Kill Count

by Brent Towns

  Still, sometimes brains are better than balls, and maybe the wisest course of action would be to just give Reardon back his son. Cut their losses and call it a day. Because Jacobs was convinced that was the reason behind this sudden killing spree. It wasn’t about the drugs. It was about the kid. And if they gave the kid back, Reardon would call off whatever mad dogs he had unleashed.

  A moment later, he realized it was too late for that.

  Auto-fire blew apart the bedroom window in his renovated ranch house. He didn’t hear the sound of the gun, which meant a suppressor. Glass shards razored the air as slugs tattooed the walls. One of the bullets ricocheted off the solid brass lamp on the nightstand and zinged past Jacob’s head.

  Hot adrenalin turbocharged his bloodstream, fueling his combat instincts. He rolled off the bed. Keeping his head low, he yanked open his nightstand drawer and snatched up his Desert Eagle .44 Magnum. Way too bulky for a carry piece, but a grade-A gun for home defense, which is what he needed right now.

  Apparently, Omega had been unable to track down the troublemakers. No problem. Jacobs would put .44 caliber craters where their eyes used to be and then tell Omega to go look for a job flipping burgers.

  The auto-fire stopped, and now there was nothing but silence. The lack of sound worried Jacobs. What had happened to his security detail? What about the alarm system? Where the hell were the dogs? It felt like he was being attacked by fucking phantoms.

  Jacobs crouched in the gray light of early morning and waited. The room’s only access points were the door and the window, and he could cover them both while crouched right here in the corner. It was a solid defensive position, and he had no intention of moving.

  And then a couple of fragmentation grenades whistled through the broken window like fast-pitched baseballs.

  When Cara had sent him the names “Paul Jacobs” and “Miguel Sanchez,” Kane had immediately contacted headquarters to have Slick run down their locations. Jacobs had been easy enough to find—he lived on 19 acres in Montville, New Jersey that had once been a pumpkin farm—but Sanchez’s whereabouts proved more elusive.

  “DEA files indicate they have some reports that Sanchez has a compound and villa somewhere out in the jungle, but nothing substantiated,” Slick said. “If you want to nail down the location, you’ll need to get Jacobs to cough up the info.”

  “Not a problem,” Kane replied. “I’m heading there now.”

  Thurston cut in on the conversation. “Are Reaper Two and Reaper Four with you?”

  “Negative.”

  “You need to wait for backup, Reaper One.”

  “There’s a kid’s life at stake here,” Kane said. “I’m not waiting.”

  “Reaper One, listen to—”

  Kane cut her off. “No disrespect, but this is my call to make, not yours.” Team Reaper’s rules were simple enough. Thurston controlled the missions, but when the boots were on the ground, Kane’s word was law.

  Thurston sighed heavily. “Fine, have it your way. Happy hunting.”

  Now, as he tossed the frag grenades through the broken window and then sprinted around the corner toward the front door of the house, Kane wished this was a two-man operation. They could have trapped Jacobs in a pincer move. But he stood by his decision. There hadn’t been time to wait for backup. Besides, he could handle this himself. The grenades would flush his quarry, and he just needed to get inside quickly enough to intercept him.

  As he moved, his eyes roved in their sockets, checking for danger. He believed he’d eliminated the guards and dogs and neutralized the alarm system, but caution came to him as naturally as breathing.

  He invaded the house with his combat senses on full alert. He would not make the mistake of underestimating his opponent. Jacobs was a skilled warrior. You didn’t become the head of the DEA’s Special Operations Division without being the kind of man capable of taking enemy scalps.

  Kane dashed through the house with his HK416 carbine leading the way, moving through the den and toward the bedroom. He heard the double bangs of the grenades popping off as he rounded a corner just in time to see Jacobs barreling down the hallway. The man was clearly expecting an ambush, for he had a Desert Eagle raised as he ran.

