Damage Control

by John Gilstrap

  “Stand by,” Jonathan said. He caught Boxers up on the details. “I’m open to suggestions,” he said.

  “I got nothin’,” the Big Guy said. “I sure as hell can’t turn around here. I lay myself at the altar of your superb leadership.” That was Big Guy speak for Tell me what you want to do.

  Jonathan surveyed the surroundings, hoping that the terrain itself might give him some ideas. On his left, the heavy underbrush was unrelenting, and on his right, the roadway fell off into a valley of rolling green that would have been beautiful if featured in a National Geographic photo spread, but was in fact an ugly problem that put them at a tactical disadvantage. Anytime you find yourself in a position where your only escape routes involve the same ones your enemies are using to attack, you can pretty much anticipate a really bad day.

  He keyed his mike. “How far away are they?”

  “Call it a half mile,” she said. “But they’re headed downhill. I give you three minutes.”

  Shit.

  “What’s going on?” Tristan asked from the backseat. His voice sounded thick with sleep.

  “Park it, Big Guy,” Jonathan said. “Tristan, out. Now.”

  “What are we doing?” Tristan squeaked.

  “Yeah, what are we doing?” Boxers matched the tone perfectly.

  Jonathan reached to the pouch on his vest behind his right shoulder and turned on his radio. “I’m switching to radio, Mother Hen,” he said, and then he closed the sat phone and slipped it into a different pouch. To Tristan, he said, “There’s another vehicle approaching, and I don’t want to be trapped in here.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Just get out and stay with me,” Jonathan said. “Big Guy, slide me my ruck when we get out, and keep the ransom bag with you.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “We’re taking cover.” Jonathan shouldered his door open and opened Tristan’s door from the outside. “Walk or be carried,” he said. “Decide.”

  Tristan’s first effort to hurry out of the backseat was thwarted by his still-buckled seat belt. His second effort did the trick.

  In Jonathan’s ear, Venice said, “Scorpion, the picture just refreshed. They’re on top of you. Thirty seconds, max.”

  Boxers slid Jonathan’s rucksack across the hood of the car to Jonathan, and then headed south to the steep side of the roadway. Jonathan led Tristan north, past the front of the vehicle.

  Venice said, “The picture hasn’t recycled yet.” The most annoying quirk of the SkysEye Network was its four-minute refresh rate.

  Jonathan heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. They all heard it.

  Tristan’s breathing changed to a huffing sound that Jonathan recognized as a precursor to panic.

  “Move,” Jonathan commanded, “but don’t panic. We have some time.” It was a lie, but sometimes you just have to stay smooth to keep hysteria from taking root. He tossed a look over his shoulder to see Boxers disappearing into the weeds. If things went to shit, they’d be set to kill the bad guys in a cross fire.

  He and Tristan were barely ten feet off the road. “Down,” Jonathan commanded at a whisper.

  Tristan dropped as if his legs had disappeared.

  Jonathan eased himself down more slowly, keeping his eyes on the road. To his left, Boxers had made himself completely invisible.

  Jonathan stooped to his haunches, where his knees hovered above Tristan’s shoulders.

  “No matter what happens, I want you to stay flat,” he said. “Understand?”

  “Who are they?” Tristan whined. His face was hidden in the crook of his elbow.

  “Trouble,” Jonathan said. “Let’s hope that’s all it is. I’m moving away from you. If there’s shooting, I don’t want you to be in the way. Don’t go anywhere, and try not to move.”

  That brought a panicked look from the boy.

  “I’ll stay close,” Jonathan promised. He didn’t wait for an answer.

  Jonathan let his carbine fall against its sling and drew his MP7 from its holster on his left thigh and extended the collapsible butt stock. The M27 was a great weapon at longer ranges, but its sixteen-inch barrel could get unwieldy in close quarters. With a barrel length of only seven inches, the MP7 was a cross between an assault rifle and a bad-ass pistol. It fired its wicked little 4.6-millimeter bullets at a rate of 950 rounds per minute with a muzzle velocity of over two thousand three hundred feet per second, and the bullets themselves were essentially steel penetrators that rendered even advanced body armor useless. For CQB—close-quarters battle—the MP7 had all but replaced the Mossberg twelve-gauge that had long been Jonathan’s good friend.

