The Target

by Roger Weston

  Jake stopped himself from laughing in her face. She was a nut, but she had a point. If he left, he probably would look guilty. It was an ugly thought, but Jake let her arms go.

  “Do you know them?” Jake said. “Do you know the Gitano?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I hate you. I hope you get killed.”

  “I hope you’re not lying. You’re going to have to live with yourself.”

  Unsteadily, he walked out of camp without looking back. He headed up into the mountains, but felt miserable, exhausted, and devastated. Every cell in his body begged him to quit, to rest, to stop. He put one foot in front of the other.

  He was going to do something that he really shouldn’t be doing at a time like this.

  CHAPTER 23

  After Jake left Rivera’s mine, he snowshoed along the spine of the mountain bearing the extra weight of the package that he’d gotten from the miner. The wind shoved and pushed and kicked. He’d never given his leg wound a chance to heal properly, and now it was getting even. He felt weak and light-headed, and he doubted the altitude had anything to do with it. His pulse raced, and the pain flared up until it felt like a hot coal. Other than his leg, heat was not a problem. Freezing gale winds now barreled across the island with fresh violence. Every step was a battle against his own weakness, against his pain and misery. Due to blood loss and pain, climbing up to the mine had taken all he had and then some.

  The high ridge gave him a clear view of the Southern Ocean, but seventy-knot winds buffeted him constantly. His fingers were numb, and he kept them moving, clenching his fist over and over again. Snow fanned across the island, but the snow was light and the winds wicked. Several times he collapsed and barely had the strength to stand up again.

  Willowaws knocked him down and beat him up. Snow got in his clothes. A gust bowled him over and he slid down a steep slope. He went over thirty-foot cliff.

  Dead and gone—the thought flashed through his brain.

  What saved him was the deep snow and the steep slope which combined to lessen the impact. Nevertheless, he was in shock that he was still alive. For a minute, he was afraid to breathe or move for fear of sudden death. First, he dared to move an inch, then two. Then he risked breathing. Finally, he stood up. Regaining his previous position forced him to reach down deep for inner reserves of strength. Hyperventilating with adrenaline, he re-adjusted his pack as if it contained fragile goods. He crawled and staggered. Tears of pain gathered in his eyes.

  His ankle was twisted, so now lifting his snowshoe was raw and humbling as the ankle reacted. He felt his leg would collapse because he was toiling up a slope, which exaggerated the weakness and vulnerability. Every step threatened to twist it again.

  When he heard the helicopter, he ducked down for a few minutes, but it never came into view. This was a huge relief because the mountains were barren snow and ice. If he was spotted by a pilot or his gunner, Jake was finished. There was nowhere to hide.

  His feet were numb, which may have helped with pain. He hoped the numbness would crawl up to the ankle. Jake collapsed and couldn’t go on. His entire leg was inflamed and swollen—devoid of strength. All strength drained out of him.

  Rest tempted him. He was drifting into peaceful sleep. He heard the lonely screech of an albatross. Somehow it spoke to him. He realized that exhaustion was an illusion and he could continue. He had not yet found his limits. He could rise up and go on.

  He staggered on for a mile with strength he did not have. When he collapsed again and couldn’t get up, his fingers had no feeling, and crawling didn’t help. He hoped his fingers would work when he needed them. As he crawled, his knees dug a trench in the snow. The inside of his drysuit was wet and slippery with blood. He could not see it because morning light was still faint, but he guessed he was probably leaving a blood trail in the snow. He felt drool freezing to his chin.

  The dominant primitive beast swelled within his body and fought for survival as does a wild thing when a threat approaches in a hostile land. At the same time, it was the spirit of dominion that lifted him above his bleak circumstances and misery. The brutal toil and the weakness drove him on to greater effort. It was in the wind. Adversity fueled him. He accepted the pain and gave thanks for it. In his primitive world, misery brought hidden opportunities and spilled glory on the mountain.

