Scorpion Rain

by David Cole

  “Affirmative.

  “Motel three?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Motel four?”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake,” I said, trying not to shout. “Just fucking do it.”

  “Motel four is good to go,” Kyle said.

  The scanner suddenly chattered at me in Spanish. I’d never really checked all the frequencies on the laminated card, had no real idea what I was supposed to be listening for, wanted to ignore it because the man was coming down the mountain, coming down for me. I focused the monocular, but couldn’t see anybody headed toward me. After two minutes of trying to see something, see anybody headed at me, I put down the monocular and went through all the frequencies. Most of them were silent, some with sporadic transmissions. I checked the last one, flipped the dial, ready to pick up the monocular.

  “I can see it,” Rey said.

  What the hell was this?

  “Sixty miles to the south. Is your team ready?”

  “They’re all good to go,” Jo said.

  And now I knew whose basket was full of Jo’s money.

  “Motel one?” I said.

  “Talk quick.”

  “Company coming.”

  “Who?”

  “Our former paymaster. My old partner. They’re in two choppers.”

  “How close?”

  “Fifty miles.”

  “That’ll be fifteen minutes max, motel one,” Wong said.

  “No problem. Motel four, stand by. Motel three, position check?”

  “Motel three is good to go.”

  “Motel two is good to go.”

  “On my mark, motel two takes the guy downslope. Motel three, the guy with the beard. Motel one, the short guy with the AK-47. No fatal wounds, just disable them. Thigh, shoulder, kill shot only if absolutely necessary. Ready…mark!”

  It was over almost before I could focus the monocular.

  A faint crackle of gunfire.

  I saw the man farthest downslope clutching his upper left thigh, as Wong flung his AK-47 away, rolled the man over, and quickly wrapped plastic handcuffs around his wrists. The bearded man writhed on the ground, holding his right shoulder, and Gates was kneeling beside him. But the short man wasn’t done, his right arm hanging broken at his side, he picked up his AK-47 with his left hand, fumbling to get a finger on the trigger, the muzzle waving as Kyle came toward him. I could see Kyle’s lips moving, knew he was shouting for the man to stay down, to drop the gun, but just as the AK-47 swung across an arc, already firing, Kyle shot a quick burst and the short man staggered backward, AK-47 firing on full auto into the sky, the rocks, until the magazine emptied and the man pitched over a short ledge and fell ten feet. Kyle crouched at the top of the ledge, but the man was dead.

  I heard a distant wopwopwop and swung the monocular around to the north. Two small birds, growing bigger by the second, two Huey II choppers, moving toward the camp.

  “Motel four,” I said. “We’ve got our company.”

  “No problem, Laura. It’s all secure.”

  “Did you find anybody…any…”

  “Yes. There are three people up here. They’re not in great shape. Since Jo is paying for a chopper, we’ll have her take them to the hospital in Guayamas.”

  “Three people?”

  “Two men and a woman.”

  I waited, afraid to ask.

  “It’s not her,” Kyle said quickly. “It’s not your friend.”

  “Not Meg?”

  “No. But we think…”

  I heard Jo’s loud voice in the background.

  “We’ll talk soon. See you. Motel one…out.”

  “See you back at the rancho,” I said to myself.

  I didn’t need to hear what Kyle had to say about Meg. I knew where she was.

  44

  They moved gracefully below me, Kyle looking upward at me through his mask.

  He’d done a lot of diving, but I was a total novice, and not sure the lessons were worth the trouble.

  Come down, his hands fluttering through the water, motioning me to descend.

  I drifted to my left, my body rolled sideways as I got hit with an underwater ripple from a passing boat wake.

  Down, the dive guide motioned, trying to relax me. Viveca was an English expatriate, living year-round in San Carlos, operating a small dive shop. We’d chartered her main boat, a thirty-foot Campion LX 925 Cruiser with twin Volvo five-liter engines and four sets of batteries. Viveca and her partners had done extensive overhauling and modifications to the Campion, but it was an awkward boat for more than two people

  Her long red hair streamed out behind her, she did a few porpoise moves, her body undulating at about thirty feet down, near the floor off the marina at San Carlos. I couldn’t avoid her, so I finally tilted my head down, made swimming motions with my hands, and joined her and Kyle on the seabed.

