Final Target

by John Gilstrap

  “Jesus, Dawkins!” Boxers yelled. “Take it easy unless you can shit ammo.”

  Dawkins ducked back behind the benches for cover as the bad guys out back returned fire.

  “Goddammit,” Boxers growled. He dropped his works in progress onto the sheet-metal floor, shouldered his 417, and pivoted to face the rear. “Keep your head down, Dawkins,” he said. He fired six rounds, single fire. Jonathan couldn’t see past him to see the results, but Big Guy looked satisfied. “Spray and pray doesn’t work on this team,” he said. “Aim your friggin’ shots.”

  “You ready to go now, Big Guy?” Jonathan asked.

  “Don’t wait for me. Get the PC out, then save your sorry ass. I won’t be long.” As he spoke, Boxers unspooled a three-foot section of det cord from a roll and cut it with a single swipe from his old-school KA-BAR knife, the same blade that Jonathan preferred.

  “Dawkins!” Jonathan yelled. “Out the window. Now.”

  The PC didn’t seem to need convincing. He turned away from the carnage in the rear and crawled down the aisle toward the front. He had to squeeze past Big Guy. “Did you get them all?”

  “You gonna shoot the ones I missed?” Boxers never looked up from his task of assembling bombs.

  “Um.”

  “Try to keep stupid to a minimum for the rest of the trip, okay?” Boxers rocked his head up to make eye contact. “Let me know if you need any help getting out of the window.” That was way more of a threat than an offer.

  Jonathan watched as Dawkins stepped onto the bench seat and then climbed out headfirst. Jonathan was this close to suggesting that feetfirst might be a better idea, but by the time he had formulated the thought, Dawkins was gone.

  “Hope he got his hands out,” Boxers said, speaking Jonathan’s thought.

  “You almost done?” Jonathan asked.

  “I told you not to wait for me.”

  “We both know that’s not going to happen.” Jonathan watched as Boxers molded the det cord into both blocks of C4 and then stretched them out in the center of the aisle.

  Boxers started to stand; then, as an afterthought, he turned back to his ruck and retrieved one of the two-foot logs of C4 he’d lifted from the orphanage stores. He chuckled as he laid it under the first GPC. “If we’re gonna make a hole, let’s make a big hole,” he said. He pointed out the windshield in the front. “More headlights,” he said.

  “In the rear, too,” Jonathan observed. “But they seem to be holding back. After the spanking they just took, the smart move is to hold back and amass their forces for an effective assault.”

  “Well, shit,” Boxers said. “I was a fan of their piecemeal, ineffective assaults.”

  Jonathan pointed toward the window. “How are you going to fit all of you through that little space?”

  Boxers didn’t answer. Instead, he set himself awkwardly on the bench seat, his back toward the aisle. He adjusted his equipment so he had reasonable freedom of movement, and then he fired five sharp kicks into the window with the sole of his boot. After four blows, the metal frame that divided top from bottom broke away.

  Big Guy stood, unslung his rifle, and step-ducked out of the window onto the wall. He stayed in a low crouch as he said, “Y’all might want to spread out a little.” Then he was gone.

  Jonathan followed.

  On the ground now, on the house side of the wall, Jonathan took inventory. Three adults, seven kids. Three of the kids were old enough to have been soldiers a hundred years ago, and all of them were old enough to be soldiers in any one of a dozen armies in Africa or the Middle East. They were more than just his responsibility. They were his team.

  They heard the sound of additional vehicles approaching on the other side of the wall, still distant but moving closer.

  “Listen to me,” Jonathan said to the sea of wide eyes. In the enhanced light of the NVGs, those eyes glowed. “This is where it gets very real. All of us will live or die based on the actions or inactions of everyone on the team. You had your chance to back away, but now that chance is gone. If the people on the other side of that wall see you and can take a shot, they will kill you. There’s no surrender, and there’s no negotiation. Give me a thumbs-up if you understand.” He demonstrated.

  They all returned the gesture.

  “Good. Mr. Dawkins will be in charge out here while Big Guy and I check out the inside of the house.” Jonathan looked to Dawkins. “Are you good with that?”

