Stop at Nothing

by Michael Ledwidge

  Ruby looked back across the depression at Ruiz standing there with his rifle. As they sat there, from way up the beach or perhaps from a boat moored out at sea, there was the faint sound of music. It was a slow mariachi song, some sad guitars and lamenting trumpets. Then just as suddenly, it cut off.

  “How long can the tanks go for?” Reyland called into the radio after another minute.

  “I don’t know,” Emerson called back out of the radio. “Doesn’t Ruiz know this shit?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Ruiz said to Reyland. “I was army, man. Delta. Shepard is the one who was in the Marine Raiders. I can hardly even swim.”

  Ruby looked at Stick, who looked at Little Jorge.

  “Yeah, right,” called Ruiz, looking over at them. “Like I can’t see you stupid fools eyeballing each other. You want to get a good look at your bone marrow in this romantic firelight, please, by all means, try something funny.”

  Ruby looked up at the sky. She suddenly remembered what Gannon had said about taking her out on his boat.

  She looked down at the black water where Gannon had gone.

  There were no stars out tonight after all.

  83

  The blue hole’s corridor-like passage began to close in narrower and narrower. As Gannon got to the extremely tight pipelike end of it, he suddenly put on the jets and swam hard into the tiny entrance of the cathedral.

  He felt his right shoulder slice open on a sharp rock as he squeezed through the pipe, but that didn’t matter. He ripped himself inside into the huge space, swam straight in for ten feet, dropped his light and left it there on the chamber’s floor. Then he turned and swam upward and back over the opening where he had just entered.

  Gannon floated there, probing with his hands. There was nothing and still nothing, and he almost went into full out-of-body panic mode, trying to remember where he put it, thinking maybe someone else had found it.

  Then his hand found the old duffel fishing rod bag.

  Gannon’s heart rate and breathing came faster and faster as he pulled the bag to him and unzipped it.

  The yard-long piece of metal he pulled out of it looked like a spear gun except instead of a spike at the end of it, there was a short squat length of steel tubing that almost looked like the coupling for a water hose.

  The device was called a powerhead, and it was a one-shot underwater firearm that was triggered by making jabbing contact with something.

  Due to the retarding density of water, a bullet shot from a regular gun at a distance under water was virtually harmless. But a powerhead set off by spring-loaded direct contact ripped into a target no differently than any other firearm round fired into something from point-blank range.

  Already loaded with a waterproofed shotgun shell of double-aught buckshot, the powerhead Gannon pulled from his bag was the kind that spear fishermen used as a backup to protect themselves from sharks.

  Gannon pulled out its safety pin and placed its shaft between his teeth like a pirate’s knife and took the second powerhead from the bag.

  He’d just pulled the second one’s pin and was turning down toward the entrance of the cathedral double-fisted when Blackbeard’s head emerged into the chamber through the opening just below him.

  Floating unseen in the dark two feet above, Gannon waited until he saw the commando’s tattooed bodybuilder shoulders.

  Then Gannon swung the powerhead down at the base of the big son of a bitch’s unprotected skull with every single solitary fiber of fear and fury and life force he possessed.

  84

  Everyone turned to Reyland’s radio as it suddenly began to sputter out static. There were several frantic clicks followed by a short loud beep.

  “Emerson? What is it?” Reyland called into the Motorola.

  “Holy shit! Reyland!” Emerson called out in a loud, suddenly very clear panicked voice.

  “What!” Reyland said.

  “The email I was waiting for,” he yelled. “Holy shit! I knew it!”

  “What?” Reyland said.

  “You have got to be kidding me!” Emerson yelled.

  “WHAT!” Reyland screamed back into his handheld.

  “This guy, Gannon. The report just came in on him. I had Rayne cross-reference his fingerprints with the covert database, and it popped. It popped. We got a hit! You’re not going to believe this.”

  “What are you trying to say?” Reyland called on the radio.

