Kill Count

by Brent Towns

  Axe, Cara, and Arenas looked at him expectantly as he approached, but he shook his head to indicate he had no intention of telling them about his conversation with Traynor. He whipped his finger in a circular motion and said, “Let’s roll.”

  The other three exchanged worried glances that Kane ignored. They followed him onto the plane, no doubt wondering if their success at smashing the DEA tentacle of the alliance was worth the price of a divided team. They had come here as brothers in arms; now they were a family torn.

  Fifteen minutes later the HC-130 roared down the runway and climbed into the clear blue sky, banking toward El Paso as each person sat in silence, alone with their dark thoughts and demons.

  Team Reaper Headquarters

  They landed at Biggs Army Airfield four hours later. None of them had spoken a word on the flight. Brooke picked them up and drove them back to headquarters. Axe rode shotgun, his hand resting on her thigh the whole way. Kane rode in the back with Cara. He did not rest his hand on her thigh.

  As they entered the converted warehouse that served as their headquarters, Brooke and Axe peeled off and headed for the bunks at an eager pace.

  “Slow down, you two,” Kane called out. “You’ve got a briefing in ten minutes.”

  Brooke tossed a smile over her shoulder, lips quirking up naughtily. “That leaves us eight minutes for a shower.”

  Kane grinned and shook his head. “Let’s make it twenty minutes ’til the briefing. Wouldn’t want you to get cheated, Miss Reynolds.” He gave her a wink.

  “Thanks, Reaper.” The sometimes-couple hurried off to take full advantage of their extended alone time, shedding clothes before they were even fully out of sight.

  Cara watched them go. “How does Axe even have the energy?” she said to Kane. “We’ve been up and on-the-go for over thirty hours.”

  “The man’s a machine.”

  “God bless him.” Cara moved away. “I’ll see you at the debriefing. I need to go find some caffeine.”

  Kane watched her go. No sassy, teasing sway to her backside this time. Unlike Axe, they were both just too tired to even think those kinds of thoughts. And they had miles more to go before they could rest.

  He took a quick shower, put on clean clothes, and chugged a cola. None of those things exactly made him feel good as new, but they worked in tandem to make him feel at least a little refreshed, and that was good enough. Team Reaper had plenty of experience at pushing forward with minimal sleep. Weary muscles and aching bones could still carry the fight to the enemy. Once this cartel was crushed and Jeremy Reardon reunited with his father, they could all face-plant into their pillows and take twenty-four-hour naps.

  He found Swift banging away on his keyboard like it owed him money while all sorts of jargon and symbols that meant nothing to Kane flashed across the quadruple monitors the computer wizard used. He turned over the electronics collected from Jacobs’ residence.

  “Thought you could crack those and see what sort of intel they’ve got on them.”

  Swift paused his keyboard abuse long enough to slurp down an energy drink, then said, “I can crack ’em, no sweat. You don’t need it to stand up in court, do you?”

  Kane shook his head. “Nobody left alive to prosecute.”

  “So it was take-no-prisoners, huh?”

  “That’s the way it goes sometimes.”

  “That’s the way it goes most of the time when you’re involved,” Swift said.

  Kane smiled without much mirth. “They don’t call us Reaper for nothing.”

  “Point taken.”

  “How you making out on that other thing?” Kane asked. “Thurston on to you yet?”

  “C’mon, man,” Swift scoffed. “Give me some credit. The general is super fantastic at keeping our sorry butts in line, but her computer savvy is basic at best. If I can cover my tracks from the DEA, CIA, NSA, and Pentagon, I think I can cover ’em from Thurston. I’ve got a data analyzation program running in the background, sifting through information on the attacks as it rolls in, and she’s none the wiser.”

  “Jones pulled Brick for a decoy operation with some of Hunt’s SEALs, so we’ve got some justification now to stick our noses into this, but I still prefer to keep it between you and me for now.”

  “No problem.”

  “Your program pick up anything useful?”

  “Nothing yet.” Swift shrugged. “Takes time. Sorry.”

  Kane slapped him on the shoulder. “Keep at it. Let me know if anything pops.”

  “You got it.”