  Dawkins showed his thumbs.

  “Keep them close to the wall, and keep an eye on the wall. If anyone tries to climb it, shoot them. Keep an eye out for dropped grenades and other incendiaries. I don’t know if they have them, but they make for nasty surprises. Good?”

  “I’m good,” Dawkins said.

  “Big Guy, on me.” He pivoted, and Boxers was there like a giant shadow. They’d done this exercise so many times that to an outsider, it looked choreographed. Graceful, even. Jonathan led, and Boxers followed, step by step. With their NVGs in place, they pressed their rifles to their shoulders while Jonathan scanned left and Big Guy scanned right.

  Two short steps led to elaborate wooden front double doors. Jonathan checked the knob and found it locked. He pressed one of the doors with his shoulder, but it wouldn’t give.

  “Kick it,” he said.

  Boxers hesitated. “Are we shooting people in here?”

  It was a fair and perplexing question. They were, after all, breaking into a house that belonged to someone who’d done them no harm. “Only if they try to shoot at us,” Jonathan said.

  Big Guy shrugged. “Seems fair.” He took a step back and fired a massive kick into the spot where the doors joined, and they flew inward. He stood back while Jonathan squirted through the opening, and then Big Guy followed. Jonathan scanned left and immediately felt a sense of relief. There was a musty, closed-up odor to the place, and the overstuffed furniture was covered.

  “Looks like somebody’s winter retreat,” Boxers said.

  “Assume nothing,” Jonathan reminded. They had to clear the house. Jonathan’s side of the center-hall building was where the bedrooms lay, a line of them to his left, each with its own door out to the hallway. The casement windows opened outward, and all were closed. Jonathan found the white-on-white decor, complete with black-and-white checkerboard floors, to be oppressive. He understood that it made little sense to have carpets in a climate as wet and hot as this, but he thought he’d tire of living like a checker. He cleared the rooms one at a time. Through the door, safety off, ready to fire. Scan, search, and move on. It took no more than three minutes.

  When he got to the rear of the building, the house opened up again to a giant family room with a spectacular view of the horizon, which had begun to lighten with the approach of sunrise.

  “Looks like we lost darkness,” Boxers said.

  “Not yet we haven’t,” Jonathan said.

  “But we will.”

  “Yeah,” Jonathan said. “We will.”

  “Grenada all over again,” Big Guy growled.

  “Jesus, I hope not.” In 1983, well before Jonathan’s time in the Unit, an operation to rescue political prisoners from a fortress in Grenada went tragically wrong after it was delayed an hour and forced from darkness into daylight.

  The red side of the house—to the right, looking at the front—was all about entertaining and enjoying the view. An open floor plan allowed instant viewing of a kitchen, living room, and dining room. All devoid of people.

  The second floor was likewise empty. But the view through the Palladian window over the stairs showed the arrival of another five, maybe seventeen vehicles, split between the north and south sides of the road. They were still hanging back, but Jonathan knew they’d be moving forward soon.

  “We’d better start shooting people,” Boxers said. “And soon.”

  “Stake a claim up here,” Jonathan said. “Keep an eye on them. I’ll go down and—”

  At that moment, the trucks surged forward in u
nison. Some moved to the front of the house, near the bus, and others chose an off-road course to surround them.

  “Shit!” Jonathan flew down the stairs to the front doors and pulled them open. “Dawkins!” he yelled. “Bring ’em in, and bring ’em in fast!”

  CHAPTER 36

  Alejandro arrived with his cousin to the scene of bedlam. He saw men dead in the street, and he saw vehicles that had been shot to pieces. He slammed the pull-down armrest with enough force to unhinge it. “Damn them!” he shouted. “Damn them all! I told them not to attack until I got here.”

  He opened the Suburban’s door before the vehicle had drifted to a complete stop and strode over to a group of armed men he did not recognize. But they clearly recognized him. The fear was instant and perhaps debilitating. “Who is in charge here?” he shouted.

  “No one,” said one of the cowering men. “That is, you are, Mr. Azul.”

  “I left orders that no one was to shoot until after I arrived.”