  “Reyland, stop interrupting him!” Ruiz yelled from across the hole, sounding suddenly nervous. “How many times I gotta tell you? Every time two people key a mic at the same time, it kills the signal. Keep the line open!”

  “Come in, Emerson. Over,” Reyland said into the radio.

  There was another crackle and then Emerson said clearly:

  “I have the report on Gannon. Listen, he was NYPD, but before that, he was DEVGRU, Reyland. Top echelon. Task Force Blue.”

  Ruby’s mouth dropped open as she sat there.

  Being navy, she knew that DEVGRU was short for the Naval Special Warfare Development Group.

  The special operations organization previously known as SEAL Team Six.

  She thought about Gannon. His diving skills. The way he had handled the SWAT team in New York. His preternatural calm.

  Gannon was a SEAL! she thought, wide-eyed.

  “He’s a SEAL?” Reyland said.

  “Yes. Listen to this record. Navy SEAL Buds training, 1995, at age twenty-one one of the youngest ever to go through. SEAL Special Sniper School, San Diego, California. SEAL Covert No Contact Urban Environment Recon Course at Fort Gordon in Georgia.”

  Ruby beamed at the growing dread on Reyland’s face.

  “He’s also done covert ops, boss. Ninety-six, he was Special Actions Division in Africa. In ninety-eight, he was South America with the same group. In twenty-oh-one, he was deployed to Afghanistan with the CIA first expeditionary force in search of Osama bin Laden.”

  “Shit, shit, shit!” Ruiz said.

  “After that he switched to the DIA. Iraq and Afghanistan ops. Year after year after year. Eight tours, Reyland. Eight! This guy’s killed more people than fentanyl. He must have joined the NYPD after cycling out of the SEALs.”

  Ruiz looked down at the water in panic.

  “I knew it,” he said. “This guy is a seasoned hunter-killer recon cowboy, and my guys don’t know!”

  “Emerson, listen to me. Are you sure about this? Are you sure?” Reyland said into the radio as he sat up straight.

  They all listened. There was the scratch of empty signal. The sound of the wind.

  “Emerson, come in. Over,” Reyland said.

  Reyland crackled the thumb piece again but there was just more fuzz.

  “Emerson, come in. Over,” Reyland said again.

  They listened, but there was still nothing but the sound of crickets from the darkness and the soft rustle of wind in the fronds of the palms.

  85

  Across the rim of the depression, Ruiz suddenly crouched and backed away from the firelight. His M4 glistened as he shifted it up to his shoulder, pointing it up the path Emerson had gone.

  “Reyland, listen to me,” he called across the sinkhole. “Where the hell is the other gun? The one with the FLIR heat scope?”

  “It’s in the Gator. Emerson has it,” Reyland said.

  Reyland lifted the radio and keyed it again.

  “Emerson. Emerson, come in. Over,” he said.

  “Emerson is dead,” Ruiz said, not taking his eyes off the trail.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Reyland said.

  “I don’t know how, but this script has shifted,” said Ruiz. “This SEAL has pulled a fast one on us. We need to get out of here and I mean now, Reyland. Get on that quad and turn it over and drive it over to me here. Do it
now.”

  “You’re crazy,” Reyland said. “Emerson’s battery died or something. This guy’s still under the—”

  The radio dropped from Reyland’s hand as a sharp crack of scratchy signal feedback suddenly sounded out of it.

  “Hello, Reyland,” said a new voice from its speaker where it lay between his feet.

  Ruby looked up at the dark sky, smiling as she felt her heart soar. It was impossible. But yet there it was.

  It was Gannon’s voice.

  “Reyland. Come in, Reyland,” Gannon said with a sharp whistle. “Come in, Assistant Special Deputy Agent Reyland, you bald ugly bastard. What? You don’t want to talk to me now?”

  Reyland stood up out of the camp chair slowly.

  “No sudden movements, asshole,” Gannon said from the dropped radio. “I have a bead on you right now with this rifle’s beautiful FLIR scope. What did you think? I’d hide everything somewhere where there was no back door? Welcome to my house, shit for brains.

