Revenge in the Keys

by Matthew Rief

  At six foot five and at least 250 pounds, the twin brothers looked more like WWE fighters than MMA. They both wore jeans and thick-soled boots, making them look even bigger than they were.

  “You just entered freely into the lion’s den, Logan Dodge,” Pedro said. He continued to step towards me alongside his brother, and I moved out from behind the side of the bed. Squeezing his hands into fists, he cracked his knuckles and shot me an evil grin. “Let’s dance.”

  The short thug with the backward hat stepped out of the way, letting the two behemoths have an open lane as they stepped towards me at the foot of the bed. I remembered watching a few of their fights on pay-per-view, and they’d usually ended with a quick knockout. But while these two thugs were highly trained fighters, I was a highly trained killer. I hadn’t trained to knock guys down or to make them tap out in the SEALs or in my recent years of employment. I’d trained to kill bad guys as quickly and efficiently as possible. My internal clock informed me that I had about sixty seconds before the others would arrive.

  Yeah, let’s fucking dance.

  Since they’d both been professional fighters, I was surprised when neither of them shifted into an athletic stance. They just moved towards me, their heavy boots stomping into the floor. Pedro reached me first, swinging his left fist towards my face in a powerful hook. I bobbed my head back just in time to feel the wind brush by my face as his fist flew by.

  Planting his left leg on the floor, he transitioned right into a sidekick, launching his right leg towards my chest. His leg shattered the bedpost between us, making contact with my left shoulder and hurling my body across to the other side of the bed.

  I rolled to my feet, bracing myself against a chest of drawers just as Hector appeared beside me. He yelled violently as he threw two quick jabs my way, landing one square in my chest that almost knocked the wind out of me. I hadn’t fought anyone with such a combination of speed and strength in a hell of a long time, and it forced me to heighten my senses and reflexes.

  He jerked towards me and straightened his left leg, trying to hit me with a front kick. I weaved to the side, then grabbed his leg and twisted it back, causing him to grunt in pain. Gripping the back of his head with my left hand, I slammed it hard into the chest of drawers, smashing the wood to splinters.

  As I reared my right fist back to hit him with another blow, my body was struck by Pedro, who appeared to my right and threw me against the wall. He forced his fists straight for my head in rapid succession, giving me only a fraction of a second to react as they flew by just inches from my head and broke through the sheetrock beside my face.

  As I tried to counter his blows, he swept my legs out from under me, causing my body to fall backward onto the hardwood floor. In an instant, he jumped on top of me, sending punch after painful punch into my face before squeezing his strong hands around my neck.

  “You look just like your father did before he died,” he snarled, his lips contorting to form a sinister smile.

  Rage burned within me, and I felt a surge of strength take over. Reaching over my head, I grabbed a wooden drawer, pulled it out and broke it over Pedro’s head. As his grip loosened, I punched him in the nose, feeling the fragile bones crack beneath my knuckles. He yelled and tried to retaliate, but before he could, I threw him off me, grabbed a wooden shard from the broken drawer and stabbed him in the chest with it. Blood oozed out of his white tee shirt as I forced the splintered wood deeper, then ripped it out and slashed it across his face.

  Forcing my body forward and flinging my legs under me, I landed on my feet in the blink of an eye and hit him with the strongest front kick I’d ever hit anyone with, catapulting his body backward and launching him off the ground. As his massive body fell onto the bed, the frame collapsed under his weight and crashed to the floor. Hector yelled and ran towards me, holding the metal baseball bat the short guy had hit me with when I’d entered. Before he could rear back to swing at me, I surprised him by lunging towards him and tackling him to the ground.

  We tumbled a few times before I managed to knock the bat from his hands. Rolling me over with my back against the floor, he tried to hurl his meaty right fist into my face. But I countered by digging my heels into his chest and leg pressing him as hard as I could. I launched his body backward, and he slammed to the floor with a loud, ground-shaking thud.

  As I jumped to my feet, I heard yelling coming from the first floor. A second later, the short muscular guy stormed back into the bedroom, his face filled with anger as bullets rattled against the door frame just inches behind him.

