by Brent Towns
“Well, now that we’ve penetrated, let’s get down to business.”
“Working on it,” Kane replied, drawing his Sig. Time to punish the sentry for his error.
There was just one guard. He stepped out of the booth as the Hummer rolled up. Kane lowered the tinted window, and before the man could react to the abrupt realization that it wasn’t Razor behind the wheel, Kane shot him point-blank in the face. Blood splattered the guardhouse as the corpse toppled to the ground with everything below his nose mangled into red mush. The cartel might cover the funeral but it for damn sure would be closed casket.
One down, only God knew how many more to go.
Time to kick the bloodbath into high gear.
There were coke-slinging, kid-stealing dirtbags who needed to die.
No point in keeping them waiting.
“Buckle up,” Kane rasped. He aimed the Hummer at the front door of the mansion and stomped on the gas. Shredded turf erupted from beneath the tires as the vehicle surged forward.
The sudden rev of the engine alerted nearby soldiers. As the speeding vehicle tore across the immaculately landscaped lawn and roared up the front steps of the villa, they peppered the Hummer with bullets. Kane heard the thwack-thwack-thwack of slugs tattooing the metalwork and flinched as a round nicked his ear.
The stone steps acted as a ramp and launched the Hummer into the air like a two-ton missile. Glass and wood exploded in all directions as the vehicle jumped right through the front walls of the mansion. A thick cloud of dust and debris roiled into the air.
The Reaper warriors wasted no time. They immediately exited the crashed Hummer, glass crunching under their boots, and whipped their HK416s into play.
A cartel soldier materialized through the dusty haze and Kane immediately dispatched him with a quick burst that vaporized everything above his eyebrows. Before the dead guy even hit the floor, they were on the move, carbines tight to shoulders, seeking more targets.
A spiral staircase twisted its way up to the second floor of the villa. A guard appeared on the upper landing, leaning over the railing with an AK-47. Ferrero fired first, chopping ragged holes in the man’s torso with a six-round salvo. The soldier jerked and twitched in a spastic death-dance and then toppled over the railing, his short dive ending in a wet crunch as he face-planted on the tile floor.
“On me!” Kane commanded, racing up the stairs. He didn’t look back to see if the others were behind him. They would follow him right to the gates of Hell if that’s where he led them.
As he hit the landing, he spotted a single door to his right. He also spotted a guard posted outside the door, clamping down on the trigger of his AK. The sentry missed the mark, bullets flying wide to chew into the wall. Kane punished the man’s poor marksmanship with a burst to the guts that tracked upward to unzip the sentry from navel to neck. The man went down with the life ripped right out of him.
Kane stepped over the corpse with less thought than he would have given a swatted fly and kicked in the door. They entered the master bedroom in combat crouches, Cara swinging right while Axe went left. Ferrero turned and took a knee in the doorway, facing the hallway, ready to defend their six.
Some part of Kane’s brain subconsciously noted the opulent luxury of the room, but his warrior mind focused on Miguel Sanchez and Jeremy Reardon. He had come here to rescue a kid, not admire the drapes.
The drug lord had Jeremy standing on the edge of a king-sized waterbed, using him as a shield as he kept a stainless-steel Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum pressed against the kid’s temple.
“Hiding behind a little kid,” Kane said. “Just like the gutless coward you are.”
“Sticks and stones and all that mierda,” Sanchez sneered. “Drop your guns or—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Reaper interrupted. “Or you’ll blow his brains out. I’ve heard it all before.”
“Whatever you’re gonna do, Reaper, do it fast,” Axe urged. “We don’t have time to jerk around.”
Kane noted the hammer on Sanchez’s double-action revolver wasn’t cocked, meaning it would take nearly ten pounds of pressure to fire the revolver and put a bullet through Jeremy’s brain. A mistake on Sanchez’s part, because if Kane could find a way to get a kill-shot into the drug lord, his death spasms wouldn’t generate enough force to fire the Magnum.