  Kane dodged out of the line of fire as the .44 roared like a steel dragon and a bullet ripped through the space his head had occupied a heartbeat before. He immediately spun back into the hallway, knowing he would have about a one-second opening as Jacobs rode out the Desert Eagle’s considerable recoil.

  Sure enough, he saw the .44’s muzzle elevated, Jacobs bringing it back down for another shot, his teeth bared in a savage snarl.

  Kane recognized the snarl of a warrior and let out a matching snarl of his own as he hit the trigger on his HK. The controlled burst marched up Jacobs’ left arm, turning the limb into a shattered mess of mangled meat.

  But Jacobs proved to have some serious grit. Despite his left arm looking like something that belonged in a butcher shop wastebasket, he used his right arm to steady the Desert Eagle for a second shot.

  Kane’s HK spoke first. The 5.56mm NATO rounds destroyed the Desert Eagle just as Jacobs pulled the trigger. The .44 caliber round, unable to spiral through the muzzle, delivered its 750 foot-pounds of energy inside the chamber and the gun exploded. Jacobs’ hand and wrist were blown to bits as thick gouts of blood splattered the floor. To his credit, Jacob didn’t bellow in agony like a normal man would have; he just gritted his teeth and sucked up the pain, silently accepting that he had been bested.

  Kane closed the gap between them, slinging the HK and drawing his sound-suppressed Sig. Jacobs just watched him come, helpless to do anything else. Kane pointed the gun at the man’s face. “The boy,” he growled. “Where is he? Don’t make me ask you twice.”

  Jacobs’ butchered arms dangled uselessly at his sides, blood streaming onto the floor. Sweat plastered his forehead, and his face had turned the color of cold ash. But he didn’t look afraid; merely resigned. A man who had accepted that Death had come for him and he wasn’t going to walk away alive.

  Jacobs studied the pistol for a moment, then looked at Kane. “Why should I tell you?”

  “You know how this works,” Kane replied. “Tell me, or I’ll rip the answer out of you. You’re maggot food either way, but give me what I want, and I’ll put you down easy. Best offer you’re gonna get.”

  Smart enough to know when the game was up, Jacobs didn’t hesitate. “Sanchez has the boy. Sent his man Razor over with a crew to do the snatch, then the crew stayed behind to take out Reardon’s wife.”

  “You were in on all this?”

  “I gave them the information they needed to pull off the grab and the hit.”

  Kane stared at him in disgust. “You’re an officer of the law, for god’s sake.”

  “That ship sailed a long time ago,” Jacobs said. “I got greedy, and I sold out.”

  “Hope it was worth dying for.”

  “Ain’t no pennies in the grave, my grandfather used to say.”

  “Where’s Sanchez now?” Kane asked.

  “Colombia.”

  “And the kid’s with him?”

  “Last I knew, they’re holding him at Sanchez’ compound, where they cook the coke.”

  “Give me the coordinates.”

  Jacobs rattled them off, then repeated them more slowly. Kane holstered the Sig, pulled out his phone, and quickly sent the coordinates to Swift. Then he slipped the phone back into his pocket and drew the pistol again.

  They both knew the time had come.

  Jacobs said, “When a man is about to die, he reflects back on his life.” He looked up at Kane. “I really fucked mine up, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah,” Kane answered. “You sure did.”

  “I was a good man once,” Jacobs said. “Believe it or not.”

  “As long as we save the kid, I’ll do my best to remember you that way—a good man who just got himself twisted.”

  “I’d appreciate that.” />
  There was nothing else left to say.

  Jacobs sighed deeply, closed his eyes, and said, “Make it quick, will ya?”

  “Sure.”

  The Sig bucked once, and Paul Jacobs paid the ultimate price for his sins.

  A bullet knows no forgiveness.

  Kane called his teammates and told them to rendezvous back at the plane. He collected any laptops, thumb drives, and cellphones he could find so that Slick could mine them for intel, then exited the house.

