Scorpion Strike

by John Gilstrap

  “Time to go,” he said. They just didn’t know where or why or for how long.

  Details.

  Jonathan led the way out of the bathroom and back into the bedroom. “We should go out the front door,” he said. “Maybe the bad guys—”

  “Wait!” a voice yelled from beyond the patio.

  Jonathan brought his rifle up reflexively.

  “No!” He recognized the voice as belonging to a woman now, and she made a praying gesture with her hands. “Please don’t shoot and please don’t leave. Hunter is getting some clothes for us.”

  “Jesus,” Jonathan grumbled. “I forgot about them.”

  “Okay,” Gail said. “We can wait for a minute or two.” She drilled Jonathan with a glare. “Can’t we?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Why would we want to hurry?” As soon as the words were out, he regretted them. Not because waiting wasn’t a stupid thing to do, but rather that he hated to sound whiny. “It’s Lori, right?”

  She nodded. “He should be right here. Who were those men?”

  “Bad guys,” Jonathan said. It was an accurate description of how he divided much of his world. There were good guys and bad guys. The rest didn’t matter.

  Another burst of machine-gun fire rippled the night.

  “That’s shooting, right?” Lori asked.

  “It’s healthier to think of it as people dying,” Jonathan said.

  “Oh, my God,” Lori said.

  “Oh, come on,” Gail admonished.

  “There is no better time for the unvarnished truth than when you’re under attack,” Jonathan said. To Lori: “Where’s your bungalow? Are you right next door?” He pointed out the shattered door to the left.

  “Yes.”

  Jonathan headed off in that direction. “I’ll see if I can move him along a little faster.”

  Lori moved to intervene. “Please don’t hurt him.”

  He stopped and forced a smile. “I’m not a bad guy,” he said. “I just want to hurry him along a little.”

  “No need to,” said a voice from just beyond the aura of light that spilled through the ruined doors. It was Hunter, and he’d found a pair of shorts, running shoes, and a polo shirt. He held out some clothes and shoes for Lori. “Thanks for waiting.”

  “Thanks for hurrying,” Jonathan countered.

  While Lori pulled herself into an outfit that looked remarkably like the one her husband wore, Hunter said, “I have a question for you.” He addressed it to Jonathan.

  He waited for it.

  “Where’d you get the mad knife skills?”

  “I grew up in a bad neighborhood,” Jonathan said.

  “Bullshit.”

  “Okay.” It was, in fact, bullshit. Jonathan had grown up in unparalleled wealth under the protection of a father who happened to be one of Virginia’s most notorious criminals. This was not a discussion he intended to have.

  “And how come you were Steve and Alicia at the pool this morning, but Gail and Dig under pressure?”

  He’d done that, hadn’t he? He’d used Gail’s name and she’d used his.

  “No bullshit answer for that one,” Jonathan said. “Just no answer at all. Hey, Lori, how are we doing?”

  Her trembling hands were having a hard time wrangling her shoelaces. “I’m trying,” she said.

  Jonathan pointed with his forehead. “Why don’t you give her a hand. This is not a place we want to stay.”

  Hunter got her fixed up, and they stood together.

  “Stay close to us,” Jonathan said, “and if there’s shooting, hit the ground fast.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “LOOKS LIKE WE WERE LUCKY TO GET CHAIRS,” TYLER WHISPERED. Weary, confused guests flooded the upper pool deck, and the chairs were being gobbled up. During the day, there was always ample seating for those who wanted to sun themselves on the pool deck—and there were pool boys to fetch more if they were needed. However, in the dozens of times that Tyler had visited the Crystal Sands, there’d never been a time when every guest was here at the pool. Typically, they were strewn throughout the resort, from the kayak launch point to the beach to the bar to the golf course. Chairs would soon become a scarce commodity.

  And it was hot. Every night was warm at the Crystal Sands—that’s why people came here in the first place—but the steady breezes gave relief. As the bodies packed in, each of those ninety-eight-point-six-degree heat generators raised the temps and blocked the breezes. It became apparent to Tyler after only a few minutes that it had been too long since too many had had a shower.

