04:12 a.m. – 41,000 feet above the North Atlantic Gulfstream G700, tail number M-YWLF
The cabin lights were off. Only the pale glow of the moving map and the occasional strobe of lightning over Greenland lit their faces.
Gareth sat sideways in the cream leather seat, shirt unbuttoned, blood dried rust-brown across his ribs (someone's, not his). The Glock lay stripped on the burled-walnut table, parts arranged like a dissected insect. He cleaned the barrel with slow, ritual strokes.
Mira was curled in the opposite divan, barefoot, wrapped in a charcoal cashmere blanket. A half-empty bottle of 1996 Macallan sat between them. She watched him the way a cat watches a flame.
"We're dark," she said. "Transponder spoofed, ADS-B off, flying a ghost corridor filed under a dead Kazakh oligarch. No one knows we're alive."
"Someone always knows." Gareth slid the suppressor back on, racked the slide once. "Question is who they send next."
The moving map showed them 480 nautical miles west of Keflavik, heading 290° at Mach 0.91. Destination officially Reykjavik. Real destination: nowhere. The flight plan dissolved into the ocean after the FIR boundary.
Mira poured two fingers of whisky, pushed one glass toward him. "You going to tell me who taught you, or do I keep guessing?"
Gareth didn't touch the glass. "You already know his name."
"Say it anyway."
"Colonel Marcus Vale. CO of Increment E, 2009–2017. The man who recruited me out of Sandhurst, taught me how to kill quietly and disappear completely. The man who stood at my 'funeral' and told my mother I died a hero." His voice was flat, almost bored. "Last intel had him living quietly in Reykjavik. No security detail, no protection. Just an old wolf licking his wounds."
Mira's eyes narrowed. "Marcus Vale is on the board of ORPHEUS-ZERO. He's not licking wounds. He's counting the money."
Gareth finally looked at her. "Then he's going to have a very bad morning."
Lightning flashed again, illuminating the cabin in corpse-white. For a second the scar on his face looked fresh.
The cockpit door opened. The pilot (ex-RAF, paid in untraceable Bitcoin) leaned back. "We've got company. Fast mover, bearing 110, climbing to intercept. Military signature. Typhoon pair out of Keflavik."
Gareth was already moving. "Distance?"
"Two hundred miles and closing at twice our speed. They'll be on us in eight minutes."
Mira stood, blanket falling away. "Can we outrun?"
"Not a chance. Can we hide?"
The pilot shook his head. "Middle of the Atlantic. Nowhere to hide."
Gareth stared at the map. Then at the whisky. Then at Mira.
"Change course," he said calmly. "Direct to Nuuk, Greenland. Full speed. Descend to fifty feet."
"That's suicide. Weather's minus thirty, thousand-foot peaks—"
"Do it."
The Gulfstream banked hard left, nose dropping. The engines screamed as they traded altitude for speed.
Mira strapped in beside him. "You've lost your mind."
"No," he said. "I just remembered how Vale taught me to disappear."
04:27 a.m. – 200 feet above black water
The jet flew on the deck, radar altimeter screaming warnings. Ice began to form on the wings. Outside temperature: −42 °C.
Behind them, the two Typhoons were closing fast, afterburners glowing orange in the night.
The co-pilot's voice crackled over intercom. "They're painting us. Fox three in thirty seconds."
Gareth unbuckled, walked forward, pulled a black Pelican case from the overhead. Inside: two Draeger rebreathers, survival suits, a Garmin inReach satellite tracker, and one waterproof pouch containing the original ORPHEUS USB.
He threw a suit to Mira. "Put it on."
She stared. "You want to jump."
"I want to vanish. Same thing."
The jet shuddered as the first missile left the rail, contrail bright as a comet.
Gareth opened the main door. The cabin depressurised instantly, wind howling like banshees. Ice crystals whipped through the fuselage.
He looked at her once (no fear, only question).
Mira smiled, the same smile she'd worn when she killed two men with a hairpin.
"Together," she said.
They stepped into the void.
Freefall.
Eighty seconds of silence and starlight before the parachutes deployed (black silk, radar-invisible). The Gulfstream exploded above them, a brief sun over the freezing sea.
They hit the water hard, went under, surfaced inside the survival raft that had auto-inflated from Gareth's vest.
The Typhoons circled once, saw the burning wreckage, marked it as a kill, and turned for home.
04:41 a.m. – 63°19'N 51°08'W
The raft bobbed in six-metre swells. Icebergs drifted past like white cathedrals.
Mira's teeth chattered, but she was laughing. "You're completely fucking insane."
Gareth activated the inReach, sent one encrypted burst to a dead-drop server in Tallinn.
Coordinates. Single word: ALIVE.
Then he crushed the device, dropped it overboard.
Mira watched the pieces sink. "Now what?"
"Now we wait." He pulled a flare gun, fired one red star into the black sky.
Ten minutes later, the low thrum of a diesel engine. A matte-black former Icelandic Coast Guard cutter appeared out of the darkness, running without lights. On the bow: a single white wolf painted beneath the waterline.
A rope ladder dropped.
The man at the rail was sixty, lean, silver-haired, eyes the same cold grey as Gareth's.
Marcus Vale.
He looked down at the two half-frozen figures in the raft and smiled like a father welcoming prodigals.
"Evening, children," he called over the wind. "Heard you had a spot of trouble."
Gareth climbed the ladder first. When he reached the deck, Vale opened his arms as if for an embrace.
Gareth punched him once, perfectly, in the solar plexus. Vale folded, gasping.
"That," Gareth said quietly, "was for my mother's tears."
He stepped over the old man's body and walked toward the warmth of the wheelhouse.
Mira followed, dripping seawater and adrenaline.
Behind them, the burning remains of the Gulfstream finally slipped beneath the waves.
The wolf had come home to the pack.
And the pack was about to learn that some cubs grow teeth sharp enough to kill the alpha.