“It’s me! What the hell is going on around here? They said we were under attack? Do you plan shit like this for fun, Xander?”
The three of them lowered their guns as Romero’s man, Ricardo, ushered in Zhanna and Jack behind Kyle.
“They are halfway up the road, señor.”
“How many?” Romero replied.
“Ten. Maybe fifteen.”
Sam interrupted. “Well, there are more at the back. Have you no security there?”
“They cannot come in from there. It is a ravine,” Romero said.
“The two dead men in your art gallery beg to differ.”
Six of Romero’s armed men came through the front door, and he directed them to the gallery.
“I am so sorry, Samantha.”
“I’m fine, but Lola might be a little out of her element.”
Romero motioned for Ricardo to take her away, then asked Xander, “Are all of your crew soldiers?”
“Fortunately for you, yes,” Xander answered as he reached into the bag of weapons. “Jack, I grabbed this one just for you.” Xander pulled out a sniper rifle and tossed it to Jack.
Jack tipped his cowboy hat back and marveled at the weapon. “Shewee! This is a Desert Tech SRS-A1. ’Bout as accurate as these new rifles come!”
“Figured you’d like that. Romero, where is a good place for Jack to perch? He’s one of the best shots I’ve seen, so pick a spot and let him work.”
Gunshots rang out at the back of the house in the direction of the gallery. Sam gave Romero an “I told you so” shrug.
Sam said, “Have we got a plan?”
Xander locked two magazines into the two Berettas he’d grabbed from the secret room. They weren’t his weapon of choice—Glock 19—but they would do.
“Yeah, survive,” Xander answered. “Kyle, you go spot for Jack. Make sure he has some backup ammo.” Sam tossed Kyle two extra six-round mags for Jack’s Desert Tech rifle. “Romero, put two men at the top of the stairs to watch Kyle’s back.”
Romero raised his eyebrow. “You’re barking orders in my home?”
Xander squared up to him and looked him dead in the eye.
“You’re damn right. You dragged me into this mess, I’m not going to let you get me or my friends killed too.”
As Kyle and Jack marched up the stairs, Romero squared up to Xander and puffed out his chest. For the first time, Xander saw the qualities that made Romero a successful drug lord. Beneath the charismatic exterior was a hard man.
“We don’t have time for an alpha-male pissing contest,” Sam said. She stepped forward, getting Romero’s attention. “I know you don’t know us, Mr. Romero, but I beg you, let Xander put us all in the position to survive whatever you have got us into here.”
“She speaks of you as if you are some sort of warrior. I like you, but it looks to me that the years away from the military may have made you soft.”
Xander let out a sigh. Then he turned toward three of the armed guards who were with them in the foyer, then looked back at Romero. Just before he was about to challenge Romero’s statement with a show of action, the window in the sitting room adjacent to where they were standing crashed inward with the momentum of a man diving through and rolling to a knee. As the intruder raised his gun toward Romero, Xander push-kicked Romero to the ground, and as the bullet from the intruder’s gun hit the banister behind where Romero had been standing, Xander pulled his Beretta and shot the gunman dead. Two more men followed through the window, and a combination of Sam’s and Xander’s bullets put them down in a flash.
Romero looked up at the two strangers who had just saved his life. Sam adjusted the shoulder strap on her dress that had fallen down her arm as she turned to make sure Romero could see her.
“You see your men standing behind me?”
Romero glanced over her shoulder at the three men dressed in all-black tactical gear. Not one of them had so much as gotten their guns off their shoulders before Xander and Sam dispatched the enemies. Romero nodded and reached his hand toward Xander. Xander took his hand and helped him to his feet.
“I apologize for questioning you, Xander.” Then he looked past him to his men. “You two, to the top of the stairs, and you, go see if they need help out back. Whatever Xander and Sam need us to do, we do.” Then he said to Xander, “I am a business man, not a soldier. But I can hold my own against these thugs.”
