King's Reign (The Xander King Series Book 4)

by Bradley Wright

  “Kyle,” Xander laughed. “Did Sam just make a pun?”

  Kyle looked back and smiled.

  “She did, but I’m not sure it was intentional.”

  “Right,” Sam said, “Because the two of you are the only ones with a sense of humor.”

  Xander shrugged, implying a yes.

  Suddenly everyone in the van was thrown forward into the seat in front of them. Kyle had slammed on the brakes in the middle of the highway, just in front of the airport.

  Xander recovered from the startling stop and squinted toward the terminal entrance.

  “What is it? What do you see?”

  “I just saw someone with a rifle over their shoulder walk into the airport.”

  Jack spoke up. “Could it be the embassy officers?”

  Sam handed Jack the sniper rifle. “You tell us.”

  Sam rolled down the window, and Jack took the rifle in his hands. He peered down the scope, searching the front parking area of the private end of the Mazatlán airport.

  “See anything?” Xander asked.

  “Unless the US Embassy sent a Mexican vigilante military outfit to pick up these girls, we got ourselves a problemo.”

  Xander scanned the area surrounding the building that the men were circling. There was no way they could drive safely through the entrance and out to the plane. They were going to have to improvise to keep the girls safe. He knew those men were there to take the girls, dead or alive.

  Xander pointed away from the building, toward the tarmac. “Kyle, see that spot in the fence back there? Where the gap is in the parked planes on the other side?”

  The runway was just beyond where he was pointing.

  Kyle put the SUV in reverse, swinging the front end toward the point Xander had motioned to in the fence. He gunned the engine, and the SUV sped forward.

  Kyle looked at Sam. “I knew I shouldn’t have listened to you and declined the rental insurance.”

  They all braced for impact with the tall chain-link fence.

  “Keep your heads down, girls!” Zhanna shouted.

  Just as Xander picked up his phone to dial his pilot, Bob was already calling him.

  Xander answered, “You see what we see, Bob?”

  “Already fired up the engines. I’ll be ready to head for the runway as soon as you shut the door.”

  “Good man. We’ll be coming in hot.”

  Bob chuckled. “Is there any other way you come in?”

  Xander ended the call and dug inside the bag of weapons as the SUV crashed through the fence. The girls screamed when the fence made a loud crashing sound as it gave way to the truck’s force.

  “There, on the left!” Sam shouted, pointing out Xander’s jet.

  Jack had been keeping an eye on the armed men through his rifle’s scope. “That got their attention, Kyle. We’d better be ready for a fight.”

  Kyle swerved toward the G6 as Zhanna helped Xander pass around some hardware. A pistol for each of the boys and a couple of M16s for her and Sam.

  “What’s the plan?” Kyle said.

  Xander press-checked his Glock 19 as he scanned the area in front of his jet.

  “Pull in sideways. Make the truck a barrier in front of the jet’s door. Zhanna, get the girls to the back of the plane and then get our back from the door opening. The rest of you, just help me hold them off from behind the truck. Any idea how many there are, Jack?”

  From behind the scope, “Two trucks just came flying through the entrance. I’d bet on eight, just to be safe.”

  “Eight?” Kyle said. “That won’t be nearly enough.”

  He sped for the entrance of their large private plane, then slammed on the brakes as he jerked the wheel to the left. The SUV skidded to a stop, exactly where Xander had requested. Zhanna flung the door open and rushed the girls up into the plane. José was waiting at the open door. There would be no waiting for any embassy officers. The girls would be flying private back to the States.

  Xander looked over his shoulder and saw the two SUVs Jack had mentioned, now speeding toward them. As he shuffled out the passenger door on the plane’s side, he readied his pistol.

  “Jack, take out the passengers. Leave the drivers, we can’t have the trucks smashing into the plane.”

  “Roger,” Jack said as he hoisted the sniper rifle to his shoulder and leaned around the corner of their SUV.