  “I wish they’d tell what they were going to do to us,” Annie said.

  “We’ve already seen what they’ll do if we don’t cooperate,” Tyler replied.

  “Will you two please shut up?” hissed the woman to their right. Aged somewhere between fifty and seventy, the lady was clearly a sun worshipper, with skin that made a football look pretty. She’d taken the time to put diamond studs into her ears before being herded out of her room. Or, maybe she just slept with them in. Was that even possible?

  Tyler looked at the woman, said nothing.

  “They’ve told us to stay quiet,” the lady pressed.

  “So, why are you talking?” Annie asked. Tyler smiled and she seemed pleased with herself.

  The captors all looked like soldiers who’d bought their gear from the same store. Black on black on black, from shoes all the way up through shirts and what Tyler presumed were bulletproof vests. They carried the same guns and they all had radios attached to their vests, just behind their right shoulders. The radios ran to square microphones that looked to be attached by Velcro to the front side of their right shoulders.

  Tyler counted eleven of them, all men, but there could have been more. He might also have double counted, since they all looked alike. They didn’t say much, but when they did, it was in English. Since the accents sounded Russian, he ruled out your standard ISIS nut bags, but he wasn’t sure that made him feel any better.

  Best he could tell from the little he’d overheard, they referred to each other not by name, but by phonetic alphabet letters. He’d heard references to a Bravo, an Echo, and a Golf. He recognized the handles as elements of the military alphabet, so he assumed that there must be an Alpha, Charlie, and Foxtrot out there someplace. Plus more, he imagined.

  Several of the other guests had dared to ask what was going to happen to them, but none of them got answers. One did get a punch in the face, though.

  Over at the blue mosaic-tiled bar, two of the soldiers sat on high stools, goosenecking over a stack of wallets and purses and their contents. From what Tyler could tell, they were less interested in the valuables than they were in the credit cards and such. In fact, after they pulled the cards from the wallets, they cast the wallets themselves off to the side. They also seemed interested in passports.

  It wasn’t until Tyler saw a familiar green-and-white accordion-folded striped stack of paper that he understood what they were up to. “They’re matching IDs to the guest roster,” he whispered.

  “How do you know?” Annie asked, which startled him. He didn’t know he’d spoken aloud.

  “The paper,” Tyler whispered. “My stepfather, Baker, won’t hesitate to spend ten grand on a new chandelier in a guest room, but the hundred bucks to replace the antique dot-matrix printer at the reception desk is a step too far. That’s the only place we use that paper.”

  Tyler’s attention was drawn to an intense discussion between two of the guards, one of whom carried a megaphone that he hadn’t yet used. The other man carried a manila folder that was stuffed with papers. They disagreed over whether or not it was time to start something. The objection had to do with some people who were missing.

  The captor on the left cocked his head to the side and said into his radio, “Hotel, this is Alpha. Is Foxtrot with you?” He waited maybe ten seconds and then repeated the question. “Their radios must not be working.”

  “Or something happened to them,” the oth
er one countered.

  Alpha looked annoyed. “They were Sector Eight, is that correct?”

  “Yes.” Tyler noted the absence of “sir” at the end. Not military.

  Alpha sighed deeply. “Take a team. Golf and India. See what you can find. Leave me the list, and send Echo over to take notes.”

  “You got it.” As the other man walked away, Tyler heard him say, “Delta, this is Bravo.” It seemed that Alpha was in charge and Bravo was his second. Tyler wondered if the alphabet was a rank system, with Zulu being on the bottom of the pile.

  After fifteen seconds or so, a new captor arrived to take Bravo’s place next to Alpha. Smart money said this was Echo. This one had removed his skullcap, revealing yellow hair as a sharp contrast to all the black. Alpha handed the newcomer the clipboard, saving the megaphone for himself. He keyed the microphone and launched a squeal of electronic feedback. Tyler couldn’t tell if it was intentional, but it, for sure, got everyone’s attention.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, settle down and listen carefully. I know that you have many, many questions, but I am not in a position to answer any of them at this time. Those of you who survive your ordeal over the next forty-eight hours will be perfectly justified in contacting your travel agent and demanding a full refund.”

