by Cindy Dees
Was it possible they were waiting for reinforcements of their own?
He keyed his mike and murmured, “Any chance these guys have called in their own backup, Spencer?”
Spencer answered with a single click. Yes.
Dammit. Sometimes he hated being right.
Whether the bad guys’ reinforcements arrived or not, all of a sudden the pause was over. Without warning, all three groups of hostiles charged down the hillside toward the house.
Gunner lined up targets and fired at them as fast as he could. As best as he could tell, he’d hit about a dozen by the time they broke out into the open and rushed the house.
He saw Spencer easing back toward the front gate, and he made out Drago backed up to the northern edge of the crawl space. Gunner waited until the groups reached the house and took up positions to shoot the hell out of it, and then radioed, “Go.”
Spencer and Drago took off running across the lawn while the bad guys opened fire on the house. The pair darted from tree to tree, using shadows for as much cover as possible. The moon had already set and it was pretty damned dark out here, which also worked to Spencer and Drago’s advantage.
But neither man had made it to the north ridge by the time the fusillade of shooting stopped and one of the groups of hostiles swarmed into the house like so many infuriated fire ants.
“Hurry,” Gunner muttered.
Spencer and Drago sprinted the last few yards and dove for cover.
“Clear,” Spencer reported.
“Clear,” Drago bit out.
“Chas and Poppy are on the trail. I’ll meet you there.”
“Take them up to the hide. We’ll hold the line here as long as we can,” Spencer ordered.
“Roger,” Gunner replied.
He slogged back through the thick undergrowth to Chas and Poppy’s position. They were gone. Good man. Chas had done as ordered and headed up to the fallback position. Gunner raced up the trail, leaving the various traps unsprung. Spencer and Drago would use them to cover their retreats when they came through.
He turned and ran up the steep slope. About halfway up, he heard the sound of a helicopter. Please, God, let that be Tanaka’s men. He reached a clear spot in the path and turned to peer back at the valley through his infrared gun sight. A large helicopter settled squarely in the center of the valley in the only reasonably open area on the property.
He watched through his night optical gear in horror as a dozen men, mostly Caucasian, streamed out of the bird—dammit, this could be more Oshiro gang members.
But his chagrin turned to shock as the newcomers were cut down before their feet touched the ground. The pilot tried to bug out, but the copter came under withering fire and smoke started pouring out of the engine section. It slammed back down to the ground, and the pilot emerged with his hands over his head. The bastards in the trees shot him where he stood.
“What the hell was that?” Spencer whispered.
“I think the Oshiro factions just resolved their differences,” Gunner replied dryly. “One side just slaughtered the other side. Although I couldn’t tell you which bunch was which. But they sure as hell made our job easier.”
Drago breathed, “I’m still counting at least two dozen hostiles out here. We’re a long way from out of the woods.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Gunner realized he was chanting the word with each step he took as he turned and sprinted up the trail. What were the odds they could go full defensive and egress out of this area with Chas and a baby in tow, and not get caught and mowed down like that pilot?
The terrain at the top of the ridge was rocky and open and provided precious little cover. There was no way to pass through this jungle without leaving a trail either. Not with an amateur and a baby.
They were well and truly screwed.
If this were a normal SEAL mission, he would call in all the air support that could be mustered, as well as whatever standoff support troops had been deployed along with the primary operating team.
He heard Spencer and Drago beginning to fire below him. Dammit. The hostiles were headed this way. They were running out of time to pull a miracle out of their asses.
God, he missed having all the resources of a SEAL team right now. Hell, they could call in a search-and-rescue bird to come pluck them off this mountain and fly them out—
It was a long shot, but what the hell. They were going to die up here. They were so ridiculously outnumbered and outgunned, it was laughable. If nothing else, the hostiles could simply wait for the three of them to run out of ammo and then hunt them all down and kill them at their leisure.
Horror at the idea of Chas and Poppy being executed in cold blood made him stumble, and he jerked his attention back to the path beneath his feet.