  Don and Michelle had worked very fast in isolating the Internet address associated with the digital image of the marina. Once he’d found it, he’d worked backward through the past weeks, locating thirteen more email messages.

  Three had pictures, two of them just other shots of the marina, but taken from what looked like a balcony overlooking the marina. The third picture was of a Mexican man, naked except for his very brief Speedo swimsuit. He held out a glass of something toward the camera. Maybe a martini. He smiled broadly.

  “You recognize him?” Kyle had asked.

  “No.”

  Don had done even better work. He’d tracked the Internet address of the two messages about Meg, verified it was indeed a doctored image of her standing in the foreground of the desert shot. He was now trying to find some common element between the two Internet addresses.

  Once we had the picture of the balcony, Justin Wong and Bob Gates had each taken a Range Rover and were quartering the resort city of San Carlos. Somewhere, probably up in the hills to the south of the marina, they were sure they could find the house where the picture was taken.

  Three people on the aft rail of a large cruiser. Clearly in the marina, because we could see the hotels and condos rising on the hill behind. The faces were indistinct, but Don had enhanced one of them.

  It was the man on the balcony.

  I had no idea who he was, why he was threatening me. Why he probably was the person who had paid a contract for Meg.

  It was bizarre, it was right out of Hollywood, James Bond, a thriller that had no relation to real life.

  But Don was certain that the man operated out of San Carlos.

  That he owned a boat.

  Our best guess—Meg was being held either in the city or on a boat.

  Approaching a house, Kyle explained, was a lot simpler than trying to do an assault raid on a boat. Until we got more data, he wanted to make sure we also had a boat, that we could use dive gear in case we had to swim from one boat to another. Actually, he could dive. So could Gates and Wong. I’d never learn, and I knew he was just humoring me, trying to get me to relax until we got some data.

  We surfaced. Kyle swam backstrokes, blowing water like a whale. Viveca helped me onto the aft decking of the Campion.

  “You’re doing okay,” she said, but without much confidence in my ability.

  “As long as he can do it,” I said. “That should be enough.”

  “Oh shit,” Kyle said from the water.

  He pointed toward the docking. Jo Kanakaredes held a hand over her eyes, scanning all the boats. Beside her, a man was using binoculars and I saw him focus on us and, pointing, giving the binoculars to Jo.

  “What does she want?” Kyle asked.

  But she had already dropped into a small dinghy, where a man immediately throttled up the outboard and headed toward us.

  “Who is it?” Viveca said.

  “A pain in the ass.”

  “She wants to talk to you?”

  “For sure.”

  But she just wanted to give us a summary of the raid on the kidnappers’ camp. Nobody admi
tted to knowing the man Chac. Jo was smoldering, manic, I could see she was almost outside the reality of where she was, what she was doing.

  Kyle told her nothing about what we’d learned.

  She knew he was lying. Frustrated, she ordered the dinghy back to the docks.

  “That woman is trouble,” Viveca said.

  “Not if we can avoid her,” Kyle answered. “One more dive.”

  “You go,” I said. “I’ll never learn this quick enough.”

  “Just one more dive,” Viveca said with a large grin, the perfect saleswoman. “You’ll see. It’s really very easy. It’s really a lot of fun.

  Gates was waiting at the dock, and I could see Wong beyond the marina in one of the Range Rovers.

  “It’s up at the very top of that hill,” Gates said without pointing. “Mediterranean style, two-story. The balcony looks right down here. If we had a spotting scope, I could pick it out for you.”

  “Has Justin got the gear ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “Whoa, whoa.” Kyle held out his arms, stopping me from walking. “You’re not coming. This is different than when we went up the sky island. This is close quarters. It’ll be hard enough for just one of us to get to the house.”