  They’d blitzed a bloody swath of carnage up the cocaine pipeline and left the DEA portion in ruins from top to bottom, all in the name of finding Jeremy Reardon. And now that he had pinned down the kid’s location, it was time to change targets.

  Time to wage war against the cartels on their own turf.

  Time to rain full-auto hellfire on the jungles of Colombia.

  Chapter 8

  The Sanchez estate

  Colombia

  Razor’s bald head gleamed with perspiration as he stepped into Sanchez’s office. It was hotter than the devil’s cloven hooves out there, and the air conditioning offered a welcome respite from the oppressive heat. “You wanted to see me?”

  Sanchez sat behind his desk, looking extremely angry. Razor steeled himself for a tongue-lashing even though he couldn’t think of anything he had done to incur his boss’ fury. He kept a wary eye on the leather riding crop Sanchez always carried. He had witnessed firsthand the damage the little whip could do. Wielded mercilessly—and Sanchez was nothing if not merciless—the crop could split flesh right down to the bone.

  But Sanchez’s first words assured Razor that he was not the target of the Colombian’s rage. “The DEA end of our alliance has been smashed,” Sanchez snarled. “The cartel will demand my head.”

  Razor didn’t bother asking him to which head he was referring, because truth was, the cartel would probably take both of them. Instead, he asked, “What do you want me to do?”

  Sanchez rose from behind his desk and began pacing, tapping the riding crop against his thigh as he walked. “Nothing,” he said. “Just be ready, stay alert. Whoever these bastardos are, they won’t stop with the DEA. They will come here. They will come for the boy. They will come for us.”

  Razor drew his signature weapon. It practically leaped into his hand; it felt so familiar. Light gleamed along the cutthroat edge, cold and deadly, just like the man who wielded it. “They can come,” he said matter-of-factly. “And they can die.”

  “Do not underestimate them,” Sanchez cautioned. “That would be foolish, and fools have a way of dying out here.”

  Razor recognized the veiled threat for what it was but chose to ignore it. Wasn’t like he could do anything about it anyway. Sanchez was backed by the cartels, and if he wanted Razor dead, then Razor would be dead. Such was the life he had chosen, and he would live it without regret. “I won’t underestimate him,” he assured his boss.

  “You had better not. These hijo de putas are not to be taken lightly. They are a very real, very legitimate threat to us. They proved that by destroying our DEA alliance. They took no prisoners.”

  “We will need to rebuild,” Razor said.

  “First we will need to survive,” Sanchez replied.

  “Guess it’s a good thing we changed locations,” Razor remarked. “They will strike the compound first since as far as Jacobs knew, that’s where the boy was being held. That will be their first target.”

  “So we will have advance warning that these cabrones are in the country,” Sanchez said, “and we will be ready for them.”

  Razor’s lips curled in a sinister smile. “But they won’t be ready for us.”

  John F. Kennedy International Airport

  New York

  By the time Kane hustled back to JFK and hooked up with his team on the tarmac outside their HC-130, news of the latest terror attacks had gone public, along with Johnny Jihad’s latest video. Footage of the George Washington Bridge destruction played in endless loops, interrupted only by shots of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, surrounded by a sea of emergency vehicles and yellow tape. Smoke wreathed the church like fog as paramedics carried the dead out under white sheets, the wheels of the stretchers rattling over shattered stone and crunching on broken glass. Every major television channel was covering the tragedy; even MTV had interrupted its regularly-scheduled reality TV programming in order to focus on the far grimmer reality out in the Big Apple.

  Brick Peters was staring at his phone screen, watching one of the cable news channels, when Kane arrived. The ex-Navy SEAL shook his head at all the death and destruction. “Hell of a thing, hey, Reaper?”

  “Yeah,” Kane said. “It sucks dick, big time.”

  “I’m guessing CNN won’t want to use that quote, but they should, because you make it sound positively Shakespearean.”

  “You think that’s good, you should hear my ‘Fuck yous.’ Pure poetry.”

  Brick put away his phone. “Watching this shit makes me wish we were going after terrorists instead of cartels. I’d like to get a little payback for the good ol’ U.S. of A.”

