“There goes Xander, right there,” Sam pointed out.
She was crouched beside Jack on the roof of the Shore Hotel looking through a spotting scope.
“You sure about that?” Jack peered through the sniper rifle’s scope. “He wasn’t wearin’ a hat earlier.”
“That’s him. I can tell by the way he runs.”
“The two of you is thick as thieves, huh?”
“We are,” she answered. Then she moved her scope from Xander running along the pier, up in front of him to the second level of the restaurant. “There is a man on the—”
“I see him,” Jack broke in. “He’s got a gun, but I don’t—”
“Take him out!”
“Now hang on, he ain’t gonna use it. Not yet anyway.”
“He thinks it’s his own man.” Sam followed what Jack was saying.
“That’s right. Ole X must have taken that hat off one of their men. Good thinkin’.”
“Shoot him anyway, Jack. Xander thinks he is on his own right now. Let’s send him a message letting him know that he’s not.”
Xander pulled the cap down low over his eyes and jogged for the end of the pier. If whoever just checked in over the earpiece didn’t like what he saw, there was no way around it: Xander knew he was a dead man. About halfway across the empty stretch of planked wood, the ocean now under him, he heard a crack from somewhere behind him. Instinct kicked in, and even though it would have been too late, he dove to the ground. An automatic response to the sound of a rifle being shot. But a smile quickly grew across his face when he looked up and saw a man drop from the second story of the restaurant.
He wasn’t alone after all.
Xander jumped to his feet and sprinted for the restaurant ahead of him on his right. After stepping around the man Jack just took out, he sidled up to the wall, next to one of the many oversized windows in the restaurant. The windows were of no help to Xander. He couldn’t see a thing inside. But he knew if someone was in there, they could easily see him. A cool ocean breeze blew across his face. With his back to the wall he looked up in the direction of where the sniper rifle must have fired from. He knew Jack was watching, so with his fingers held up against the dark wood of the building behind him, he counted down.
3 . . .
2 . . .
1 . . .
Xander opened the door of the restaurant, and just to his left a bullet shattered a window and the shadow of a man fell to the floor. He knew Jack would have his night-vision scope on, and clearly it was working. Another man in the lower level heard the crash of broken glass, and when his shadow passed in front of a window at the back of the restaurant, Xander squeezed the trigger on the AR-15, and the flashes from the muzzle showed a man dropping to the ground.
“What the hell is going on over there?” A man’s voice came through Xander’s earpiece.
David Tarter.
Xander did his best to clear the bottom floor of the restaurant, but there were a lot of places to hide. Booths, tables, a bar—men could be anywhere.
“Rodgers, you listening to me? What is going on over there?”
It was Xander’s turn to speak.
“Rodgers isn’t feeling so hot. He’ll have to get back to you on that one, boss.”
“King,” Tarter said with disdain. “You just don’t know how to mind your own business, do you?”
Xander moved through the swinging door into the kitchen and gave it a once-over. All was empty.
“What the hell are you doing, Tarter? Everyone knows you’re an asshole, but trafficking young girls? That’s low, even for a dirtbag like you.”
“Oh yeah? We all can’t be choir boys and live off Daddy’s money, King. Speaking of daddies, I heard your old man murdered your mommy. That must have been a real kick in the teeth.”
Xander stopped dead in his tracks. He didn’t need motivation to save Carrie and take out Tarter, but hearing David taunt him with the murder of his own mother made his eyes glaze over. That primal feeling that came over him back on that mountain in Sinaloa burned up the back of his spine. He tapped the release button on his rifle, ejecting the magazine from its well. He felt for the top round with his index finger as he popped in a fresh mag, struck the bolt release with the palm of his left hand, and walked back out into the dining room, heading straight for the stairs.
Ready to hunt.
“Did you happen to hear how that story ended, Tarter?”
Silence.
Xander ascended the stairs.
“They say those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
“Keep talking, King. I can’t wait to shut your smart-ass mouth, once and for all.”
Xander turned the corner and sprayed the man coming for him with a string of bullets. His heart rate was steady, his breathing was normal, but his senses were tingling. He felt like a man in his element. For whatever reason, he was meant to do this. Mentally and physically, he could feel that now, more than ever, that he was uniquely qualified to be the man who fought for others. Now that he was no longer just fighting for himself, that much was clear.
This was his calling.
“Men much better than you have been trying for years to shut me up, Tarter. Good luck.”
46
Someone Order a Pizza?
Xander stepped over the man he’d filled with bullets and continued down the aisle between the tables on his left and booths on his right. Out of the corner of his eye, the fire from the pier drew his attention for a split second, and it was long enough for him to feel someone wrap their arms around him, tackling him to the ground. The man landed on him with force and raised up to punch him. Xander dodged his head left as a shadow of an arm came at his head. The man punched the tile floor and cried out in pain. Using that miss, Xander bridged his hips as he trapped the man’s arm and rolled over on top of him. A classic jujitsu sweep.
“Always use your elbows, that way you don’t break your hand.”
