an. I have no idea how I used to churn out updates within days of each other. This chapter sent me down a rabbit hole of research that lasted two days, LOL. Also, there are tons of prior chapter references in this so sorry for all the backreading if you care for refreshers.

References: St. Augustine, Chapter 4: 'Taneh Merah', St. Augustine, Chapter 8: 'Call a Spade a Spade', St. Augustine, Chapter 14: 'Every December', St. Augustine, Chapter 32: 'Will We Be Soldiers Left On The Floor?', St. Augustine, Chapter 33: 'There Will Be No Start To Finish This', Looking Glass, Chapter 4: 'That Girl', St. Louis, Chapter 1: 'When It Rains in Hong Kong'.

Guest Review Response: Can you tell I'm a pessimist? Ha. Mike is in a rouuuugh place. I ended up reading a couple of memoirs from couples who lost a child in an attempt to scratch the surface (that's not the rabbit hole that sucked me down this chapter), but the accounts I read stuck with me. Pablo is so fun to write! He's not Navy. He's patriotic and loves his country, but of anyone on the James, I see him as the one who would challenge Tom or even revolt if he deemed it necessary. RE: Tom catching on about Sasha's plan. Would you believe I actually wrote it differently the first time and then read it back and changed it? The more I thought about it from Tom's POV - the night before, he got Sasha to agree that she was still grounded because of the injury, and on top of that, the Takehaya conversation happened. He wasn't expecting her to do a 180 less than a day later, and if anything, he assumed Sasha knew he wouldn't entertain it, so why waste her breath? I think he was expecting her to suggest a way to trick the pirates with her blood, not argue the case to volunteer. I laughed out loud when I read your rocket comment. Deep down, Sasha knows what she's saying... but she's already flipped the operational switch and compartmentalized. It always seemed to me that none of the characters had any qualms about risking themselves, only about losing others. It's so much easier when you're not going to be the one left behind to suffer the aftermath. Torturing Tom is fun.

.

And If You Wish to Know Peace

you must come to know pain

.

.

"Aside from Green, there are four others listed on the ship's manifest who are immune. Valdez, Jaffe, Wong, and Heggen. Thirty-two of the individuals aboard either declined or were transferred to the Nathan James after I initially sampled the crew. The remaining three participants who tested positive in St. Louis, I assume have been assigned elsewhere."

Mia Valdez, Weapons Operator, CIC. Twenty-two. Someone whose ground experience equated to graduating from boot camp. Dillon Jaffe, Electronic Warfare Officer. Twenty-six. Zero ground experience. Ryan Wong, Boatswain's Mate. Nineteen. Aside from being what Tom considered still a child, Wong also possessed zero relevant field skills, and Benjamin Heggen, Hospital Corpsmen. Thirty-five years old, essential under normal circumstances but non-expendable in a world where eighty-percent of its medical professionals had perished.

Expendable.

His stomach lurched at the word.

From the bridge wing, Tom surveyed, radio in hand, while the drone of Jesse's helo whined endless and loud. Hai Phong was a port slow to refuel, its waters slick with muck and crowded. For the next six hours, Nathan James was a stationary target, and he could do little more than find himself forced to accept.

Short of performing a red blood cell exchange transfusion—something that, in Tom's opinion, sounded Frankenstein-esque and wasn't attainable within their limited time constraints—Rachel's snap test could not be fooled. Despite ordering Val to purge all but a singular alias from their database, he'd spent enough hours studying Sasha's file to recall the details. Her choice to become a HUMINT operative with the DIA had taken her beyond the scope of any ship-based specialty and rivaled his own foundation in special warfare. The list of combat and ground certifications she'd attained spanned an entire page; land, air, and sea. Injury not-withstanding, on paper, Sasha was more than equipped to undertake this mission.

Those were the facts.

When footsteps approached, he didn't need to turn to identify their owner.

"What did Scott say?"

"Nothing that I wanted to hear." He was of piss-poor attitude, the muscles in his face aching under tension, and he remained focused on the docks, eyeing the perimeter that Lieutenant Damon and their ground teams were holding.

"Who do you have that's a fast study?" Sasha asked. "Someone who could recognize keywords if I spent the next"—her hand encircled his wrist, twisting his watch face toward her—"four hours giving them a crash course in Sino-Tibetan-based languages?"

That brief touch ignited his frustrations, sending a pulse of energy through his body so intense he wanted to beat his fists against the hull. "I haven't agreed to anything yet, Sasha."

"You wouldn't be wishing death upon the dock if you had another choice."