Kane could see a small section of Sanchez’s face as the drug lord peered around Jeremy’s head, his right eye visible just above the top of the kid’s earlobe. A tempting target, but if he was even slightly off, he would shoot an innocent boy in the face. But if he didn’t find a way to kill Sanchez fast, the room would be swarmed with guards, and it would be game over.
As if to confirm the urgency, Cara hissed, “Reaper, we’ve gotta do something right now, or we’re dead meat.”
Jeremy stood frozen on the bed, not daring to struggle or squirm with the muzzle of the .357 Magnum tucked tight to his temple. He looked at Kane with fear in his eyes and mouthed the words, Help me, mister.
“I’ll kill him!” Sanchez warned. His gun-hand remained rock steady. Clearly, the drug lord was no stranger to tense, violent situations.
“You’ve got one chance to put down the gun, give me the boy, and walk out of here alive,” Kane growled, knowing the numbers were running down fast. “Because I’m not walking out of here without the kid.”
“You’re not walking out of here at all,” Sanchez retorted. “My men will be here any second and cut you all to pieces.”
“Guess that means I don’t have much time. Last chance, asshole. Put down the gun.”
“Or what?”
Kane bared his teeth in a wolfish smile. Enough of this bullshit. He had learned long ago that when you only had one option, you took it. He surreptitiously used his thumb to flick the HK’s fire selector switch to semi-automatic mode. “Or I’ll kill you.”
“Ha!” Sanchez mocked. “How do you plan on pulling that trick off?”
“Glad you asked.”
Kane hit the trigger.
Jeremy Reardon flinched as the bullet split the top of his ear.
Miguel Sanchez did a whole lot more than flinch as the slug passed through Jeremy’s ear and drilled a hole in the drug lord’s face right below his eye. The 5.56mm death-dealer tore a devastating channel through his head until it slammed against the rear skull-bone and exited in a bloody burst of brain matter.
The impact punched Sanchez backwards like he had been walloped by a wrecking ball. The unfired .357 fell from his hands as he bounced off the wall and slid to the floor, what remained of his face slackening in death.
Jeremy fell onto the bed, crying out in pain and clutching at his bloody ear. His eyes were saucer-wide and full of tears. “You shot me, mister!”
“Yeah,” Kane said. “Sometimes you gotta lose some skin to save your ass.”
“We’ve got company!” Ferrero announced. “The welcome party has arrived.”
Kane heard enemy boots pounding up the spiral staircase. Time to get the hell out of here.
He pulled the pin on a fragmentation grenade as he moved toward the door, holding it in his right fist while he hefted the HK in his left. The Sig still rode in its holster as backup if the time came. Or more likely, when the time came. Because Kane had no doubt that if they wanted to have any chance of getting out alive, they would need to unleash every bullet they had.
Unleash their inner savagery.
No quarter. No mercy.
The only way to play this game.
Ferrero opened fire as Kane leaned out and tossed the fragger down the hall. The lead soldier went down with Ferrero’s burst drilling his chest. The grenade bounced off the body and ricocheted toward the next guy in line. The gunman scrambled backwards, crashing into his comrades behind him, creating a domino effect. They tried to retreat in a cursing, yelling, panicking melee of flailing limbs. Then the grenade detonated and turned them into a dying, moaning, screaming mess of shredded meat.
“Stay close,�
�� Kane said to Jeremy. He patted Ferrero on the shoulder, and they all moved out of the bedroom, he and Ferrero rapid-walking down the hall side by side, with Axe and Cara bringing up the rear. Jeremy stayed glued to his six like a shadow.
They slipped through the slick swath of blood and guts spread everywhere and started down the spiral staircase, but a burst of auto-fire from below forced them to pull back. Splinters chipped from the railing, and a ricocheting slug grazed Jeremy’s side, causing him to cry out in pain.
Kane plucked another grenade from his webbing and tossed it over the rail, down into the cluster of enemy gunners. The explosion decimated them, pulpy red chunks flying everywhere. A blown-off head tumbled across the floor like a lumpy bowling ball and came to a stop at the base of the stairs.