  “Then I’ve got good news,” Kane said. “Thurston called just before I got here. You’ve been pulled off this mission and reassigned to Chief Hunt’s SEAL team. Jones wants you to assist them with taking down this terrorist cell.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “As a heart attack. They’re going to run a decoy op and see if Johnny takes the bait. You’ll get all the details at the briefing but looks like you’re playing decoy.”

  Brick caught on quick. “So I’m standing in for the President.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “So if this op goes sideways, my head gets chopped off on live TV.”

  Kane slapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, I hear it only hurts for a minute.”

  “That’s messed up, Reaper.”

  “You want me to get you pulled from the mission? It’s not like we don’t have our own job to do.”

  Brick shook his head. “Negative. I’ll do it. Surprised they tapped me though. Thought we had a monogamous relationship with the cartels.”

  “You just happened to be in the right place at the right time,” Kane said. “And when the President asks you to help take down the biggest terrorist in the world, you don’t say no.”

  “You got that right.”

  “Good. Now get out of here. You’ve got a briefing to catch.”

  As Brick trotted off, Kane turned to Cara, Axe, and Arenas. “We need to be wheels-up in fifteen. Where’s Traynor?”

  The three team members exchanged glances and shuffled their feet, but nobody said anything.

  Kane frowned. “Somebody want to tell me what’s going on? Where’s Pete?”

  With a let’s get it over with sigh, Axe said, “He’s still at the hospital with Reardon.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  Sensing his rising anger, Cara quickly added, “Cut him some slack, Reaper. Reardon was attacked, and Pete feels he needs protection in case Omega comes back.”

  “We have a cartel to take down and a kid to rescue,” Kane said. “The cops can handle guard duty.”

  “If it was your friend, would you trust his life to a couple of patrolmen?” Arenas asked. “Especially a skilled operator like this Omega seems to be? Think about it, Reaper. Put yourself in his shoes.”

  “We’ll be facing a small army in Colombia,” Kane said. “I need all the fingers on triggers I can get.”

  “We’ll get it done,” Cara assured him. “Have a little faith.”

  “It’s not faith I want,” Kane replied. “It’s fucking firepower.”

  He turned and walked away without saying another word. The midmorning sun was starting to heat up the tarmac under his boots. When he was out of earshot of the others, he pulled out his phone and called Traynor.

  The ex-DEA agent answered on the first ring. “Figured you’d be calling, boss.”

  “I’ll
make this quick,” Kane said. “Reardon’s your friend, so you do what you gotta do.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that,” Traynor said. “But the tone of your voice tells me there’s a ‘but’ coming.”

  “But,” Kane added, “when this mission is over, I’ll be taking a hard look at whether or not I still want you on this team.”

  Silence on the other end, as Traynor was clearly caught off guard. When he spoke again, he said, “Kane… Reaper… c’mon, man, don’t do this to me.”

  “I need people I can rely on,” Kane said. “I get why you’re sitting this one out, but the kind of people I want watching my six are the ones who don’t sit out while their teammates go to war.”

  “Are you calling me a coward?”

  “No, I’m questioning your loyalty to this team.”

  There was another long silence. Kane waited it out, and finally, Traynor said, “With all due respect, Reaper, I’m not sure if I want to tell you I get where you’re coming from or tell you to go fuck yourself.”

  “Think it over,” Kane replied, “and let me know when I get back. Right now, we have to go save your friend’s kid.”

  “Sorry, Reaper. Never meant to let you down, but I’ve gotta do what I think is right.”

  “Copy that. We’ll see you on the other side.”

  “Kick their asses, man.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  Kane hung up and walked back to the others. Losing Traynor was a blow, but he couldn’t force the guy to join them, and he had made the potential consequences perfectly clear. Traynor had chosen to ride the bench on this one. That decision sat wrong with Kane, so when this was over, he’d probably tell the former DEA agent to hit the road.