The words were automatic for Xander as he dropped an elbow onto the man’s forehead. But at this point in the fight with Tarter’s men, unconscious wasn’t good enough. He slid his thumb across the snap and pulled the Ka-Bar knife from its sheath. This man was aiding the sale of a girl into slavery. That made it easy to slide the knife into his throat. As blood flowed from the dead man, the tat of a semiautomatic rifle sounded off behind him, and bullets clanged into the tables along the wall in front of him.
Xander rolled to his right, under a four-top table which he tipped over to create a shield. More shots were fired, definitely from more than one gun. He was pinned down. He reached his gun over the table and sprayed some bullets just to back them off for a second. He heard one of the guns shooting at him click—an empty magazine. Xander rose to one knee to fire, but before he could get off a shot, he heard a quick BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
Shotgun blasts.
The two shadows at the far end of the dining room dropped out of sight, and someone walked in from the right side of the room.
“Someone order a pizza?”
Kyle Hamilton.
Xander jumped to his feet.
“Kyle?”
“And Zhanna. Are you all right?” she said as she walked around the corner behind Kyle.
Xander felt a wave of relief wash over him as he ran over and gave them a hug.
“How’d you get up here?”
“The deck goes all the way down out there,” Kyle explained. “We saw gunshots flashing in the upstairs window. We were just hoping we made it in time. They blew up the entire entrance to the pier. Have you found the girl?”
“Not yet, she must be hiding in the office next door.” Xander jogged over to the two gunmen Kyle had just mowed down. Neither of them was Tarter. “Tarter is still alive, we have to hurry. You two make sure we cleared this building. I’m going to get David.”
“That’s it? You’re not going to even acknowledge my pizza line?” Kyle asked.
“Let’s just say it wasn’t as
bad as Yahtzee. So there’s that.”
Xander was referencing a moment in Paris when Kyle shouted Yahtzee to distract a gunman from surprising Xander. The pizza line was an attempt to wash that embarrassing moment away. It didn’t work.
“I’ll never live that down,” Kyle said, disappointed.
As soon as the last word left Kyle’s lips, the three of them could hear the faint hum of a motor in the distance. It was getting closer to them, and it was coming fast. Then Xander heard David’s voice in his ear.
“A SEAL always leaves himself an out.”
Two things registered immediately. One, Tarter was about to make a run for it. Two, that was a boat’s motor that they heard, and it was already much louder than before, so it was really moving. Xander glanced out the window facing Santa Monica: SWAT was coming up the side steps of the pier in the distance. Then he turned 180 degrees and looked out at the darkness of the ocean beyond the window. He wasn’t close enough to see the pier below them, but he could feel it in his bones that David was making a run for the end of it, and that boat they could hear was his exit plan.
“New plan,” Xander said as he opened the door on the city side of the restaurant—the only side with a way down. “I’m still going after David, but you two make sure SWAT doesn’t kill me before I get to him.”
Xander didn’t wait for a response; he opened the door to the deck, jumped the eight steps to the first landing, turned and jumped the last eight to the bottom. As he turned the corner for the edge of the pier, he raised his gun and wrapped his finger around the trigger. The rail was about fifty yards from him, and thanks to the soft light of the fingernail moon, he could see David pulling himself up to the top of the rail. Without hesitation, Xander squeezed the trigger, but as he heard his own gun fire, he watched David drop out of sight to the water below. Simultaneously, he could hear the boat, and see its light coming in from the right as it slowed to pick Tarter from the water.
Xander broke into a dead sprint. If that boat pulled away, there was a chance he would never see David Tarter again. Xander wasn’t OCD, he didn’t have to have everything perfect, but there was no way he would be able to leave this thing open-ended. It would haunt him until the day he died. And he was through with things from his past keeping him awake at night and driving every decision he made by day. He had no idea what he would be getting into once he jumped over that rail, but not knowing the future didn’t really matter.
It never had, and it never would.
47
A Hell of a View
The passenger car wobbled again as another strong ocean breeze swept through. Carrie had never been afraid of heights, but this was beginning to scare her. She only jumped on the Ferris wheel because the men were right behind her inside the police station. She was going to run for one of the buildings at the end of the pier, but when she heard the gunshots from inside the police station, she panicked and jumped in the first cart that came around low enough for her to get into. They had almost seen her when her tub came back around to the bottom. She thought for sure that they had her, but the two men were too focused on combing through the vendor stands to look in the Ferris wheel. Every time the wheel made a full rotation, she thought they would surely find her. But then she heard more gunshots, and just at the peak of the wheel’s rotation, the power shut down, and there she was, stuck more than a hundred feet in the air. Apparently, right above a full-on war zone.
All she heard from the time the power went off were explosions, sirens, and gunfire. Was all of this really for her? Had her hero in the basement managed to get out? Was he looking for her?