Sometimes he loathed her smartass mouth.

"Mason."

"Your sonar operator?"

From the corner of his eye, Tom saw Sasha's head cant. "He's got a talent for sound. When we encountered Ramsey, he accurately differentiated between miscellaneous noise and the submarine's prop after they'd gone dark when no one else could. You put it to him like that? He'll pick it up fast."

Seemingly accepting the answer, she approached the rail.

"I spoke with Rios," she offered. "He thinks it's a scar adhesion. There's nothing he can do about it, and it's otherwise healed well."

Irony wouldn't stop pummeling. Scar adhesion. A complication experienced with his knee. On occasion, he still felt those phantom shootings of pain despite a successful surgery to address it.

"Why did you switch to the DIA?" Quarter the way, his head turned to study. "You never once mentioned wanting to become a field operative. Not the kind who does reconnaissance for DEVGRU without an official cover or any backup."

Confusion flittered across her face, and she leaned against the solid rail at the hip. "They reached out to me. I was flagged because I spoke Farsi and because of my marksmanship scores. After 9/11 and years of us stagnating in the Middle East, they realized that the only way to get the intel they needed was from the wives—"

"And the wives only speak to women," he finished.

Sasha nodded. "You know the agencies don't give a shit about what Congress says when they can label it Intelligence Reconnaissance. I was glad actually, when the Secretary of Defense announced the end of the ban against women in combat?"

"I was aware of it." Just six months before Nathan James deployed. The memory surfaced: sitting in his nondescript office on the base in Norfolk, imparting directives. This one came with a fresh wave of integration trainings, none of which had come to pass, but even in his comparative boredom, shore duty was a period Tom cherished. At six o'clock sharp, he shut down his work and prioritized Darien and the kids.

Had prioritized.

"I've been getting screwed on occupational hazard pay ever since I switched disciplines," she continued. "Not that any of that matters anymore."

The blossoming ache in his chest struck for its intensity. More recently, time had begun dulling the blade of Darien's loss. It would always hurt—he'd accepted that. But those memories weren't suffocating like they'd been in St. Louis. Usually, he controlled it, but this surge felt raw. Focusing on what Sasha said, he pondered, concluding that he never gave much thought to the realities of their agencies exploiting the gray to circumvent the need for congressional approvals . . . like misclassification on payroll.

"Is the U.S. even using a currency again?" she raised.

"Dad mentioned something about Michener trying to re-establish the banks when we last spoke a few weeks ago, but I didn't get into specifics. Trade's running mostly on rations and goods. President's using the military to enforce a housing authority. Kicking out squatters . . . Dad said that wasn't too popular."

"They've moved out of the hotel?"

This time, Tom inclined his chin. "They cleared out a neighborhood by Forest Park. Most of the staff and dependents are living there for now. Mike said it's decent"—to his surprise, he grinned—"and that I'm gonna be pissed when I see the house that Dad let the kids guilt him into."

Sasha returned his smile, but the weight inside of him only increased.

He didn't want to do this.

"I guess I hadn't thought about that yet." Her voice had taken on a melodic quality. "It's a total reset. Always wanted a million-dollar view? Now you can go take it."

"And the penthouse didn't?" Mindful of gripping the radio too hard, Tom leaned on his right elbow to face her. "Could have used some more furniture, but you were hardly slumming it."

"It belonged to Jesse's brother." Her smile lilted, and in response, the faint traces of mirth evaporated from Tom's features.

"What was his name?" he asked softly.

A beat passed. "Zach."

"Were you close?" he hedged after failing to read her guarded response.

"No. We hadn't met before."

Drawn by the subject matter, Sasha peered across the sky in search of the helo. It wasn't visible with the bridge and pilothouse blocking their aft and the James' towering superstructure thereafter, but based on the increasing crescendo, Jesse would swing around starboard soon.

"She's got the skills," he said, recalling Jesse's response to his assumption that a civilian would need a crash course on defensive flight standards. Turns out Jesse didn't discriminate when it came to contracts; humanitarian organizations, privately funded expeditionary trusts, and the Australian military, to list a few. "Could use some work on her attitude—" his mouth curled into a shrug "—but we'll get there."

Despite his jest, Sasha became sheepish. She never had been big on interpersonal drama, and between Shemanski and Jesse, they certainly had their share.

"Has Mike ever said anything like that to you?" The inquiry was muted. Enough that he squinted to hear . . . only to realize how stupid that was.

"Not as directly, no. But he called me out for Changi. After I disagreed with him for giving Christine another chance."