  “There’s fucking more of them!” he snarled, looking at the two Campos brothers. “They have the place surrounded.”

  Hector was still shaking off the blow, but Pedro was on his feet and moved towards the short guy, who met him in the side of the room. He didn’t hesitate or waste a second thinking over the guy’s words. Instead, he grabbed the short guy by his shirt collar and said, “Get to the Jet Ski!”

  Then he pushed the guy aside towards the nearby open window, and the guy jumped out onto a balcony. I jumped to my feet and hit Pedro in his head with a powerful side kick that for any normal-sized man would be a knockout blow. He fell sideways and tried to shake it off as footsteps echoed up from the stairway. As I reared back to kick him again, he rolled to the side and reached for my Sig, which was still resting on the floor.

  Gripping it with his strong hands, he turned to aim it at me. But before he could fire, I took a powerful step and dove in his direction, forcing the barrel of the weapon aside as I tackled him onto a fancy silver couch. His finger squeezed the trigger repeatedly, causing a barrage of bullets to explode out and scream across the room.

  In my peripheral vision, I watched as the rounds riddled holes up Hector’s back as he struggled to his feet, causing him to lurch in pain and topple forward onto a small end table. The table shattered, and he hit the floor hard as blood oozed out of his massive lifeless body. As Pedro stopped firing and forced me aside, he realized what he’d done.

  “Motherfucker!” he snarled as he turned and stared back into my eyes.

  Veins bulged out of his neck and arms as he tried once more to aim the barrel of my Sig at me. I grunted and gritted my teeth, using all my strength to keep it drawn away from me. Our arms shook as he squeezed the trigger, exploding a succession of 9mm rounds just inches away from the top of my head. The bullets whizzed past, splintering into the door frame behind me and causing the guys out in the hallway to stop and move back for cover.

  After what felt like an eternity, the slider on my Sig locked back and the hammer clicked audibly a few times but didn’t strike a round. The magazine was empty, and as I tried to break free of his grasp, he yelled wildly and struck my forehead with my Sig’s handle, jerking me back in a haze.

  As the footsteps grew louder just outside the doorway, Pedro knew that he was surrounded and turned and lunged for the open window. My legs wobbled as I struggled to rise to my feet and shake away the stars that were swirling around my head. I stepped towards Pedro, but before I could reach him, he’d already jumped through the window and disappeared into the night air.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I ran over to the windowsill as fast as I could and searched the darkness. Pedro was nowhere to be seen on either the balcony or the roof, and a second later, I turned around to see Scott standing in the doorway. He had a Glock 19 gripped with both hands and raised chest height out in front of him. As he stepped into the bedroom, he took a quick look around at all the destroyed furniture, the shattered glass, and Hector’s bullet-riddled body lying facefirst on the floor in a pool of blood.

  “Holy shit, Logan,” he said as he stepped towards me.

  “Pedro’s getting away,” I said, my voice intense as I reached for the radio still clipped to the inside of my pants.

  No longer needing to be stealthy, I ripped the earpiece plug free and held on to the rubber side button.

  “This is Logan,” I said, speaking a
s loudly and as articulately as I could with my heaving chest. “Pedro Campos and another thug are trying to make an escape on a Jet Ski. He just exited the second-story bedroom window heading north.”

  Scott appeared beside me at the window and stared out. Just as he started to climb up onto the windowsill, we heard the unmistakable sound of an engine starting up, followed by a loud roar as it cut through the water, heading northwest.

  “He’s already out of the compound,” I said, watching as their thin silver wake glowed behind them in the moonlight.

  I grabbed an extra magazine from my holster and quickly exchanged it with the spent one. As I watched the Jet Ski speed up, cutting through the water, I spotted a faint flicker of light coming from Pedro’s lap.

  Scott was quickly followed into the bedroom by a group of three police officers, who entered like a SWAT team with their submachine guns raised and scanned every inch of the room.