  The alphabet men laughed, but they were the only ones.

  Alpha continued, “Consider yourselves to be our captives. Anyone who tries to escape will be shot.” He paused for effect. “I assure those of you who have been separated from your children that they are being well taken care of.” If those words were supposed to be soothing, they had the opposite effect. Murmurs rumbled through the assembled crowd.

  “Pay attention!” Alpha shouted. “These are unsettling times, and during unsettling times, people are most apt to make terrible mistakes. As some of you have seen all too closely, terrible mistakes bear terrible consequences. The gift of being shot with a high-powered weapon is to die quickly. The curse is to die slowly. So listen very carefully.”

  In the silence of Alpha’s next pause, the sounds of snuffling could not be masked. Tyler imagined that such was the point. These people were all terrified. Tyler was scared, too, but not to the level of the parents. He got that.

  “If you are a parent and you try to escape, your children will be killed first—in your presence—and then you may or may not follow them into death.”

  “You’re animals.” The comment bloomed from the middle of the crowd, from an indeterminate source. The words ignited a rumble, and while Alpha seemed alerted, he did not seem to be angered.

  “Animals, are we?” he said. “I won’t ask who said that because I understand that you are all animals, too. An armadillo’s response to danger is to roll into his shell. When threatened, a frightened chameleon changes color to become invisible. A frightened prisoner makes noise anonymously because—”

  A man in his sixties arose from a group that was sitting on the concrete near the shallow end of the upper pool. Tyler recognized his face, but he hadn’t met him. “That was me,” the man said. “I’m sorry if you thought I was hiding, because—”

  A gunshot thumped the night and the man’s head erupted in a hideous spray. He dropped to the deck as if his central core had evaporated. An alphabet component who hadn’t yet made his letter clear lowered his rifle from his shoulder. A sixtysomething woman—presumably the dead man’s wife—pulled the man’s head into her lap and howled a sound that was pure grief.

  “Ask yourselves if that was a worthy sacrifice!” Alpha yelled. “A wife lost her husband, children lost their father, and grandchildren lost their legacy. All because of a proud man’s need to look brave. Was that a worthwhile sacrifice?”

  Alpha zoned in on the Turner couple, Zach and Becky. He was the one who’d left a leg in Afghanistan.

  “You two,” Alpha drilled. “You’ve suffered the penalties of war and patriotism. Was that man’s sacrifice a noble one?”

  Tyler watched as Zach’s face turned red from the neck up. Becky’s gentle touch on her husband’s arm looked like a well-practiced move. Zach’s shoulders relaxed a little.

  “No,” Becky said. “The sacrifice was not worth the penalty.” She wiped a tear and blew a kiss to the sobbing woman. “I’m sorry.”

  “I want to hear from the cripple,” Alpha said. “What say you, Mr. War Hero?”

  Zach’s jaw tightened under the skin of his slender face. Even in the dim, deflected glow of the swimming lights, the throbbing muscles in front of his ears stood out in high relief. He said nothing.

  “I expect an answer, War Hero.”

  Becky cupped the line of his jaw with her hand. “Please,” she said.

  Zach gently pushed her hand away. “I’m not a war hero,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  Zach started to stand, but Becky pulled him back down into his chair. “Think of the kids,” she said. Tyler wasn’t sure that he’d actually heard the words, but he easily read her lips.

  “I said I’m no war hero,” Zach repeated, this time loudly enough to be heard by everyone. “The heroes lost their whole souls over there. I’m just a guy who’s missing a leg.”

  That didn’t exactly jibe with what he’d told Tyler at the pool, but under the circumstances, who couldn’t forgive being a little fast and loose with the facts?

  “You haven’t answered my question,” Alpha pressed. “There’s a dead man bleeding into the pool. His wife is covered in his blood. Was his a worthy sacrifice?”

  The redness intensified in Zach’s neck and cheeks. Becky clearly saw it and her posture telegraphed pure dread.