  He moved at a crouch through the tangled undergrowth, putting more distance between him and both Tristan and Boxers. That was the plan, anyway. Ten paces and as many seconds later, the jungle revealed a Mexican Army Sandcat winding its way down the hill, its engine screaming in too low a gear. Jonathan had never seen one of these vehicles up close, but he’d read about them. It looked like a cross between a Humvee and a Jeep, but with an outer skin that jutted at odd angles, giving it a stealthy appearance. He remembered reading that the Sandcat might or might not be armored. It looked to be designed for eight people, but probably could hold up to twelve in a pinch.

  Jonathan craned his neck to check on Tristan, and was pleased to see no trace of him.

  Out on the road, the Sandcat slowed as it approached Jonathan’s parked Pathfinder. When they were still thirty feet away, it stopped and held its position. For a good twenty seconds, no one moved. A bug in the back of Jonathan’s brain calculated what would be left of him if this turned out to be some kind of rolling car bomb. It wasn’t pretty.

  It also wasn’t logical, so he pushed it aside. Even if it turned out to be true, he’d never know it.

  When the doors opened simultaneously, and the vehicle disgorged six soldiers, Jonathan pressed the MP7’s butt stock more tightly into his shoulder.

  They wore green jungle camouflage uniforms, and carried assault rifles that Jonathan recognized by their bizarre shape as FX05s, the standard-issue rifle for the Mexican military. Ugly as sin, the weapons were more or less unique to Mexico, and fired a 5.56-millimeter NATO round that was identical to those fired by Jonathan’s slung M27.

  “The Pathfinder’s blocking my view,” Boxers whispered into Jonathan’s earpiece. “Are we in trouble?”

  “Too soon to tell,” Jonathan whispered back, though these guys were evidently expecting trouble. Flashes of green on the epaulettes told him that they were members of La Justicia—the Mexican military police. He also noted that none of them bore the markings of a commissioned officer. He wasn’t sure what that meant, exactly, but he found it interesting that a truckload of noncoms happened to be on this stretch of road.

  The soldiers took defensive positions on their respective sides of the Sandcat, their weapons trained on the woods, waiting to shoot. Jonathan offered up a silent prayer that Tristan wouldn’t choose this moment to sneeze.

  “Are you sure this is the right vehicle?” one of the soldier asked his comrades in Spanish.

  “One hundred percent sure,” another one answered. “It belongs to the church. This is the fugitives’ vehicle.”

  Jonathan’s heart skipped. Father Perón had gotten that one right, though the betrayal had come faster than Jonathan had anticipated.

  So, were these guys real cops on a real manhunt, or were they more terrorists on a murder mission? Jonathan figured he’d know soon enough.

  One of the soldiers approached the Pathfinder while the rest of his team covered him. Jonathan kept the red dot of his sight on a spot just in front of the point man’s left ear as the man reached out and touched the hood. “The engine is warm. They must have heard us coming.”

  “That means they’re still here,” said the soldier who’d been riding shotgun. Jonathan figured him to be the leader. The words made them all shrink by two inches as they crouched a little deeper and pressed their weapons more tigh
tly into their shoulders. The posture spoke of fear.

  “They could be watching us,” one of the other soldiers said. He started sweeping the woods with his rifle, desperate for something to shoot at.

  “Raul!” the commander barked. “Settle down. If you see them, shoot them.”

  Something flipped in Jonathan’s stomach. “Did I just hear what I think I heard?” Boxers whispered in his earbud.

  Jonathan tapped his chest. Just once, which meant yes. There was in fact a kill-on-sight order out for them. Not “arrest on sight,” or “detain on sight.” Shoot on sight meant that a death warrant had been written on them.

  “I still can’t see anything,” Boxers whispered, “but say the word, and I can step out into position. I’ll take whatever’s on the left.”

