Scorpion Strike

by John Gilstrap

  “Three hours, give or take,” Jesse said as he moved to the controls.

  Big Guy raised his eyebrows. “So, you’ve been promoted to boat driver?”

  “Big Guy, I’d hang on if I were you,” Jesse said as he started the engines. “A guy your size could keep a frenzy of sharks busy for days.”

  He saw Big Guy look at Davey and say, “‘Frenzy’?”

  “Apparently, that’s what they’re called,” Davey said with a big smile. “I wouldn’t argue with him. If it’s in a book, the kid probably knows it.”

  CHAPTER 29

  ANATOLY FELT HIS COMMAND SLIPPING AMONG HIS TROOPS. THEY wanted to find and kill the infiltrators, whoever they were. Two more were dead now, and those were killed by a teenager! The marauders were still free, still roaming the jungles, and the men wanted them dead. Anatoly shut that down. It simply did not make sense.

  He’d pushed hard to release the first hunter teams against the counsel of his lieutenants, and now one of those teams was dead. The remaining members were angry. They wanted revenge. But the men needed to stay focused on the mission they came here to do. When that was accomplished, if they wanted to stay behind and wreak havoc, he wouldn’t get in their way. But for now, he needed all hands for the transfer. Their intel told them that the CIA shipment would arrive at or around eight o’clock this evening.

  Baker Sinise would greet them, just as he always would, and his dockworkers would off-load the shipment, just as they always did. By dawn, the delivery vessel would be gone. By eight, the Olympia 3 would be loaded, and Anatoly and his team would be on their way.

  He stood on the veranda outside Baker’s office, watching the approaching sunset and enjoying the breeze from the overhead fan.

  “What are we going to do with all of them when this is over?” a voice asked from behind. It was Gerasim.

  Anatoly continued to watch the ocean and the horizon beyond. “Those who behave, we will leave to recover the cost of their vacation. Those who do not behave, we will leave for a future overworked coroner.”

  “What about the staff?”

  That drew Anatoly’s glance. “What about them?”

  “Are we going to let them live?”

  “Why would we not?”

  “They will know details,” Gerasim said. “They will know what we took, and let’s be honest, not all of us have perfect English. Some will figure out our nationality. We have specific orders not to let that happen.”

  “How could it possibly be in their interest to talk?” Anatoly asked. “They are guilty of the international trade of chemical weapons. They will be praying that we will not reveal their identities.”

  “Think it through, Tolya. There are Americans and British citizens here. The FBI and MI6 will turn the world upside down to solve what happened here. Do you think an underpaid resort worker is going to withstand the kind of pressure those agencies will inflict? They are certain to talk. Certainly, some of them, and we will never know which of them will be the problem.”

  “Are you suggesting that we kill them all?”

  “That is exactly what I am suggesting. Not the guests—at least not the compliant guests. When we leave, they will eventually build the nerve to go searching for their children, and all of this will feel to them like a very bad dream. But the staff—especially the staff who help us at the docks—need to be killed.”

  Anatoly had not thought the plan out that far, perhaps because he didn’t want to. He was not opposed to killing when it was necessary—certainly, Baker Sinise would see a bullet through his brain when this was over—but Anatoly was a loyal man who liked to reward loyalty in others. “Do you think we should give the workers an opportunity to come with us when we leave?” he asked. “Would that perhaps be a way to spare some of their lives?”

  “Our men would not stand for it,” Gerasim replied. “We mercenaries are not a trusting lot. They would be seen as spies.” He gave a wry chuckle. “You know yourself, Tolya, that once a man has been held as a prisoner, his loyalty can never be trusted. We have killed their friends. We have frightened them, and they will be working on the docks under threat of death. Even a man with so big a heart as you could not let yourself trust them after that.”

  That was an undeniable point, Anatoly thought. But the thought of a group massacre conjured images of some of the tasks he was forced to perform during the unpleasantness in the Balkans, and he had little desire to repeat those sins.