The men moved into their instructed positions. Gunfire erupted out front. The rest of the cartel army had made it to the mansion.
Xander said to Romero, “We survive this, you tell me where the next drop is in your son’s little trafficking ring.”
Romero hesitated.
“I haven’t spoken with my son in more than a year.”
13
Primal
“What was that back there?” Sam asked Xander as they moved over to the shattered window.
Xander peered through the broken glass from a crouched position and watched the tips of Romero’s soldiers’ guns flash as they fired defensively into the night.
“Romero says it is his son who’s in the sex slave business.”
“And you believe him?”
Xander looked over at Sam. “I know what you’re thinking. And I know the man makes his living as a criminal, but yes, I believe him.”
“Bloody hell, Xander. I’m shocked that your heart hasn’t gotten you killed before now. As many terrible things as you’ve seen, from so many horrible people, and you still want to believe in humanity.”
“Sorry we all can’t be as cynical as you, Sammy.”
As the gunfire continued just outside the window, Sam replaced her half-empty magazine with the full one in her thigh strap. She decided it best to drop the conversation for now and focus on surviving the night.
“So what do you want to do here?”
Xander’s expression softened, and his mind focused on the task at hand.
“We don’t know how many are coming. That is a problem. If they have anything more explosive than guns, we are sitting ducks in here.”
“Agreed.”
Xander pulled out his phone and typed a group text that included Zhanna and Kyle:
Z, keep Romero and men at back of mansion. Do everything you can to keep the gunmen from breaching doors. If you can’t, message K and have J move his sniper rifle to back to help cover u. K, J should have visible targets in seconds out front if not already. Make sure he knows his targets before he fires.
Zhanna messaged back first: Will do, right now not much movement back here.
Then Kyle’s message came in: Wait, why would Jack need to be sure who he is firing at? Aren’t they all bad guys? What the hell are you planning, X?
Xander messaged back: Just tell him not to shoot the sexy couple coming up from behind.
Kyle: Christ.
“Made your plan, have you?” Sam asked.
“Remember the service entrance on the aerial topography map of the compound you showed us earlier?”
“The one with the dirt road leading up to the left side of the mansion? Of course.”
“You think the cartel knows about it?”
“No way to know that.”
“You think you can navigate the rocky terrain in between the service road and the main drive in that dress?”
Sam began to slip off her high heels.
“To sneak up behind a bunch of gun-toting thugs? I can bloody manage.”
The night had cooled since Xander and Sam had arrived at the mansion an hour earlier. As Xander shut the service door behind him, a chorus of various insects called out into the night. The heat of the night combined with the feeling of going off into battle reminded him of all the nights he’d spent with the Navy SEALs, sneaking up on an otherwise unsuspecting enemy. Without fail, every time he had found himself in a situation like this, the feeling of becoming something other than himself always came over him. As silly as it sounded, it really felt as if he were something like a lion in the ju
ngle, stalking his prey.
It was an odd feeling when he first experienced it years ago. One that almost threw him off his game entirely when it crept up the back of his spine. He remembered it like it was yesterday. He and a small team were in the desert just outside of Jalalabad in Afghanistan. They had chased one of Bin Laden’s senior generals to the foot of the Hindu Kush mountain range that bordered Pakistan. As he and his team stalked across the creek, he remembered the strangest feeling coming over him. One so strong that it stopped him dead in his tracks, the water of the creek rushing around his legs. It was something primal. Something that he was sure had been buried deep in his DNA from cavemen days, a time when they hunted for survival. That was what it felt like, because Xander and his team were doing just that. Though they weren’t hunting for food, they were hunting a man, and it was kill or be killed. At the time, his commanding officer had to snap him out of it. Xander remembered the large man grabbing him by his com pack and shaking him until the feeling crawled back out from under his skin. Now, every time he was in a similar situation, Xander could feel those same primal feelings gnawing at his subconscious. The difference for him now was that he had felt it enough to know how to control it. Instead of fearing it, he welcomed it. It was his source of focus.
