by Jake Bible
The AK clicked empty and Kinsey jumped onto the pile of men and flipped the rifle around, smashing it into the face of the next soldier that came through the door. He staggered and fell against the jamb, allowing the man behind him to get a clear shot.
Almost.
Bullets ripped through the man’s side and into the wall next to Kinsey as she dove away from the door, rolled, and came up running, heading for the hall.
“What are you doing?” she shouted as she passed the kitchen and saw Gunnar yanking open drawers. “Come on!”
She reached in and grabbed his arm, pulling him out of the kitchen and back towards the bedrooms. More gunfire erupted and the corner of the wall exploded in a shower of plaster and drywall. Kinsey ducked and shoved Gunnar forward, but he didn’t keep running, instead he turned and threw what was in his hand, just missing Kinsey by an inch.
The knife flew end over end then embedded itself in the shooter’s throat. The man squeezed off a few wild rounds as he fell to his knees, choking on his own blood. He was shoved out of the way by more cartel soldiers and this time Gunnar didn’t pause as Kinsey lowered her shoulder into his chest and pushed him down the hall.
They rushed into Kinsey’s bedroom and slammed the door shut, then grabbed the long dresser and braced it between the door and the bed. The top of the door became riddled with bullet holes and Kinsey yanked Gunnar to the floor. She reached under the bed and pulled out a long black case. Hurrying through the combo on the locks, she clicked the case open and grabbed the M-4 carbine inside.
“Got any blades?” Gunnar shouted over the gunfire.
“There!” Kinsey yelled, pointing to the bedside table. “Plenty!”
Gunnar crawled over and opened the drawer. Several knives of various sizes and shapes were piled inside. He jerked the drawer out of the table and set it next to him as he stayed to the side of the bed while Kinsey slapped a magazine into her carbine.
“I only have the one!” she said to him. “Thirty rounds and we’re done!”
Gunnar picked up a basic MK 3 MOD O knife typical of what the US Navy used, felt the weight in his hand, flipped it around his fingers quickly then looked at Kinsey.
“Then don’t miss,” he smiled.
“Are you enjoying this?” she snapped. “You better not be enjoying this!”
“I never get to be in the shit!” he replied.
“That’s a fucking good thing, asshole!” Kinsey yelled as she chambered a round and put the carbine to her shoulder.
“Well, try being the gay scientist on a Team of ex-SEALS and see how you like it!” Gunnar yelled.
The top of the door was completely obliterated and one of the attackers shoved his rifle barrel through. Kinsey squeezed off three shots and the man screamed and fell away. He was immediately replaced by another man who met the same fate. Then another. And another. The men finally stopped trying to get through and stood back away from the door.
“Can we get out the window?” Kinsey asked, her eyes never leaving the doorway.
“No,” Gunnar said. “No fire escape on this side.”
***
The Reynolds boys were busy hiding behind the Wrangler when the first cruisers came up over the yard behind them. They tried to wave the police off, but they just kept coming. Right into the automatic rifle fire the boys were taking cover from.
The cruisers’ windshields were puckered with bullet holes, the men inside jerking and shaking as they were ripped apart by heavy caliber slugs.
“Motherfuckers!” Max shouted.
The machine gun fire stopped and Shane rolled over onto his stomach, his rifle to his shoulder, one eye to his scope.
“Second floor, third window in,” Shane said then rolled back just as the gunfire started up again. “I can take him.”
“You suck,” Max said. “You want your brother to die?”
“What?” Shane asked flinching as dirt kicked up into his face by a dozen bullets.
“You’ll need a distraction so you can have time to set the shot,” Max said. “And I’m the only distraction.”
“Not quite,” Shane said and nodded back to the police cruisers.
More came from the street and sped through the yard towards them. The trajectory of the gunfire changed and the cruisers screeched to a halt, then sped in reverse to avoid the dozens of slugs that rained down on them.
Shane took that second to roll back out and set his shot He squeezed the trigger then rolled back to Max.
