Yanking the door open, Mike ran straight into the barrel of a gun.
It took Mike a second to confirm that, not only was he still alive (which was somewhat amazing given how recklessly he just ran through that door), but he wasn't even sporting any blood loss. Looking up, Mike met Wolf's steady gaze. "The hostages are secure, Captain."
"Thank you Senior Chief." Mike glanced around the interior of the cabin, taking in the open layout and small loft, presumably where the guard Green was currently dragging out the door was originally positioned, the optimal spot for one or two men to keep an eye on a far larger number of prisoners. And there were far more than three people located in this room, something that Mike registered before his attention was caught by an oh-so-familiar figure.
"Dad!"
Shaylyn's voice bounced off the walls as she scrambled across the space towards her father. Mike scooped her up, hauling her against his chest, needing that physical contact to assure himself that she was really here and not an invention of his imagination. A flash to his right had Mike turning, shoving Shay behind him protectively, only to realize that the person running towards him was Whitney. Collapsing to his knees, Mike pulled both girls to him, not caring about the tears streaking down his cheeks, not caring that he was likely squeezing them too hard, not caring about the people staring at them.
His girls were alive.
"I missed you so much." He managed to gasp, kissing first Whitney and then Shaylyn's heads, both so much taller than when he left, so much older.
"Captain?" Russ's quiet but commanding voice finally caught Mike's attention.
"Yes, Master Chie….Christine." The word came out as an exhale. Mike froze, fearing that this was a dream – or maybe a nightmare where Shaw would jump out from the back room to steal them away from him.
Christine smiled, her lips trembling as she took in the sight of her husband standing there with his arms around their daughters. She, like the girls, looked far older than when he left, her auburn locks now streaked with gray and the furrows on her forehead deeper than before. But she was still as beautiful as the day he married her – and just as feisty. "What took you so damn long?"
"I thought you were dead," Mike croaked as Christine joined the group, allowing him to stretch his arms around all three of them. "All those months I thought you were dead. And the whole time you were here."
"Mom knew you would find us," Whitney replied, tipping her tear stained face back to look at him. Mike drank in her features. She was a young lady now, a carbon copy of Christine twenty years ago when he first met her, back when Mike was a seasoned bachelor with no plans to settle down. That all changed the night Mike and his partner were called to break up a bar fight, resulting in a bottle smashed over Mike's head and a visit to the ER. Christine was the nurse who patched him up, making sure to deliver a stern lecture on the evils of getting in the way of flying glass the entire time.
Mike left the hospital that night with twelve stitches and Christine's number and he hadn't looked at another woman since.
"I'm sorry I didn't come earlier, sorry I wasn't there when..."
Christine cut him off. "You didn't know, Mike. And even if you did, your mission...I had no idea...when you said you were on a mission." She stopped, her stuttering so uncharacteristic. "You found the cure Mike. You saved the world. Me. The girls."
"But not our son," Mike said sadly.
"If you have been home you would have gone to that camp with Lucas, and you would be dead," Christine argued back. "Don't you think I know that?"
There was the fiery, fiercely loyal woman he married so many years ago. The one person he could always depend on to understand him, to overlook his flaws, to forgive him when he screwed up, to stand by his side through thick and thin. "I..."
Russ chose that moment to interrupt. "Captain, Commander Burk is asking whether it is safe to bring in the helo. We should probably move the hostages as soon as possible, as a precaution."
There was no need for Russ to go into more details. They were all suspicious of how easily the rescue had gone. "Girls, can you wait over there while I talk to the Master Chief for a few minutes?"
Mike watched, reluctantly, as Whitney and Shaylyn moved towards the back of the room where Tex and Danny stood talking to the other hostages. Mike would have preferred that Christine join them, but after twenty years of marriage, he had a pretty good idea of how poorly she would have responded to the suggestion.
"How many civilians are there here?" Mike asked, the question directed at Russ but Christine answered.
"Eighteen. There are eighteen of us."
Mike considered the list of names that Croft had provided, wondering whether he should be thrilled that eighteen of them had been recovered alive, or terrified that more than half of the people on the list were still missing. Twenty-nine people were still out there – somewhere. Assuming that they were even still alive.
Mike turned to Christine. "How many guards were there here?"
Christine didn't hesitate. "Ten."
Frowning, Mike spoke before thinking. "You outnumbered the guards. Why didn't you run?"
"Run where?" Christine demanded, eyes flashing. "We're in the middle of nowhere, Mike! And even if we knew where to go, some of these people are sick. One woman is pregnant. How long would we have made it before we got caught?"
Properly chastised, Mike turned until he found the man he was looking for. "Green!"
Danny jogged across the cabin. "Yes, Captain?"
"How many targets were neutralized?"
The response was immediate. "Eight confirmed, sir."
"So two are still missing," he murmured. For the first time, Mike really looked at the hostages, heart sinking as Christine's words sunk in. Two of the group were elderly. One woman looked about ready to give birth. There were four small children. Walking out wasn't an option. Mike turned to Russ. "What's the closest base?"
