The guy at the front of the building still had his back to me, and he started talking to Amanda. “Where’s that little boyfriend of yours, missy? Maybe he got scared and left your ass here. Maybe we’ll all take a turn on you before I shove you in a crab trap and drop your ass in the ocean.”
“I don’t fuckin’ think so,” I said, and fired a suppressed three-round burst into the back of this asshole’s head, neck and back. He dropped with a quiet plop into the sand, and Amanda’s scream was muffled by her gag, thank God. I moved quickly to her and shushed her, then pulled my K-Bar and cut the ropes behind her back. She pulled the gag out of her mouth, threw her arms around me and squeezed so hard that I fell over.
“Be quiet!” I whispered in her ear. “There’s a ton of these fuckers still out there.”
“I know,” she sobbed.
I pulled the dead guy back away from the corner and found his nine-millimeter semiautomatic. Taking the safety off, I chambered a round and handed it to Amanda. “Point the gun and pull the trigger. Use two hands. It’ll kick up after you fire. The safety is off, so try not to shoot me. There’s a sniper up in the lighthouse, and at least five guys on the beach. The sniper can’t get a shot at us down here without exposing himself. I’m going to try to pick off the guys on the beach. You watch the back of the house, okay? Stay low and quiet. Anyone comes up behind me, point and shoot.”
I crawled back to the front corner and spotted the guys still standing on the beach looking at the fishing boat, which kept moving closer to shore. It was high tide with a storm surge, and the boat could practically anchor ten feet offshore.
Looking through the scope, I watched the five guys, then opened my cell phone and called Agent Bauman. I told him I had Amanda, two bad guys down, and six to go. “Sniper in the lighthouse.”
Taking aim at the group on the beach, happy to have a scope, I started squeezing off double-taps. Two went flying, and the other three hit the deck in total shock. They were screaming into the radio, “Russo! What the hell are you doing! That’s us out here! Cease fire!”
I sent another burst at them, which I guess woke them up to the fact that I wasn’t Russo. They started firing back. They were low in the sand and using the two dead bodies as cover, and all I could do was keep their heads down and wait for the cavalry. I was figuring the FBI when I thought of the cavalry, but that wasn’t how it went down.
The fishing boat opened up both diesel engines and roared up high out of the water. It was like a killer whale surfing in for a seal and made a bee-line for the guys on the beach. With the floodlights on them, they were temporarily blinded, and I scrambled forward to the front of the house and started firing again. One more down.
Thomas didn’t slow the boat down, and the two guys left on the beach turned their guns on him. I moved forward as fast as I could, using the building to shield me from the sniper as I worked closer to the guys on the beach. The boat continued its course straight into the enemy gunfire, which would have been great if the boat were armed with a bow gun, but it wasn’t. I fired and moved and fired again.
A loud boom resounded off the water. It was so loud that I stopped and looked. There was Caleb on the bow of the boat, firing a shotgun at the guys on the beach. The crazy son of a bitch was going to get his head blown off.
The guys on the beach tried to make a run for it as the boat hit the sand like a landing craft at Normandy, beaching itself and sending Caleb flying across the deck. Tons of sand and water shot up out of the stern of the ship as the screws made contact with the shore.
I used that split second to charge, dropping the MP5 and pulling up Ice. I don’t remember doing it, but according to Amanda, she could hear me screaming bloody murder as I charged their position. The switch in my head had flipped, and I ran into the crowd firing round after round at everyone I saw. Ice was a wicked friend and blew holes in those dirtbags that were big enough to read a newspaper through.
A round impacted near my foot and I realized I was giving the sniper too large a target. I hit the ground and pressed into the sand as hard as I could. I could hear Caleb and Thomas on the boat, screaming.
I yelled, “There’s a sniper up in the lighthouse,” but there’s no way they could hear me over the wind.
Caleb fired a few rounds with his shotgun, but the tower was well out of range. I yelled at him to get inside and stay down.