For over a half hour, she had managed to keep her curiosity from getting the best of her. But now that the gunfire had slowed and she could hear a motor coming in her direction, she couldn’t help but look. Inch by inch, she peeked her head above the top of the cart she’d been cowering in. The first thing she saw was a massive fire at the edge of the pier and what looked like dozens of cop cars, all flashing their blue and red lights. She raised up a little more, and she could see a group of what looked to be policemen moving onto the pier from the stairway going up the side. That brought some relief, but she still had no way down. The power could be out for a while. As she moved her left leg around so she could check the other end of the pier, where she heard the motor coming from, the cart creaked loudly as it wobbled back and forth. Her stomach dropped and she froze her movements. Without the Ferris wheel in its normal steady rotating motion, it seemed the cart was much more vulnerable to movement.
A fear of heights was quickly settling in.
She moved more slowly this time. Then she raised her head to peek at the end of the pier. The source of the motor’s sound became visible. A boat was approaching the end of the pier, and it was moving fast. She heard a couple of shots from what looked like the restaurant where she and her mom had eaten last time they were there. She squinted trying to focus on where the shots had come from, but she couldn’t quite see. She raised up a bit further, the cart wobbling in the wake of her shaky legs. The boat was coming to a stop at the end of the pier when she could have sworn she saw someone dive face-first right over the rail. When she leaned out just a little farther, right above her head something slammed into the metal that fastened her cart to the rest of the wheel. It startled her, and when she fell back onto the floor of the cart, she could swear there was a hole in the white painted metal that wasn’t there before.
The thing that scared her most was that it looked an awful lot like a bullet hole.
48
All Aboard
Xander planted his right foot and launched himself forward, flying over the top rail at the end of the pier. Looking before he leaped would have been ideal, but there had been no time for that. Halfway down the twenty-foot drop he heard the throttle being pushed, and the three large engines fixed to the back of the massive center-console Boston Whaler roared to life, surging the boat forward. As Xander fell, he reached out with both hands, bracing for impact at the back of the boat. But the boat was powerful, and it moved just enough that when he hit the water where the boat used to be, his hand was lucky to find the cleat at the far-right side of the back of the boat. In rapid succession, his body hit the cold water of the Pacific Ocean, his shoulder was almost jerked from its socket, and he drank about a gallon of sea water. He was lucky it wasn’t worse. If the boat had moved a couple of inches to the right before he dove into the water, instead of hitting the right end of the boat his arms could very well have landed right in the middle of the spinning blades of the motor just to his left. As it were, he found himself holding on for dear life, being dragged through the water by the powerful speedboat.
When the boat jerked him forward, his AR-15 was torn from his shoulder. The water washing over him at that point was enough to drown him. If he didn’t pull himself up onto the boat now, before it got up to top speed, there would be no way to hang on. As the boat hit a wave, it actually helped him swing his right arm forward, and he was able to catch the bottom part of the rail just above his left hand. The force of the pull was unbelievable. The roar of the engines was deafening. The water drowning his face inhibited him from taking a breath, and after the run and jump that put him in his current position, he had very little air to spare. He was going to have to let go.
He pulled once again with all his might, but his forearms and shoulders were on fire. He barely even budged. And it was only getting more difficult as the boat gained speed. Like a bodybuilder pushing up the last rep of an impossibly heavy bench press, his arms were failing him. He wasn’t holding on longer than humanly possible because he needed to find Carrie. Most likely, she was now safe. And it wasn’t because he had any sort of vendetta against Tarter. It was because of what Carrie had said down in that basement that kept him holding on against all hope.
They brought two of us on the plane. They already took her somewhere else.
There was a girl somewhere at that very moment going through the most terrif
ying experience of her life. She had already been kidnapped by strange men. Torn from her family. Hog-tied, gagged, thrown around in a van and then a plane. Only to be taken to some monster who now could do whatever he wanted to her, most likely with no one having any idea where she was.
No one but David.
Xander’s hands squeezed once more, harder, when all they wanted to do was let go. He tensed every muscle in his body. He had to hang on. If he could manage to keep hold of the back of the rail, maybe the boat would hit another wave just right and he could—
The nose of the boat pitched upward, hard, momentarily suspending the water’s violent push against Xander’s body. And because he had adjusted his grip, he was ready. He jerked with his arms in a rowing motion, and his body pulled from the water and slammed against the back of the boat. When the engine’s propellers once again found purchase in the water, the boat jerked forward and Xander scrambled, barely able to grab a different rail, one that separated the engine reservoir from the far back seats of the boat. The small reservoir that he had pulled himself into was just wide enough for his body. Though he had managed to pull himself up, one wrong move at the speed they were traveling and it would be all for naught. He could see the back of two men’s heads just over the rise of the stern. They were standing at the center console. Two walkways wrapped around the outside of that center console and opened up to a seating area at the front of the boat. There was another man sitting there at the bow.
With his body almost entirely spent, he pulled himself to his knees. He barely had the strength to maintain an upright position against the bounce of the boat on the water. But if he could maintain the element of surprise, his lack of strength wouldn’t matter as much. The man on the left was a lot larger than the man driving the boat. Xander knew that it was David. He took two deep breaths, desperately fighting against complete fatigue, and brought himself up to a crouching position.
King's Reign (The Xander King Series Book 4) Page 21