Kane quickly checked the boy’s wound. Superficial, nothing more. The bullet had merely grazed him, peeling off a strip of flesh and leaving behind a bloody trench. To a ten-year-old kid, it probably hurt like crazy, but he would have to suck it up. “You’ll live,” he said. Well, maybe, he silently added, turning his full attention back to the lethal task of getting them out of here alive.
More troops poured into the mansion through the hole in the wall created by the crashing Hummer. Kane knew it was now or never. “All right, boys and girls,” he said into his com. “Time to shoot some motherfuckers.”
“Rock ‘n’ roll,” Axe snarled. “Hell, yeah!”
Kane plucked a pair of flashbangs from his webbing and tossed them over the railing. As soon as the grenades detonated with their 180-decibel thunder and one million candela blast of blinding light, the team was on the move, racing down the stairs while the soldiers below were deaf, blind, and incapacitated.
As soon as Kane’s boots touched down on the main floor, his HK hunted for targets. The debilitating effects of a flashbang could last as little as five seconds, and he wanted to make sure the threats were put down before they regained their senses.
Adrenalin burned through his veins as Kane cut loose with the carbine and sent 5.56mm hornets buzzing toward the soldiers staggering around the Hummer with blood trickling from their ear canals. The guns of Axe, Ferrero, and Cara joined him a half-second later.
Dozens of red-hot projectiles nailed the cartel henchmen where they stood, scything through their bodies and sending them to meet their Maker. The twitching, shuddering corpses bounced off the Hummer like epileptic victims and corkscrewed to the ground in scarlet sprays.
More soldiers appeared, and Kane kept his finger on the trigger, tearing them apart. The others followed suit, taking on targets as they rushed toward their position. They didn’t make every shot count—damn near impossible on full-auto—but they didn’t miss much either. Bullets drilled into bad guys, and a bloody haze filled the air. Living enemies turned into dead enemies, just the way Reaper liked them.
Kill ’em all. Right now it was their only chance.
Kane swapped magazines and, with a scared-to-death Jeremy sticking close, led the way through the carnage. The sharp, acidic stench of death bit into his nostrils. Over in the corner, a dying-but-not-quite-dead-yet soldier screamed in pain, trembling fingers clutching at a belly wound. Kane expended a bullet to end the man’s misery.
As the team moved outside, they found more enemy troops out on the front lawn scurrying about like confused beetles. Clearly, Sanchez had put his faith in the quantity of his soldiers rather than the quality. A mistake that cost him his life—and would cost them theirs.
All four Reaper warriors opened fire and saturated the kill-zone with hot slugs, sending the enemy soldiers to eternal damnation one by one.
The HK416s ripped the targets to bits as they were caught in a crisscross cyclone of lethal lead. Blood sprayed from bullet-torn flesh as men dropped, dead or dying, blown to gibbets by Team Reaper’s full-auto hellstorm.
Kane performed another magazine exchange. The others followed suit. Jeremy watched them, one hand pressed to his clipped ear, the other holding his scorched ribs. With their weapons topped off, the team did a quick search for survivors, heads on swivels. They found one in the garage—the last man standing, as it were—and Kane smoked him. The burst of auto-fire slashed across his chest in spurts of red and he crashed to the ground, leaving the Sanchez estate undefended.
Kane sent Cara and Ferrero back inside to collect all the cell phones, computers, and files they could find. Axe helped himself to a Land Rover sitting in the garage, tucking Jeremy inside while he checked out the engine. Meanwhile, Kane fired up the sat-phone to give Thurston the news.
She answered on the first ring, which let him know she’d been waiting for the call. “Thurston.”
Since she didn’t waste any time with preambles, neither did Kane. “It’s Reaper,” he said. “You want the good news or the bad news?”
“I could use some good news right about now.”
“We have Jeremy Reardon.”
He heard her sigh in relief. “My God, that is good news. I’ll notify Traynor.” She paused, then asked, “Okay, what’s the bad news?”
“Sanchez is dead.”
Silence for a moment, followed by, “Did it have to be done?”
“If you wanted the boy alive, yeah.”
