Scorpion Strike

by John Gilstrap

  “Remember, they’re not armed,” Gail said.

  “They don’t shoot at me, I won’t shoot at them.” Jonathan threw open the door to the passageway. Gail was surprised that the door was a standard hollow-core door panel with standard hardware, no different than what you’d find in an office building.

  Jonathan pivoted right, while Gail pivoted left. Her view of the passageway was clear, but Jonathan yelled, “Down! Hands, hands, hands! Let me see your hands! I’ve got crew, Gunslinger.”

  She never turned her back on her sector as she moved to lend aid to Jonathan as he stormed the bunk room. Gail counted six crewmen on the first glance, all in various stages of panic. Caught in midsleep by the noise and excitement, they mostly just seemed confused.

  “We won’t hurt you if you cooperate,” Jonathan said. To Gail’s ear, he’d moderated his tone, moved to soothing mode. “No weapons, no fists, and we’ll be out of here in no time. Gunslinger, hold the hallway.”

  Gail stood in the doorway to the bunk room, her back turned to the activity in there. If Digger needed help, he’d ask for it. She scanned the passageway from one end to the other, left to right and back again, in a continuous motion.

  Behind her, Jonathan ordered his captives under their bunks, facedown, while he rummaged through their things. Gail wasn’t happy that they’d made their presence known in such an obvious way. She stipulated that they needed as much intel as they could gather, but this was a level of risk—

  She saw movement to her left, toward the front of the ship. A shadow moved along the intersecting hallway, advancing right to left.

  “Scorpion, I’ve got movement out here.”

  “Need help?”

  The shadow froze. Then it backed off. Slowly at first, then quickly.

  “Shit,” Gail said. “We’ve got a runner. I’m going after him.” Jonathan said something discouraging in her ear, and she responded, “You do what you need to do so we can get out of here. I’m going after him.” It was the right thing to do. The only thing to do. She pushed off and ran to the end of the passageway, where she pulled to a stop, pivoted to a leftie grip, and scanned to the right for her target.

  She caught a glimpse just as an underwear-clad male disappeared out of the far door on the starboard side and headed left. There was no time to snap a shot. She pivoted back to the left, just to make sure that she hadn’t been drawn into the trap of a cross fire—in which case, she’d already have died—then took off after her quarry. By her estimation, he had maybe a five-second head start.

  “Stop!” she shouted.

  The fact of his running was the problem. Was he getting a weapon? Was he calling for help? They couldn’t afford to let him do either of those things.

  Gail sprinted to the end of the cross passageway, took a second to calm herself, and then dared a peek to the left, and then another to the right. No guns. Not that she could see, anyway.

  The doorway led her to a spot beyond the covered passageway where they’d boarded. Immediately to her left, a set of steep open stairs—she recalled being told that stairs were ladders in the Navy—led to the deck above.

  Suddenly aware of a potential threat from above, she stepped away from the door opening and scanned for shooters who might be looking down on her. Nothing. That was the second time in thirty seconds when she’d survived despite her mistakes. This was exactly why SWAT and other assault forces worked as teams. As a solo, there are simply too many angles to cover.

  All that lay ahead of her was more open deck, much of it stacked with stuff she didn’t recognize. Boxes, canisters, that sort of thing. Her instincts told her that her prey had fled up to the next deck.

  “Status report, Gunslinger.” That was Venice.

  “I think I’ve tracked our guy to the deck above us,” she said. “I’m heading up there now.”

  “Be advised that’s where you’ll find the wheelhouse. The control room. Whatever the heck you call it.”

  “Got it,” Gail said. She climbed the ladder as quickly and as quietly as she could, yet again keenly aware that she was exposing herself in a progression from the head down.

  There he was! “I’ve got him,” Gail said.

  The man she’d spotted was just a few feet away from the door to the wheelhouse and sprinting toward it.

  “Stop! Don’t make me shoot.” If he got to the wheelhouse—if he got anywhere—he could gain an advantage. She couldn’t allow that to happen.