"Fort Detrick. Commander Burk is coordinating with them as we speak. Unfortunately they only have two helicopter pilots so it will take five trips," Russ replied. The men fell silent as they did the math. Five trips, minimum of forty minutes each, meant four hours of being sitting ducks were the two missing guards to reappear.
"That's a long time to be in the open, sir," Teylor added, his voice dubious.
"I'll take a team and the dog. We'll track them down, Captain," Danny offered. The 'or at least keep them busy while you evacuate' part unspoken but understood.
Mike nodded. "Master Chief, you're in charge until we return."
"With all due respect, sir, your place is here." As usual, Russ was completely respectful while disregarding Mike's orders and, as usual, he was right. No matter how much Mike wanted to hunt down – and kill – the men responsible for kidnapping his family, his first priority needed to be keeping Christine and the girls safe, keeping everyone in this room safe. Making sure that they got out of here alive.
Mike nodded. "Stay sharp, Green. You have a baby to go home to."
The younger man grinned. "So do you, sir. I'm pretty sure Kara will raise you from the dead just to kill you herself if you leave her to take care of Kaito permanently."
Green, Taylor, Cruz, and Burk were walking out the door before Mike noticed that Christine was watching him with narrowed eyes. "This is the part where you tell me that Kaito is a dog."
"I'll assist Tex in vaccinating the hostages," Russ said, quickly vacating the corner of the cabin, leaving the two of them alone.
Mike stared at Christine, searching for the words to explain how – while she and the girls were being held hostage – he managed to acquire a baby. Trying to figure out a way to tell her that he had a son without sounding like he had moved on. Without making her think that he had simply replaced them. But while Mike was groping for words, Christine drew her own conclusions.
"What did you do Mike?" The heartbreak in her voice was enough to spur Mike to action.
"Not that." Mike reached for Christine's arm. "I've never cheated, Christine. Never. You know me better than that."
Christine gave him a sharp nod, but Mike knew that he needed to explain, quickly, before she reached another conclusion.
"Kaito's father was a Captain in the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force. The Chinese took advantage of the pandemic to try to wipe the entire country out. Takehaya survived, for a while, but lost his crew. He was," Mike paused, trying to think of how to explain his unlikely bond with the man who kidnapped him when all he wanted to do right now was kill the men responsible for kidnapping his family, "an ally. His homeland was devastated, he and his wife both dying. His only remaining men were either sick or criminals, they weren't equipped to raise a child. He asked me to raise his son. I couldn't say no."
Christine's face relaxed briefly when Mike began talking but, as he continued, her lips pursed in a way that Mike knew well. She was trying to control her emotions. "A boy?"
"Yes."
"How..." Her voice broke. "How old?"
"Two months."
"I don't think I can do that, Mike. Not after what happened with Lucas..."
"He doesn't replace Lucas. He never did." Mike croaked, his voice low, beseeching. He tried to wrap his arms around Christine, but she side-stepped him, arms folded across her chest.
"Did you stop to think about what that would mean to me? To the girls?" Christine's voice was raw.
Mike couldn't avoid the brutal truth. "I thought you were all dead. I searched the house in Norfolk. I went to Deer Park. I even went to Chicago, thinking you might have gone there. I never stopped looking – never – but as the cure spread and there was no word, it was hard to keep hoping. I knew that you would come to St. Louis if you could."
"We didn't make it to St. Louis because we were tricked into coming here, thinking you sent for us," Christine snapped, angrily brushing a tear away from her face.
"I know that now," Mike explained. "But only because we found a recording of you and the girls in Shaw's desk after she was shot."
"You mean Allison Shaw? The lunatic? She's dead?" Christine demanded, apparently distracted by the new information.
"Yes. She kidnapped Tom's family, murdered his father. She was killed during the rescue." Having spent twenty years arguing with Christine, Mike knew when to press his advantage. "We don't need to talk about Kaito now, Christine. One problem at a time, right? So let's focus on getting back to St. Louis and then we'll go from there."
But Christine was having none of it. Biting her lip, she brushed away and angry tear. "Isn't that what you always do? Push off our problems? Then disappear off to sea for six months?"
"That's not…"
Christine cut him off. "You're right, Mike. We need to focus on getting out of here. But once we're in St. Louis and safe, I want my own space, at least for a while. I don't know if I can be married to you, Mike. Not after this."
Mike swallowed, Christine's words hanging between them. This wasn't about Kaito, not really. He was just the trigger. This was about Lucas, about the Florida desk job, about the long deployments, about moving away from their friends and family in Chicago, about joining the Navy to begin with. This was about everything that he and Christine had fought about for the past twenty years.
But this was also different. Because Lucas was dead, and Mike couldn't rewind time to go back and save him, and because Kaito was alive, and Mike wouldn't turn his back on the infant.
And apparently there were some things that Christine couldn't understand - or forgive - after all.
Without conscious thought, Mike found himself parroting back the words that Christine said to him just before he left for the Arctic. "That's a decision that you have to make yourself, Christine."
Turning away, Mike hit his comm. "Green, sitrep?"