  The others began filing into the briefing room, taking their seats. Axe and Reynolds entered last, looking flushed but happy. Ferrero had once approached Kane about banning inter-team romances, but Kane’s stance was that as long as his people delivered in the field, he didn’t care what—or who—they did in their downtime. So far neither Ferrero nor Thurston had overruled his decision.

  The general buckled right down to business. “That was some nice work in New York. You guys took out the DEA component of this alliance in less than twelve hours. That, ladies and gentlemen, is impressive.”

  “Any fallout?” Kane asked. “This was a blitz, so we left bodies on the ground.”

  “And a lot of them,” Thurston commented.

  “We did what had to be done. Not to mention every one of those bastards deserved a bullet.”

  “No argument from me,” Thurston assured him. “I’m working with the DEA to get everything cleaned up. As you can imagine, they’ve got egg on their face from all this, so they’re very interested in making it all go away as quickly and quietly as possible.”

  “Oh, I’ll bet,” said Ferrero. “One thing the Agency brass was always good at was covering their asses.”

  “But as you know,” Thurston continued, “the mission isn’t over yet. We still need to rescue Jeremy Reardon and deep-six this cartel. That’s why Reaper will be wheels-up in a couple hours, headed for Colombia.”

  “My team is down two,” Kane said. “Traynor bailed, and Brick got snatched up to play with the SEALs.”

  Thurston nodded. “Ferrero can fill a spot.”

  “Do I get to shoot this time?” the ex-DEA agent inquired. “Usually you can’t get a bullet in edgewise with Kane around.”

  “Oh, your guns will get hot on this one,” Kane said. “Guaranteed.”

  “Then sign me up.”

  “I could use one more,” Kane said to Thurston. “We’re hitting a manufacturing plant, and I expect it to be guarded by a small army.”

  “I want Reynolds here in case we need to send in a Predator,” Thurston replied. “So that just leaves Teller.”

  Kane looked over at the big, broad-shouldered former USAF Master Sergeant. “How about it, Pete? Feel like tagging along and snorting some gunpowder?”

  Teller’s regular assignment on Bravo Team was UAV tech, but like all team members, he could hit the mud and blood when called upon to do so. “I was in the Air Force, remember?” he said. “I’m always up for a plane ride.”

  “You know there’s no lobster tails, right?” Arenas asked with a grin. Teller had regaled them with tales of how fantastic the Air Force chow halls were.

  Teller grinned back. “Don’t worry, these days all I eat are snakes.”

  Axe slapped the table in approval. “A bunch of snake-eaters and ass-kickers; that’s what we are.”

  “Damn straight,” Kane said. “Now shut up and let the general finish.”

  Axe looked respectfully apologetic. “Sorry, ma’am.”

  “Don’t sweat it. I appreciate the enthusiasm.” Thurston motioned to Swift, who put a satellite photo of a fenced compound up on the largest monitor. “Turns out the intel Reaper got from Jacobs wasn’t bullshit. There really is a manufacturing plant at the coordinates he gave us.”

  “So, the mission is simple,” Kane said. “Go in, get the kid out, and blow the place to hell.”

  “The kid is priority one,” Thurston agreed. “But we’d also like
to take Miguel Sanchez off the board. He has a villa about ten miles from the compound.”

  “Jacobs said they’re holding the boy at the compound,” Kane said. “We need to hit that first. Then we can go knock on Sanchez’s door and see if he’s home.”

  “Agreed. I want that boy safe. But I also want Miguel Sanchez dead or in custody if we can pull it off.”

  “When it comes to scumbags like Sanchez, dead is better,” Kane rasped.

  “Coffin or cage, let’s put him in one of them.”

  “How we getting in-country?” Cara asked. “The cartels will be expecting us, so you know they’ll have eyes on all the major airports.”

  With a couple of keyboard strokes, Swift threw a photo up onto a secondary screen. It showed a square-jawed man with close-cropped, gray-streaked black hair and a matching mustache that drooped down each side of his mouth.

  “Meet Paul Oswald,” Thurston said. “He’s a freelance pilot with ties to the merc business. He also happens to be a smuggler with his own little airstrip in the jungle, about twenty-five klicks from Sanchez’s compound. The cartels either don’t know about it or if they do, never bother it.”

