Final Target

by John Gilstrap

  “Big Guy, we need to get out of here.”

  “I hate to be a broken record,” Boxers said, “but don’t wait on me. I’ve got this.” As he spoke, he set the detonator into the mine.

  “What kind of fuse are you using?” Jonathan asked.

  “RF,” Boxers replied. Radio frequency. The safest of the fusing choices when you weren’t sure if you were going to detonate the device, RF fuses were also the least reliable when you wanted to be sure you got a bang. “How sure are you about this boat pilot?”

  “Mother Hen seems sure of him,” Jonathan replied. “She hasn’t gotten us killed yet.”

  “Not for lack of tryin’,” Boxers grumbled. He stood, re-slung his ruck, and adjusted his rifle. “So, where are the little darlings?”

  CHAPTER 37

  The war zone zoomed closer with frightening speed. Jesse could hear individual gunshots now, and the wind brought the ever-stronger smell of burning petroleum. As he watched through the binoculars, the pounding of the hull against the waves made it impossible to see details, but muzzle flashes were clear, as was the collection of bodies on the sand.

  “Who the hell are these guys?” he asked no one in particular.

  “Former D-boys,” Davey said.

  “What?”

  “Delta Force operators. The Unit. Badass moe foes.” That made no sense. If they were part of the Army, then why wasn’t the Army taking care of this shit?

  “My guess is that whatever they’re doing meets Uncle Sam’s approval but can’t be officially sanctioned,” Davey said. Jesse wondered if he’d actually voiced his question aloud.

  And none of that mattered. For the first time in his life, Jesse understood the answer to a question that had always bugged him: How had they talked those guys on D-day into those boats and onto those beaches, where they had no chance of survival? In fact, the answer was obvious: Once you’re on the boat approaching the whirling saw blades, there’s nothing else to do but fight.

  “Hey, Jesse, remember your question about the effective range of rifles?”

  Jesse’s stomach tightened against the question.

  Davey said, “You might want to get ready to shoot back.”

  * * *

  Every face Jonathan saw looked terrified. The shooting from outside was becoming more aggressive. It was as if the OPFOR had found contentment in firing into stucco. He didn’t understand the logic, but he appreciated the waste of their ammunition.

  “This is the hardest part, right here,” he told the gathered kids. “We’re moving in two parts. On my order, the first part is to run to the back gate behind the pool. You may be exposed at that point, so if you see anyone with a gun who is not us, shoot. In the second part, we’re moving out to the end of the dock. Once I tell you to run, just haul ass out to that boat. Get on and keep low. Don’t turn to shoot; don’t worry about others ahead of you or behind you. Worry only about living. Are we clear?”

  Nods.

  “I want to hear it.”

  In unison: “We’re clear.”

  “Good luck to all of you, and remember to wait for my commands. I’ll see you on the boat!” To Boxers: “Big Guy, let’s go to VOX.”

  By flipping a tiny switch on their radios, everything they said would be broadcast without having to press a TRANSMIT button.

  “Mother Hen, we’re on VOX.”

  “I copy,” Venice said.

  Jonathan looked over the faces one more time. “I’m proud of all of you,” he said. “Let’s go to America.”

  Jonathan led the way again as he and Big Guy made their move through the shattered glass doors and out onto the pool deck. They swept their sights up and down, left and right, scanning for targets. As they passed the unremarkable rectangular pool and moved away from the protection afforded by the physical structure of the house, they opened themselves up to wider expanses of the surrounding wall, on all sides.

  Jonathan found himself walking backward. The cluster of kids—only six now, instead of seven—remained only two or three steps behind, and they moved as children, devoid of discipline or situational awareness. They weren’t pushing one another yet, but they were in one hell of a hurry to be someplace else.

  All except for Santiago, Tomás, and Angela, the oldest, who scanned consistently for threats. The bleeding boy—Leo—was in the cluster of the young ones, holding a blood-soaked bandage against his neck, right where it joined with his shoulder. He was still alive, so it wasn’t an arterial bleeder.

