Scorpion Strike

by John Gilstrap

  That answered the question whether the feedback was done on purpose.

  “I want you all to listen carefully,” Alpha said. “As I call your name, I want you to move into the restaurant area to my left.” It was the least formal of the seven restaurants on the property—more about burgers and fish sandwiches than haute cuisine. It was currently occupied by three soldiers, who projected pure menace.

  In the far reaches of the assembled crowd, a profoundly pregnant young woman stood and aggressively waved her hand for attention.

  The nearest handlers swarmed toward her, but Alpha intervened. “Stop!” he commanded. “What do you want?”

  “I’m Barbie Burris,” the lady said. “I really, really need to use the bathroom.”

  The resulting chuckle from the crowd—including Annie—surprised Tyler.

  Alpha, likewise, seemed amused. He looked to Delta, who referred to the printout.

  “Is your husband, Michael, there with you?” Alpha asked.

  A man who was perhaps the skinniest adult Tyler had ever seen stood and raised his hand. Perhaps he was sick, but the guy was shirtless, and in this light, every rib cast its own shadow.

  “Very well,” Alpha said. He gestured to the area in shadow behind where Tyler and Annie were seated. “The bathrooms are right there. Michael, you go to the restaurant.” Alpha cocked the bell of the megaphone up, indicating that he was now speaking to the entire crowd. “As I call your names, if you need to use the facilities, you are free to do so, but only one half of a couple at a time. You will have five minutes. Do not make us come looking for you. That will not be good for the partner left behind.”

  This is how Stockholm syndrome works, Tyler thought. Some asshole gives you permission to do something that you have no choice but to do, and you end up feeling gratitude. They didn’t threaten the individual, but rather they leveraged the concern over loved ones. Compliance driven by guilt. He was going to have to run that by his psychology professor when he got back to school. If.

  Alpha began with the A’s—Rob and Sarah Anderson—and proceeded to carve his way through the alphabet. It took a few iterations for the crowd to learn the choreography, but soon the pattern became clear. When a name was called, the couple would stand, and Delta would check what he saw against the photo IDs that they’d collected. It was not a fast process, and emotions were raw. Many moved as though they were walking to their execution. For all Tyler knew, that was exactly what they were doing.

  “They skipped me,” Annie whispered. “I’m Banks, and they just called Dufresne.”

  Tyler beckoned for Annie to join him on his chair.

  Annie shook her head. “Somebody will take this one.”

  Tyler set his jaw and tried to flash anger with his eyes. “Please,” he said.

  She clearly didn’t like it, but she complied with his request. “I guess we’re going to have to move soon, anyway,” she said.

  “No, we won’t,” Tyler whispered. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Annie’s jaw dropped and her eyes grew wide. “But you heard what they said.”

  “I did, but—”

  “They’ll shoot us.”

  Tyler squeezed her thigh, perhaps a little too hard. She slapped his hand away.

  “Please keep your voice down,” he whispered. For his plan to work—hell for any plan to work—he needed not to draw attention to himself or to Annie. You can’t be invisible when you’re making a lot of noise. “They don’t have our names,” he said. “Don’t you see? I’m never on the guest list, and you’re not even here. They can take roll all night and our names will never come up. They’ll get to the end, and we’re the only ones who will be sitting out here.”

  “That doesn’t mean they’ll shoot us, like they would if we ran.”

  “If they caught us running,” Tyler corrected. “Remember, I’m the owner’s stepson. These guys are here for a reason, and if they—” He gasped as the truth dawned on him. “Baker’s not even here this weekend.” He didn’t have a clue what these guys wanted, or why they invaded the Crystal Sands, but it had to be something bigger than mere robbery. “Annie, I need to get out of here.”

  Annie did not seem pleased. “How?”

  “I think I know a way. I know some places that these guys probably don’t know about. At least not yet. You need to trust me and follow me.”

  “Tyler, I like you and everything, but I’m not going to get shot for you.”

  “You’d rather get shot for them?” That came out wrong, but he couldn’t understand why she would resist a chance to get away. Would she rather be a victim?