Thomas ran out on to the deck and grabbed a floodlight, repositioning it to hit the lighthouse. The sniper started firing at the boat, and I sprinted for the house. He only managed one shot at me. I was moving way too fast. I got back to the house and yelled to Amanda not to shoot me when I came around the corner. I found her crouching with the gun, looking terrified. When she saw me, she shouted my name and started to cry. No time for that now, babe!
Running past her to the rear corner of the building, I looked up at the lighthouse. I still couldn’t see him or his rifle. I pumped three rounds back into Ice and told Amanda to sit tight. I didn’t stick around to wait for an argument.
Thomas and Caleb were trying to aim their lights at the lighthouse, but the sniper kept shooting their lights out and making the poor guys scramble for cover. They had balls, those two old guys. Sporadically, I’d hear their shotguns go off, useless and out of range, but providing emotional support.
I opened the door at the base of the lighthouse and entered slowly. There was a tight spiral staircase leading to the top, made of waffle-print metal that had been painted black a hundred years ago. I looked up but couldn’t see anyone. I heard him fire and breathed a sigh of relief. As long as he was firing at the boat, I had a chance to reach him.
I held Ice out in front, in two hands, starting my long run up the staircase, trying to be as quiet as possible. The sniper fired another round. I heard him shout, “Got you, you fucker!” Damn. I was praying he hadn’t just killed one of my Toider friends, but there was no way to know.
Moving quickly and quietly up the last twenty stairs, I stopped at the top, near an open doorway. The huge lens inside the top of the lighthouse was shielded in the back, I suppose to protect the lighthouse-keeper’s eyes. The front part of the room was as bright as you’d imagine with a gigantic lighthouse beam blasting a few thousand watts. Under the light, on his belly, there was the sniper with a bi-pod rifle and scope.
Crouching, I moved up behind him. “Freeze, asshole!” I wanted one of them alive.
He didn’t freeze. He rolled over on his back and tried to bring his rifle around on me. Ice roared as I fired two rounds on autopilot and left his splattered mess all over the lighthouse.
I ran down the spiral stairs as fast as my legs would take me.
Chapter Forty-Two
Hoo Aah
I blew through the door at the bottom of the lighthouse. Amanda raised her pistol at me with both hands! I screamed at her not to shoot. She threw the gun in the sand and covered her face with her hands.
I ran over to her, picked her up and squeezed so hard that I think I adjusted her spine.
She cried, and I’m not sure, but I think I might have, too. It was all a bit overwhelming.
Combat was one thing. Having someone I loved in the middle of it was another.
“We need to check on Thomas and Caleb.” I grabbed her hand and we ran along the side of the house, Ice still out in front of me in case we had missed anyone. I stopped and tried a fake-out move on the radio.
“Help—is anyone out here? Help…”
I waited for a full minute. No one responded.
I started jogging down the beach, dragging Amanda along behind me. The boat was beached, sitting at a funny angle in the sand. Half of the floodlights had been shot out, and the remaining ones shot beams of light in different directions. With the wind making strange sounds in the background, the boat appeared like an otherworldly being.
I yelled at the boat, waving my arms as I ran with Amanda. I had slid Ice back behind me so they wouldn’t mistake me for a bad guy and take a shot at us. C
aleb’s face appeared over the rail.
“Over here! Help!”
Shit. Thomas.
I started running as fast as I could, dropping Amanda’s hand as I hit the surf in full sprint and pounded through the breaking waves to the side of the boat. I climbed up and saw Thomas on his back with Caleb holding an old rag over his shoulder. I moved over to them and checked for a pulse. He was alive!
He opened his eyes. “You get ‘em?”
“Yeah, how you doing?”
“All of ‘em?”
“Yeah, Thomas, all of them. How do you feel?”
“Best I have in twenty years,” he said, and closed his eyes. He had a silly grin on his face, and I swear some of the ancient stress lines seemed to disappear.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket, pressed ‘send’, handed it to Caleb and told him to tell Special Agent Bauman that we needed an ambulance immediately.