  In time Jake spotted tracks and followed them a while until he saw a cave. He approached the cave as slowly as a crawling glacier. To cover fifty yards took him twenty minutes. He moved so slowly to approach silently in the snow. Fortunately, the wind helped a little for sound cover. Finally, he stood at the brink and looked around the corner.

  There he saw the sniper, sitting twenty feet back in a stone-hewn cave, sitting by a fire and cleaning his rifle. He wore a white stocking cap and a white jacket.

  The sniper was cleaning what appeared to be a rare SAR-21 Singaporean assault rifle, but Jake was looking at his back and didn’t have a good sight line. Jake knew his weapons because years ago his step-father had made him learn the specifications of dozens of rifles and handguns as part of his training. The sniper rifle was set aside. It looked like a Unique Alpine TPG-1.

  Jake thought of the dead sailor and scientist. He rose up and broke into a run toward the assassin.

  The killer evidently heard the footsteps because he rose up and twisted around, aiming the SAR-21. He got off one shot in semi-auto mode, but Jake slammed into him as he fired. Jake slammed him so hard that they both flew over the fire and landed on a rough stone floor. The gun clattered free.

  Evidently, being attacked activated the sniper’s adrenaline because he immediately gained his knees, produced a box-cutter knife, and dove at his attacker. He flew at his foe and slashed the razor at Jake’s neck.

  Jake welcomed him with a fist in the face—so hard that his white stocking cap came off revealing salt-and-pepper hair. It was a young, gaunt-faced man of late thirties who had gone prematurely gray. The razor missed Jake’s jugular by half an inch.

  The sniper rolled on the cave floor. He got up and waved the box cutter back and forth as if he was some kind of martial arts master.

  The man cursed at him in Spanish.

  Jake kicked his knee, a move that saved his life because he had to lean back to kick and at the same moment, the sniper took another neck swipe with the razor.

  The knee shot was just a glancing blow, but it was enough to cause the sniper to yelp in pain and collapse to the floor. As he tried to get back up, Jake kicked him in the face.

  The sniper landed on his back. He rolled over and jumped back up. He was still holding the box cutter, but now he was furious.

  He lashed out at Jake with a gloved hand, the blade whispering past his face. Jake backed away. The killer smiled and slashed at Jake’s mid section. Jake backed off again. After the counter-swipe, Jake rushed inside the slash and stopped the arm to immobilize the weapon. This placed the knife close to him, but it could not hurt him because the killer couldn’t move it.

  In the same instant, Jake delivered a web-hand strike to his throat. The sniper dropped the weapon, but somehow he made a fast, violent movement and got free.

  He grabbed a meaty driftwood stick from the fire and swung the red-hot end at Jake. He lashed back and forth with the smoking stick. The stick had not been in the fire long so it was still very stout. It was two inches thick and two feet long.

  The killer lashed out with a vicious head shot, but Jake ducked under the strike, delivering a side thrust kick to the side of the attacker’s knee. The knee collapsed and the sniper hit stone floor face first. His face rolled over on top of the red hot piece of fire wood, and Jake heard the hissing of burning skin on his cheek. He rolled the wrong way and even more of his face was seared by the red-hot coals.

  Jake leapt on his back to subdue him. Unfortunately for the sniper, it pinned his face against the smoking club. He screamed in agony.

  Jake yanked the stick out and put it by hi
s face. “Do not struggle.”

  “My knee,” he said. “It’s shattered.”

  Jake patted him down for weapons, removing a combat knife and a handgun. He got a rope from the man’s pack.

  “Get that first aid kit out of there,” the man ordered. “You need to treat the burn immediately.”

  “I’ll treat it, all right,” Jake said. He palm smashed him in the side of the face.

  The scream was blood curdling. The sniper said, “If you’re going to kill me, just get it over with.”

  “If you insist.” Jake got the SAR-21 and put the barrel to the back of his head. “Are you ready to die today?”

  “Just do it.”

  “I think I’ll do a body shot. Then you’ll die slow.” Jake pressed the barrel against his lower back.

  “You dirty scum!”

  “Get ready,” Jake said. “Three-two-one.”

  The sniper squealed in anticipation of being shot in the liver.