  “I don’t like it being this calm,” Boxers said. “They’ve either all run away or . . . Shit!” His rifle barked three times. “Got one,” he said. “I think they’re amassing on the other side of the wall.”

  “Behind!” Tomás yelled, and he fired back toward the house.

  Jonathan saw the movement, too, and as he brought his weapon to bear, he hesitated just an instant to make sure it wasn’t a child. See, this was the problem with kids. They made you jumpy. Jonathan settled his red dot on a shadow behind a curtain and fired twice. The shadow yelled and fell. Beyond that guy, Jonathan saw more shadows moving through the family room.

  “Big Guy, blow the Claymore.”

  “Happy to.” He fired at two more targets along the wall and then fished the detonator out of a pouch on his vest.

  The void beyond the glass doors flashed orange red for a millisecond, and then the warhead shredded everything. Someone screamed from within. Then it became a chorus.

  “Keep going, kids,” Jonathan coached. “Stop at the gate.”

  * * *

  If it hadn’t been for the plumes of flame and smoke, the coastline would have been black. As the SeaVee approached at what felt to Jesse to be an impossible speed, the sounds of gunfire intensified. He stood at the front of the boat—the bow—with his vest cinched tight and his carbine in his hands. Davey had taught him how to thread himself into the sling. The rifle was loaded with a thirty-round magazine, and the safety was off.

  Jesse’s mission was to keep an eye out. That was all of it—to keep an eye out. Presumably for anything that looked out of the ordinary. Or, more importantly, for anything that looked like it might pose a threat. Problem was, at this distance, with all the shit that was going on at the shore ahead, the greatest challenge was finding a thing or two that did not pose a threat.

  Behind him, Davey must have found the switch for a searchlight, which Jesse didn’t even know existed, because a powerful beam of white light cut through the near-dawn darkness with razorlike sharpness and seemingly reached out a mile. All at once, he could actually see the shore.

  And it looked way too close.

  “Davey!” Jesse called. “Do you see the dock?”

  “Got it,” Davey yelled. He cut back the engines and then put on the brakes somehow. Was it possible to reverse the engines on a boat? Jesse pitched forward and had to put his hands out to catch the edge of a storage locker to prevent himself from being ejected over the side.

  The boat slowed quickly and water splashed over the sides and onto the deck as Davey somehow slid through a controlled skid up to the dock.

  “This is where it gets intense, son!” Davey called. “Shoot at anyone who shoots at you, but don’t shoot at anyone who’s shooting at the guys who are shooting at you.” He must have known that the order was confusing as hell, because he laughed when he said it.

  Jesse dropped to one knee, hoping for as much cover as possible, as he scanned the expanse of beach ahead of him. At first, he didn’t see anything.

  And then he saw the children.

  * * *

  Jonathan didn’t have time to count bodies or check for wounded. Survival meant movement, but the choke point created by the back gate concerned him. It would be too easy to hide back there and lie in wait. Like the front gate, there was nothing the least bit decorative about the back gate. It was made of stout steel, and it was held shut by a massive padlock.

  Jonathan pointed to the lock. “GPC,” he said.

  “Y
ou really do love me, don’t you?” Boxers said.

  The shooting out front had stopped completely, leading Jonathan to believe that those who were not torn to pieces by the Claymore had gotten religion and had decided that there were better ways to spend their morning.

  “Are they all dead?” Sophia asked. The thought didn’t seem to bother her.

  “Or they ran away,” Tomás said.

  “Tomás killed Alejandro,” Angela said. She looked proud. She turned back and examined Leo’s bandage. “You’ll be okay.”

  The boy nodded but seemed unconvinced.

  The news of Azul’s death ignited a rumble of amazed small talk.

  “Maybe they stopped shooting because their leader is dead,” Santiago guessed. “What do you think, Scorpion?”

  “I assume nothing,” Jonathan said.

  “We’re set,” Boxers said. “Everybody, take cover.” He pulled the string to ignite the thirty-second length of OFF, old-fashioned fuse, and instantly, the sharp stench of burning gunpowder filled the air.

