Scorpion Strike

by John Gilstrap

  “Wait, I see movement,” Jaime said, pointing.

  “Will you please stop doing that?” Jonathan snapped. “Quick movements and extended arms are going to give away our position.”

  “But do you see them?”

  “Of course, I see them. Just stay still and keep your voice down.” Jesus, it was like dealing with seven-year-olds.

  Another soldier appeared in the passenger door. He shouted something Jonathan couldn’t make out to his friends on the dock, and when he got a thumbs-up, he moved forward. Behind him, a white-haired man in a beige suit and pink shirt walked tentatively, his hands tethered behind his back. Yet another soldier followed closely behind.

  “Oh, my God, Tyler,” Jaime said.

  “That’s Baker,” Tyler said. “That’s my stepfather.” There was an edge of panic in his voice. “What are they doing?”

  “Easy, kid,” Jonathan said. “Just keep cool. He doesn’t look hurt.”

  “They’ve tied him up.”

  “It looks like handcuffs, maybe,” Jaime said.

  “Same thing,” Tyler said. “We need to help him.” He started to stand.

  “What you need to do is stay put,” Jonathan said.

  “Can’t you shoot them?” Jaime asked.

  Jonathan shook his head. “Not from here.” They were separated by an easy two hundred yards. Maybe if the rifle in his hands was his own, with sights that he had zeroed personally, but not with these. “I’d be as likely to hit your stepdad as the bad guys.”

  “Besides,” Gail said, “we can’t afford that kind of attention with eight hours of daylight ahead. We’ll be lucky not to be found, as it is.”

  The soldiers led Baker to a waiting Crystal Sands pickup truck, where they shoved him into the front seat. He had difficulty getting in without the use of his hands.

  “They’re going to kill him,” Tyler said in a frayed voice.

  “No, they’re not,” Jonathan said. “They could have done that already. They want something from him.”

  “What kind of something?” Jaime asked.

  “Well, that’s the big question, isn’t it?” Jonathan said.

  Tyler slid away from the edge and stood. “I’m going back to the resort to see what they’re going to do.”

  “You’ll do no such thing,” Gail said.

  Jaime added, “Are you out of your mind?”

  “Are you going to stop me?”

  Jaime stood, as well. “If I have to. Why do you want to go back there and get yourself killed?”

  “Because it’s better than waiting here to get myself killed,” he said. “This is bullshit. There’s a whole world down there being tortured and killed, and we’re up here smoking weed and not doing anything to help.”

  Gail turned to Jonathan. “Scorpion, say something.”

  “Staying safe is not doing nothing,” he said. “Staying safe is staying safe. There’s no shame in that.” Even as he spoke the words, he heard how unconvincing they were.

  “He’s my stepfather,” Tyler said. “No, screw that. He’s my father. He’s always been a hell of a lot better to me than the bio version. How can I live with myself if I just do nothing?”

  “It’s better than not living at all,” Jaime said.

  “I’m not sure it is,” Jonathan said.

  “Scorpion!” Gail looked appalled. “He’s only nineteen.”

  “VA hospitals are filled with eighteen-year-olds,” Jonathan said.

  “But what about—”

  “Yo, Gunslinger,” Tyler said. “At what point, did you become my mother? I’m a big boy. I can make my own decisions.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Jonathan asked.

  Jaime threw up his hands. “I do not believe you’re having this conversation.”

  Jonathan ignored him and kept his focus on Tyler. He hoped the kid would follow his lead and focus.

  “I’m thinking I can sneak back in the way I got out,” Tyler said.

  “In the daylight?”

  “Some of it will be tricky,” he explained, “but once I get into the maintenance corridor, I’ll be below grade and pretty much invisible. That’s how I got out in the first place.”

  “At night,” Jaime reminded.

  “But we’ve snuck around there in the daytime, too. If you know where to duck, you can stay out of sight.”

  “And to get to the maintenance corridor, you have to be out in the middle of everybody.”

  “We need to distract them,” Gail said.