  “Sam,” Xander said. “How’d they know we were here?”

  To give Jack a bit of cover Sam stepped up onto the running board of the truck and fired a couple of times over the roof in the direction of the oncoming SUVs. She then furrowed her brow and flashed Xander a stern look.

  “Where do you bloody think, Xander? Where just about every problem we’ve had comes from with you. The girl.”

  Xander stepped up on the running board beside her, firing a couple of shots of his own.

  “Bullshit, Sam. That’s just your go-to excuse these days.”

  Sam fired a couple more times, and both she and Xander watched as the windshields of the oncoming trucks exploded in fairly quick succession. Jack had shot both passengers, just as Xander requested. The two trucks swerved a little, then skidded to a stop about twenty-five yards in front of them. From behind the team, Zhanna was joined by José, and from their elevated position the two of them continued firing their weapons, keeping the men from getting any good shots at the four of them.

  “You sure about that, Xander? How the hell else would they have known?”

  They both fired a couple more times, joining the sniper blasts from Jack and the pistol shots from Kyle.

  “I don’t know, Sam. But I’m telling you, it wasn’t Gabriela. There must be a mole.”

  “Oh, there’s a mole all right.” POP-POP-POP. “And she looks like J.Lo.”

  27

  Sherlock Holmes Has Nothing on Xander King

  A couple dozen more rounds from Reign’s weapons and the Mexican crew that was sent to stop Xander and company decided they weren’t getting paid enough for the job. The two passengers Jack had so graciously managed to put holes in with his sniper rifle probably helped influence that decision. Xander instructed his team just to leave the rented SUV where it sat. Sam said the CIA had people to clean up messes like that for them. Xander was beginning not to hate having a US agency there to deal with the things he never would.

  After their ascent took them over ten thousand feet, Xander made sure everyone was okay, then finished passing out waters and snacks to the four girls spread out on the couches at the back of his plane. Weary from the chaos, he walked back to his seat next to Sam. The jet engines hummed, and sunlight poured in from the great blue beyond just outside the windows.

  “Shall we finish our conversation?” Sam asked.

  “You mean your Spanish inquisition?” Xander wiped the sweat from his brow and let out a frustrated sigh. “Can I at least get a bourbon first?”

  Kyle walked up, three glasses full of ice in one hand, a bottle of King’s Ransom bourbon in the other. Sam and Xander each took a glass, and Kyle poured a couple of fingers into each one. Kyle clanked their glasses and sat down opposite of them. Zhanna, José, and Jack sipped from their own glasses a row back. They all were weary, but Xander could tell by the way Kyle looked at him that he felt Xander was the most out of sorts.

  “What?” Xander said to Kyle.

  “Why don’t you go take a hot shower, relax for a minute?”

  “Look that bad, do I?”

  Kyle shrugged. “You’ve looked better.”

  Xander took a sip of his bourbon, swirled the glass, and for a moment just wanted to change the subject.

  “How are sales?”

  He was asking Kyle about sales of King’s Ransom bourbon. Xander started the company almost immediately when he left the Navy SEALs. He never imagined it would take off like it had the past year. His horse with the same name as the brand, King’s Ransom, winning the Kentucky Derby had a lot to do with that. It was all kinds of good p
ublicity. The last five months, he had received only a few updates from Kyle about how the company was doing. Kyle would spout off a bunch of dollar figures, but that didn’t matter to Xander. He was going to be giving the profits to charity as it was. He didn’t need the money. He just loved having his own piece of Kentucky—home—everywhere he went. The thing he cared most about when it came to the bourbon company was that it was available all over the United States. That was where Xander drew his source of pride.

  “They are great,” Kyle said. “We are in over thirty states now. I know you like that.”

  Kyle knew Xander well. Twenty years of friendship will do that.

  “Now seriously, will you go clean up? We’ll try to get some more info while you do. That way we at least have some direction on where we should land.”

