Scorpion Strike

by John Gilstrap

  Jonathan’s inner warning bell dinged. “What kind of business, and how suddenly?” As a rule, Jonathan didn’t believe in coincidences. When said coincidences happened in concert with bad events, he presumed them to be intentional acts.

  “I have no idea,” Tyler said. “We don’t talk about business very much. Actually, we don’t talk about anything very much. We don’t talk about business at all.”

  “You’re the owner’s kid!” Hunter exclaimed.

  Welcome to the show, Jonathan didn’t say.

  “How did you get away?” Gail asked.

  “I slipped out when they weren’t looking,” Tyler said. “I know stuff that regular guests don’t know.”

  “Like how to slip out when people aren’t looking,” Jonathan said, drawing a smile.

  “I figured that once they figured out who I was, and where my stepfather isn’t, I’d wish I was somewhere else.”

  “Weren’t you with a young lady?” Lori asked. Her voice was heavy with disdain.

  “Annie,” he said.

  “But didn’t I hear you say that if one part of a couple ran away—”

  “The others would be killed, yeah.”

  Tyler’s words sort of sucked the air out of the jungle for a second or two.

  “Look,” he said, “I’m not proud that I left, okay? I asked her to come with me. Begged her, but she wanted to stay.”

  Jonathan cleared his throat. He got where the kid was coming from, but he wondered how he was going to feel about the decision later if something bad happened to his girlfriend.

  “And besides, it’s not like we’re an actual couple,” Tyler pressed. “There’s no record of her being here, either. And even if they connect us, my last name is different than my stepfather’s. So, even if they puzzle out who I am, what are the chances they’ll figure out my relationship with her?”

  “All it would take is for one of the other hostages to want a favor at her expense,” Hunter said.

  “Moving along,” Jonathan said. “What’s done is done, and it’s not our job to judge you or anyone else. Chances are, this whole thing will take care of itself quickly, and there’ll be no more loss of life.” That last part was total bullshit. In fact, Jonathan fully expected this to get much, much worse before it even began to turn the corner.

  He changed the subject. “You were going to tell us where you were going.”

  * * *

  When the kid talked about a shantytown, Jonathan had wondered if he knew what that meant. It was clear that he did. There were ten of them in all, constructed of tar paper and two-by-fours and arranged in parallel rows straddling the overgrown remains of what had once been a road. The structures had not aged well. Windows were mostly broken, and relentless water and humidity had inflicted brutal damage to the roofs and floors in particular.

  “Are you sure it’s safe to use a flashlight here?” Hunter asked. “Aren’t we going to attract attention?”

  “It’s a big jungle,” Jonathan said, “and we’re on the other side of the mountain. There are no guarantees, but rest assured that if I thought it was a bad idea, I wouldn’t do it.”

  “How long ago were these abandoned?” Gail asked.

  “At least twelve, maybe fifteen years,” Tyler said. He pointed to the shack that was farthest down on the right. “That last one down there isn’t in too bad shape. Me and a buddy sort of keep it up. We don’t have glass for the windows, but there’s that roll-up plastic stuff for the bad storms. We cover the windows when we’re not here, and the roof is in pretty good shape.”

  Lori cleared her throat. “Are the outhouses . . .”

  “They work, and we even have toilet paper,” Tyler said, earning a smile from Lori. “But this is still the jungle. I wouldn’t sit without checking first.”

  “Thanks for the safety tip,” Gail said.

  Jonathan held up his hand, a signal for all of them to stop. “Do you smell anything?” he asked Gail.

  She sniffed the air. “Weed?”

  “That’s what I got.” Jonathan thumbed the safety switch to FIRE and brought the M4 to his shoulder. “Y’all stay here,” he said. Maybe the bright white light hadn’t been a good idea, after all.

  “Wait!” Tyler said, racing ahead. “Jaime, is that you?” he whisper-shouted.

  “Who the hell is Jaime?” Hunter asked.

  “Dude, if you’re there hiding, step out. It’s me. It’s Ty.”

  “Hold where you are,” Jonathan said. “I don’t know who Jaime is, but if that’s not—”

  “It’s him,” Tyler insisted. “I know it is.”

  “Stop, goddammit!” Jonathan shouted. No whisper to it. “Jaime, if that’s you and you’re hiding, this is the only chance you will have to present yourself.” He opened his muzzle light to its widest aperture and lit up nearly the whole structure.

  From somewhere up ahead, a shaky voice said, “Don’t shoot. Please don’t shoot.”

  “We’re getting that request a lot tonight,” Jonathan said just loudly enough for Gail to hear.

  Tyler turned to face Jonathan and waved both his hands. “That’s his voice,” he said. “That’s Jaime Bonilla. He’s the maintenance guy here.” Then he turned and hurried to the door of the tar paper shanty and pulled it open.

  A dark-skinned man dressed in flowered shorts and a wifebeater lunged from the opening and tackled Tyler to the ground.

  Jonathan tracked them with his muzzle, but couldn’t get a clear target through the tangle of flailing limbs.

  “Jaime! Jaime!” Tyler yelled. “It’s me. What are you doing?”

  Jonathan let his rifle fall against its sling and he waded into the fight. It was really more of a schoolyard flail fest, the kind of struggle where both players were guaranteed to escape with only a few bruises. The kind of fight you saw among people who didn’t know how to fight.