While he talked to the Fed, I ripped open Thomas’ shirt and looked at his wound. It was from a high-powered rifle and had made a large hole. I rolled him over on his side and saw the bigger hole in back. It had gone through. I was relieved. Thomas had lost a lot of blood, but Caleb had only been putting pressure on the entry wound. I wadded up a piece of Thomas’ shirt, cut off a piece of a plastic rain slick and went to work. Plastic first to try to seal it off, the wad second, with a homemade pressure bandage last. I gently eased him back onto the deck and pushed my hand over the entry wound.
“Hang in there, buddy. Help’s coming.”
He tried to talk.
“Just rest, Thomas. Help’s coming.” I felt his carotid artery. The pulse was slow and weak, but it was steady. “You’re gonna make it, Thomas. Just hang in there. And thanks, man. You saved our lives tonight.”
He smiled.
While I was working on Thomas, Caleb was helping pull Amanda aboard the fishing boat. As soon as she was on, Caleb ran to the wheelhouse and started gunning the reverse engines. Behind the boat, tons of sand began shooting over the water as the props dug a hole in the sand under us. Caleb didn’t care about the boat. He kept full power up until enough sand had been moved that the boat slid backward. He was a pro. His right hand moved around the wheel and controls while his left one held the radio.
“Coast Guard, Coast Guard, Coast Guard! Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is Harkers Island fishing vessel Lucky Lucy, Lucky Lucy, Lucky Lucy… We are en route to Morehead City. Advise Carteret General that we have a gunshot victim on board. He’s lost a lot of blood. Have an ambulance at the Thirty-Fifth-Street pier.”
As used to medics and self-reliant Special Forces operators in the field as I was, I was taken aback by Caleb’s professional demeanor on the radio. Shocked, actually. He was cool as a cucumber.
Thomas looked like shit, but I’d seen plenty of guys who looked worse come through just fine. Of course, they’d been forty or fifty years younger and in battle-ready shape. I pulled off my belt and wrapped it around Thomas, tightening it as best I could to try to stop the bleeding. He was unconscious now, but his pulse was still steady and his breathing seemed okay. Amanda knelt down next to him on the other side, holding his head steady against a makeshift pillow as we bounced along the surf.
I felt my cell phone buzzing in my pocket. Agent Bauman.
“What’s your situation over there?” he shouted into the phone.
“We’re on a fishing boat, headed over to Carteret General. One of my buddies got shot helping me out, and he’s lost a lot of blood.”
“What about the hostage?”
“I have her. She’s safe.” I looked up at Amanda, who was holding on to Thomas—and maybe her sanity.
“And the kidnappers?”
“All dead. We got ‘em all. And I still have the diary. Can you meet us at Carteret General?”
“Listen… By boat, you can make it in thirty minutes. By car, we’re screwed. We’d have to take Route 70 all the way back the way we came and hook around. We’re already at the Straits. Damn it! Let me call you right back.”
Caleb kept chugging along through the Back Sound, way faster than was prudent in the dark and the weather. The sound had plenty of shallow spots which could wreck us, but I prayed the storm surge and high tide might help us out.
A few second later, the radio on the boat squawked.
“Lucky Lucy, be advised that we have military choppers inbound from Camp Lejeune and Cherry Point. ETA ten minutes. Put on as many lights as you can and be prepared for aerial boarding. Special Agent Bauman has arranged for emergency transportation to Carteret General. Over.”
We were closer in miles to Carteret General than the choppers were to us, but they’d cover twenty miles a lot faster at a hundred and fifty knots than we would at twenty-five.
I breathed a sigh of relief. He’d sent in the Marines. My cell phone buzzed again.
“Walker, you there?”
“Yeah—the Marines are sending choppers.”
“Ten-four! They’ll have a combat team on board to personally escort you to the hospital and stay with you until I can get there. No one is getting within five miles of you without an invitation.”
Not even fifteen minutes later, two Marine helicopters banked in over top of us, bathing us in their searchlights. Caleb cut the engines and dropped anchor right where he was in the middle of the Sound, and within a few minutes, the chopper was dropping ropes and lowering a gurney. It was a sight for sore eyes. A Marine staff sergeant was the first on the deck, having fast-roped down in the wind and rain like it was no big deal. He ran forward to where we were working on Thomas.