  “You have a choice here, Reyland. You lie the hell on the ground, you get to live. You don’t, I’m going to blow that big ugly Charlie Brown head of yours clean off your neck. Tell El Mighty Mouse same goes for him. Tell Short Shit to lay down his rifle or I will grease his spunky little ass.”

  There was a scuffling sound, and when Ruby looked up, Ruiz was running full sprint along the rim of the depression.

  The rifle crack that came from the trees behind them a moment later seemed inconsequential, a car door closing. Ruiz screamed out mournfully as he went sprawling across the rough limestone face-first.

  When he slowly regained his feet, he was clutching at his lower back with one hand like an old man in an aspirin commercial. Using his rifle like a kind of crutch, he began moving again much slower now, his feet shuffling, kicking up rocky dirt along the blue hole’s rim.

  The next shots from the trees came in a louder cluster. A kla kla kla–ing burst of fire that made Ruiz’s baggy yellow guayabera shirt billow outward as he stopped dead in his tracks.

  When he turned slowly, you could see the dark blood splatter like huge ink stains all down the front of the shirt. He was attempting to lift his rifle to his shoulder when there was another shot that took him through the hollow of his throat just above the breastbone.

  Then Ruiz teetered over headfirst into the depression and fell from sight.

  His heavy little body had just hit the water with a cannonball-like splash when Ruby was suddenly yanked to her feet.

  Gripping at her bound hands and the back of her hair, Reyland ducked in behind her. He swung her hard between him and where Gannon’s fire was coming from.

  “You keep backing away with me,” Reyland said in her ear as he began to pull her backward past the campfire, “or, by God, I will snap your neck clean in two.”

  “Let her go, you son of a bitch,” Gannon called from the radio as Reyland shoved her to the right beside some palm trees where the other 4x4 quad was parked.

  As she tried to pull away, Reyland swung her hard by her arms off her feet. The air was knocked out of her as she landed stomach first into the metal side of the quad.

  She was still gasping to catch her breath, still in a daze, when Reyland kicked her away from the vehicle and leaped on top of it.

  Reyland got the four-wheeler started. As he revved the throttle, the palm tree trunk just beside the left side of his face exploded.

  But Gannon’s shot had just missed him, and Ruby screamed as Reyland crouched his pale bald head down between the handlebars and tore off into the woods, the engine wailing.

  86

  Shirtless and soaking wet, Gannon ran top speed out of the shadows into the firelight beside the blue hole, carrying the M4 carbine he’d taken off Emerson.

  He peeked over the rim of the depression and saw Ruiz floating facedown there in the water. Then Ruiz’s head blew apart as he clacked another tight burst of 5.56 NATO rounds through the back of it.

  Gannon squinted down at the cocky little prick who had killed Sergeant Jeremy.

  He only wished he could bring Ruiz back to life. So he could kill him all over again.

  “Mike! Over here,” Little Jorge called.

  Over the rim of rock, Stick was laid out on the stone on his side with Little Jorge kneeling beside him.

  “Everybody okay?” Gannon said as he arrived and began slicing off zip ties with Blackbeard’s knife.

  “Yes,” Stick said, smiling, “thanks to you. I never doubted you for a second, brother.”

  “Really? Then why did you keep saying ‘we’re dead, we’re dead,’ over and over again?” Little Jorge said, giggling, hugging Gannon after he helped him up.

  Gannon ran over to where Ruby lay on the ground.

  “You okay?” he said, kneeling down.

  When he sliced off her zip ties, Ruby doubled over, clutching her stomach.

  “Hey, are you hurt?” Gannon said, pulling at her baggy dress. “Let me see. Maybe you broke a rib or something.”

  “No, no. It’s okay,” Ruby said, immediately shoving him away. “It’s better now. Much better. I’m fine now. Perfect, in fact.”

  “Suit yourself,” Gannon said with a wink as he pulled her to her feet.

  He led Ruby back to the others and crossed over to the other side of the campfire and started dumping out bags the mercenaries had left. In the second one, he found his truck keys. In the third one, two full magazines fell out and bounced off the rock.