  “He’s probably giving them a cut,” Teller said.

  “You may very well be right. Or they could just not give a rip as long as he’s not smuggling narcotics,” Thurston said. “Either way, it’s off the grid, so that’s where you’ll insert.”

  “Where’d we dig up this guy?” Arenas asked.

  “The CIA put me in touch with him.”

  “Can we trust him?”

  “The spooks use him. Take that for whatever it’s worth. Plus he’s a merc, and our money is good.”

  Axe asked, “Are we hiking the twenty-five klicks from airfield to target?”

  “Negative,” Thurston replied. “Once you land, you’ll head to the river, about three miles, and then insert into cocaine country by boat. Oswald managed to secure us a black market SOC-R for your use. You get as close as you can with the boat, then hike the rest of the way.”

  “That SOC-R must have cost us a pretty penny,” Ferrero said.

  “It did,” Thurston confirmed. “But if you’re worried about saving a few bucks, I can call him back and order a rowboat instead.”

  “No, the SOC-R is good,” Ferrero grinned.

  “Thought you might say that.”

  SOC-R stood for Special Operations Craft-Riverine, a V-hulled, high-performance tactical watercraft designed for short-range insertion and extraction of SOF forces. It was propelled by a pair of 440HP diesel engines each driving a water pump-jet. Team Reaper had used a SOC-R on a previous mission and was familiar with its attributes.

  “If we’re floating down a river in bad boy country,” Kane said, “I hope that SOC-R comes with a full weapons system.”

  “Not full,” Thurston replied, “but you’ve got one minigun forward and one fifty-cal aft. Oswald said that was the best he could do on short notice.”

  “Good enough,” Kane said. “That minigun is some heavy metal firepower, so we should be okay. When do we leave?”

  “I’ve arranged clearance for Oswald to land at Biggs for pickup at sixteen-thirty hours.”

  Kane glanced at the clock on the wall. A 4:30 p.m. pickup gave them ninety minutes to pack up and get to the airfield. “All right, people, grab your gear and be ready to roll out in one hour.” He looked pointedly at Burton and Reynolds. “And Axe, that means you don’t have time to be grabbing anything else, you hear me?”

  Axe grinned. “I’m good, boss.”

  “Yeah, that’s what Reynolds keeps telling us.”

  With a round of good-natured laughter easing the pre-combat nerves, the team left the briefing room to prepare for war.

  Paul Oswald’s cargo plane looked like it had seen better days and those days had been somewhere circa. 1968, but the smuggler assured Kane the dents, dings, and rust were cosmetic only, gave the plane character, and that the mechanics were “tight as a dingo’s arse.” Kane almost asked him how he knew how tight a dingo’s ass was, but then thought better of it.

  Oswald’s accent sounded as fake as an American trying to imitate Crocodile Dundee, but the merc assured him he was a native Aussie. “Born in Sydney, but raised in the bush, and I’ve got the scars to prove it,” the pilot said, tapping his buttocks but offering no further explanation. “It’s what makes me so bloody good at what I do.”

  Kane wasn’t clear on how being born in the city but raised in the outback qualified someone for a life as a mercenary smuggler-pilot, but he left it alone. They were here for a ride, not chitchat. He forked over the money and said, “As long as you’re good enough to get us where we need to go and get us back out without asking questions.”

  Oswald pocketed the cash—good old American greenbacks, just like he’d insisted—and gave him a toothy smile. “Questions aren’t part of the deal, mate. But I will ask you this—you know you’re heading into cartel country, right?”

  “Do we look like tourists to you?”

  The smuggler looked at all the weapons and gear, then said, “Not exactly.” He shrugged. “Your funeral, not mine.”

  It’s going to be somebody’s funeral, all right, Kane thought but kept it to himself. Oswald no doubt suspected they were going to rack up a kill-count, but there was no reason to confirm it.

  Since Oswald was a one-man show, Kane rode in the copilot’s seat while Cara, Axe, Ferrero, Arenas, and Teller sprawled out in the cargo hold with their gear. Kane glanced in the back and saw they were all taking power naps, resting up for the battle to come.