“Are you all right?”
Sam sensed that Xander was in another head space. As Xander walked forward on the dirt path toward the darkness, she must have been able to feel his electricity.
“I can’t believe I ever thought I could stop doing this,” Xander said to her as he tucked one of his pistols into his belt line. He replaced it with his Marfione knife, preparing for a possible silent attack. “This is what I was meant to do.”
Though Xander couldn’t see it through the darkness that enveloped them, Sam wore a wide smile. “That makes two of us.”
Xander and Sam, with the kinship only two warriors could share, walked off the dirt path, once again running alongside each other toward the danger.
14
Watch Your Back
As Xander and Sam walked off the beaten path and stalked their prey, Kyle was looking out the master bedroom window through the laser range finder that Jack had one of Romero’s men find for him.
“What’s that crazy sum bitch up to now?” Jack asked.
“He and Sam are trying to flank the gunmen. I guess he didn’t like the idea of waiting for death to come to him.”
“Probably a good strategy. How long you boys known each other? Hang on, hold your ears.”
Jack squeezed the trigger on the sniper rifle, and Kyle watched one of the approaching cartel gunmen disappear from sight.
“Been blood brothers since we were eleven. Been finding trouble ever since.”
“Awfully unusual for a civilian like yourself to follow trained soldiers into situations like this. You might be even crazier than Xander is.”
“There’s one,” Kyle said, breaking the conversation to point out another target. “A hundred and forty yards—”
“I see him.” Jack squeezed the trigger and another gunman disappeared.
“Nice. And as far as me and Xander go, after he finished with the SEALs, I was always around anyway, so when I figured out what he was doing, we just decided I might as well know how to handle myself. One thing led to everything else after that.”
“You’re brave, Kyle. But I reckon you’ve had just about as good a trainer as you could get. That sure helps.”
The gunfire was beginning to escalate below them. Spotting the men coming out of the brush wasn’t easy, and Jack knew they had to be careful.
Jack said, “I figure Xander and Sam are closing in about now. We best be real careful before we shoot again. We lose either one of them and we’re all in trouble.”
Another blast from a sniper rifle echoed across the mountain.
“Jack?” Sam whispered.
“Jack,” Xander confirmed.
Sam and Xander had made a loop around the back of the approaching army of men. They didn’t see anyone below them, and that gave them hope that they were coming up the back side of the last of the cartel. They were crouched together behind a row of shrubs. Both of them were covered in sweat as they listened for any clues. Over the calls from the insects, they heard some rustling up ahead in the direction of the mansion.
“Stay with me,” Xander told Sam. Then he made a move out from behind the bushes.
He hadn’t taken the time to notice whether the moon was out in force. But judging by the darkness, he didn’t see how it could have been. Every step was a misstep; he had no idea how Sam was managing to do it barefoot. He danced around a couple of cactuses, and with the light of the front of the mansion a couple hundred yards to the north, the clatter of automatic gunfire serenaded their steps. That was when Jack’s sniper rifle began firing at a much faster rate. Then Xander felt a vibration in his pocket.
A text from Kyle: Get back to the mansion. The first few through were just scouts, at least a dozen of them just came out of the dark and took out all the front guards. Jack is about out of ammo. We’ve gotta move!
Xander stopped and texted back: Get to a secure room upstairs and hole up. Let Z know which room. Sam and I are on our way.
A final sniper round blasted into the night.
“We gotta go, they’re taking the front of the mansion,” Xander shouted back to Sam.
He began to run up the mountain toward the mansion. As they approached, the floodlights from the roof shone down on a few men rushing toward the front door.
“There! On your right.” Sam whisper-shouted to Xander, drawing his attention to the trees.