  Gail brought her rifle to her shoulder and gave the runner one last chance. “Stop!”

  If anything, he sped up.

  Gail settled her front sight on a spot between the man’s shoulder blades and fired. Fired again.

  The man faltered with the impact of the first bullet, and the impact of the second appeared to propel him through the opening and out of sight.

  “I hit him,” she said.

  “Is he dead?” Jonathan asked.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Approach cautiously.”

  Gail didn’t bother to respond to that. Again, the biggest threat at this second—especially since shots had been fired—was the approach of previously unknown and uninvolved crewmen who had just been alerted.

  She kept low and advanced in a scissor-step as she crossed the deck toward the open door to the wheelhouse, scanning in a continuous arc for additional targets.

  “He’s on the radio!” Jonathan announced in her ear. “Goddammit, he’s on the radio. Kill him.”

  Gail picked up her pace. Still with no targets to shoot, she closed the distance to the wheelhouse door and swung inside.

  There he was, on the floor, bleeding from a hole in his belly, a bloody microphone clutched in his fist. No more than twenty years old, and maybe 130 pounds soaking wet, he jumped when he saw her, and threw the crimson-streaked mic onto the deck.

  “Don’t shoot!” he said in heavily-accented English. “Please don’t kill me.”

  Gail’s finger caressed her trigger, but she hesitated. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Harm,” he said. He winced against a wave of pain. “Harm Mohren. I am Dutch. I am not with them.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Please help me. I have been shot.”

  “I know,” Gail said. “I’m the one who shot you.”

  “For God’s sake, Gail, what are you doing?” Jonathan said. She could tell from the effort in his voice that he was running.

  She pulled her Bluetooth from her ear and slipped it into her pocket. “Answer me,” she pressed, moving closer. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  “But it hurts.” Harm started to cry.

  “Keep it together, Harm. Answer my questions and we’ll get some help for you. You tell me you’re not with the terrorists, yet here you are. Why?”

  “I am, em, how do you say it? Ship’s company. Not a terrorist. I am with the ship. Now, please help me.”

  “Who are the terrorists?” Gail asked. “Why are they here? What do they want?”

  “They don’t tell me,” the young man said. “They pay me a lot of money to bring them. I did not know where they wanted to go until after we were under way.”

  “Under way from where?”

  “Rosarito.”

  “Where is that?”

  “Mexico. On west coast. Now, please. It hurts so much.”

  Gail fought the temptation to move in closer, fought the urge to offer aid. She needed to know what this guy knew, and this was her only opportunity. Relief from pain had long been one of the most effective means by which to leverage information.

  “What are the terrorists here to do?”

  “I told you. I don’t know.”

  Gail moved to back away. “Then I’m sorry we can’t help you.”

  Behind her, she heard footsteps quickly approaching, and she turned to see Jonathan on his way to join her. She held out a hand to stop him, then turned back to Harm. “I’m sorry that you have to die.”

  “Wait,” h
e said. “They have explosives. And guns.”

  “More than what they took with them?”

  Harm nodded. He coughed once and sent a mist of blood into the air. Some of it dribbled down his chin. “Oh, God,” he said. “Ik ben stervende.” He took a deep breath and seemed to lose focus.

  “Where are the guns and explosives?” Gail pressed. “In the hold?”

  He shook his head. “No, the holds are empty. That is why we are here. To fill them.”

  “To fill them with what?”

  Harm lifted his hands and looked at the blood. “Nothing that is worth this.”

  “But what?” Gail said. She heard the urgency in her voice causing it to rise half an octave.

  He looked at her. And he died.

  * * *

  “I think this is maybe a bad idea,” Lori said. They were navigating through the dark, going far too fast for her liking. “Maybe we need to go back.”

  “We are not going back,” Hunter said. “That boat or ship, or whatever the hell it is, is our way out of here. I’m not going to let you get left behind while Scorpion Digger, or whatever his name is, takes off.”

  “I don’t think he would do such a thing,” Lori said. “He seems like a saver and not an . . . abandoner.”