  People will allow themselves to be herded into tight groups, and they will even allow themselves to be shot—something that Anatoly never understood, no matter how many times he witnessed the phenomenon—but they could not will themselves to die quickly. The pitiful wailing and screams of panic still fueled his nightmares, even after all these years.

  “What must be done, must be done,” Anatoly said. “But only those who help us at the docks.”

  “But, Tolya, those workers at the docks will all have friends. How do we know who they have confided in over what happens on the dark side of this island? That is all it will take. One person who spreads a story to one investigator, and then the secret is out.”

  Anatoly felt his resolve slipping.

  “As unpleasant as it is, it is the only way, my friend.”

  So many lives, Anatoly thought. Too many lives.

  “We knew that this was going to be messy when we started,” Gerasim pressed. “We knew it was going to be violent. Frankly, the hostages have on the whole been more compliant than I anticipated, and the violence has been less than what I expected. I really think this is the only way. The staff must be eliminated. All of them.”

  Anatoly gave a loud sigh and returned his gaze to the horizon. “What will the men think of that level of brutality?” he asked.

  “They are the ones who asked me to have this discussion with you,” Gerasim replied.

  * * *

  Jonathan was annoyed that Tyler and Jaime had shared the location of the shantytown, but grateful that Tyler had remembered to share the fact that he had. There was no evidence that the information had been repeated, but they had to assume it had, and that location was now out of play. Between now and Boxers’ arrival with Team Yankee, they’d have to shelter in the jungle like real soldiers, making the best of natural cover and trying their best to be invisible.

  Once they were deep enough into the undergrowth that Jonathan thought it was safe to stop, he ordered a halt.

  “So, what do you think about life in handcuffs, kid?” he asked.

  With his hands still pinioned in front of his body, he moved through the jungle with an awkward, halting gait that clearly belied a continual sense of falling.

  “I kinda hate it,” Tyler said. “I don’t suppose you have a key.”

  “Of course I do,” Jonathan said.

  Gail gave him a look. “You do?”

  “Well, I will. Take a seat.”

  While the others watched, Jonathan opened his knife and went hunting for the perfect branch. He wanted something hearty, but not too stiff.

  “What are you doing?” Gail asked.

  “Just pay attention,” Jonathan said playfully. “Don’t get ahead.”

  With the twelve-inch section of branch separated from the tree, he used his blade to nick off a couple of straggling leaves, all the while ignoring the gooey coating of gore that remained on the blade and the hinge from last night’s initial attack.

  “Handcuff locks are among the easiest locks in the world to pick. It’s easiest with a paper clip or a bobby pin—I should have asked first. Do either of you have a bobby pin or a paper clip?”

  Gail said, “Oddly enough, in our haste to leave . . .” She didn’t bother to finish the obvious.

  “That’s why I didn’t ask,” Jonathan said. He whittled both sides of one end of the stick down to the dimensions of a flat toothpick.

  “Stand up, Tyler,” he said. “Hold your hands out.”

  Tyler did as he was told.

  “The locking me
chanism is actually a spring with ratchet teeth that bite into the teeth on the bracelets.” As he spoke, he lifted Tyler’s wrists a little higher. He shifted the bracelet on Tyler’s right arm to expose the opening where the male and female elements of the assembly joined. As he continued, he demonstrated his words. “I’m going to slip this shim into that slot. I’m gonna have to tighten the ratchet to get it to work.”

  As he squeezed the bracelet tighter, the shim was drawn into the mechanism. When he was in about an inch, he said, “Okay, here’s the hard part. You stand still. One . . . two . . .”

  On three, Jonathan pushed the shim deeper as he yanked the bracelet open. Tyler yelped at the suddenness of it, but then he grinned.

  “Mission accomplished,” Jonathan said.

  “How do you know how to do shit like that?” Tyler asked, clearly impressed.

  “Chalk it up to a misspent youth,” Jonathan said. It took maybe three minutes to whittle down the other end of the stick and repeat the process on his left cuff.

  “Thank you,” Tyler said as he rubbed his wrists. “That feels a lot better.”