  “Shit,” I said, realizing what the light was and staring back at the group. “We need to get out of the house now!” As the three guys turned to head back for the door, I added, “This way! There’s no time.”

  Hearing the seriousness in my voice and seeing the stone-cold expression plastered across my face, Scott and the three others moved alongside me as I ushered them out onto the patio. We climbed over the railing, our boots slamming against the metal roof as we sprinted for the edge of the compound. Up ahead, I saw a gap of about ten feet between the roof and the wall surrounding the compound. A second later, I heard a deep rumble resonate from inside the house and knew that my instincts had been correct.

  “Jump!” I yelled as I reached the edge of the roof in a full-on sprint.

  Digging my right heel into the metal, I launched myself into the air with reckless abandon. I landed on the wall, then rolled over, grabbed onto the edge and eased myself down onto the other side. Just as my soles hit the sand, I looked up and saw the others dropping down beside me. The night air suddenly shook as an explosion boomed from inside the house. The sound was deafening as it rattled across the air, causing the ground to rumble beneath my feet like an earthquake. The explosion lit up the night sky with a bright yellow flash, and shattered pieces of the mansion rained down around us, splashing into the water and smashing against the rocks. The three-foot-thick wall acted like a bunker, shielding us from the flames and the shockwave as we crouched down beside its base.

  In seconds, the explosion stopped, and all I could hear was the occasional pieces of shattered wood hitting the ground and the roar of the inferno as what remained of the mansion went up in a blaze. Standing up from the base of the wall, I could see the tops of the flames as they flickered powerfully high into the night sky. The smell of smoke and napalm dominated the air.

  “Did everyone make it out?” I asked while moving down towards the water and scanning the outside of the compound.

  Scott nodded. “We were the only ones inside,” he said, motioning to the five of us. “Everyone else is still aboard their boats.”

  I reached for my radio. “This is Logan. We all made it out of the house. What’s the status on Pedro?”

  After a brief silence, I heard Ange’s voice. “I only caught his shadow as he vanished on the other side of the compound,” she said.

  I hadn’t expected Ange to be able to take him out. The window he’d climbed out of faced northwest, the opposite side of the compound from where Ange was posted.

  “He hopped on a Jet Ski and turned east,” Charles said. “We chased after him but were already heading into the compound when you informed us he was on the move.” After a short pause, he added, “I still have contact with a patrol boat that has a visual, but it looks like he’s gonna get away.”

  Moving along the water beside Scott and the three police officers, I saw that all three boats I’d sabotaged were still tied off to the dock. From the looks of things, Pedro and that short muscular guy had been the only two to make an escape. As the massive flames pierced the blackness behind us, I grabbed my gear bag and we headed onto the dock.

  A second later, I heard the sound of a familiar pair of engines, then spotted the Baia cruising in our direction over the water surrounding the compound. The beach, waters and rocks surrounding the mansion were littered with broken pieces of wood, sections of the metal roof and various other remnants.

  Jack eased the Baia right up alongside the dock beside the three Cigarettes, and I tied her off to just one cleat, then climbed aboard, changed into a pair of swim trunks and jumped down into the water to retrieve my rebreather from under the dock.

  Once I had my gear aboard and stowed, Jack looked me over. “You alright, bro? You’ve got a nasty cut on your forehead.”

  As the adrenaline from the ordeal wore off, I felt pains all over my body from my encounter with the Campos brothers. The blood dripping down from my forehead was no doubt from when Pedro had hit me with my Sig. But what hurt the worst was my right shoulder, which felt like it had almost broken when the short guy had hit me with the baseball bat.

  “I’ve had worse,” I said as I grabbed my first aid kit from a storage compartment just inside the salon.

  I spent a few minutes patching myself up, then headed back out into the cockpit.

  Scott moved beside me and patted my left shoulder. “Hell of a job,” he said. “It looked like we arrived just in time.”

  He shot me a grin and I shook my head. “I had those big assholes right where I wanted them.”

  Scott chuckled, then replied, “Charles wants us to clear out and meet him outside the compound.”