  Jonathan led the kids to a spot among the ornamental trees that lined the interior of the whitewashed wall about a hundred feet away. The nature of the charge and the position in which it had been placed took significant shrapnel out of play.

  “Get low and put your fingers in your ears,” Jonathan said. The kids complied, and a few seconds after, the charge erupted with a ground-shaking boom.

  “Everybody okay?” Jonathan asked.

  Thumbs-up from everyone.

  “Excellent,” Jonathan said. “Now, stay put for a minute. And remember to keep your eye out for shooters.”

  Boxers and Jonathan converged on the site of the explosion. The GPC had both vaporized the lock and cut a hole in the steel.

  “I do love explosives,” Boxers said with a smile. He started to push the gate open.

  “Not yet,” Jonathan said. “Let’s drop a couple of frags to make sure it’s clear on the other side.”

  “I literally just came in my pants,” Big Guy said.

  Jonathan moved to the left side of the gate and lifted the flap on a pouch on his vest and retrieved an M67 grenade. With a glance to Boxers, they coordinated their effort. In unison, they pulled the pins, released the safety spoons, and heaved the tiny spheres of Comp B over the crest of the wall. With only a four-second delay, there was little concern that a bunch of untrained drug dealers could react fast enough to toss them back.

  Jonathan considered the simultaneous explosions to be a thing of beauty. It wasn’t about how many people they maimed or killed. It was about the number of people they scared the shit out of, and few sights in battle were more intimidating than enemies who seemed to know what they were doing.

  Jonathan turned to the kids and motioned them forward. “Here we go!” he shouted. “After Big Guy and me, we’re out. Dawkins, you lead. Go! Go! Go!”

  Boxers pulled open the broken gate, waited for Jonathan to pass, then squirted out after him. Jonathan spun left, and with his M27 pressed to his shoulder, he darted out to the green-black corner and scanned for targets. The sun was above the horizon now, casting long dark shadows, which made for perfect hiding places. This was the nightmare situation Boxers had been worried about. Their sole advantage at this point was firepower and marksmanship. That wasn’t nearly enough.

  Jonathan’s earbud popped. “Scorpion, Mother Hen. I just got word that your ride is there.”

  Jonathan whipped his head around to the water, and sure enough, there it was. A sleek white boat was coming in hot, only about a hundred yards away.

  “Dawkins!” Jonathan yelled.

  From behind the gate, Dawkins said, “Yo!”

  “Get them moving. Your boat is here.”

  * * *

  The view from the sea was all bedlam. Smoke billowed from the house now, great roiling gobs of it, which hung close to the ground and seemed to expand more laterally than vertically. Jesse’s dancing view through the binoculars showed two soldiers in the sand, pointing rifles at nothing. “Why are they taking so long?” Jesse asked.

  “They’re doing their jobs,” Davey said. “Covering the retreat. And you’re not supposed to be watching that, anyway.” As he spoke, Davey kept tweaking the throttles to fight against the current, which alternated between trying to run them into the dock and take them out to sea. “They’ve got the close-in areas covered. You need to keep an eye on the perimeter.”

  “Want me to tie off to the dock?” Jesse asked.

  “Oh, hell no. When it’s time to go, we’re going.”

  Jesse pivoted his body to the right and scanned the scrub growth for anything that looked like a threat. The only human forms he could see all appeared to be dead. Bloodied and in some cases literally torn to pieces. “Jesus,” he breathed. “What the hell happened here?”

  And some of them were too far away. If only they could settle the boat down, he could see better detail. He tried bracing his arm against the edge of the hull, hoping to settle down the image, but that only made it worse.

  He scanned right to left and then back again. The combined effect of limited vision and movement made him feel a little ill. At least he was feeling safer. This Scorpion dude had done a lot of business, eliminated a lot of threats. And every eliminated threat was one that Jesse didn’t have to—

  Wait.

  He brought the binoculars down for a second to clear his head and then brought them back up again. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought maybe one of the dead guys had moved.

