The awful finality of Spenser's silence is still ringing in their ears when Ray says sharply, "Where's this blood from?"
For an instant Sonny is thrown into the past; he blinks once and sees Nate, dead, eyes wide open. Blinks again, finds his way back to the present, and starts checking his brothers over for injuries. Everyone is conscious, talking. They all look fine.
Then Ray swears and lunges forward to drop to his knees beside Ashli Mayers, who lies still and silent, eyes closed, right where Sonny dropped her.
"Shit! Sonny, put pressure here!"
Automatically, Sonny moves to comply, pressing down hard on the girl's side. She doesn't react. Blood squishes up between Sonny's fingers, and he's suddenly, inexpressibly furious, because they lost Clay and it can't just be for nothing.
It has to have meant something. It has to.
"You don't get to die," he tells the girl. "You hear me? Breathe, goddammit."
They're supposed to take her dumb ass home, where she can recover and live a life and never give more than a passing thought to the men who risked everything to save her. She's not allowed to just check out five minutes after they rescued her.
Not when Sonny was the one who was carrying her, and he somehow didn't even know she was hit.
Not when Clay died for her.
It's the first time he's let himself face that word, and the resulting grief rips into Sonny's chest like it's got claws. He coughs away a sob that tries to break loose, forces himself to focus on breathing, on keeping all the girl's blood from leaking out onto the dingy metal.
Ray reports that she's alive, still breathing, pulse a little weak but steady. Sonny wishes that Trent were back here, but Bravo Four is a little busy driving at the moment. They'll get him to take a look at the girl as soon as they reach the helo.
Please just let her make it till then.
With Ray monitoring her pulse and breathing, Ms. Mayers hangs on until they reach the exfil helo, at which point Trent takes over. He checks the wound, says it looks to be just a deep gash. Figures the blood loss is only hitting her so hard because she was already dehydrated and half-starved. Seeing Sonny's expression, Trent tries to reassure him that she'll likely be fine with rest, fluids, and maybe a blood transfusion; even so, Sonny spends the entire flight feeling like his lungs are trying to crawl out through his ribs.
He was carrying her. How did he not know?
It doesn't make any goddamn sense. Any of it. Not the bullet hole in the girl's side, and sure as hell not the fact that they left their brother behind to die alone.
Once they reach the nearest military base, the girl is whisked off by a medical team, and Bravo is provided quarters to stay in. Sonny figures it might be a good thing that they're in a place they never shared with Clay. Right now he's not sure he could handle seeing the kid's stuff scattered all over the place.
The bad thing, though, is that there's suddenly nothing for Sonny to do with himself. He was running and dodging bullets, and then he was trying to keep the girl alive, and now there's just … nothing. Nothing to keep him from crawling inside his own head and getting lost there.
It doesn't take long for all of Bravo, or what's left of Bravo, to migrate together and sit in a sort of shell-shocked silence. Ray rests his chin on steepled hands and looks at the ceiling, possibly having a silent argument with God. Jason bounces his knee while his hands twist a rubber band over and over until it breaks. Sonny gnaws on a toothpick. Brock, wearing a thousand-yard stare, brushes Cerberus without ever once looking down. Trent keeps getting up and going back to wash his hands again, even though they all know there's no more blood left under his fingernails.
Eventually Mandy shows up. She keeps her chin up, gaze direct, but that doesn't prevent her from looking like a woman going to her own execution when she faces them.
Sonny bolts up, starts to open his mouth, but Jason beats him to it. "You want to tell us what the fuck happened out there?" His voice is tight with fury.
Mandy shakes her head. "I don't know. I don't … I don't understand what we missed."
"You missed 30 heavily armed tangos is what you missed, and we paid the price for it."
She nods, still meeting his gaze. "I know. I'm sorry, Jason. I am."
"Yeah? Well, tell that to Clay." Hayes turns away, flings the broken rubber band violently enough to make Mandy flinch, even though it wasn't aimed at her.
"We'll find him," she says, voice wavering; then she catches herself, apparently remembering not to make promises she can't keep, and revises the statement to, "We'll do everything we can to find him."
"Yeah? How soon you reckon that'll be?" Sonny's voice comes out hoarse, like he's been yelling for hours, even though he hasn't said a word in what feels like forever. "Before or after those shitstains get around to releasing a video where … where they're-"
"Sonny," Ray says, quiet but sharp. When Sonny looks at him, Ray shakes his head, just once, and all the strength goes out of Sonny's legs. He sits down suddenly and clenches his jaw tightly shut, because if he doesn't he might embarrass himself.
He can't even figure out what he's supposed to hope for: that Clay is still alive, because then there's a chance they could find him and bring him home; or that Clay is already dead, because then at least those bastards can't take him apart on camera and broadcast his suffering to the whole damn world.
Mandy has gone even paler, if that's possible. When Sonny looks back up, she meets his gaze, seems to be trying to come up with something to say, but finally just shakes her head a little and looks at the wall behind him. "Ashli Mayers is going to be okay," she says in a monotone. "I thought you all might like to know that."
Without waiting for a response, she turns and leaves.
She isn't lying about trying to find Clay; she pulls her team together, and they stay up all night scouring ISR data and satellite photos, trying to figure out if Spenser (or Spenser's body) has been moved, and if so, to where.
What they know for sure is that multiple vehicles left the village in the hours following the rescue of Ms. Mayers. Unfortunately, there's no real way to determine which if any of them might have been transporting Clay, and even if there were, the trucks are virtually impossible to track using the sparse data that's available.
Ultimately, Mandy says that attempting to find Clay based on satellite images would be a bit like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle the size of Colorado. Bottom line: it's not gonna happen. She's leaning hard on her assets in country, but so far, nothing.
Then and for four days afterward, nothing.
Mandy's people don't pick up any relevant chatter. No horrifying videos of Spenser's brutal murder, or pictures of his mutilated corpse, pop up on the dark web. There's just silence, and a Clay-shaped absence in their world that none of them can stop thinking about.
On the fifth day, one of Mandy's assets relays a rumor: a group that's supposedly tangentially affiliated with the one that took Ms. Mayers is reported to be holding a prisoner in a remote location roughly a day's drive from Clay's last known location.
Mandy doesn't much like it. She can't verify the rumor, and it's coming from a single source she doesn't consider overly reliable. She and Blackburn confer at length; she and Jason argue.
In the end, after going around in circles for long enough that Sonny wants to chew his own damn fingers off, they're finally given the green light to go after their boy.
Mandy watches them go, hands wrapped around her elbows, eyes shadowed with worry. She made Jason promise twice that he'd watch himself, that he'd stay alert for any indications, no matter how subtle, that his team is being drawn into a trap.
Truth is, Sonny isn't even much worried about whether it is or not.
If Clay is there, dead or alive, they'll bring him home. If Clay isn't there? Well, at least maybe they'll finally get a chance to hand out some vengeance. Anything is better than being forced to sit with their thumbs up their asses.
He hangs onto that opinion, doggedly, right up until they reach their target location and all hell breaks loose.