  “If you do what they say, they won’t hurt you.”

  “I can’t,” he said. “I’ve got to get out of here before they find out who I am. You can come or you can stay, but I have to go.”

  Annie looked hurt. “You’d leave me?”

  Tyler cast a glance at Alpha and Delta, the two soldiers closest to him. They seemed thoroughly absorbed in their paperwork and in watching the couples wander from poolside to the restaurant. His window of opportunity was closing.

  Annie pulled on his sleeve. “You can’t leave me here alone.” Her comment drew a concerned look from a heavyset older woman, who was sitting on the deck near them.

  Tyler fired a glare at Annie, then backed it down. It made zero sense to turn this into an argument. “Please keep your voice down,” he whispered so softly that it was barely audible. “I know a way. Please come with me.”

  When Alpha called Hartwig—or something like that—the offended older woman raised her hand, and then struggled to rise to her bare feet and swollen ankles. Tyler got up from his seat to assist. “Here, ma’am, let me help.”

  He grasped her hand in a powerful thumb grip, and cupping her dimpled elbow with his other hand, he leveraged her to her feet. Ms. Hartwig leaned in as if to kiss Tyler’s cheek and whispered, “Don’t let a whiny girl get you killed. If you go, run for all of us. I’ll give you the distraction you need.” She ended it with a real kiss and turned to her captors. “I’m coming,” she said. “Just takes me a little longer. . . .”

  Did she say “distraction”? Tyler thought. What did that mean? And how did she know that—

  Ms. Hartwig was winding her way through the others in her way when her knees wobbled and she toppled sideways into a crowd of others. They tried to catch her, but there was a lot to catch. As she fell, several of the other guests lost their balance. Two of them splashed into the pool.

  In that instant, Tyler saw that every eye in the complex was staring at the older woman. This was his chance. This was her favor to him. He turned to Annie, who was also staring at the spectacle at the water’s edge. “Annie!” he whisper-shouted.

  She either didn’t hear him or she chose to ignore him.

  Either way, this was it. This was the unique moment when this would happen or it wouldn’t. “Bye, Annie,” he said.

  Bending low at the waist, he scurried behind the backs of two of the guests and made his way to the waist-high locked gate that closed the pool’s utility area off from the places where guests were allowed to go. He fought the urge to look behind him as he rolled his body across the top of the squatty fence and into the near-absolute darkness of the other side. A flight of six concrete steps was there, leading to a short subterranean sidewalk, which, in turn, led to a heavy steel door that was always locked.

  Unless you knew where the key was hidden.

  Tyler came down here frequently to smoke weed and hang with his buddy Jaime Bonilla. In fact, it was hard to think of a patch of real estate at the Crystal Sands where he hadn’t smoked weed with somebody. Jaime was a leadman for the maintenance crew, and consequently was a keeper of all the keys. To facilitate those times when Tyler wanted to toke alone, Jaime’d had an extra key made, which he stored under a loose bit of concrete that rested under a triangular box of rat poison. Call it a poor man’s security system.

  Tyler had never done this by feel before, b
ut he was counting on muscle memory to pull him through. Facing the door, he used the flat of his left hand to follow the contour of the steel door from left to right until his fingertips found the vertical seam where it met the hinge side of the jamb. That put him close to the inside corner where the walls met.

  To his left and eight feet above his head, the decorative hedges and planters did nothing to mask the sounds of the continuing roll call. The commotion of Ms. Hartwig’s fall had died down, but the fact that another one had not blossomed in its place told him that no one had noticed that he was missing.

  Yet.

  After he’d acquired both walls, he converged his hands into the corner and traced the seam straight down to the ground, where he found the container of rat poison, right where it was supposed to be.

  He cringed as his fingers sifted through what could only be rat shit. He hated rats. And mice. And pretty much every other critter that didn’t bark and wag its tail. As he lifted the box to get the key, his mind conjured images of rat turds being driven under his fingernails. He didn’t realize that his hands were shaking until he heard them rattle against the hard plastic of the trap.