  “They shot at us first,” said another man.

  “One has nothing to do with the other,” Alejandro said. “How many soldiers do we have?”

  “None,” said the first man. “There are no soldiers here.”

  “You are all soldiers!” Alejandro boomed. “You are my soldiers, and you are fighting little boys and little girls. What kind of men are you?”

  “No, no, no,” said a third man, who had remained silent until that moment. “Yes, there are boys and girls, but they have soldiers with them. I saw them. I think we are up against the American Army.”

  “How many soldiers on their side?”

  “At least three.”

  “Three! Three soldiers and children. Against how many of you?”

  In unison, the other men looked down in shame.

  “You disgust me,” Alejandro said. He retrieved his radio from his pocket. “Guillermo,” he said. “Are you on the channel?”

  “Mr. Azul!” responded a voice he recognized as belonging to Guillermo Gonzales, a trusted lieutenant from Tuxtla Gutiérrez. “I did not know you were here.”

  “How many men do you have who are unhurt?”

  The length of the pause told Alejandro that the man was actually counting heads. This pleased him. “We have eleven men here,” he said. “Three have been killed.”

  Orlando tapped Alejandro on the shoulder. “There is a total of seven unhurt men on this side.”

  “Does that include you and me?” Alejandro asked.

  Orlando looked a bit shocked by the question. “No, cousin, it does not.”

  “We have nine men on this side,” Alejandro said. “We need to surround the house. If they cannot get off the beach, then they cannot get away. Do you understand me, Guillermo?”

  “Yes, sir,” Guillermo said.

  Alejandro turned to the three men he’d been addressing. “Stop sniveling and be men,” he said. “This all stops right now. Move out to the side. Orlando, put someone on that big machine gun on the back of the truck and teach the bastards a lesson.” Then he keyed his mike and told Guillermo to open up on the house, as well.

  Those people inside the house might be skilled fighters, but strength was irrelevant against big enough firepower. Good God, was he going to sleep well when this was over.

  * * *

  Tomás didn’t like being closed out of the action while Scorpion and Big Guy went inside the house. When the fight came, wherever it came, he wanted to be a part of it. But he had his orders. He kneeled in the sand and watched the edge of the front wall, worried about all the sounds of arriving and moving vehicles. Their headlights cast swirling shadows on the front wall of the house, giving the impression of angry ghosts. He heard the raspy chatter of people on radios, but he couldn’t make out the words.

  Angela kneeled at his side. She held a rifle and wore a chest rig, but it didn’t look right on her, and she clearly didn’t feel comfortable in it. He caught her glancing over at him a few times, and when he did, his heart raced. She’d said she loved him. Loved him.

  Maybe she didn’t really mean it. Maybe it was just the stress of the past couple of days.

  He cast glances around to the other students from Saint Agnes. They didn’t seem prepared to fight. Mostly, they just seemed frightened. Except for Santiago. He looked frightened, of course—they were all frightened—but he also looked alert and ready to shoot.

  Tomás jumped at the sound of roaring engines. Something was happening. The sound seemed to be everywhere, not just out front anymore. It was on the sides, too. The dancing ghosts went wild, swirling everywhere. The trucks sounded their horns. Everyone there in the yard jumped to their feet as fear peaked to terror. Some of the younger kids started to cry. Angela grabbed his arm.

  “This is it,” Tomás said. “This is the fight.”

  The front doors of the house flew open, and Scorpion stepped outside. He called to Dawkins and beckoned everyone inside.

  Tomás pressed on Angela’s shoulder. “Go,” he said.

  “You go, too.”

  “I will,” he said. “I just want to make sure that the little ones make it inside.”

  “I’ll wait for you here,” Angela said.

  Above and behind them, the sound of rifle shots pounded the air. Tomás turned at the sound and saw a rifle protruding from one of the slots of what looked like a bell tower. Each shot brought a puff of smoke, but no muzzle flash.

  Return fire from the other side of the wall gouged great chunks out of the stucco around the windows of the bell tower.

  Tomás spun back toward the wall but couldn’t see anything to shoot at.