  “What do we do now?” Gail asked.

  “Let’s get to a higher point, where we have a better view. If they do have hunter-killer teams deployed, I’d like to be in a position to see them coming, know what I mean? Do you know this part of the jungle, Tyler?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t,” he said. “If it’s not on the resort or in the shantytown, I don’t know it.”

  “All right, then. Let’s head uphill and see what we find.”

  They walked in a cluster, without a lot of effort made to control noise. When they spoke, they spoke in a whisper, and they tried to avoid the noise of traversing thickets of vegetation, but compared to a lot of other walks Jonathan had made in hostile environments, this one was pretty tame.

  “They’ve got Hunter and Lori’s bodies hung up on display,” Tyler said. Those were his first words in two or three minutes. “They’re naked and hanging from the archway to the pool.”

  Jonathan exchanged glances with Gail. Together, they chose to say nothing. If the kid needed to vent, the least they could do was let him.

  “That’s not right,” Tyler went on. “I mean, Jesus, they were human beings.”

  “I’ll be honest with you, kid,” Jonathan said without turning to look. “I’m a shitty philosopher on these things, but I’ll share something I’ve learned over the years. There are whole swaths of this world where evil is bred into people. Killing a person and swatting a fly occupy the same spot on the spectrum of morality. It’s always been that way, and always will be.”

  Another moment of silence passed before Tyler said, “Um, don’t take this the wrong way, but did you just describe yourself? You don’t seem to have too hard a time killing people.”

  “You want to be careful here, Tyler,” Gail said. “False equivalencies and all that.”

  “No, I’ll take it,” Jonathan said. “And no offense taken. A little while ago, you killed a couple of people with your truck. Did you do a wrong thing?”

  “I didn’t kill them,” Tyler objected. “They killed themselves. And yeah, I feel bad about it.”

  “Do you feel better or worse than you would have felt if they captured you and tortured you?”

  Tyler didn’t offer an answer, and Jonathan didn’t wait for one.

  “But you’re right,” Jonathan went on. “I don’t have a hard time killing people when they are trying to kill me. I don’t enjoy it, but sometimes people make stupid choices.”

  “So, in real life, are you an assassin?”

  “God no,” Gail said. It warmed Jonathan’s heart to see her so defensive of him. For him.

  “I’ve already told you that we won’t discuss what I do in real life.” He leaned on the words to signify his displeasure with the turn of phrase. “But I will tell you that I am on the side of the angels in everything I do. I endeavor to save lives, not to take them.”

  “And sometimes you have to kill to save a life,” Gail added.

  “Especially when you’re saving your own?” Tyler asked.

  “Sure,” Jonathan said. “If it comes to that. But for others, too. Those assholes back on the resort are the very opposite of me. They kill for sport. They kill to terrorize, and those kinds of predators are everywhere.”

  Another quiet spell lasted for maybe thirty-five yards. “What are we going to do when your friends arrive?”

  Jonathan started to answer, but Gail raised her hand to signal silence. “What should we do?”

  Tyler’s silence drew Jonathan’s gaze. The kid had gone dark. His jaw was locked and his eyes were focused on a spot in the air that did not exist.

  “Tyler?” Gail prodded.

  “They blew Jaime’s face off,” he said. “God only knows what they did with the body. My stepdad told me to run away. That wasn’t my choice.” He rocked his gaze to Jonathan. “That wasn’t my idea. I wasn’t a coward.”

  Jonathan brought them to a halt. “I never said that you were.”

  “Yes, you did. Before. When I left Annie. I wasn’t the coward then, either. She was.”

  The kid was on the verge of unraveling, and it made Jonathan nervous. He chose to say nothing. Tyler seemed so deeply entrenched in his own brain that he wouldn’t have heard his words, anyway.

  “I wasn’t a coward, goddammit!” He yelled this, startling Jonathan.

  “Stop!” Jonathan yelled back, and Tyler jumped accordingly. “You have all the meltdown you want, kid, but you keep your voice down, you hear?”