  “I’m coming. You can let me off, down the street.”

  “Laura. This is somebody who probably knows you. We’ve already discussed this. You’re a hazard for anything this tightly wrapped.”

  “Meg is my friend,” I said. “Is there anything you can say against that?”

  “At least a block away,” he finally said. “And you have to promise to stay there. Your word?”

  “You’d trust my word?”

  “Then I’ll handcuff you to the steering wheel.”

  “Come on,” Gates shouted from halfway down the dock. “Let’s bring it on.”

  I squeezed into the Range Rover with the three of them and their assault weapons. Wong threaded his way slowly up the hill as all three of them put on headsets and clicked them into radios. In turn, each of them clicked on their transmitter without speaking and clicked the button twice. They were wired. Gates double-checked the magazines of the three AK-47s, and Kyle handed out stun grenades, clipping two onto D-rings on the front of Wong’s vest.

  “Next block,” Wong said.

  We drove another twenty feet to the top of the hill. Wong stopped, parked the Range Rover. The three of them got out.

  “Don’t move from here,” Kyle warned me.

  “Okay.”

  “Unless I call for you, you do not move. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  “Okay, guys. Ready?”

  Wong and Gates had already spread out on opposite sides of the poorly paved street and were moving behind other houses. Kyle listened on his headset until they both checked in. He racked the AK-47 lever.

  “Okay. We’re good to go. So do it.”

  45

  But just after Kyle disappeared behind another house, I heard a car engine, saw a small Toyota stop halfway down the street, and Jo got out. She saw me immediately.

  I ran toward her, trying to wave her away.

  “He’s found them,” she hissed.

  “Stop, Jo. Stop, wait until Kyle gets into the house.”

  “I want that man,” she said, swinging her fist at me and connecting solidly with my right temple. “Don’t get in my way. Which house?”

  Staggering, I reached out to try to wrap my arms around her, keep her from moving, but she hacked at my arms, slapped my face repeatedly.

  “Which house?” she hissed again. “I know they’ve found the house. Which one is it?”

  I wrapped my arms tighter, but she kneed me in the stomach, hard, until I let go of her, and she immediately started running down the street. She stopped three houses away, looking left and right frantically, saw Kyle flicker beside a blue wall, and without hesitation she ran toward the house.

  I couldn’t shout, couldn’t make noise, so I ran after her.

  Reaching the front door, she banged both fists on it, bam bam bam. I caught up to her just as Kyle got there, but she reached for a clay flowerpot beside the door and swung it at his head, knocking him to the ground.

  “Quien es?” somebody shouted from inside.

  “Let me in!” Jo shouted.

  Wong ran up beside her.

  “Jesus, lady, get out of the fucking way!”

  The door flew open and a man emerged with nine-millimeter handguns in both hands. He saw Kyle was down, unconscious. He swung one gun intuitively toward Jo, his forearm catching her in the neck, and she dropped to her knees, gasping for air. He fired at Wong and hit him twice, in the right arm and shoulder.

  “Laura! Get down, get down!”

  Gates shouted at me from across the street, aiming his AK-47. I ducked, but the man turned sideways to Gates and fired three times, hitting Gates in the left thigh and knocking him back across a wooden fence. The man emptied one of his guns at the fence, looked at Kyle and Jo. I turned to run, but he came up quickly behind me, wrapped an arm around my waist, and dragged me into the house.

  He kicked at the door as we moved backward, but it didn’t click shut. He kept pulling on me, down a hallway, out into a back kitchen. He’d been cooking, there was the smell of burning olive oil, and some onions and garlic sizzled in a frying pan. He pulled me to the back doorway, not a sliding door, but what looked like an old Dutch doorway, separate top and bottom halves. The top was open, and I could see the marina below.

  I stomped on his instep, hard. His arm loosened and I dropped to the tiles and crabbed my way behind the cooking island. He fired twice, wildly, one shot shattering a flowerpot. Shreds of red petals, dirt, and water flew onto the floor. As I kept going he came around the cooking island and just as he leveled the gun at me he slipped on the watery tiles, went over backward, cracking his head.