The automatic fire stopped.
There was silence for a few seconds and Shane ducked his head out from behind the Wrangler. A shot hit the earth two feet in front of him.
“Pistol,” Shane said, ducking back.
“9mm,” Max said. “They must have only sent two here thinking the road crew would get the job done.”
“WEAPONS DOWN! HANDS IN THE AIR!”
A SWAT team came running from the other side of the house the brothers faced, their rifles up and aimed at the two men.
“There’s still a shooter!” Max yelled as he set his pistol on the ground.
“I got the other one, thank you!” Shane shouted as he laid his rifle carefully on the grass.
“On your faces! Hands laced behind your heads!”
More shots rang out and the SWAT team turned their attention to the townhouses. They scrambled for cover, which was the shot up cruisers behind the Jeep, and all hit the deck.
“Told ya there was another shooter!” Max said.
“I said to get face down with hands behind your head!” the SWAT commander yelled. “Do it! NOW!”
“Asshole,” Max grumbled as he and Shane complied.
“I can take him out,” Shane said. “See the big gun I have? That’s called a sniper rifle. It shoots bad guys.”
“Shut up!”
“Fuck you!” Max said. “We’ll be here all day and there is a woman and her children that need our help!”
“I said shut up!”
“Fucking asshole,” Max said. He looked over at his brother. “What now?”
They both heard the squawking of radios and looked towards the SWAT team.
“State your names!”
“Max Reynolds!”
“Shane Reynolds!”
There was more radio noise. Then hushed voices followed by, “Take the shot.”
“Uh…what?” Shane replied.
“If you can take the shot then take the shot!”
“Cool,” Max smiled.
“I’ll need some cover,” Shane said.
Three SWAT members leaned out from the cruisers and started firing towards the townhouse. Shane took his opportunity, grabbed his rifle, rolled away from the Jeep and took aim.
The shooter wasn’t in the same window as the other one, but Shane quickly found him two windows down. The man ducked back as the SWAT members fired on him then leaned out quickly to return fire. He never got to duck back again as Shane took the shot.
Everyone waited for a couple minutes.
“Move in!” the SWAT commander ordered and the team rushed forward to the townhouses. “You two! Stay put!”
“Not moving an inch,” Shane said as he got to his knees, his rifle held above his head.
The SWAT commander stomped over to them, his face pinched with rage.
“I don’t know who the fuck you yahoos are, but you’re lucky you have friends in high places.”
“We’re the Reynolds,” Shane smiled.
“We have friends in high places?” Max asked.
***
“Fuck this,” Kinsey said and stood up, her M-4 barking as she put several rounds through the walls on each side of the doorway.
Men screamed and bodies fell then there was silence.
“Fuck, Kins!” Gunnar yelled as he crawled to her and pulled her back down on the ground. “What the fuck? They could have shot you!”
“You hear anything?” Kinsey asked. “Because I don’t.”
She stood back up
and grabbed a shirt off the floor with the barrel of her carbine. She inched forward and stuck it just barely out the door. It was ripped apart by gunfire.
“How many?” Gunnar asked.
“No clue,” Kinsey said. “At least one. Maybe more.”
“That’s good math, Kins,” Gunnar frowned.
“I’m not fucking psychic, dickhead,” Kinsey snapped.
There was a crash outside the room then a gunshot followed by two more.
“Kinsey? Gunnar?” a woman’s rough, gravelly voice shouted. “Talk to me.”
“Darby?” Kinsey yelled. “That you?”
“It’s me,” Darby replied. “It’s clear. Come on out.”
Kinsey scrambled over the dresser, M-4 still in hand. At the end of the hall, standing over three bodies, was Darby, Ballantine’s bodyguard and member of Team Grendel. Barely five feet tall, but muscular and looking like business was all she meant, Darby held a Beretta 92Fs pistol in each hand. She locked eyes with Kinsey and nodded.
“Good to see you,” Darby said, her voice harsh from nearly being choked to death by a Somali pirate almost a year earlier. “Where’s Gunnar?”