  Zach stood, and weapons raised at every compass point. “I don’t know who that murdered man was,” he said, “but I know that he was killed for stating his mind.”

  “Please, Zach,” Becky whined.

  “Is stating an opinion ever worth summary execution?” Zach continued. “I would say, probably not.” He eyeballed the potential shooters one at a time. “Certainly, that is not a line that I would dare to cross.” He returned his glare to Alpha. “Is that enough?”

  Tyler watched the assembled riflemen. They deeply wanted to shoot somebody.

  Alpha smiled, but it was all mouth and cheeks. His eyes remained dead. “Your answer will keep you alive for tonight,” he said. “For now.”

  The threat melted Becky, but seemed to bounce off Zach. Maybe it was absorbed by him. “I’ll take whatever mercies come my way,” he said, and he sat back down.

  * * *

  Anatoly Petrovich Ivanov thought there’d been far too much shooting this evening. Mercenaries the world over enjoyed violence far too much, and their thirst for it closed their minds to peaceful alternatives. He had seen it in career soldiers, as well, but that was back in the day when rank meant something, where disobedience was met with due process and prescribed punishment. Here, with this crew, his status as the leader was subject to the willingness of his men to grant him the title.

  Tonight, and for the next two, maybe three days, he and his team of twenty-eight fighting specialists were no longer Russian. In fact, they had no citizenship at all. Moscow wanted it that way, so that if things did not go according to plan, his government could deny any knowledge of the operation. Unlike the clownish politicians of the United States, Russian politicians were very good at keeping secrets. In part because of honor, but also because, again unlike the Americans, betrayal carried real consequences.

  The assault plan required swift, intense violence, but he had hoped for a loss of fewer lives among the hostages. With one or two, you got everyone’s attention and focused fear, but with too many, you instilled a sense of hopelessness—of inevitable death—that might encourage rebellion. And while people were sheep, even sheep will turn violent if they are pushed too far. Though Anatoly’s team numbered twenty-eight and they were armed, the hostages numbered as many as two hundred. If they found a strong leader who could motivate them, twenty-eight wouldn’t be nearly enough. That’s why Ana
toly ordered the children to be sequestered from their parents. Nothing weakened even the toughest man quite like his love for his children.

  As the prisoners settled into place—he couldn’t bring himself to think of them as hostages—Anatoly watched over Stepan Vasechkin’s shoulder as the other man sifted through stolen wallets in search of identification papers. One never knew who might be a guest of Baker Sinise. He owed it to his team and to Moscow to take a full accounting.

  “This will take time,” Stepan said. Until this was over, his name was Lima.

  “Something that I believe we have plenty of,” Anatoly replied. Only English would be spoken during their time at Crystal Sands, and most of them exhibited acceptable British pronunciation.

  The radios near him all broke squelch. “Alpha, this is India,” a voice said. Anatoly knew India to be Gerasim Arturovich Kuznetsov, one of the few operators on this mission with whom Anatoly had served while in the Russian Army. He knew Gerasim to be a good soldier and a loyal comrade.

  Anatoly leaned his jaw into the microphone at his shoulder. “This is Alpha.”

  “Alpha, be advised that the prime package is not here.”

  Anatoly’s stomach flipped. He met Stepan’s gaze and asked off the air, “Did he just say—”

  “That the prime package is not here, yeah,” Stepan said.

  Into the microphone: “Where is he?”

  Hesitation. “Um, can you come up to his quarters?” India said. “Third floor of the main building.”

  “Is it urgent?” he asked.

  A pause. “I suppose not urgent, but it’s important.”

  “I copy,” Anatoly said. “I’ll be up when I can.”

  CHAPTER 4

  TYLER COULDN’T HEAR THE WORDS THAT ALPHA AND THE OTHER man were speaking at the bar, but there was no missing the fact that something was wrong. He could see it in the faces of the other captors, as well, all of whom heard the same radio communication. Lots of silent glances and subtle shrugs.

  Alpha brought the megaphone back to his lips and keyed the microphone, triggering another squeal of feedback. “Damn it,” he said.