surrender. There was no way he was going to use his pumping hands to keep it intact. He needed them for running.

D-Day didn’t miss a beat. “Zorro’s pickin’ up speed but not strategy, oh, and there goes the towel! That’s a full moon over Rio, folks.” He paused, then added with reverence. “Full moon on deck, and gentlemen, that sucker is getting waxed .”

“You’ll have to catch me first, buckaroo!” Zorro howled, now completely, tragically unarmed. He cut left, vaulted a crate, laughing so hard he could barely breathe, while frantically cupping Frank and the boys.

“Beautiful jump,” D-Day announced, “but he's losin' coordination. He’s got one hand on dignity, the other on survival.”

“Yeehaw, motherfucker!” Buck bellowed. The rope flew. It looped. It landed.

“There it is. The rope is up and he’s down! That’s a clean loop, ladies and gentlemen. Textbook cowboy closure.”

Zorro’s legs tangled. Momentum did the rest.

He hit the dirt hard, a graceless sprawl of limbs and humiliation.

“Goddamn,” he wheezed into the dust. “That was…impressive.”

“Time of take-down…14:26. Cause of fall: hubris. Losses sustained: towel, pride, and probably the skin off both knees.” D-Day paused dramatically. “Wait, wait… yes, yes. I think Frank and the boys are unharmed.”

Buck stood over him, chest heaving, rope still in hand. “You were warned. Repeatedly. With affection.”

Zorro turned his head and muttered into the ground, “Tell my mother…I died honorably. Even with my ass exposed.”

“You ain’t dead yet,” Buck said, bending to tighten the loop just a little. “Now say it.”

Zorro groaned. He played the fool like it was armor. Laughed harder than he meant to. Took the fall, because if he didn’t find a way to laugh today, he might just break something.

The guys thought he was just being Zorro. But Zorro was the act. Inside, he was quiet now, and he was hurting.

Buck gave the rope a gentle tug. “Say. It.”

“You’re a majestic stallion, and I’m sorry for comparing you to bison and large kitchen appliances,” Zorro muttered.

Buck nodded. “Good.”

Then he stood and hollered back to the locker room. “Hey, Blitz! Grab your phone! Have I ever got a pic for Doc Sunshine!”

From somewhere nearby, Migs’s laughter echoed out into the sun while full-grown, hardened men rolled around in the dirt, howling.

Zorro hadn’t made it ten feet down the hallway before he heard it, the sound of someone breathing too hard in too tight a space.

He paused.

The door to the stairwell was cracked open. Inside, Migs sat on the landing, back against the wall, fingers pressed to his temples like he was trying to push something out of his skull.

Zorro didn’t speak right away. He didn’t know what to say that would pull the kid out. No fast fix. No magic phrase. Just breath and presence. It didn’t feel like enough.

Didn’t move either.

Just let the silence stretch long enough for Migs to feel it.

Migs looked up, eyes rimmed red but dry.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Didn’t want to…lose it in the room. Didn’t want them to see.”

Zorro stepped through the doorway and lowered himself to sit beside him.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I get that.”

They sat in silence. The air in the stairwell was thick with heat and echoes.

After a long beat, Zorro spoke again. “Still hearing it?”

Migs nodded. “Not always. But sometimes it’s like the crack comes first, and the memory fills in after.”

Zorro leaned back, letting his shoulder hit the wall. “Gunfire’s like that. It doesn’t just echo. It pulls. ”

“I thought I was past it,” Migs whispered.

“I know.” Zorro exhaled. “You’re not weak, Migs. You’re injured. If this were a bullet wound, you wouldn’t be sitting here wondering why it still hurts.”

Migs scoffed, but it wasn’t cruel. Just exhausted. “Yeah, but at least with a bullet wound, you can show someone the scar.”

Zorro turned his head toward him. “You just did.”

They sat with that for a moment.

Then Zorro added, softer, “You’re not alone, hermano . You never were.”

Another breath passed. Migs wiped his face, then nodded once.

Zorro bumped his shoulder lightly.

“Come on. Let’s go pretend we’re normal for a few hours.”

“Normal?” Migs shook his head. “There was nothing normal about two half-naked SEALs playing cowboy and cow in our courtyard. The guys will be talking about this for days.”

Zorro grinned. “Okay, our version of normal.” He rose and shouted. “Hey, Buck. Migs said you looked like a sissy when you were swinging that rope.”

Migs threw back his head and laughed as Buck responded with a yell, “What did you say, kid?”

“We can compare rope burns later.” Zorro shoved Migs into the hall.

The last of the BOPE compound dust clung to Zorro’s boots as he stepped outside the gate, the sun beginning its descent behind the jungle-streaked hills beyond Rio’s sprawl.

The air held that thick, wet weight again.

Hot pavement. Diesel and citrus trees. Burnt gunpowder still tucked in the seams of his shirt.

They were done for the day, at least on paper.

D-Day walked beside him, unwrapping a protein bar with all the grace of a toddler. Buck trailed behind, muttering about rope burn and revenge with every step. Even Joker had relaxed enough not to bark at traffic.

But Zorro?

He wasn’t laughing anymore. His eyes scanned the street.

It started as a flicker. A shape near the alleyway outside the kill house fence.

Faint. Wrong somehow. Not BOPE. Not military.

Not delivery. Just a man, lean, dark-haired, with the kind of posture that knew how to blend in without actually belonging.

Zorro slowed his pace.

“Hey,” he said under his breath, just loud enough for D-Day.

D turned toward him. “What’s up?”

“That guy,” Zorro said. His voice had dropped, quiet, still. “The one near the bike rack. He was there this morning too. Didn’t move for forty minutes.”

D-Day followed his line of sight.

The man was walking away now. Too much control in the shoulders. Civilian clothes, but the cut was tactical. His shoes were wrong, urban grade but too quiet. Hands loose, unarmed, but the kind of loose that told Zorro they weren’t unfamiliar with draw mechanics.

Buck noticed the shift in tone and dropped into step without a word.

“Eyes on,” Buck murmured. “Could be local. Could be press.”

Zorro shook his head. “Too clean for a journalist. Too observant for a lookie-loo.” Zorro scanned up. “He happened to find the only blind spot.”

The man turned a corner and disappeared behind the security wall’s far end.