  * * *

  Orlando Azul knew that he was dead. It wasn’t possible to be in this much pain and not be close to death. The explosion of the bus had done something to his legs and his stomach. He didn’t know what, exactly, and he didn’t care to look, but he knew that his guts had been torn up.

  And he knew that his cousin was dead. First, he was mangled by the same shrapnel that had mangled Orlando, and then he was shot down. Orlando had seen the bullets tear into him. And then again, after he had been killed.

  These Americans were animals. They needed to be put down. As many of them as possible. Orlando made that his last mission in this life. Literally, he was forcing himself to stay alive for this one thing. This one act of vengeance.

  And so he had crawled. For what seemed like an hour or more, he’d crawled across the sand and over and through countless shrubs and bushes, all of them cut close to the sand.

  He might have passed out once or twice. He had no idea what the second explosion was, but he saw a third explosion tear apart a man named Alfredo. He was a good man and a good father who never would have chosen to be a part of this attack if Alejandro had not pressured him into it.

  The only way for the Americans to leave was by boat. And the only way to get to a boat was by going along the beach, so that was where Orlando would make his mark. He was nearly there.

  And there was a full magazine in his MP5 submachine gun. His favorite.

  * * *

  The kids sprinted out in single file, each separated from the nearest other kid by six or seven feet. As they ran, Jonathan forced himself not to look at them. The best favor he could do for them at this point was to protect them. Their only job was to run fast down the dock and onto the deck of the waiting boat—one that had a lot of engine, judging from the throaty sounds it made while idling.

  Behind him, he heard Dawkins encouraging the kids to move faster down the dock.

  “I don’t see any bad guys, Boss,” Boxers said over the radio.

  The last two kids to clear the back gate were Angela and Tomás. They slowed as they approached Jonathan.

  “Do you need help?” Tomás asked.

  “No. Keep going. We’re right behind you.” He waited another five seconds or so, then said, “Let’s back it up, Big Guy. Get the hell out of here.”

  They walked backward, eyes always forward. Planted toe first and then heel, one foot after the other, constant progress, constant vigilance. As long as the corner of the wall stay
ed in the same spot relative to his view, Jonathan knew that he was heading in the right direction, give or take a minute or two of angle.

  And Tomás matched him step for step.

  “Tomás, I’ve got this,” Jonathan said. “Get to the boat.”

  “We’ll all get to the boat together.”

  Jonathan barked, “Now, Tomás. Think of Angela. If nothing else, go to protect her. I don’t want you this close right now. Let me do my job. Now go.”

  “I’m not in your way,” Tomás said.

  Jonathan didn’t have time to argue. Didn’t have the energy, either. In just a few minutes, this thing would be done. Later would come all the shit on the far side. On the American side, when he had to assimilate seven—no, six—children into a system where—

  Gunfire from his right startled him and drove him to his knee, rifle up and ready. He pulled Tomás down to his knees and pushed him into the sand, grateful that he didn’t resist. “I’m taking fire,” Jonathan said. “From the right, I don’t know where.” He scanned for targets, found nothing.

  Then he heard a gun from out at sea. Nothing big, another M4, probably, and a glance confirmed it. He heard someone on the boat shouting something, and then he saw someone on the boat lift a rifle and fire again. An area out in front and maybe twenty yards away erupted in a spray of sand.

  “Stay down,” Jonathan said. He couldn’t see anyone at the site of the spraying sand, but that didn’t mean anything. There was plenty of cover out there. “Big Guy, do you see anything deep out on the green side of the building?”

  “If I did, I’d be killing it,” Boxers said.

  “Mother Hen, get Torpedo or Bomber, or whoever the hell they are, on the horn and find out what’s going on.”

  “Already on it,” she said. “You’ve got a tango in the weeds at what they’re calling your three o’clock.”

  “Big Guy, cover me,” Jonathan said. He rose to a sprinter’s stance, crouched at the waist, with his M27 pressed against his shoulder, and he charged forward.