  “Los Angeles,” Sam said.

  “You have an update?” Xander asked, hope in his voice.

  “No, but we know they are headed to one of the airports there. Additionally, three of the four girls are from there. I figure that is a good place to start.”

  Xander glanced toward the back of the plane. The girls were huddled together, eating their food. All of them looked relieved to be safe, but there was a heaviness to their eyes. He looked back to Sam.

  “You think they’re going to be okay, Sam?”

  Sam took a drink, then paused to ponder the question.

  “I think they will be.”

  Xander couldn’t tell if she was placating him or if she really thought they would be okay. Either way, the notion of a shower began to sound better and better. But a nagging question hung in his mind.

  “I’m gonna go wash off, but do you really think that Gabriela tipped Francisco that we were there?”

  Sam rolled the ice in her glass with the tip of her finger.

  “I don’t know anything about this woman. And neither do you. But I told you that Bob said she wasn’t in the airport when he checked before we took off. Now, I didn’t see her get in the truck with those men, but she definitely didn’t stick around for a ride home.”

  Xander thought about it for a moment. Sam had a point. If Gabriela was who she said she was, and lived in California, why wouldn’t she stick around and fly back with them? Her story about why she was with Francisco didn’t make a lot of sense. And besides her, there weren’t many other options of who could be the mole. Then it hit him.

  “Have we found anything else out about this ‘dark’ FBI agent?” Xander said.

  “Only that she hasn’t been with the FBI long. Why? What else is there to know?” Sam said.

  “It just seems so strange that the FBI doesn’t know more about where she is right now.”

  “It does,” Sam agreed. “But when undercover, there are many times when an agent can’t come up for air.”

  “True, but okay . . . so she goes dark for a while, then turns up out of nowhere and only gives one little slice of information? And that’s it? There is a very high likelihood she is the mole. Can we get a picture of her?”

  Xander’s wheels were spinning.

  “Of course. What are you thinking, Xander?”

  He didn’t want to tell Sam what he was thinking. Because it would mean that Sam was right about Gabriela. And there were few things Xander hated more than admitting when Sam was right.

  “Go on then. Out with it?” Sam nagged.

  “Okay, so this FBI agent, she’s a she . . .”

  “Sherlock Holmes has nothing on Alexander King,” Sam interrupted.

  Xander rolled his eyes.

  “Can I finish?”

  “Please.”

  “So, she’s a she, and if she hasn’t been with the FBI long, she is probably also fairly young.”

  “Okay . . .”

  Sam was trying her best to give him a moment.

  Xander finished his thought. “So we have a young, female FBI agent from California, who is undercover, and she has a Latino name. Sound familiar?”

  “I don’t get it,” Kyle said.

  Sam picked up her phone.

  “You believe that Gabriela’s real name might be Eliza Sanchez.”

  Kyle had a lightbulb moment look on his face. “That’s why you want the picture of the FBI agent! You think Eliza Sanchez is Gabriela!”

  Sam put the phone to her ear and gave Kyle a condescending pat on the head. “Just don’t ever lose your looks, all right?”

  Zhanna leaned in from beside them. “But this would mean that FBI agent is compromised. Working for Francisco instead of US government.”

  Xander stood up.

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Who else could have tipped Francisco off that we were in Mazatlán? And that quickly?”

  “Does make a lot of sense,” Jack agreed.

  José nodded as well.

  The five of them listened to Sam leave a message for Marv. Xander began to feel like things were closing in on them. They didn’t have the answers they needed, but they needed them fast. They had managed to save four girls from a horrific future, but there was one more on her way to that peril at that very moment. And while Xander knew they would find Francisco and shut him down, he also knew that was the easy part. Keeping the young woman out of some monster’s hands while doing it would prove much more difficult. Their timing and precision would have to be far more delicate because of it.

  “I’m going to get cleaned up. By the time we drop these girls off in LA, we have got to know our next move. If not, we’re probably going to be too late.”