"Nothing happened in Changi," she shot back, provocatively flat.

Amending his posture, he stopped leaning, resting both wrists on the railing and faced the bow. "It was about what didn't happen. He came to stay with us the night he found out about the affair. Ended up asking me if I'd ever . . ."

"Cheated?" Sasha supplied after his silence lingered.

"Been tempted."

Though he stayed facing outward, his eyes found hers.

"We wouldn't have gone through with it."

"No," he agreed. "But I did promise Darien that I wouldn't reach out to you again."

"You didn't." Sharp. Quick. Just as the way her gaze razed up and then down his body. "Unless you're implying that you were supposed to run away from that bar because I had the audacity to speak to you?"

"That's what she would have preferred," he drawled, his tone encapsulating both fatigue and admittance. His grip around the radio, still clutched in his right hand, tightened.

"Well. We can't all have everything that we want." The t-sound cracked like a whip. "You married her. What more were you supposed to do? Erase me from your memory?"

Oh Sasha.

It had been a long time since he'd glimpsed the caustic spitfire of old; the sharpness of her tongue more frequently tamed by maturity, it seemed.

Briefly, her eyes closed. "I didn't mean for that to sound the way it did."

But Tom wasn't concerned with bitterness. If anything, he was perplexed by how refreshing it was to hold a candid conversation. Sans filters. "Dad didn't exactly help the situation." He scoffed. "I lost count of how many times he brought you up just to piss her off." This time, when he glanced, he saw a glimmer of satisfaction. "He cooled it once the kids were old enough to understand."

And after Katie disclosed the existence of that voicemail.

"I'm surprised that Darien managed to stick it out," she offered more diplomatically, now monitoring Jesse's flight path. "He's not exactly known for withholding or changing his opinions."

Despite Tom's clashes with his father over the subject, he still saw the humor. "Sometimes I wondered if she did it just to spite him."

Inscrutable while digesting and avoiding eye contact, Sasha drew her bottom lip between her teeth and chewed. Though confident that the helo would mask their conversation, Tom remained cognizant of the sailor standing watch at the big eyes and abandoned the rail. Never one to allow another to tower over her, she too adjusted her stance, facing him dead on.

"Look," he said. "Darien knew what she was signing up for. She didn't go into it blind, and believe it or not, she didn't hate you—she understood that all I wanted was to be six feet under the dirt with the rest of my team until we met."

That earned Sasha's recognition. What was before defiant morphed.

"She was just very clear about the boundaries."

For a moment, Sasha processed, and then she murmured, "So why didn't you leave? If you knew that's what Darien would have wanted? You could have come up with some kind of excuse and gone back to the Pickney."

Even as part of him recoiled, the other fought back, begging that he stop burying the truth. "Because the second I heard your voice—I realized that I couldn't live with my last memory of us being the one where I walked away." The air became charged. Her gravity, he felt bound to, intensified. "And you and I both know that I've always been selfish when it comes to you."

A myriad of emotion battled within the depths of her eyes. Almost iridescent under the glow of the sun. "But not selfish enough to ignore a choice that you know is right," she countered.

His jaw bulged. "When's the last time your average pirate commandeered a Naval Destroyer from a crew of experienced sailors, Sasha?"

They hadn't.

As the words left, recognition seeped into her repose. "You think he's Maritime Self-Defense."

"Yes I do." Tonetically, he'd delivered a sarcastic congratulations. "Still betting on me if turns out that he's using the Hayward to defend his operations?"

For the first time since volunteering for what he deemed a suicidal mission, he saw a lick of fear. Good. Now she understood.

The radio crackled to life. Cruz communicating with Wallace about a group of men loitering by one of the wet-market stalls, and relentless Sasha held eye contact. Resolute, it seemed, in ignoring his challenge. The radio chatter stopped. Jesse's drone grew quieter as she looped the flight path and disappeared beyond their aft. Predictable. Dependable. Just as the world continued to turn.

Even though he wanted it to stop.

"I am," Sasha finally said, and he almost succumbed to his selfishness. Maybe she sensed that, for the barrier went up, a detachment forced between them when she said, "I'll be in the wardroom with Mason." And then he watched as she walked away.

o o o

Fingers massaging the knot between his brows, Tom listened to the dial tone with Navy Red in his grip. The knowing look Granderson threw his way after requesting the communications room percolated. More personal than it should have been, almost as though she knew that pretending to be impartial was about to kill him. Perhaps too literal for his taste—but there was no goddamn way that such sustained levels of stress weren't shaving years from his life.