  I nodded, and Scott jumped onto the dock and moved with the three officers along the beach towards my Zodiac, which was beached about a hundred feet away.

  Jack untied the line and I started up the engines. As I eased us away from the dock, the night sky was still lit up by the fire behind us and the flames showed no signs of slowing. I idled us momentarily as we left the compound, then dove down into the channel and surfaced holding on to my sea scooter. Handing it to Jack, I climbed aboard, toweled off again, then cruised out through the channel towards a cluster of three police boats that were gathered about a quarter of a mile from Blackett Key.

  I saw Charles standing on the bow of his police interceptor as it pulled out of the group and headed towards us.

  “Permission to board, Captain?” Charles said as his boat crept just a few feet from mine.

  I nodded. “Come on over, Charles.”

  A second later, he jumped the gap separating our boats with the agility of a man much younger than his years.

  Landing on the swim platform just aft of the transom, he stepped towards me. “We’ve got a beat on where he’s headed, and we’ve got people on the lookout for him.” Then, turning to look at the massive fire still blazing in the center of the compound, he added, “What in the hell happened in there?”

  “As we suspected, they had the place rigged with explosives,” I said. “Only two of them survived. Though they may have others who were out on the water when we attacked.”

  After dropping off the three police officers on one of the patrol boats, Scott brought the Zodiac up against the swim platform, and the four of us pulled it up and secured it with ratchet straps.

  Charles thought it over for a moment, then said, “If there are any others, we’ll find them.”

  “Update me on what’s going on,” I said. “I’ll be at the marina if you need anything. For now, there’s a beautiful woman waiting patiently for me to pick her up.”

  Charles said that he’d come by my boat for a debrief of the attack the following morning, then stepped onto the gunwale.

  “Hey, Logan,” he said, turning back to me. “You did good tonight.” After taking in a deep breath, he added, “And we’ll find him.”

  With a powerful push, he launched himself back onto his police boat, gave a tip of his cap and cruised back towards the small cluster of boats. Putting the engines back into gear, I accelerated past the group, heading southwes
t towards the end of the channel and into deeper water. Turning to port, I banked around the tip of Cutoe and slowed to a stop at roughly the same place where we’d dropped off Ange on the kayak. I knew Ange wouldn’t be very long, so instead of lowering the anchor, I kept the bow facing into the current and kept us stagnant by throttling to three knots.

  Even from over a mile away, the brightness from the burning mansion shone like a brilliant beacon across the dark sky. Listening in the stillness, we could hear the distant low roar and the occasional crackling of the fire. Using my night vision monocular, I spotted Ange as she climbed aboard the kayak with her gear and quickly paddled towards us.

  Within a few minutes, I could hear the paddle slipping into the water and splashing as she propelled herself. A few moments later, I moved along the port side and held the kayak steady as she handed up her gear. Offering her my hand, I helped her up onto the swim platform.

  “You look like you had fun,” she said with a smile as she looked me over from head to toe. Even with black paint splattered across her face, she managed to look sexy as hell.

  “A blast,” I replied with a grin. “Good call on the booby trap. Maybe I should listen to you more often.”

  She laughed as we reached over the gunwale, pulled up the kayak and secured it to the transom just ahead of the Zodiac.

  “Any word on Pedro?” she asked, looking out over the dark horizon and the distant burning house.

  “He’s long gone,” Scott said.

  She shrugged. “I’m not surprised. Looked like a Yamaha FX, which has an engine with over eighteen hundred cc’s of supercharged power. That thing flies across the water. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll hit a sandbar.”

  “It’s just the two of them,” Scott said. “And even if they manage to escape, what then? If they’re stupid enough to attack again, everyone down here will be ready for them.”

  Though I heard his words and they made a lot of sense, there was a big part of me that wished I hadn’t let them get away. That I’d finished all of them off tonight and ended their entire operation. Instead, one of the thugs responsible for my dad’s death had managed to escape. And I knew that if his motives had been strong before, they were amplified exponentially now that his brother was dead.