  Her words shocked Jonathan, and clearly his face showed it.

  “What?” she said. “Obviously, you’ve made up your mind, and Tyler’s determined to be a target, so the least I can do is get with the program.”

  “What is wrong with you people?” Jaime said. “You act as if this is some kind of game. People are going to die!”

  “Yes, they are,” Jonathan said. “They already have, and it’s entirely likely that others will. What’s your point?” He was being deliberately obtuse to force the discussion that Jaime seemed determined to have.

  “What’s my point? What’s my point! Are you crazy?”

  Gail stiffened. “Be careful, Jaime,” she said. “Crazy is a tough word. A loaded word. These people—these terrorists, whoever they are—are evil people, but they’re not crazy. The people who tried to run and were killed for their efforts were not crazy, either. And when you look at Scorpion and me, you’d be wise never to even consider the deployment of that word. We know exactly what we’re doing, even if we don’t know where it will go. If you want to hide, hide. But understand that if, at the end of all this, you’re still alive, it will have had nothing to do with you. It will have had everything to do with the fact that you hid and let other people do the fighting for you. Only you can decide where you want to be on that curve, but you’d be wise to stay out of the way of those of us who wish to have a say in our own futures.”

  Jonathan found himself stunned. He’d known and worked with Gail for more than a few years now, and he knew her background as a lawyer and an FBI agent and a small-town sheriff. He’d seen her shoot the wings off a gnat when the chips were down, but he’d never heard her echo his own thoughts so precisely before. For people in their line of work, moments arrived when fate presented a binary choice, where you could work to live or you could hope to live. In a perfect world, those moments didn’t arrive in the middle of a vacation, but the world was an imperfect place.

  “Here’s the thing,” Jonathan said. He modulated his voice to take some of the edge off the rancor. “Tyler has just volunteered to do a noble thing. He’s willing to go behind enemy lines, so to speak, in order to gather intelligence for the rest of us. Intel that will help enormously when our rescue crew arrives tonight.”

  “That assumes we will be alive when they get here,” Jaime said.

  “No, it really doesn’t,” Jonathan countered. “They’ll be here, whether we’re alive or dead. Knowing at least two of the personalities who are coming, you should pray for quick ends for those who kill us if it comes to that.” He couldn’t stop the chuckle at the thought of the waste that would be laid by Boxers if he arrived to find either of his friends dead. Look up scorched earth in the dictionary. That would be the first act. Before it got rough.

  “Look, let’s reset. Jaime, your life is yours to live—however you want to live it. I’m not passing judgment. Gunslinger and I have fought our way out of some pretty nasty dustups over the years. I think I speak for both of us when I say that we have every intention of going home alive. In the short term, though, that means taking some chances, and embracing some danger. If you don’t want to be a part of it, that’s fine. But for the next few minutes, I need you to be quiet and let the rest of us work out what options we might have.”

  Jonathan didn’t wait for an answer. In fact, he broke off eye contact and drilled back into Tyler. “What’s your purpose for going back into the resort?”

  “To help Baker.”

 
; “How?”

  Tyler seemed a bit put off by the question. “By . . . being there.”

  Jonathan waved him off. “You need to stay invisible,” he said. “These dickheads have a history of killing anyone they perceive as having escaped.”

  “But they don’t have to know that.”

  “You can’t determine how others will think,” Gail said.

  “I’ve bluffed myself out of a shit ton of bad stuff,” Tyler said with a smile. “They don’t even know I’m missing. If they catch me, I’ll tell them that I was hiding, and then I realized that the best thing to do was to present myself.”

  “What about the jilted girlfriend?” Jonathan asked. “Annie, right?”

  That took some of the wind out of Tyler’s sails, but only for a few seconds. “She’ll be pissed,” he said. “But I don’t think she’ll get me killed over it. I’ll just keep my distance.”

  Jonathan worried that the kid was vastly underestimating the fury of a betrayed squeeze, but it wasn’t his fight.

  “You know what happened to the Edwardses,” Gail said.