“Then I’m good with it.”
That surprised Kane. “Really? Thought you’d be pissed.”
“A young boy is alive, and a drug lord is dead,” Thurston said. “I call that an acceptable outcome. God knows it could have been a lot worse.”
“What about Sanchez’s connection to the terrorists?”
“Slick managed to hack into his offshore accounts. I’ll spare you all the technical details, but he was able to follow the money trail—just under three million—to a shell corporation in New York City. He managed to dig up the name and address of the guy behind the shell. If we’re right, he’s living on a houseboat in New Jersey.”
“You think it’s Johnny?”
“That’s what we’re betting on.”
“I’d love to go knock on his door, but we’re a long way from home.”
“Brick and Traynor are still in New York. They can handle it.”
“Traynor may not be willing to walk away from Reardon,” Kane reminded her.
“If he won’t leave his buddy to stop the mastermind behind five terror attacks on U.S. soil that resulted in thousands of deaths, you won’t have to fire him because I’ll do it myself,” Thurston replied with a sharp edge to her voice.
“Copy that,” he said. “We’ll wrap things up here and head for home.”
“Safe travels. See you on the other side.”
Kane hung up as Cara and Ferrero returned with a satchel full of laptops and cell phones. Slick would have a field day cracking all their electronic secrets. There was a good chance that those devices contained the intel that would lead to their next assignment. Because this war never ended. But they needed to exfil from this mission before they could worry about the next one.
Axe closed the hood and gave him a thumbs up. “She’s got gas and oil, so we’re good to go.”
“Perfect,” Kane said. “This place sucks. Let’s go home.”
Chapter 13
Angel of Mercy Hospital
New York City
Traynor sat in the chair next to Mike Reardon’s hospital bed, flipping through an entertainment magazine he’d found in the bottom drawer of the nightstand. It was so old there was an article covering the wedding of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston.
An NYPD police officer who barely looked old enough to shave was stationed out in the hall, the first line of defense if Omega showed up to finish the job. If that happened, Traynor had no doubt that the assassin would go through the cop like a lion going through a lamb. But no way on God’s green earth would the killer get through him.
Reardon was sleeping, momentarily free from the pain of his wounds thanks to a morphine drip. He surfaced from the narcotic fog periodically, and the first thing he always asked was, “Did they find Jeremy
yet?” It hurt Traynor’s heart every time he had to shake his head and tell his friend no.
His cell phone vibrated, the screen lighting up in the dimness of the room. He looked at the number and saw that it was headquarters calling. He swallowed hard, wondering if this was the call he had been dreading, the call where Thurston told him to not bother coming back.
He walked over to the window that looked out on the city, down at the roads that were usually filling up with traffic at this time of the morning. Today they were mostly barren due to the threat of another terror attack. Keeping his voice low to avoid waking Reardon, he pressed the button to answer the call. “Traynor.”
“It’s Thurston,” the general said. “We need to talk.”
Traynor sighed. “Yeah, I figured this was coming. Just thought Reaper would at least do it face to face.”
“Reaper is in Colombia, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“And this can’t wait,” Thurston said.
“Yeah, I get it.”
“How’s Reardon?”
Traynor glanced over his shoulder at his sleeping friend. “He was kneecapped and cut to ribbons, but he’s hanging in there. He’s tough. He’s asleep right now, so I guess this is as good a time as any to have this conversation.”
“Well, when he wakes up,” Thurston said, “you can give him some good news.”
“What’s that?”
“They got his boy.”
So much relief rushed through him that he nearly dropped the phone. He fumbled it back to his ear and said, “Are you serious? Tell me you’re serious.”
“I’m serious,” Thurston said. “They found him at Sanchez’s estate.”
“Is he okay?”
“Missing a chunk of his ear and a bullet grazed his ribs, but he’s fine.”
“Thank God.”
“Thank God if you want, just don’t forget to thank your teammates when you see them again.”
She means ‘if’ I see them again, Traynor thought to himself. Aloud he asked, “What about Sanchez? Dead or alive?”