“Staff Sergeant Cruz!” he shouted over the rotors. “We’ll have your man in the hospital in fifteen minutes. Leave this vessel where it is, anchored. You’re all to board the chopper and come with us!”
I looked at the wheelhouse. Caleb was not going to want to leave his boat in the middle of the sound in a hurricane. “You better tell the skipper yourself!” I screamed back at him.
Two medics ran forward with their kits and knelt beside Thomas.
“He’s lost a lot of blood,” I yelled over the rotors. One of them nodded at me and broke open his kit. Within seconds, they had real pressure bandages on Thomas and had popped a bag of plasma into his arm. They were writing Thomas’ blood pressure and heart rate on his forehead with a felt-tip marker, along with the time—1:30 a.m. I remembered seeing that happen in Afghanistan.
Caleb came out of the wheelhouse behind Staff Sergeant Cruz and yelled over at me. “How is he?”
“I think he’s going to make it, but we need to go!”
“They want me to leave Lucy right here in the middle of the Sound?”
“That’s right! We’re out of here! Let’s move!”
The medics slid Thomas onto a board, strapped him down tight and ran aft with him. Within seconds, he was clipped to a caged gurney and hoisted up to the chopper. The gale-force wind was howling, and yet the helicopters were perfectly still. Damn, they were some pilots. The chopper dropped more lines and hoisted us up, two at a time. Within seven minutes of when they had arrived, we were all aboard the chopper, leaving Lucky Lucy anchored by herself in the middle of the Back Sound.
We sat in silence as the medics worked on Thomas, and as I glanced around the chopper at the young faces from Lejeune, I felt very old.
SSgt. Cruz moved over to where I was sitting with my arm around Amanda and leaned close to me. “I have no idea who you people are or what this is all about, but when the base commander personally tells me to guard you all with my life in the middle of a hurricane, that’s what I do. My men are to escort you to the hospital and not leave your side until we are relieved by FBI Special Agent Bauman. Anyone else tries to get near you, we’re ordered to fire.” He stared into my face. “What the fuck is going on, sir?”
“You don’t want even want to know. Hopefully, you’ll read about it in the news very soon.”
He nodded and moved back with his men. Amanda buried her head in my shoulder and clos
ed her eyes, obviously totally exhausted. I was pretty damned beat myself.
Chapter Forty-Three
Recovery
With the wind whipping, I was seriously worried, but our ride was pretty smooth, all things considered. The choppers landed on the front lawn of the hospital. Two attack helicopters from Cherry Point had escorted us halfway through the trip and now circled the hospital. These guys were the best of the best.
I have no idea what Agent Bauman had said or what kind of juice he had, but I was pretty damned impressed. The Marine bases in North Carolina—and there were several—didn’t get involved in civilian police activities. Whoever Bauman had spoken to, or whatever connections he had, had come through big-time.
The Marines literally escorted us into the hospital and wouldn’t leave our side. I’m not sure the President would have had so much security. I was very happy to have them with us. Thomas was sent on to surgery, with two Marines posted outside the doors of the OR. The three of us were taken to a doctors’ lounge, where we collapsed in exhausted heaps.
Amanda and I curled up next to each other and were sleeping within minutes, the adrenaline having been replaced with complete physical exhaustion. The doc had given Amanda something to help her calm down, and she was snoring, which made me smile. I’m sure Caleb wasn’t far behind.
It seemed that immediately I was awakened by the same Staff Sergeant. “Sir, the Federal Agents are here to see you.”
I looked around and tried to remember where the hell I was. I checked my watch. It was four-thirty. “Is Thomas okay?”
“He is still in surgery. Special Agent Bauman is on his way up.”
I sat up and moved gingerly around Amanda, who was out cold. I walked out into the hallway to meet my hero. Special Agent Bauman greeted me in his FBI windbreaker, a 9mm and badge on his belt. He had two other agents with him. “Cory Walker?” he said as he stuck out his hand.
Blood from a Stone Page 18