  The bad guys were too close for Jonathan to risk answering. Was the shoot-on-sight thing just bold talk, or was it truly the order that had been issued? He needed to be sure before he took action. Once he opened fire on military personnel, he’d set events in motion from which there’d be no recovery. He decided to wait them out a little longer.

  While the rest of the soldiers covered him, the point man approached the Pathfinder, his weapon at the ready and trained at the windows. Each step took him closer to Tristan’s hiding place.

  Jonathan kept the soldier squarely in his sights every step along the way.

  Jonathan tapped his transmit button once, paused, and then twice again. That meant Stand by. In his mind, he could see Boxers grinning.

  The presumed commander ordered, “Search the jungle.” As he spoke, he started walking directly toward Jonathan.

  Scorpion didn’t care about the approaching commander. At least not yet; he was still twenty feet away. Jonathan was way more concerned about the point man, who couldn’t be more than five feet from Tristan’s hiding place.

  The soldiers scanned their sectors of the compass with a professionalism that Jonathan hadn’t anticipated. As they swept their weapons from left to right, they showed admirable muzzle discipline, never endangering the soldier next to them. That was good news for their own safety, but not good news for Jonathan’s.

  “I’ve got good sight pictures on two,” Boxers whispered.

  Jonathan tapped another Stand by. He wanted to see how this would play out. Chances were good that Tristan would be discovered, and when that happened, Jonathan wanted—

  “Shit!” the point man yelled in Spanish. “You! Stand up! I found one!”

  Jonathan slipped his finger into the trigger guard and prepared to fire. The soldier’s posture spoke more of fear than intent, however, so Jonathan gave him the benefit of the doubt.

  “Stand up, stand up, stand up! Put your hands up!” The others cut their respective searches short—exactly the wrong thing to do—and turned to confront the threat that their colleague had discovered. That put six guns all trained on Tristan.

  Jonathan knew that Boxers must be borderline apoplectic. He understood Spanish at least as well as Jonathan did—in fact the Big Guy was something of a genius with languages—so he knew exactly what was happening. All of their tactical training told them that this was the time to take the bad guys out—while they were out in the open and exposed—but Jonathan wanted to give them a little more rope. If they were truly going to shoot on sight, then Tristan would already be dead. He wanted to see what their plan really was.

  He keyed his mike and dared to whisper, “Hold your fire.” He held his aim on the no-reflex zone of the lead soldier’s brain. If Jonathan pulled the trigger, his bullet would unplug his central nervous system in a microsecond. There’d be no twitch of a trigger finger.

  Tristan rose from the spot where he’d been hiding, his hands held high over his head. “Please don’t shoot me,” he said, first in English, and then he said it again in Spanish.

  “Jesus, Scorpion,” Boxers whispered. “Now’s the time.”

  Jonathan let the comment hang in the air.

  The point man leveled his rifle at Tristan’s face. “Step out here,” he said. The soldier motioned for Tristan to step out into the roadway.

  The boy was only one notch away from panic. His eyes darted from left to right, looking for reinforcements as he stepped free of the undergrowth and into the clearing of the road cut.

  “What’s your name?” the solider asked in Spanish.

  “Tristan Wagner,” he answered. His eyes never touched his questioner. Instead, they were all about finding Jonathan and Boxers.

  “Why are you hiding here?” the soldier asked.

  Tristan hesitated. Clearly, he wasn’t sure how to answer or what to do. “I was kidnapped by terrorists,” he said. “My friends and I.”

  “Your friends?” the soldier said. “Where are these friends now?”

  “Dead,” Tristan said.

  The leader stepped forward, moving away from Jonathan’s location and closer to the boy’s. “You killed them,” he said.

  Jonathan shifted his aim from the point man to the leader, whose back was now turned to him. He settled the sight on the base of his skull, right where the spinal cord joined the brain.

  “I didn’t kill anybody,” Tristan said. “The terrorists killed them.”

  “Are you one of the Yankee missionaries?” the leader asked.

  An invisible hand pulled Jonathan’s spine.