“Here,” Gunnar said, peeking his head out of the bedroom.
“Good,” Darby said. “We need to go.”
“Go? Go where?” Kinsey asked.
“First, to pick up your cousins,” Ballantine said, walking from the living room into the hallway behind Darby. Middle-aged, but fit, tan and built like he could handle himself, Ballantine stood there looking like a golf pro in his khakis and polo shirt. But Kinsey and Gunnar knew he was nothing so mundane. “We have a job. A big one. And not much time. Pieces have already started shifting on the board and we are a few moves behind.”
“What about my dad?” Kinsey asked. “And the rest of Team Grendel?”
“All taken care of,” Ballantine said, leading them outside.
Down in the parking lot was a MH-65F Dolphin helicopter. Primarily used by the Coast Guard’s HITRON (Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron) unit to take down possible terrorist threats to the US, which included drug smuggling, the Dolphin was fast, maneuverable, and in the hands of the right pilot and gunner, a deadly bird of prey.
“Wyrm II?” Gunnar asked as he saw the name stenciled on the side. Several of his neighbors were staring at the helo and Gunnar waved at them weakly. “Still holding onto that Anglo-Saxon poetry theme?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t call it a theme,” Ballantine grinned as he placed a pair of aviator sunglasses on. “More of an obsession, really.”
***
The two teenagers sat on the decrepit dock, their arms around each other, the smell of pot and beer wafting off them. The boy leaned the girl back onto the boards, his hands fumbling about her shirt until she swatted them away.
“Come on,” he whispered in her ear. “No one’s around.”
She pushed him back and shook her head. Even with a good buzz on, she knew she didn’t want to do it there on a dock that was missing more boards than it had.
“No,” she said. “We can do other things. But not that. Not yet.”
“Okay, okay, that’s cool,” the boy said. “Want another beer?”
The girl frowned. “I’m not going to change my mind just because you get me even more…drunk…”
Her eyes went wide and her hand went to her mouth. The boy turned in the direction she was looking and his jaw dropped.
“Is that a whale?” he asked.
The whale moved up close to the old dock and then stopped. Forty feet of massive, blue mammal just floated there and the teens couldn’t believe their eyes. It was even more unbelievable when part of the whale’s back split and a hatch opened.
“Hey, either of you have a cell phone I could use?” Mike asked as he took a deep breath of the fresh San Diego air. “Hey! Do you have a cell phone?”
The girl fished around in her pocket and held out the phone.
“Can you toss it me?” Mike asked, pulling himself all the way out of the sub. “Kinda hard for me to climb up there right now.”
“Dude,” the boy said, leaning into the girl. “Was that pot laced with something? Because I think I’m seeing a legless guy crawling out of a fucking whale.”
Chapter Three- Just One Fix
Chip left the white sands of the Baja Mexico coastline behind him as he raced through the Pacific Ocean swells on the rented Wave Runner. He laughed heartily, his body fueled by tequila and too much sun, as he hopped wave after wave, pushing the machine to its limits.
Behind him on his own Wave Runner, and not having near as much fun, was his friend Luther, a young man anxious to get out of the water and back to the cabanas of Playas Rosarito so he could drink a few pina coladas and just chill.
Luther was not a fan of the open ocean. He was also not a fan of sweating, working hard, or water on his face. Baja was not Luther’s idea.
“Chip!” he shouted as ocean spray whipped him in the face, irritating him with every drop. “CHIP! Come on, man!”
Chip couldn’t hear his buddy over the racing machine beneath him. He probably wouldn’t have cared even if he had. Luther was there because he had a car and he had a sister with a rockin’ bod. Oh, and the money to pay for a trip south of the border. Otherwise, Chip could do without the doughy mama’s boy.
He hit a wave at a steep angle and soared into the air, twisting the handlebars to the side so the back end of the Wave Runner kicked out, sending a stream of water out behind him. He came down hard and didn’t quite have the coordination, or experience, to stick the landing. Chip found himself flung from the Wave Runner and into the bright blue of the Pacific.