  “I don’t know why I hesitated,” Jake said. “Let’s try again.”

  The sniper broke under the strain. With his arms and upper body, he lunged for Jake’s ankle, but Jake kicked him in the face.

  Jake shook his head. “I thought I told you be still. You better listen better.”

  Jake kneeled down and used the rope to bind him. “I have something I have to do,” Jake said. “I’m going to have to leave you here for a few hours.”

  “You can’t leave me here. I’ll freeze.”

  “It’ll be good for your face,” Jake said. “You need to cool off.”

  The sniper started in with a vitriolic rant, cursing up a storm so foul that even the icicles went cold. Jake gagged him.

  “That’s better. Maybe I’ll be back later. I have to the Gitano a visit.”

  The sniper squirmed around on the cold stone cave floor and tried to speak, but couldn’t because of the gag.

  CHAPTER 24

  Jake hiked onward, but it was tough going on steep, snowy slopes. The vigorous movements of fighting had set his leg wound back a few days. The bleeding had resumed and the pain was worse than ever. He hiked for a hour and progress came slowly in the deep snow. He left bloodstained snow in his trail. Finally, he collapsed in weakness.

  After a couple of minutes, he gained his feet and stood like a fragile reed. He shook in the breeze. He almost fell over. He lifted his show-shoes and their burden. He worked slowly so that he didn’t collapse again, but lifting his legs he felt the muscles swell as blood pulsed through them, blood that didn’t reach his feet, except maybe on the outside. The muscles swelled in his back and in his abs. He stood triumphantly in angry gale winds that swarmed around him, pushing him to the edge of another fall.

  He slogged on for miles. Every step was an achievement, literally paid for in blood and sweat. His limbs shook with weakness, but he put no confidence in his own strength. There was a greater strength beyond the second wind, a strength born of faith and boldness, a strength born of the spirit that transcended the weary flesh.

  He staggered over the winter landscape until he stood tall, wavering and teetering on the ridge high above the cargo ship, which was in front of the tarp that hid the cruise ship. A dead man was roped to the crane, which was extended out over the bow above the anchors. Jake used the grappling hook and tied the rope around his chest for safety. He lodged the hook between two big stones rising from the snow and ice. It took a long time because his fingers weren’t working. Opening the box he’d gotten from Rivera, he carefully planted a line of explosive charges along the ridge at the peak of the avalanche chute above the cargo ship’s anchorage.

  The snowpack shifted beneath him. Jake couldn’t breathe for a moment. He was too terrified to move. Then slowly, an inch at a time, he began to crawl, shifting his position, but staying out on the overhang of snow and ice, moving inches closer to the edge for a better view.

  Morning’s first light rose and revealed the living dead, and he tried in vain to do the work of the living. He peed his pants and felt warmth on his thigh that quickly turned cold. With his binoculars, he watched the crew loading the platinum for over an hour. Then he saw the Gitano board the cargo ship. Jake got up and snowshoed down the slope away from the crest. After he was well clear of the danger, he twisted the handle on the primitive detonator.

  Nothing happened.

  Rivera’s mining detonator had failed.

  Placing the grappling hook between the big stones again, he paid out the safety rope. He crawled back to the explosives to see where the connection was parted.

  The helicopter beat around the point and came right toward him. Jake reached for his pistol, but his numb fingers fumbled the weapon. When it hit the packed snow at his feet, it slid off the cliff and dropped hundreds of feet, landing by the cargo ship far below.

  Jake waved to the helicopter and then put his hands in his jacket pocket. There was nothing else he could do. They’d caught him in a totally exposed position on a barren, snow-covered ridge. The bird swung up, hovering barely thirty feet off the ridge, and the side door opened. Jake feared that the entire ridge would give way from the downwash and vibrations, but it held. He made eye contact with the gunman, who smiled as he shifted the selector switch on his M-16 and raised the gun.

  From his pocket, Jake withdrew the World War Two grenade that he’d gotten from Rivera, pulled the pin, and lobbed it into the open bay door. The gunner’s face was seized by a hand of terror and twisted into a mask of fear. He threw down his gun and dove for the grenade as Jake dove to the ground for cover and crawled to get away from the edge.