  “Little Jorge, listen,” Gannon said as he tucked a magazine into the back pocket of his wet madras shorts. “You get everybody back to the Gator and go straight to your place. I’ll meet you guys there.”

  “Where the hell are you going?” Stick said.

  Gannon listened to the rip of the quad’s engine getting fainter and fainter in the southern distance. He raised the M4, punched out the half-shot magazine, inserted a fresh one and ran the smooth-oiled action with a loud snick.

  “To end this bullshit once and for all,” he yelled as he began to run.

  PART FOUR

  The One That Got Away

  87

  It took Gannon under a minute to run back down the forest trail. His Sierra was parked there on the dirt road they drove in on, and he turned it over with a roar and laid the rifle down into the passenger-side foot well and opened the crew cab door.

  When he came around to the tailgate, he saw Emerson on the other side of the dirt road. He was unmoved from the spot in the grass beside the Gator where Gannon had sneaked up behind him and choked him out.

  He saw he was semiawake now, groggily staring at him from above the wraps of duct tape he’d tied him with.

  “On your feet, you damn weasel,” Gannon said, grabbing him by his hair. “We’re going for a ride to find your boss.”

  A ragged column of trailing dust rose behind the speeding truck as Gannon hauled it up the dirt drive. When they hit Sherman’s Highway, he was doing close to eighty, and the Sierra’s spinning back tires gave out a long, high scary bark off the asphalt as the rear end fishtailed.

  He went flat-out south as fast as he could for another mile. Then he let off the throbbing engine and rolled all the windows down, listening.

  When the ripping sound of the quad came ahead through the trees on his right, he quickly pictured the terrain in his head.

  Reyland was along the water now on the Bahama Banks–side beach. South of him where he was headed was Lighthouse Point, where the island ended.

  The truck’s V-8 throbbed to life again as Gannon buried the accelerator.

  “I got you now, you son of a bitch,” he said.

  A quarter mile to the south the road began to dogleg to the left. When he saw the palm trees on the far side of it, he realized they actually rimmed the beach Reyland was currently driving on.

  Gannon reached over a
nd grabbed his seat belt.

  “Bump!” he called back to Emerson as the Sierra bucked up off the road and plowed through the brush.

  The speeding pickup just fit between two palm trees and then there was a crunching sound as it bottomed out on some jutting rocks. Beyond the rocks there was a descending sand dune, and Gannon felt his stomach drop as the truck’s front end got sudden air.

  He was rocketing down the curve of the dune, frantically pumping the brakes, when Reyland blew past at incredible speed from left to right across the beach right in front of him.

  Gannon spun the wheel and locked his eyes on the quad’s cherry-red running light and gunned it down the beach. He was reaching over to grab the rifle a split second later when the quad suddenly zoomed out of his headlights to the left.

  “No!” Gannon screamed as he watched the red light disappear from the beach up a dune of sand that sloped up toward the ridge on their left.

  He was halfway up the slope after it a moment later when the truck’s tires began to slip.

  “No!” he screamed again as the rear end swung back and forth in the loose sand as he revved it.

  But it was no use.

  Gannon slammed the stuck truck in Park and grabbed the rifle and bailed out the driver’s door. He sprinted up the dune between the quad’s tire tracks past the island’s abandoned old gray concrete lighthouse and then came running down the ridge’s other side.

  He’d just made the flat sand of the Atlantic-side beach when he saw a spot of red to the north.

  He halted and brought the infrared scope of the rifle up to his eye.

  The quad had stopped. He could see Reyland’s heat signature light up white against the dark as he stood beside it. He seemed to be talking on his phone.

  Gannon blinked in the scope, gauging the distance. Four hundred yards, he thought. Four-fifty, tops.

  Gannon hurried to his left. He braced himself in against the rough trunk of a jutting palm tree trunk and clicked the scope’s range selector to four hundred and tucked the butt of the rifle tight into his shoulder.