  “We’ll find her, Xander.” Sam tried to assure him. “Half the CIA is working on it.”

  Xander turned toward the back of the plane as he began to unbutton his sweat-drenched shirt.

  “Not sure that’s really a vote of confidence at this point.”

  28

  Born to Fight

  Hot water washed over Xander. He closed his eyes and let it massage his back. He rolled his head in circles a few times, trying to get his neck muscles to relax. He hoped it would lead to the same feeling in his mind. It did not. As much as he tried to clear it, his brain kept dialing up the conversation that Sam had started back in the SUV. Instead of fighting it, he let the images overload his senses, as they had many times since the day he slammed the blade of his knife into the side of his father’s neck.

  He thought after avenging the betrayal his father perpetrated against his family that he would stop having the dreams, but they still came, clear as the day it happened. It started as it always did. Replaying the day when he was a teenager, the day that changed everything. The vision was always the same. The black van would screech to a halt in front of his parents’ home, and two men wearing black ski masks, carrying assault rifles, would jump out and open fire. He watched as the bullets smacked into his mother’s body, until she lay on the ground, leaking blood, dead. Then Xander would look left and see what he thought were bullets entering his father. But they weren’t. Now in his memory he can clearly see what he couldn’t have known as a child. That the other gunman firing at his dad wasn’t using actual bullets at all. They were blanks.

  This was where the memory turned into a new movie in his mind. The scene no longer ended as it had that day; now it ended instead with his teenage self jamming a knife into his father’s throat.

  Xander rubbed the hot water over his face, and with both palms against the wall of the shower, he leaned full weight against it, and sobbed. His heart was still broken for his mother. His heart was still broken for his friend Sean, who died trying to help Xander in Syria. And his heart still hadn’t recovered from the loss of King’s Ransom, and it still longed for Natalie.

  They say that time heals all wounds. Xander supposed, as his tears mixed with the water from the shower, that in some ways that was true. But in his case, all those terrible things, mixed with what happened to Sam in the basement of Sanharib Khatib’s compound, were still there in the form of gaping wounds. Over the last five months, all those wounds had been doing was festeri
ng. And though he only showed his friends the face of the Xander he wanted them to see, inside he was on fire. And seeing what these men were doing to these young girls only poured gasoline on those flames.

  As he stood there, drying his eyes and calming his sadness, he realized that the revitalizing feelings that had crept back in from being back in action had nothing to do with feeling that adrenaline flowing again. Somehow being able once again to make some bad people pay for the terrible things they were doing was throwing water on the fire that burned inside him, if only for a brief moment. And it was right there in that plane, on the way to try to right some more wrongs, that he understood that this life of risking his own to hold people accountable for their actions was the very thing that would keep him sane. Whether he liked it or not, this was his purpose.

  He understood himself in that moment more than he had at any time since that life-altering day when his mother was murdered. Xander understood that everything in his life had led to this revelation. All the events in his life that led him first into the Navy, then to becoming a SEAL, and all the missions he carried out with Special Ops had rendered him the perfect man for the job. He realized that running into Sam all those years ago was no coincidence at all. She was the perfect person to help him on this journey. She was just as broken and yet just as perfectly trained as he was for this. And having Kyle around to keep him grounded were all perfect pieces to the puzzle that made his team exactly what they were supposed to be.

  Xander shut off the water and wrapped a towel around his waist. He opened the door of the shower and walked out with the steam. He stepped over to the sink, wiped away the fog from the mirror, and for the first time he truly recognized the man staring back at him. His eyes wandered over his machine of a body. A machine that he had been forging for years. He ran a finger over a scar along the outside of his shoulder. A flash of being shot in his bedroom as he protected Natalie played in his mind. He then ran his fingers over the scar on his stomach, and a flash of that shotgun blast on the back of his yacht sent the illusion of pain to that very spot.