  A fireball enveloped the chopper, and a loud blast was joined by a concussion wave that Jake felt through to his bones. The attacker fell from sight. Somehow, the overhanging snow cornice held fast to the ridge, so Jake reversed his course and rapidly crawled to the edge just in time to see the burning helicopter land on the main deck of the cargo ship far below. The impact was followed by a secondary explosion that was bigger than the first had been. A wave of fire hit the wheelhouse like a sledgehammer, blowing the roof off. The concussion wave hit the steep mountainside and had nowhere to go but up.

  The edge gave way beneath Jake. He plunged. Jake free fell. He realized he was about to die with the Gitano.

  The rope went tight and almost ripped him in half.

  Jake endured the impact. He caught his breath as he lay against a slope of ice.

  As he lay on a steep, freshly-exposed mountainside, he saw only the top of the cargo ship’s wheelhouse emerging from the avalanche that had buried the ship underwater.

  An hour later, Jake watched from the high peak as a Argentinean patrol boat soared into the cove, gunner’s mates on deck and ready for action. The surviving criminals shot back, but a sniper on the patrol boat took several of them out. A helicopter swooped in, but this was an Argentinean patrol helicopter. As it hovered over the cruise ship, ropes were thrown out and commandos slid down, storming the ship and finishing off all resistance of the murderous crime family.

  CHAPTER 25

  Within two hours, the Royal Navy warship HMS Vigilance arrived.

  While walking the decks of the hijacked cruise ship, which was spared by the avalanche, Jake talked to some of the dazed survivors. One of them warned him that that Captain Dawson wanted to see him and that Jake might be in some trouble. He decided it was a good time to let the land swallow him up, so he started back up into the hills, but he was promptly intercepted by a British sailor with a naturally hoarse voice and an assault rifle.

  “You need to come with me, sir.”

  Jake was taken by skiff to the Royal Navy ship HMS Vigilance. Armed sailors led him to the saloon where an officer gestured to a cushioned bench. The saloon was a small nook, but it was new and clean, which also described the officer’s uniform. The man wore a black navy jacket and a captain’s hat. From his expression, Jake sensed trouble

  “I am Captain Dawson,” he said. He spoke in a serious tone and studied Jake like a pro
secutor studied a defendant upon entering a courtroom for a show trial.

  “Jake Sands.”

  Dawson nodded. “Welcome aboard. I understand you almost lost some fingers.”

  “Your doctor soaked them in warm water. He says I’ll be alright.”

  “Good.” Dawson glanced at a yellow legal pad with lots of notes on it. “I see he cleaned your gunshot wound, too. There’s a few things I need to ask you about.”

  “Shoot.”

  Dawson looked up quickly and frowned at Jake. “The reason I’ve called you here is that I’ve already talked with one of your shipmates, a girl by the name of Ava Hackworth.”

  “That can’t be good.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “She’s had a lot to say lately.”

  “Yes, but some of the things she said are of concern to me. By the way, do you know who the Spaniards were?”

  “Killers. Spanish Mafia. Moroccan cutthroats.”

  “They are Acosta Mafia. Most of them were killed by the avalanche, but there were a few survivors.”

  “Isn’t that wonderful.”

  “Did you know any of them?”

  “No, sir.”

  “According to this … uh, Ava you were working with them. You conspired to kill your own crewmen.” The tone was neutral, as if he’d just recommended a good insurance agent. Jake figured it was all an act. Behind his smooth act, Dawson probably figured he was talking to a cockroach.

  “She’s lying.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Look, you’ve been interviewing the cruise ship passengers all day. Maybe some of them told you about me. I went on their ship, but as an intruder, not a friend. I was trying to find out who the Acostas were because they’d just killed some of our people.”

  “Yes.” He studied his legal pad. “A few did mention you being chased off their ship by guard dogs. Some of your other crewmen have vouched for your character, so maybe we can dismiss the statements of this Ava Hackworth.”