He spied the boulders ahead and put on one last maximum burst of speed. He leaped for cover and landed hard beside Chas and Poppy, both of whom lurched in surprise as he dropped down beside them. He frantically pulled out his cell phone and waited impatiently as the call went through. It was a Hail Mary pass, but it was all he could think of.
“Charles Favian. How may I help you?”
“Charles, it’s Gunner. Use my satellite phone to get my position. We’re on Oahu. We’re under attack and we can’t hold off this force for much longer. Do you have any resources at all you can call in to help us? We’re desperate.”
“Oahu, you say?”
“Yeah.”
“I can’t call in active-duty forces since you’re not on a government op, but there are a crap ton of retired SEALs in Hawaii, and I know a few of them. Lemme see what I can do.”
Charles Favian was fucking brilliant. He was going to call in retired SEALs and appeal to them to help two brothers in trouble. Now, if only some of those SEALs lived damned close by.
Charles had kept him on the line, and Gunner heard him talking urgently on another phone. “Yes. Call everyone. These are the coordinates. There’s a baby out there in the middle of it. Yes. And two SEALs. Spencer Newman and Gunner Vance. Team Ten.”
He glanced over at Chas, who stared back fearfully.
“Are we going to die?” Chas asked grimly.
He smiled bravely and lied, “Nah. SEALs always find a way.”
Spencer radioed urgently, “Fall back. I’ll cover your retreat and trap the trail.”
Gunner hung up on Charles, for they’d just run out of time. They were on their own now.
He set up his rig between two of the boulders to cover where the trail emerged and waited grimly for the final retreat. Drago came bursting out of the jungle first. He leaped behind the rocks and landed with the kind of grunt that gave away that he’d been hit.
“Chas, check him for wounds and do what you can,” Gunner bit out, never taking his eyes off the trail.
In under a minute, Spencer also burst out of the jungle, but he was ducking as someone shot at him. Aiming over his head, Gunner sent a round down the mountain to give Spencer the cover he needed to make it behind the boulders.
That was it. They were done retreating. Now they would shoot it out until they ran out of ammo or died, whichever came first.
Spencer set up shop at the left end of the outcropping. Drago waited impatiently while Chas insisted on tying a bandage around his left thigh, and then he rolled to the right side of the wall of rock.
“Ammo check?” Spencer murmured.
“I’ve got a couple hundred rounds,” Gunner reported.
“Same,” Drago replied.
“I’m at about one-twenty,” Spencer supplied.
Spencer didn’t have to tell them to conserve rounds. They all knew they were massively outgunned.
Over the next few minutes, the bad guys figured out where they were and fanned out across the slope below. The good news was the thick undergrowth was giving them hell and slowing them down a lot. Which, at the end of the day, only prolonged the inevitable.
Grim determination to go down fighting settled in Gunner’s gut. He’d been in some bad situations
before, but none as hopeless as this one. If he had to die, this wasn’t a bad way to go. He was with friends and the only two people in world he loved. It sucked that Poppy wasn’t going to get to grow up and have a full life. She should’ve gotten a chance to be a kid, fall in love, have kids of her own—
He broke off the train of thought. He had no time for despair. Not yet.
But as the next hour passed and the bad guys methodically forced them to use their precious ammo fighting off wave after wave of attacks, the despair set in, whether he wanted it to or not.
Chas rendered basic first aid, tying strips of cloth over their various minor wounds as they got nicked by flying shards of stone. He also passed them water bottles and the precious clips of spare ammo. For her part, Poppy cowered in the lee of the rocks with her thumb or her pacifier jammed in her mouth. She whimpered from time to time, but silence didn’t matter anymore. The bad guys knew exactly where they were and were patiently wearing them down.
“Ammo check?” Spencer asked a shade wearily.
“Thirty-two,” Gunner reported.
“Sixteen,” Drago reported.
“I’m at twelve. Time to let them draw in close. Let’s make the shots count.”