  As the plane droned toward the setting sun, Kane looked out the window at the ocean flashing by beneath the wings and allowed himself an introspective moment.

  This mission was about rescuing Jeremy Reardon. Striking a blow against the cartels was a nice bonus, but not necessary for this mission to be a success. That said, putting down Jacobs and all his corrupt cronies had been justice. And in the shadowed corners of his soul, where the spiders and demons and bad things crawled, Kane knew that gunfire justice was part of the fuel that made him tick.

  He and his team were about to launch a strike into a Colombian hell-zone with saving Jeremy Reardon as the top priority. But he would be lying through his teeth if he said he didn’t relish the chance to smash some coke-slingers.

  No judge.

  No jury.

  Just bring in the executioners.

  The scumbags more than deserved the hell and thunder he planned to rain down on their evil heads.

  He wasn’t sure what that said about him—maybe he was more bloodthirsty than he cared to admit—but he didn’t need to justify his actions to anyone. Besides, they were Team Reaper, not Team Sunshine, and violent death came with the territory. They waged war against the cartels, and anyone affiliated with them, and that meant they had to kill. And it was this willingness to kill, to do what was necessary to get the job done, that made the team so effective. They hit hard, they hit fast, and nobody flinched when it was time to pull the trigger.

  To save the innocent, they killed the guilty. It was as simple as that. No primrose path for Reaper and company; the road they walked was littered with the bones of the dead and the damned.

  Kane gazed out the cockpit as the bright orange ball of the sun sank, and the sky began its gradual plunge into the darkness of evening. In several hours, beneath the belly of the plane would be a thick, tangled canopy comprising the harsh, unforgiving jungles of Colombia. A place where death could come in the blink of an eye, the swipe of a claw… or the pull of a trigger. Somewhere down in that green inferno was a young, innocent boy. Reaper would gun down a thousand evil men to save one innocent child, and Kane’s soul would regret nothing. As a rule, drug dealers didn’t deserve to keep sucking God’s good air. Drug dealers who also kidnapped little kids deserved it even less. Fuck ‘em all and let ’em eat bullets.

  The pilot’s voice snapped him back from his grim musings. “Hey, mate, you know they p
ut a bounty on your scalp, right?”

  Kane turned his head toward Oswald. Without really thinking about it, his right hand crept closer to the butt of his thigh-holstered Sig M17. He would shuck it in a heartbeat if he thought the merc pilot had betrayed them. “You looking to collect, buddy?”

  The smuggler chuckled. “’Course not, ya bloody fool. I ain’t no Judas. But I will admit, those cartel wankers are paying good. You must’ve really pissed them off.”

  “They might pay good,” Kane said. “But their money don’t spend in Hell.”

  Another chuckle from the Aussie. “Well, well, ain’t you one tough cookie. Of course, that won’t mean bugger-all if you catch a skull-splitter upside your noggin.”

  “Guess I’ll have to make sure I duck."

  “Sounds like a right proper plan you got there.”

  Kane decided the smuggler was just jaw-jacking to pass the time and allowed his muscles to relax. He was tired and on edge, which led him to expect the worse. Oswald was a mercenary, and mercs were all about the money, and the pilot had been paid well for his services. That didn’t automatically mean the Aussie hadn’t sold them out to the cartels for the bounty, but it lowered the odds. Plus Oswald seemed smart enough to realize that if he did well by them this time, they might very well use him again down the road. Lucrative repeat business trumped one-time payouts any day of the week in the merc world.

  They crossed into Colombia flying low and under the cover of darkness, the night as black as squid ink. Oswald seemed unfazed, hands light on the controls, piloting the plane by instruments only. For all Kane knew, the belly of the plane was scraping the tops of the trees, and they were moments away from a crash-and-burn death. He forced himself to relax and trust the Aussie flyboy to get them safely to their destination.

  To take his mind off the dangers of the nocturnal, below-radar insertion into hostile territory, Kane thought about Peters. By now the decoy operation with the SEALs would be over, one way or the other. He fired off a quick prayer to the gods of war that the big man had made it out alive. Not that he put much faith in prayer. Generally speaking, he only believed in the gun in his hand and the men—and women—who watched his six. Still, the occasional appeal to a higher power never hurt anyone.