  “That’s different,” Tyler objected. “They were with you. They were with the team that you killed. The terrorists probably thought—”

  “That they helped in killing those first two,” Jonathan said, finishing the thought. The kid made a good point. “But you can’t go into this with the intention of getting caught.”

  “No, not with the intention, but if it happens, I’m saying that I think I can talk myself out of it.”

  “And what good will that do for us?” Gail asked, again thinking Jonathan’s thoughts.

  “Huh?”

  “We need you to get in and get back out,” Jonathan explained.

  Suddenly the expression on Tyler’s face dimmed to something less defiant. “I don’t understand.”

  “We need eyes on the inside,” Gail said. “We need you to find out where the hostages are being kept and how many captors there are.”

  Jonathan said, “When our friends get here, the more we know, the more efficient we can be in resolving this.”

  Jaime raised a hand, as if to tentatively ask a question in class. “These friends of yours,” he said. “When they arrive, what will they be here to do?”

  “To bring everyone to safety.”

  “Everyone, or just their friends?”

  There was an unstated accusation beneath the words that Jonathan chose to ignore. He turned back to Tyler. “I need you to commit to getting in and then getting out again.”

  Tyler blanched. “How am I going to do that?”

  “You said yourself that you know how to navigate the area,” Gail said.

  Jonathan added, “For the moments when you’re exposed, we’ll help provide a diversion so people will be looking the other way.”

  “You can’t know that,” Tyler said. “People are going to look where they’re going to look.”

  Jonathan presented his hands in mock surrender. “This was your idea,” he said. “I’m just adding some modifications.”

  “And doubling the danger.”

  “Tripling,” Gail said with a smile. “At least. Maybe even more.”

  For a second, Tyler seemed confused, as if the words didn’t make sense. Then he laughed. “Jesus God, is this really what your life is like?”

  “What do you mean?” Jonathan asked.

  “You talk about the odds of dying like they don’t mean anything.”

  Jonathan said, “Tell me if you want honesty or sugarcoating.”

  “Jesus,” Jaime said. “Patronize much?”

  “I’m not patronizing,” Jonathan said. “A lot of people have a very real preference. I’m a facts-in-your-face kind of guy, but lots of people aren’t.”

  “What are we talking about?” Tyler said.

  “The odds of dying,” Jonathan said. “You want facts or sugar?”

  Tyler steeled himself with a big breath. “Facts,” he said.

  “In the long view, they’re one hundred percent,” Jonathan said. “Because none of us get out of this life experience alive.”

  Tyler rolled his eyes. “Oh, good. Word games.”

  “Not at all,” Gail said. She’d heard this speech before. “Listen to him.”

  Tyler did his best petulant stance, arms crossed, weight on one leg.

  Jonathan continued, “Your chances of dying in the next day or two are a lot higher than they were yesterday, but next week, with any luck, they’ll have dialed back down to what they were yesterday.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “My point is that the odds don’t matter in real time. You do your best, you keep your head down, you make smart decisions, and you beat the odds. Fail to do any of those things, and you lose.”

  Tyler added a scowl and cocked head to his petulant stance. “Was that supposed to be inspiring? You just made the case for me breaking back into the resort and staying there.”

  “Because that would lessen your odds of being killed,” Jonathan guessed.

  “Exactly.”

  “While at the same time increasing everyone else’s odds of being killed,” Gail said.

  The wall of petulance cracked a little.

  “We need that information,” Jonathan said. “And I’ll be completely honest with you. I never would have asked you to do any of this. But you volunteered.”

  Tyler looked to his buddy.

  “Don’t do it,” Jaime said. “It’s a crazy idea.”

  He looked back to Jonathan.

  “I’ve made my pitch,” Jonathan said. “The decision is yours.”

  Tyler’s shoulders sagged. He thrust his hands into his hair and pivoted as he stomped away three paces and then returned. “You know this isn’t fair, right?” he said. “All I want to do is lie low, and you pile all this shit on my shoulders.”