Gunner knew what Spencer was saying without stating it aloud. They were going to die soon. It was a last-ditch SEAL maneuver to let their position get overrun and burn the last few rounds of ammo on point-blank shots that would take out as many of the enemy as possible before they were gunned down themselves. As a SEAL, if you had to die, you took as many of the bastards with you as you could.
“It’s been an honor, sir,” Gunner said formally to Spencer.
“Likewise,” Spencer replied.
Drago just swore under his breath, off radio but loud enough for Gunner to hear. Then Drago transmitted. “I love you, Spencer Newman.”
“Love you too.”
“Jesus,” Chas whispered off-mike beside him. “You guys sound like you’re getting ready to charge over the rocks and go out in a blaze of glory.”
Gunner risked turning away from his weapon sight long enough to smile ruefully at Chas. “Guess you were right. We should have found another way to handle this besides shooting it out.”
Chas leaned over and grabbed the front of his shirt. “Don’t you give up on me, Gunner Vance. Poppy and I are depending on you. Be the warrior you were trained to be, dammit.”
He stared, stunned. “You mean it?”
“I’m not ready to die, and she sure as hell isn’t. You fight for us.”
“But I’m killing people. Loads of them.”
Grim desperation vibrated in Chas’s voice. “Poppy deserves to grow up. You and I deserve a shot at happiness. You do whatever it takes to give us all a future. You hear me?”
“Yeah.”
“You were right. You kill whoever you have to. And stay alive, dammit.”
He nodded and turned back to his sight. Huh. Chas finally got it. Funny how staring down death at close range could change a person’s opinions about the whole kill-or-be-killed thing.
If he, Spencer, and Drago rotated shooting so that they never shot at the same target, they could still take out a fair number of hostiles.
He transmitted, “Let’s rotate shots. Call your targets. Single shots only at close range.”
“You sure?” Spencer asked.
“I’m not ready to go just yet.”
“You heard the man,” Spencer murmured.
Gunner settled in, readying himself to shoot like he’d never shot before. He reviewed the basics as he always did. He felt the calm washing over him. There it was. The kill zone.
A heat signature moved up the path toward them. “Mine,” he said coldly. He pulled the trigger and the hostile’s head evaporated. Thirty-one rounds left.
When the bad guys were coming in slowly enough, he took two shots to every one of Spencer’s and Drago’s to even out the ammo count. He was at fourteen, which meant Spencer and Drago were down to around six each, when he heard something from below.
A muffled bang.
Another one.
Several heat signatures lit up on the trail… but heading away from their position.
“What the hell is that noise?” Drago asked.
“Sounds like weapon fire,” Spencer said wonderingly. “Muffled by the jungle. Hold your positions.”
Gunner stayed at his weapon, poised to shoot anyone who came up the trail at them, but over the next ten minutes or so, not a single person charged their position. Sounds of weapon fire came from both ends of the valley and seemed to be converging toward the middle of it.
“Come look at this,” Spencer said over his radio.
Shocked, Gunner left his weapon and moved over behind his boss, who was peering around the left end of the rocky outcrop. The entire hillside below them was lit up with muzzle flashes—two large groups of them, one coming in from their left and another group from the right. And between them, the Oshiro gang was slowly being crushed, rather like a nut in the jaws of a lethal nutcracker. For all the world, it looked like a military force executing a clearing maneuver on a battlefield.
“What the hell?” Drago muttered.
Even Chas poked his head around the rock to stare. “What is that?” he asked.
Gunner’s phone vibrated in his pocket, and he pulled it out. “Go ahead,” he murmured at Charles Favian.
“Do you see them yet?” Charles asked, sounding positively gleeful.
“You mean the massive line of shooters advancing up the hill toward us?” Gunner asked.
“They’re SEALs. Well, retired SEALs. I’ve got them on a satellite video feed here. They say there’s another group of shooters taking out the same guys they’re trying to take out, but they don’t know who the new shooters are.”
“Could be Tanaka’s guys,” Gunner replied.
“You might want to get on the phone with Tanaka’s men and tell them they’ve got SEALs on the field helping them and not to kill our guys.”