“Chip!” Luther yelled, gunning his Wave Runner as fast as he was comfortable with, which wasn’t very fast, and aimed towards where his friend went under. “Chip!”
Other watercrafts and pleasure boats dotted the water all around them and several less than sober eyes were turned towards the young man with the too tight wet suit. Luther ignored the stares as he raced to the abandoned Wave Runner that bobbed along in the waves. Once there, he reached back and grabbed a towline then tossed it around Chip’s Wave Runner.
“Chip!” Luther shouted.
“Right here, dork,” Chip laughed as he slapped the back of Luther’s machine. “That was awesome! Did you see that?”
“Yeah, I saw it,” Luther said, glad he didn’t have to call Chip’s parents to tell them he was dead. “Can we go back in now? This wet suit chafes.”
“That’s because you need to lose a few, dude,” Chip said. “I ain’t saying you’re fat, just that you need to work on your core, bra.”
“Screw you,” Luther said, shaking his head. “I’m going back.”
“Ah, come on, I was just fucking with you,” Chip laughed. “Chill out.”
Chip swam over to his Wave Runner and struggled to get back up on it. Every time he tried to hook a leg onto the running board, he just slipped back into the water, too drunk to get a good grip. Luther shook his head some more and reeled in the rope so the Wave Runners bumped up against each other.
“I’ll hold it while you get on,” Luther said. “Then we go back to the beach. I’m hot and thirsty.”
“You know who’s hot and thirsty?” Chip said, still failing to get on. “Your sister, dude.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Luther said. “And stop fucking around. Get on the damn thing.”
Chip slipped again, this time going all the way under the water. He came up spluttering, his eyes wide with fear.
“Holy fuck!” he cried. “There’s something down-”
Luther didn’t hear the rest as Chip disappeared under the water once again.
“Ha ha, asshole,” he said. “I’m sick of your shit, Chip! Get up on the Wave Runner!”
Chip’s response was to burst from the water thirty yards away, his arms flailing and mouth coughing blood.
“Fuck!” Luther yelled and turned his Wave Runner towards his screaming friend.
Blood spewed from Chip’s mouth like a fountain of red. Then he was gone, taken back under. Luther stopped the Wave Runner and looked at the shoreline. He had seen what had a hold of Chip’s bottom half. He wanted nothing to do with that.
It didn’t take him long to decide between his loyalty to an asshole or his desire to stay alive. Luther let go of the towrope and gunned his Wave Runner towards the beach. He slammed across wave after wave, praying he was fast enough to outrun whatever it was he saw.
His Wave Runner launched into the air and Luther at first thought he must have hit a wave just right. But when he looked down and saw he was still going higher and higher, not because he launched off a wave, but because he was clutched in the jaws of the largest shark he’d ever seen, Luther shat himself.
The shark crunched down and the huge teeth ripped into the Wave Runner, and Luther’s legs, before crashing back into the waves.
Luther screamed as he was dragged under. He thrashed about, trying to reach the shark so he could punch it in the nose like all the nature shows said to do, but his body wouldn’t obey; the pain was too much. Water filled his lungs as the shark bit all the way through the Wave Runner, taking Luther’s legs completely off at the thighs.
Choking, drowning, dying, Luther tried to use what faculties he had left to swim to the surface, but he no longer knew which way was up. All around him he was surrounded by his own blood; the water was clouded and dark with it. He gasped one last time, topping off his already water filled lungs, blinked, then began to sink to the bottom. He twisted and could see the sand below him.
There were crabs. He liked crabs.
Then it was all gone.
***
The girls screamed as they watched the shark fall back into the water. The man piloting the speedboat thought they were just having fun as he zipped and zoomed across the blue water. He always knew having a boat would be they way to get the gringas to pay attention to him. Seeing their tight American bodies crammed into those tiny bikinis was worth the night shifts and weekend hours he had to work to pay for the boat.