  “Tomás! Angela!” It was Scorpion. “Get inside!”

  After one last scan of the yard to make sure that the others had gone inside, Tomás grabbed Angela by the arm, and together they ran toward the doors. At the threshold, he stopped and pressed Angela ahead of him. He didn’t know why, exactly, but it felt important that he be last.

  As he stepped inside, Scorpion grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him into the foyer. “Listen to me, Tomás,” he said. “When I tell you to move, you move; do you understand? If I tell you to shit gold coins, you figure out a way to do it right by God now.” He gave him a hearty but not violent shove toward the stairs, at the base of which everyone had gathered.

  Scorpion pressed a button in the middle of his chest and said in English, “Okay, Big Guy. We’re coming up.”

  An instant later, the house seemed to shake with the sound of machine gun fire as Big Guy opened up. They were long, sustained bursts, entirely different than the short bursts or single shots he’d heard Big Guy fire before.

  “Is that what you call covering fire?” Tomás asked in English.

  Scorpion smiled at him. “That’s exactly what that is,” he said in Spanish. “Everybody, run upstairs as fast as you can, and when you get to the top, cut to the left. Get away from the big windows as fast as you can. Go! Go! Go!”

  The kids more fell up the stairs than ran, a disorganized jumble of arms and legs. Someone must have seen the movement from the outside, because bullets started slamming through the big windows, and as they did, chunks of the stairway and walls erupted and rained down. After only a few hits, the entire Palladian window crumbled and collapsed down on them.

  Little Leo yelled out in pain and started to fall back down the stairs. Angela rushed up to catch him, and in that flash of time, Tomás saw a lot of blood.

  “Keep moving!” Scorpion yelled. “Do not stop on the steps! Move!”

  “Leo is wounded!” Angela yelled.

  “Get him upstairs. You’re going to get people killed! Move! Dawkins, give us covering fire!”

  Mr. Dawkins had made it all the way to the top of the stairs and was about to make the turn to the left. When he heard the order from Scorpion, he spun around and started shooting through the glassless window. They didn’t seem to be aimed shots, but rather a random spray.

  From his position just halfway up the stairs now, T
omás still could not see an enemy to shoot. Wait! There was one. Behind the bus, near the truck that Scorpion had called a technical.

  Tomás shouldered his M4, moved the selector to FIRE, aimed, and pressed the trigger. The recoil was nothing near what he had feared. He could actually see his shot puncture the side of the truck. He fired again. And again.

  “Tomás, goddammit, get up those stairs.”

  He fired three more times, and the man behind the machine gun on the technical fell off the truck.

  “Keep pouring on the fire, Dawkins!” Scorpion yelled.

  Tomás saw Scorpion’s face as he came up the steps behind him. For a second, Tomás thought the man was going to hit him. Instead, he felt his pants go tight at the crotch as Scorpion grabbed him by the back of his belt and hauled him the rest of the way up the stairs.

  “Where is the boat?” Diego asked.

  “How’s the boy?” Scorpion asked Angela.

  “I don’t think he’s shot,” she said.

  “It hurts!” Leo howled.

  Scorpion leaned in for a closer look, didn’t seem too concerned. He pulled a pouch off his vest, making the ripping sound of Velcro, and he handed it to Angela. It had a red cross on its top. “Find a bandage in there and stop the bleeding.” Then he addressed the larger crowd. “The boat is not here yet. We’re going to have to fight this out, and it’s likely to get ugly. I want everybody fighting. Stay to this side of the stairs. The windows are smaller. Push something in front for cover if you want, but if you see somebody with a gun who is not one of us, you shoot them and kill them. Am I clear?”

  Sophia asked, “But where—”

  “The boat will be here when it arrives. In the meantime, we live or die based on our abilities to fight. Go to it. Tomás, see to it that people have what they need. Dawkins, supervise. Do not cross this stairwell unless and until I tell you to.”

  He pressed the button on his chest. In English, he said, “Talk to me, Big Guy.”

  An instant later, the whole world seemed to come apart. A rapid boom-boom-boom shook the air outside, and holes were blasted all the way through the building, from the front wall all the way through the back wall.