  Tristan hesitated. He was close to breaking. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re American,” the leader said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you are here from Scottsdale, Arizona.”

  This time, Tristan’s hesitation was the loudest confession Jonathan had ever heard.

  “I thought so,” the leader said. He raised his pistol.

  Jonathan squeezed his trigger, and the MP7 roared. His first two bullets shredded the leader’s head, and his second two did the same for the point man. Ahead and to his left, Boxers’ rifle discharged what sounded to be a half-mag of 7.62-millimeter bullets. Three more dropped, and Jonathan took out a guy who just looked confused.

  The gunfight lasted less than a second and a half. When it was done, Jonathan and Boxers had fired twenty-five rounds between them, and all six soldiers were dead, their bodies dropped like so many sacks of manure.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  One day, Gail would learn that people’s names rarely matched the pictures those names evoked in her mind. She’d expected Harriett Burke to be a mousy sixty-something in a print dress and gray hair pulled back in a bun. She’d smile sweetly and say God-loving things.

  Instead, she was a sturdy thirty-something with shoulders that were broader than most men’s. Smart money said her résumé included time on a roller derby team. Where the sweet smile should have been, there was instead a set jaw and firmly pressed lips. Clearly, her buddy Volpe from downstairs had called upstairs.

  As the elevator doors opened on the opulent fourteenth floor, she was right there, doing her best to block the path down the hallway. “Reverend Mitchell doesn’t have time to meet with you,” she said.

  Gail stepped into the elevator lobby. “And I don’t have the inclination to put you in handcuffs,” she said, and she skirted the human roadblock.

  Tried to, anyway. Harriett grabbed Gail’s sleeve. “You may not go in there.”

  Gail drew her badge as if it were a gun and pointed it at Harriett’s forehead. “This is your moment to make careful choices,” she said, startling herself by the ease with which she slid back into her old role.

  “Do you have a warrant?” Harriett said. The badge and the speed with which it appeared had startled her.

  “I’ll get one for your arrest if you don’t let go of my sleeve.”

  Harriett pulled her had away as if it had touched a hot stove. “Sorry,” she said.

  “Good for you. Where will I find Reverend Mitchell?”

  “I’m sorry, Officer ...”

  “It’s sheriff. Sheriff McLain.”

  “Sher
iff McLain, Dr. Mitchell left very specific orders not to be disturbed today.”

  “I’m guessing she didn’t anticipate my visit when she said that.”

  “I could get fired.”

  Now they were squarely in territory where Gail had stopped caring. “If she fired you for this, then you probably should consider working somewhere else.”

  The elevator dinged, and Volpe joined them. Harriett looked genuinely relieved until the guard rested his hand on the revolver he wore on his hip.

  Gail hated rent-a-cops. She pulled back her suit jacket to reveal the grip of her Glock. “I’ve got one, too,” she said. “And I’ll bet you a million dollars that I’m better with mine than you are with yours.”

  Volpe lifted his hand from his weapon and ostentatiously splayed his fingers. “I wasn’t threatening you,” he said. His voice cracked a little.

  “That’s exactly what you were doing,” Gail countered. “And I guarantee that I am threatening you. Will I find Dr. Mitchell’s office down this hallway?”

  Volpe looked to Harriett, who said, “Yes. I’ll take you there.”

  Something clicked in Gail’s head. That was a big change of heart in a very short time. Was Harriett looking for a reason to be alone with Gail? If so, was that good news or bad news? The most dangerous threats are the ones you don’t anticipate.

  “She’s not going to be happy,” Volpe said.

  Gail was about to say that she’d be a lot happier than these two would be if she arrested them, but she caught a look from Harriett that made her swallow the words. Besides, she didn’t have the power to arrest anyone.

  “I’ve got this, Paul,” Harriett said. “You can go back downstairs.”

  Volpe didn’t like it. “You sure?”

  “You almost started a gunfight,” Harriett said. “Nobody needs this to escalate. It’s between Sheriff McLain and Dr. Mitchell now. I’m stepping out of the middle.”

  Volpe actually looked to Gail for support—an effort that lasted only a second.