  I ran down the hallway, crashed directly into Jo, who was carrying Kyle’s AK-47. She was so out of control that I plucked the gun from her hands before she realized what I was doing. Wild-eyed, she pushed past me into the kitchen.

  I saw the man on the balcony, there was another man out there.

  I tried to call out to Jo, but she barged out the Dutch doorway, swinging the bottom half open with a bang. I saw her head turn abruptly sideways, left, and just as quickly swing to the right. She froze. One of the men was obviously just to the right of the Dutch door, and he tapped it from behind, tapped the bottom half, and they both swung almost shut.

  The gun muzzle normally faced left, my right hand on the trigger, I launched myself through the open doorway, AK-47 pointing left as I smashed the upper part of the Dutch door backward into whoever was standing there. He was too close, thinking only of surprise, and the door caught him full in the face.

  The man to my left was half twisted around, a Glock moving down toward Jo in an awkward position as I held down the AK-47 trigger and blew his hand off, slugs traveling up his arm and shredding his elbow and his shoulder. The man on the right slapped at both halves of the Dutch doors, trying to get out from behind them. He shoved against the top part and as it closed he lunged at me, but got caught on the bottom part and tripped. I whacked his gun hand hard, a TECDC9, sent it flying toward Jo while I got the AK-47 muzzle tight against his chest and jabbed him twice, right against his rib cage, but he swung both arms quickly in a scissors motion and brought the shotgun barrel down so fast that even though I fired three rounds they went in front of his feet, shattering the rough pine decking.

  He coiled into a tuck and rolled from behind the door, a sunburned arm stretching toward the TECDC9. I fell on my back, kicking out with both feet against the bottom of the Dutch door, knocking him off balance. Even as he fell on his face he kept grabbing for the TECDC9, his head and arm straining forward, an inch at a time, and the AK-47 jammed and I didn’t know how to free the chamber. His palm touched the TECDC9’s magazine and I flung the AK-47 against his head, cra
cking open a long gash on his forehead, but he kept moving for the gun. I heard Jo jump behind me to pick up the Glock and in the same motion she started shooting before she could aim, the bullets thunking into wood and the man’s eyes bugging out as he got his hand around the TECDC9 barrel, throwing it up a few inches so he could grasp the butt and get his finger on the trigger. But Jo kept shooting, each bullet closer to him, and finally she got him in the shoulder, the sheer force of the bullet knocking his hand off the TECDC9.

  “Enough,” I said to her, but she drew her lips back over her death grimace, snarling, and she shot him in the head with the last bullet in the magazine. She kept pulling the trigger, clickclickclick, standing up, putting the muzzle against the man’s head, clickclick, finally realizing the gun was empty. She stood back from him, looked at the gun, and dropped it at her feet.

  I thought she was done, but she pulled out the KA-BAR knife and turned to the other man, who was barely conscious, blood streaming from his shattered right arm.

  “Jo!” I shouted. “He’s out of it, he’s not a problem.”

  She didn’t hear me, knelt to lay the blade against the man’s throat.

  I grabbed her arm, tight, just about the wrist. She fought me for a second, almost turned the knife on me, and then realized what she was doing. The man scrabbled backward, stopped only by the wall.

  “Jesus!” Jo said. “Oh sweet Jesus, I really wanted to cut them.”

  “Give me the knife!”

  She stood up, wrapping her arms across her breasts, hands grabbing elbows on both sides so tightly her knuckles gleamed white from the tension. She rocked back and forth on her feet, twisting in the wind of her indecision about what to do.

  46

  “Have a sandwich,” Kyle said. “Eat.”

  “Not hungry.”

  He thrust the sandwich into my hand, but it was tuna, it leaked mayonnaise on my hand and I just set it down. Slightly nauseous anyway, a swell in the marina from a passing sixty-footer. A piece of wood clanked against the hull.