  “So, you’re siding with the others,” Hunter said.

  She started to reply, but swallowed her words. This was Hunter in a nutshell. All competition, all the time, and never wrong, even when he was. The argument always went the same way from this point, and now was not the time to have it.

  “You had the choice to stay behind,” Hunter went on. “I don’t need you piling a bunch of shit on our situation.”

  Lori sat quietly.

  “Am I making myself clear?”

  “As crystal,” she said. At the height of any battle, one of Hunter’s most wielded attack weapons was condescension and demanding language. Lori was sick of it. This vacation was a mistake—Hunter’s vision of retaliating against her request for a divorce by throwing lots of money at it. “Can you at least slow down a little?”

  His foot got heavier on the accelerator pedal. He could be such an asshole. Thank God there were no kids in the marriage, or else—

  “What’s that?” she asked. It sounded like an engine and it was coming up from behind them. “Is that a truck?”

  “Oh, shit,” Hunter said. He leaned onto the accelerator even more.

  “We need to get off the trail,” Lori said. “This golf cart can’t outrun—”

  “Shut up, Lori. Can you just do that one thing for me?”

  At this speed, Lori could no longer distinguish between the center of the road and its shoulders. It was pointless to argue, so she wrapped her fist around the roof support and hung on.

  Within five seconds, headlights swept the trees on the curve behind them, and a few seconds after that, they were overtaken.

  “Stop that train!” someone with a heavy accent yelled in English. “Stop or we will shoot.”

  “Jesus, Hunter, what are you going to do?” Lori said. “They’re going to shoot!”

  He let up off the accelerator. “Okay, fine,” he said. “Is this what you wanted? You wanted to get caught?”

  The question was so absurd that she couldn’t form an answer before the soldiers were on them. At first, there were only four of them, but within another few seconds, a second vehicle arrived— both were pickup trucks bearing the logo of the Crystal Sands Resort—and disgorged four more soldiers.

  “Hands up!” someone called. “Hands up right now. Hands!”

  Lori raised her arms to the point where her hands hit the roof of the cart and could go no farther. She didn’t look to see what Hunter was doing. Whether he was being an ass or a pussy, she just didn’t want to know.

  “Get out of the train,” the soldier said. To call the cart a “train” made sense, she supposed, considering that the cart could comfortably transport as many as twenty-four people at a time. Throw in the fact that English was clearly not this soldier’s first language, and it made even more sense.

  “Do not put your hands down.” It was a chore to butt-walk to the edge of the bench seat and swing her feet to the ground without using her hands.

  “Who are you?” another soldier asked.

  “We’re guests of the resort,” Hunter said.

  “We’re the Edwardses,” Lori elaborated. “Lori and Hunter Edwards.”

  In the wash of the headlights, she could see that her words triggered some form of recognition. Three of the soldiers exchanged glances, and one of them stepped away from the others to speak into his radio. While he was away, the soldier closest to Lori pulled her hands down one at a time and bound them behind her back with zip ties.

  “What are you going to do with us?” Hunter asked. His voice shook as he spoke.

  If the soldiers heard him, they made no indication.

  Lori kept her eyes averted. If she looked at Hunter, she didn’t think that she could stifle the words that boiled in her throat. If he’d just stayed put—if he’d just done what they were asked to do—her hands wouldn’t be bound behind her back, and they wouldn’t be in a position of begging for their lives. This was no time for a lecture.

  “Hunter and Lorelai Edwards.” It was the voice of one of the soldiers, and from his bearing, she assumed him to be the leader of this group. He approached as he spoke, closing the distance between himself and Hunter to less than three feet.

  Hunter nodded. For the first time, Lori saw that Hunter’s hands had been bound, as well.

  “You are from Bungalow Nine, are you not?”

  “Yes, sir, we are. Were, I mean.”

  The soldier threw a vicious punch into Hunter’s midsection, collapsing him in a heap. He disappeared from Lori’s view, so she could not see where the two brutal kicks that followed landed on his body. But she could hear Hunter retching and gasping for breath.