  Keep it together, he told himself. If he could get through this door, he’d have a chance at getting away. If he couldn’t get through . . . He had to get through.

  He used both hands to lift the box and move it off to the side. As he did, something poured out of the holes in its side, launching a stench that made him gag, a combination of stale shit and dead things.

  Jesus, when this was over, he was going to scrub his skin till he saw blood.

  He pried up the chip of concrete and found the key just where it was supposed to be. His fingers fumbled it and it dropped with a tink, which sounded like a striking bell.

  “Shit!” The word was out before he could stop it. For the first time, he dared a look back toward the top of the stairs. A guy in his thirties stood there, just on the other side of the gate, his face folded into a scowl. Tyler couldn’t tell if the guy had seen him, or if he was just staring out into space.

  Please don’t say anything, he prayed. And if you haven’t seen me yet, move the hell out of the way.

  That thought did it. The man at the top of the stairs heard his name and he raised his hand. “Here,” he said, and he pointed toward the restrooms. “I need to go,” he said. Apparently, he got approval because he thanked somebody and turned his back on Tyler to head off to pee.

  This time when Tyler got his fingers on the key, he held on tight. Using his left thumb to index the slot, he used his right hand to slide the key into place. It was always tricky to get this lock to turn. You had to jiggle things, but less tonight than on other nights, thank God. The knob turned and he pulled. He winced as he anticipated the metal-on-metal scraping sound that always accompanied this part.

  It couldn’t have been as loud as it sounded to him—otherwise, people would be shooting by now. He opened the door only exactly as much as he needed to slip through, and then pulled it closed behind him. Somehow, the scraping sound was less terrifying when he had a steel panel between him and the people with the guns.

  With the door closed, he spun the button on the lock. And he found himself in total darkness.

  CHAPTER 5

  “SO, WHAT DO WE THINK THE ‘PRIME PACKAGE’ IS?” HUNTER EDWARDS asked as they navigated their way through the undergrowth in the dark. Jonathan and Gail had both kept their radios on, and that was the first bit of chatter that had come through.

  Gail shifted her shoulder so that Jonathan could reach the radio, which was strapped to her vest behind her left shoulder. “Turn mine off,” she said. “We might want these later, and it doesn’t make sense to drain both batteries.”

  Jonathan’s fingers found the correct button in the dark and twisted it to the OFF position. “Good idea,” he said.

  Lori said, “What does ‘prime package’ even mean?”

  “Whatever they determine it to mean,” Hunter said. He walked behind Jonathan, and Lori behind Gail. “Say, Digger, you never did elaborate on where you got those knife skills.”

  Jonathan ignored him. The use of real names was a big problem, and a rookie error on his part. His head had been in survival mode, he figured, not tactical mode. Having spent decades of his life training and living the role of the wolf, he’d let his guard down and transformed himself into a sheep. That moment was past, but the damage was done. And dickless back there kept using the slipup as a prod. How could Hunter think that was a good idea?

  “What do you two do for a living?” Gail asked. Jonathan took it as her effort to change the subject and take him out of a homicidal frame of mind.

  “I’m an investment banker,” Hunter said. “We specialize in tech companies. The last deal we did was for seven hundred million dollars.”

  Such words did little to make Jonathan feel closer to the man. Bankers in general—and investment bankers in particular—ranked right up there with politicians and lawyers on his list of oxygen-wasters.

  “Are you a banker, too?” Gail asked.

  “Oh, no,” Lori said. “I’m not that smart. I just run an art gallery in Phoenix.”

  “But she represents some really good up-and-coming artists,” Hunter said. “Putting that community college associate’s in art to good work.”

  “Tell me the truth, Hunter,” Jonathan said without turning to make eye contact. “Do people often accuse you of being a dickhead?”

  He stopped and turned.

  “Because I’ve got to tell you, you have climbed up on my wrong side and taken residence there. I have no idea what lies ahead for us in the next hours or days, but we’ve got to find a way to make peace or go our separate ways.”