Xander saw the three men watching each other’s back from the tree line. He tucked his pistol into the back of his belt and hit the release button on his knife, shooting the blade from its hiding place inside the handle. He could faintly see Sam behind him now. He motioned for her to stay to the left, and he showed her his knife, letting her in on how he planned to deal with the three unsuspecting men. Sam veered off to the left, heading directly for the front door. Xander narrowed his eyes and focused on the men crouched at the edge of the brush. That primal feeling needled at the back of his brain once again, and adrenaline heightened his senses as he moved in. He readied the knife in his right hand and steadied the rush that was pumping through his veins. An excited sweat threatened to impair his handle on the knife, so he wiped his palm down his pant leg to keep it dry. His heart pounded faster in his chest with each step he took toward them. The terrain around him was loud. Each move he made on one plant or another caused a noise. If he maintained this speed, they would hear him before he could strike.
Xander stopped for a moment. He was only twenty feet from the men now. One of them radioed something in Spanish to a member of his team. Xander took a deep breath and saw that Sam was now in position, ready to rush the front door when Xander was finished with his quiet kill. The man in front of him put the radio away and readied his gun. They were about to move. Xander’s hand tightened around the knife’s handle as he leapt forward toward the man in the middle. A second later, his knife sank into the back of the man’s neck. Before the other two men had time to react, Xander had retracted his knife from their comrade’s neck, stabbed right hitting the next man in the left side of his neck, and immediately spun 180 degrees in the opposite direction and plunged the blade into the right eye of the third man.
When Xander looked up, the last few of the dozen or so men Kyle had mentioned were running into the front door. He took back his knife from inside the man’s face and sprinted toward them. Sam darted out of the tree line to meet up with him on his way there. Even though they had gone undetected, and taken out three men, Xander wasn’t satisfied with what had happened. He had hoped to get there sooner and take more of them out before they entered the mansion. However, at least the men who were now inside weren’t expecting anyone but their allies to be coming in behind them.
15
Dance with the Dead
; Xander and Sam both stopped just outside the mansion’s front door. Xander pocketed his knife and pulled both of his pistols. As they caught their breath, gunfire erupted inside the mansion. These strangers were firing on his friends.
And they were going to pay for it.
Just before they went to move, Sam reached up and wiped a smattering of blood from the side of Xander’s face.
“Red might just be your color,” she told him.
“I’m telling Kyle you were hitting on me.”
Sam just smiled.
“All right then, up or down?”
“You go up and check on your boyfriend, I’ll go see how Zhanna and Romero are doing.”
Sam nodded.
“Don’t risk your life for this Romero bloke. I assure you he isn’t worth it.”
“Maybe not, but Zhanna is.”
The two of them readied their pistols, and Sam whirled around and kicked in the door. The next fifteen seconds was like a choreographed dance. A violent yet methodical groove that only Xander and Sam could perform. A high-speed death tango that felt, in the moment, more like a slow and smooth waltz. Although they hadn’t practiced this synchronized cadence specifically, it was an art they had mastered together through years of battle. As they breached the door, Sam did a front roll and shot the first two men she saw on her left. Xander shot four times up the stairway with his left pistol as he simultaneously took out two men on his right who turned to see who had kicked in the door. As the men dropped dead to the ground, Xander turned and shot the gunman on the left side of the room who had raised his gun to shoot Sam, who had just elbowed an attacker who grabbed her from behind, spun into him landing a knee to his stomach, and put a bullet at close range through his forehead.
With soft yellow lights glowing overhead, Sam watched the man whom Xander had shot drop dead, and as her victim also fell, she gave Xander a nod of appreciation for the assist. That was when the two of them heard men yelling at the back of the mansion in the direction Zhanna and Romero had gone earlier. Xander, knowing Sam was low on ammo, tossed her one of his pistols, and the two of them split up, Sam going upstairs, Xander to investigate the shouting.
King's Reign (The Xander King Series Book 4) Page 7