“Will do. Just a sec.” Gunner took the phone away from his mouth and relayed the message to Spencer, who immediately got on his cell phone to call Kenji Tanaka.
Charles commented, “Satellite view shows the new arrivals have pretty much cleared out your bad guys. They should reach your position in a few minutes. Don’t kill the good guys, eh?”
Gunner snorted. “We have just about enough ammo left to make a smiley face in a pumpkin.”
“Good timing, then,” Charles said. “The SEALs are operating on channel four if you want to say hello.”
“Thanks,” Gunner muttered.
Drago was already dialing up channel four on his radio. “Roger. Four adult males and one toddler. On the rocky outcropping about a hundred yards above your line. We’re using IR designators if any of you gentlemen have the capability.”
Gunner got his own radio switched over in time to hear someone respond in a gravelly voice, “We’ve got a few IR capable kits. We’ll send those boys up your way first.”
“We’ll be watching for them,” Spencer replied. “And I repeat, there are friendlies coming in from the other end of the valley.”
“Roger. We see them.”
Chas frowned. “What’s happening?”
Gunner couldn’t help grinning as he answered, “Tanaka’s guys got here, and they appear to have come in from one side of the valley, and Charles Favian called a bunch of retired SEALs who live in the area. They came in hot from the other end of the valley. Between the two, they appear to have wiped out the Oshiro boys.”
Sonofabitch. Tanaka coming for his own kid was not a surprise. But the SEAL brotherhood coming to the rescue like that for him and Spencer? That was a surprise of the best kind. This was why he loved his brothers-in-arms so damned much. When the chips were down, a bunch of crusty old ex-SEALs had answered the call. He and Spencer were still part of that brotherhood. They would be until they died. Leaving his active-duty SEAL team didn’t make him any less of a SEAL. He w
ould always belong to this very special family.
Something proud unfurled in his chest, and it felt as if he’d drawn his first real, deep breath in weeks.
It took a bit to sort out who all was who on the hillside. A few hostiles were found hiding and taken prisoner if they surrendered or eliminated if they tried to fight. But eventually a great bearded bear of a man emerged at the top of the trail, his assault rifle pointed at the sky.
“Ooh-rah,” he said by way of greeting.
“Is the hill clear?” Spencer asked cautiously.
“Clean as a virgin’s—” He broke off. “Sorry. Forgot about the kid. Yeah. Hill’s clean. Y’all can come down now.”
Gunner stepped out from behind the rock. “Man, am I glad to see you.” He couldn’t resist thumping the big ex-SEAL on the back.
“C’mon. I imagine the boys are gonna want to meet y’all. It’s not often we get an excuse to come out and run a little target practice.” He added, “Oh, and there’s a bunch of Japanese fellas down in the valley who are all kinds of worked up to see the kid y’all have up here.”
Gunner snorted. He would bet.
The hike down to the valley floor didn’t take long. The SEALs had obviously cleared out the logs, vines, and other traps on their way up. They stepped out of the jungle, and several dozen men milled around, armed to the teeth, chatting and laughing as if they were holding a team reunion. A group of similarly armed Japanese men stood apart, speaking quietly among themselves.
A big cheer went up when they stepped out of the woods.
Poppy must have sensed she was safe at last, for on cue, she popped her thumb out of her mouth and let out a wail fit to raise the dead. That made everybody laugh, and Chas hugged and joggled her until she calmed down.
The next few hours passed in a blur. The contingent of Tanaka’s men made a discreet departure before law enforcement arrived, and not long after, police showed up to take control of the scene. The retired SEALs pitched in, fetching bodies and laying them out for identification. All in all, some forty Oshiro gang members died in the valley.
As far as Gunner, Spencer, and Drago could tell, both factions of the Oshiro gang had taken heavy losses out here tonight. If nothing else, the entire Oshiro gang had been taught a painful lesson on how seriously the Tanaka family—and the SEALs—took her safety. Gunner doubted they would ever try to mess with her again.