  Hunter’s silhouette puffed up in the darkness. “You want to tell me what I’ve done to turn you into such an asshole?”

  “Try showing a little respect,” Jonathan replied. “We are, after all, saving your lives.”

  “Oh, is that what you’re doing?” Hunter puffed up even bigger and took a half step closer. “So far, all I’ve seen you do is take lives.” He looked like he might throw a punch. How entertaining would that be?

  “Not here,” Gail said. “And certainly not now. There’s too much to do.”

  “Like what?” Hunter pressed. “We’re walking through the dark after killing people whose friends are going to be very pissed off when they find out. What are we going to do? Hide?”

  “Not a bad start,” Jonathan said.

  “Pretty goddamn cowardly for a guy with two guns,” Hunter said.

  Jonathan felt his control slipping. The C-word wasn’t often slung at him, and it pulled the pin on his rage grenade.

  “Definitely not the time or place,” Gail repeated. To Hunter, she said, “Believe me when I say that. If you and Lori want to head off on your own, you’re welcome to do that. But this bullshit dick-knocking has to stop. Now.”

  Jonathan’s head whipped around to Gail. Did you just include me in that dick-knocking comment?

  Yes.

  They’d known each other long enough that they really could communicate without words. Even in the dark.

  The radio broke squelch on Jonathan’s shoulder, and a panicked voice said, “Break, break, break, we have an emergency.”

  With a singsong tone, Jonathan said, “I bet I know what this is. . . .”

  “Who is this?” a voice said. “And remember radio protocol.”

  “This is India, in Sector Eight. Hotel and Foxtrot are both dead. Their killers are missing. Bungalows Nine and Ten.”

  “That’s us,” Hunter said.

  He’s fast on his feet, that one, Jonathan didn’t say.

  “Are you sure they are missing?” the other voice asked. “Have you checked for bodies?”

  “Alpha, you don’t understand,” Delta said. “Hotel and Foxtrot were killed by an expert. With a knife.”

  After a long pause, Alpha said, “Return to the Plantation House. Bring our men’s equipment
and weapons with you.”

  “That’s a problem,” Delta said. “Their equipment and weapons are all missing.”

  * * *

  Tyler’s friend Jaime Bonilla was nothing if not organized. Sometimes annoyingly so. But now, as Tyler fumbled through the darkness, he sent up a prayer of thanks to Jaime for being such an OCD pain in the ass. He moved in the dark with confidence that the center aisle would be clear. He knew without a doubt that the heavy black flashlight that Jaime used to illuminate his work would be right where it belonged, in its charger, mounted to the first rank of metal shelves on the right. And it was.

  Tyler lifted the light out of its keeper, placed his palm over the lens, and pressed the switch. He didn’t want a lot of light, but he wanted enough to be able to see what he was doing. At this point, he’d reached the end of his initial plan, which was simply to get out of the terrorists’ view. He wanted to buy some time and some anonymity, but both of those would run out soon. How long could it possibly take before they realized that they had two more sets of identification than they had people signed into the hotel?

  And how much hope should he hold out that Annie would keep his secrets? Especially after he’d dumped her. But hey, it’s not like he didn’t offer to bring her along. Still, he felt like a shit for leaving her.

  Past was past. Now that he’d given the crazy guys with guns a reason to execute him on sight, he needed to focus on the business of staying out of sight.

  He needed to put distance between himself and the attackers—and the sooner, the better. There was a section of old houses—shacks, really—on the back side of the island that the construction workers used while they were building the resort. He doubted that tonight’s assholes would know anything about them. It wasn’t like Baker Sinise put the shantytown in the brochures that sold accommodations for a gajillion bucks a night.

  The original roads from the shantytown to the resort had mostly been converted to hiking trails. These now veered away from the old housing to take exploration-minded visitors through the rain forest to the bamboo forest, and finally to the gem in the Crystal Sands’ crown: the ninety-foot waterfall. This was reached through a backdrop of spectacular flowers whose names Tyler could not have guessed on a multiple-choice quiz.