  Tyler dropped his voice to a desperate whisper. “But that’s what they’re going to think of me, don’t you see? Why should they all be hostages and I’m not?”

  “Because you had a less shitty day than they did,” Jonathan said. “This isn’t complicated, Tyler. On a battlefield, when the whole world is shooting at you, people on all sides of you fall dead. Front, back, left, right, but because your stars aligned, you get to breathe to see another day. That’s just life.”

  “But what—”

  “Wait,” Jonathan said. “What you need to ask yourself is how are you going to tip the Reaper who spared you? How are you going to make it good for those poor bastards who never even heard the bullet?”

  Tyler gaped. He had no clue.

  “You pay that shit back by avenging the lives the Reaper took. And you do that by sending him a shit ton of corpses that are wrapped in the enemy’s uniform.”

  “You’re talking revenge.”

  “I’m talking justice. And there’s a big difference. I apologize for the things I said to you about your girl. I was out of line. It did take a lot of courage to escape when you did, and it took twice that amount to escape a second time. Tyler, buddy, you’re a survival machine.” He sold that with a big smile, which went unreturned.

  “But there are other brave men and women down there. Your stepdad showed huge balls when he encouraged you to get the hell out, and every one of those parents who are tortured every second by not knowing where their kids are, are brave as hell. So, answer Slinger’s question. What do you think we should do when Team Yankee gets here tonight?”

  The hard look on Tyler’s face transformed from a look of despair to a look of resolve. “We bring justice,” he said.

  “Damn straight.”

  CHAPTER 30

  AS THE SUN DIPPED BELOW THE HORIZON, JONATHAN SILENTLY CATALOGUED all of the technology he wished he had access to, chief among them night vision and telephoto optics. They’d chosen an outcropping of rocks on the eastern side of the island. It was new territory for all of them, and it afforded a reasonably unobstructed view of the area where Team Yankee planned to make their landing. Jonathan had walked down to the beach and back again, just to make sure that there were no insurmountable hazards between here and there.

  Unfortunately, they’d planted themselves on the wrong side of the breeze again, and mosquitos and other ravenous insects were chowing down on all of
them.

  “How long do you think it will be?” Tyler asked.

  Jonathan checked his phone. “If they stick precisely to the schedule, they’ll be making landfall in about thirty-five minutes.”

  “How will we know?”

  Gail said, “They’ll contact us when they’re in place offshore. Then they’ll swim in and we’ll meet them at the beach.”

  “They’re going to swim?” Tyler said. He seemed horrified. “At night? How far?”

  “That’s up to them,” Jonathan said. “Probably about a mile. The trick to pulling something like this off is stealth. If the bad guys are alerted to the sound of an approaching boat, we’re screwed.”

  It was near full dark now, and Tyler’s features had morphed to shadows. “I thought they were bringing guns and ammunition and stuff,” he said. “How are they going to swim a mile with all of that?”

  “It all goes into inflatable bags,” Gail explained. “As they swim, they tow it all behind them. Takes very little effort.”

  As if on cue, Jonathan’s phone buzzed. He connected and said, “Yep.”

  “Hey, Boss!” Boxers’ voice exclaimed. “You ready to light up the night?”

  “What took you so long?” Jonathan said.

  “Just because God and I are close friends doesn’t mean He listens to me all the time. I offered to flip Him for a sunset at sixteen hundred hours, but He said I was behind on my confessions.”

  “Hell, if you kept up with your confessions, you’d never get anything done. You still planning to make landfall at the same coordinates?”

  “That’s the plan,” Boxers confirmed. “But I got some lightweights on the team with me, so the current might take them to Peru or some friggin’ place.”

  Jonathan heard the requisite griping in the background and smiled. Just hearing Big Guy’s voice had a soothing effect. “So, who exactly is on Team Yankee?”

  “You sure you want me to ruin the surprise?”

  Jonathan waited for it.

  “We’ve got some of the usual suspects. Madman and She Devil—”