  “That is what you get for killing my compatriots,” the soldier said.

  Hunter said something through his pain, but it got lost in the impact of a third kick.

  “Say nothing,” the soldier said. Then he turned to Lori. “And what about you, pretty lady?”

  The soldiers all closed in around her, as if to block her way if she decided to run. None of them touched her, but the soldier who’d beaten her husband looked wired for murder. Details were hard to discern in the glare and harsh shadows of the headlights, but she caught the very pale complexion and the red beard stubble. More than that, she caught the thick, muscular neck and the hard set of his mouth. All of that was terrifying, but the rest paled in comparison with the vivid heat of his glare.

  “What is the correct penalty for executing my soldiers?”

  CHAPTER 10

  JONATHAN ARRIVED ON THE DECK PISSED, READY TO DO HARM. BUT when he saw what Gail was doing, the information she was gathering, he pushed the anger down. They needed intel, and if there was one person who could give it, it was the ship’s captain. If, indeed, that’s truly who he was.

  He’d heard most of what had been said, even though much of the electronic conversation was muffled after Gail stuffed her earpiece into her pocket. And Venice had already told him that he deserved that bit of rudeness, that Gail was doing exactly what needed to be done.

  What neither of the ladies knew, however, was the volume and pace of the radio traffic surrounding the captain’s alert that “Home Base” was under assault. Most definitely the sort of message that would bring large numbers of bad guys storming their way. He came up to tell Gail that they needed to get the hell out of here, but when he heard about the guns and explosives, he got an idea.

  What were the two data points they had on that? One, that they were not in the hold, and two, by definition they had to be someplace else. Belowdecks, he’d found all kinds of documents and identifications—he’d scooped up as many of them as he could and filled the pockets of his pants and his vest with as many as they would hold—but he saw nothing in the way o
f weapons. Now, granted, there was a lot of ship that they hadn’t yet seen, but—

  The crates on the deck.

  “He’s dead,” Gail said. She’d returned to the door of the wheelhouse, her body framed in the opening. “How much of that did you hear?”

  “Pretty much all of it,” Jonathan said, but he’d already moved on. “Here, come help me. I think I know where they keep their ammo and explosives and your guy’s friends are on the way.”

  “If we’ve got any time, I want to search the wheelhouse for intel, instead.”

  Actually, that was a damned good idea. “Two minutes max,” he said.

  They separated. Jonathan advanced to the forward part of the deck, where cube-shaped objects of various sizes had been draped with tarps. They stood six to eight feet high and had been sealed with shrink-wrap. Jonathan pulled the knife from his pocket and slit the plastic on the nearest crate. As he pulled that away, he slit the tarp, as well, revealing that the big containers were, in fact, stacked smaller containers. All of them displayed explosives labels of varying scariness. The ones marked Class 1.4 were undoubtedly small-arms ammunition, and the ones marked Class 1.1 meant some form of high explosives. Class 1.1A was the really good stuff, but Class 1.1B were likely the detonators needed to make the really good stuff go boom.

  “Mother Hen, next time you see Big Guy, tell him that I have just discovered the weapons cache of his dreams.”

  “Take a picture and send it to me,” she said.

  Jonathan didn’t have time for that. He let his rifle fall against its sling as he strode to the outer bulkhead of the wheelhouse to pull a fire axe from its mount, and then moved back again to the stacked crates. With two full swings on the crate marked Class 1.1D, the wooden case broke open to reveal a collection of M67 hand grenades. Normally, those types of grenades were shipped in their own squatty cardboard tubes, but these looked like they’d been tossed into the crate, maybe twenty of them in all. Yeah, these were coming with him.

  The radio receiver in his left ear popped to life. In heavy-accented English, he heard, “Alpha, Alpha, Alpha. Emergency message.”

  “Hey, Gunslinger,” Jonathan said for the benefit of his Bluetooth, “if I’m back in your ear, step it up. Something’s happening.”