  “Don’t do it, Ty,” Jaime said.

  “Now I have to!” Tyler said. His tone was a muffled shout. “I have to go in, be a spy, and come back out, because if I don’t, King Scorpion here will tell the world that I was a coward.”

  “I won’t say a word,” Jonathan said, his voice the essence of calm. “Knowing it yourself will be plenty.”

  Tyler paced in a circle again. “I hate this shit,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “And I hate you!”

  “Okay.”

  With a giant sigh, Tyler let his legs fold beneath him and lowered himself onto the ground, sitting Indian-style. “Okay, how are we going to do this?”

  CHAPTER 19

  ZACH TURNER LEFT HIS PROSTHETIC LEG ON THE POOL DECK AS HE lowered himself into the water. He didn’t want the fabric sleeve to get wet. Sooner or later, wet cotton against flesh would wear a hot spot. When this situation went sideways—as it was bound to do sooner or later—he wanted as few complications as possible.

  As time wore on, and the guards endured the same heat as their captives, the guys in the uniforms had allowed their ass-holery to wane a bit. While the rule against talking still existed, they were enforcing it less zealously. People were social creatures, after all, and they were going to communicate. As the dangling bodies of the man and the woman swelled and festered, perhaps the guards thought that the graphic warning was enough. And for some, it no doubt was.

  Zach wanted to explore a little more and see who among them were the very opposite of cowed by these asshats’ atrocities. It would be suicide to try to mount a rebellion now, but if the opportunity presented itself, they needed to be ready to pounce.

  The other rule the guards decided to lift was the prohibition against getting in the water. Zach figured that decision to be rooted in pure practicality. They’d all been denied food, though they’d been given ample drinking water. As stomachs got rocky, the exacerbating effect of the bright sun and boiling heat would have people dropping out as if struck with the plague.

  By allowing the captives to remain hydrated and cool, the captors avoided a lot of hear
tache.

  Of course, Zach noticed that as the flow of people into the pool increased, the flow of people into the bathrooms decreased accordingly. What the hell? He’d swum in cesspools before. What’s one more, even if the others were more of a metaphorical variety?

  As he splashed about in the water, he kept eyeing the couple he’d noticed before—the ones who looked like firefighters or police. They seemed very into each other, sitting arm-in-arm, each stroking the other in comforting gestures. Zach didn’t want to be too obvious in his efforts to get their attention, for fear of attracting unwanted attention to himself, but he didn’t want to miss an opportunity, either.

  Finally it was the lady of the pair—the wife?—who caught his eye. She poked the guy, and indicated Zach with a subtle nod. When the man connected, he looked angry, and then there was recognition. He gave a quick wink, and went back to his conversation. Maybe a minute later, he stood from his girl, sat on the edge of the pool, and slid into the water. The trick here was to make the upcoming conversation look entirely coincidental, so as not to draw attention.

  Finally they crossed paths near the giant planter that marked the entrance to the Lazy River, a narrow path of flowing water that would float inner tube–clad swimmers in a meandering circuit around the pool.

  “Zach Turner.” He wanted to waste no time.

  “Will Ambrose,” the other man said. Zach hadn’t expected the heavy British accent. “I’m hating my travel agent right about now. You look like a man with a plan.”

  “No plan yet,” Zach said. “I’m just trying to assemble a team for when the shit gets real. You look like a guy who’s won a few fights in his day.”

  “More than I’ve lost, I suppose.”

  “You a cop?”

  “No, mate, I’m a firefighter. London Fire Brigade. So’s my wife. That’s her over there. She thought you were ogling her.”

  Zach laughed. “Well, she’s worthy of a good ogle, for sure. But I’m here with my wife, too.”

  “It’d be nice to have a plan,” Will said. “I’ll tell you this, though. Those twats ain’t gonna decorate no doorway with my corpse. Nor Lindy’s, neither.”

  “Copy that,” Zach said. “I’ve got another guy over on my side of the pool willing to kick some ass if it comes to that.”