"Tell me you have some good news."

If Mike were here, he wouldn't have called it that. "We're going after Green," he confirmed.

"Damn right you are. What's the plan?"

Abandoning the idea that working the knot would have a meaningful effect, Tom sighed and leaned back in the chair he'd sunken into. Everything communicated on this channel was recorded and subject to the official record. "We have a working theory that Takehaya brings the people that he captures to a specific location. We're going to sell an immune to his men and trail the vessel. Ideally, it will lead us to Green, but failing that, we'll be able to pull the intel from their navigational logs and interrogate the buyer."

"Someone from the crew volunteered?" Mike's tone had lowered considerably.

"Not the crew." He hesitated and then felt such a twisted confliction of irony that he thought to question reality. "The hot chick from the Ukraine."

Silence answered, and Tom closed his eyes.

"I need you to convince Michener to give us the green light, and we cannot wait for the Shackleton," Tom continued. "As the situation permits, we'll relay our coordinates so that Captain Hicks can join us, but Mike—once this starts, we have to stay in range of that vessel. I cannot comply with a change of orders—"

"I understand," Mike interrupted. "Go find our boy. I've got your back, you have my word."

o o o

Location Unknown

Light assaulted when the scratchy burlap hood was ripped from Danny's head. While blinded by the extreme differential, a hand shoved him forward, down a gangway. Against his skin, humidity prickled, and the pajama-like brown coveralls thrown at him just minutes before itched. At least they weren't moving him in his skivvies, and compared to the cold, damp confines of the inner ship, heat felt good. Once sight returned, Danny began taking stock: the sun was high—by his estimate, midday.

His captors had delivered him to a port with three docks large enough to accommodate vessels of significant displacement. A destroyer would push it, but they were ideal for frigates . . . twisting to glimpse the ship he'd spent the past unquantifiable number of hours on, Danny confirmed his assessment: cargo freighter. Commercial.

In a language Danny couldn't identify beyond knowing it differed from the pirates who'd traded him, a man yelled, then slapped the back of his head. Against his bounds, Danny strained but found no give. Teeth clenched, he blinked and breathed through the sharp ricochet throbbing from the impact. This was some kind of island. An outpost developed during WWII?

Above the dense row of palms lining the docks, the dome of a civic building gleamed as if to blind, and behind it, a tower dominated. It was cyclical, like the fat, shorter brother of the space needle, and four thin red antennas protruded from a lampshade-like roof while a disproportionately large sphere sat in its middle. Its upper levels had glass windows, but the lower floors were clad in steel. For several minutes, they walked. It became apparent that all the land was flat. They crossed a road that he believed traveled the island's perimeter. It was single lane, with a yellow solid line separating the directions . . . if anything, the infrastructure he'd observed wouldn't look out of place in the Southern Americas.

More time passed.

The dome-capped building drew closer with every hindered step, peeking from the canopy of thick palms. He caught sight of a Japanese flag waving in the building's courtyard. This was evidently the capitol of this settlement. Not dissimilar in appearance to the courthouse in St. Louis. The elements were simpler, the stone more beige than crisp white, and there was little decorative stonework beyond the columns, but it adhered to the classical standards of colonial, or perhaps it was Greek-revival architecture. Symmetrical square windows. Three stories. Four columns under the protruding reveal, and three anchoring each wing, bringing the total to ten. Still, the pirate marched him on—the streets were deserted save for a few guards stationed outside—until they approached what Danny recognized as a jail.

Once again, the man pushed against his back, this time with the tip of his gun. Inside, it was dim. There weren't too many windows, and none of the lights appeared to be working. Instead, camping lanterns were perched on a few of the unattended desks. It wasn't overly large, similar in scope and design to a small-town county facility back home. There were, however, more men here. At least a dozen of them. Every one of them was armed and leering at him; hate etched into their features. His captor led him through a security door. Without power, the digital locking system was redundant . . . that's why two men were posted on either side. This was where the cells were located, and as he was shuffled past row after row, cottonmouth spread.

The sallowed faces, clad in the same coveralls, watched lifeless.

Hopeless.

At the furthest end, the man shouldered him into a cell, the force and his bounds making his fall inevitable, and when he smacked into the concrete floor, that dull pain in his ribs screamed. If they weren't cracked before, Danny was certain they were now.

The man towered at the door, his thin lips cracked into a vile grin, and then he delivered the only understandable words Danny had heard since Lt. Harris yelled "Bail Out!"

"Home sweet home."