  Jonathan found a shirt collar, closed his fist around it, and pulled. The fabric pulled then tore, but it held enough to peel Jaime out of the scrum and onto his feet. Barely older than Tyler, he weighed maybe 125 pounds, and he was still flailing. He spun to flail on Jonathan, but whatever he saw convinced him in an instant that throwing that punch would be a bad idea.

  Jaime pulled away. “Who are you? What the hell is going on?”

  “Settle down, son,” Jonathan said. “We’re in the same boat as you. No clue what’s happening, and just trying to stay alive. Now, are you going to settle down, or are we going to have an issue?”

  Jaime looked to Tyler. “Sorry, bro. I thought . . . oh, hell, I don’t know what I thought. Did I hurt you?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “What’s going on down there?” Jaime asked. “I heard all this shooting, and then there was screaming. I mean, what the hell?”

  “Terrorists.” Tyler took the better part of a minute to catch his friend up.

  As they chatted, Jonathan poked Gail’s arm, and motioned for her to join him, away from the others. Together, they swept the structures in a search for bad guys, but neither was surprised that the shacks were empty.

  “We can’t win this fight,” Gail said. “Not if it comes to shooting. Even if we got rifles for every one of them—”

  “Yeah, I know,” Jonathan agreed. “Whoever these terrorists are, they seem to have skills. That’s concerning.”

  “Right,” Gail said with a chuckle. “That’s exactly the word I was going to use.”

  “You were able to snag our cell phones on the way out of the room, right?”

  “They’re in my backpack.”

  “Okay, it’s time to wake some people up.”

  Gail unslung the backpack and was able to reach directly to the phones. “You calling Mother Hen?”

  Jonathan took his phone and pushed the button to bring it to life. “Yup. We need reinforcements.”

  CHAPTER 7

  BACK WHEN SHE WAS A TEENAGER, VENICE ALEXANDER HAD DECIDED in a pique of adolescent self-importance that her name was too boring. Her
mother, now known to everyone in Fisherman’s Cove simply as Mama, had been named Florence by her mother, Roma. When she had a daughter of her own, she insisted on perpetuating the generations-old tradition of humiliating children with names drawn from Italian tourist destinations. So, Venice decided to elevate her name with a more exotic pronunciation. From then on, her name was pronounced Ven-EE-chay. Everybody got it wrong on the first try, but that fact made for a great trap to filter out telemarketers.

  The single mom of a thirteen-year-old boy—Roman, and yes, he hated his name, too—she’d been a part of Jonathan’s life for as long as she could remember, back to the days when she was a little girl with a crush. She’d grown up in the mansion she now called home, on the grounds of what was now Resurrection House, a charitable home for the children of incarcerated parents. Back then, though, she lived in the basement with Mama, who was the full-time housekeeper for the Gravenow family, whose only child was the boy named Jonathan. Venice was never sure why Jonathan changed his name, but she suspected that it had much to do with the fact that his father was a notorious criminal.

  Venice was thrilled that Jonathan and Gail had finally carved out time to be together. Their absence tripled the amount of work she had to balance at Security Solutions, but if it could bring happiness to Jonathan, and restore some of the confidence that had been beaten out of Gail in that terrible attack a while back, then the extra effort would be worth it.

  Besides, it never hurt for the boss to feel as if he owed you a favor.

  She’d had trouble sleeping tonight, and she couldn’t determine why. The day hadn’t been especially stressful, she’d had ample time to spend with Roman, and even the boy’s adolescent angst seemed to be tamed for the moment.

  It didn’t help that JoeDog had chosen Venice’s bed as her own this evening. The black Lab lay sprawled sideways, as she was wont to do, but Venice was something of a coffin sleeper and still had adequate room. She didn’t even mind the dog’s snoring, though the flatulence could be eye watering.

  Because she’d been thinking so intently about Jonathan, it did not surprise her when her phone rang and it was him.

  “It’s awfully late there, isn’t it?” she asked as she connected the call.

  “The island has been invaded,” Jonathan said.

  Venice had been expecting a sharp retort, but she didn’t understand the humor in this one. “Which island is being invaded?”

  “Ours. The Crystal Sands Resort.”

  “‘Is being invaded.’ ” Saying it again did not make it more sensible. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that a whole bunch of bad guys have invaded the resort and taken hostages.”

  Venice sat up in bed, causing JoeDog to open an eye and then close it again. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “As a heart attack.”

  Her head raced nearly as fast as her heart as she tried to make pieces fit. While she hadn’t slept, she realized that she wasn’t fully awake, either. “So, you and Gail are hostages?”

  “Not in the active sense,” Jonathan said. She could hear the irritation growing in his tone. He was tired of the warm-up conversation, and wanted to get to something meatier. “Some guys with guns came to our bungalow and tried to take us, but it didn’t go well for them. We got away, but there’s only so far to go when you’re on a friggin’ island.”

  “Well . . .” She had nothing. “Did you call the police?”

  “It’s an island, Mother Hen. And it’s private. Shit, I don’t even know what its nationality is. That’s why I’m calling you.”

  His use of her code name told her that he was in the presence of others. “It’s not just you and Gunslinger, is it?” Code name for code name.

  “No, it’s not. We picked up a few strays. Gunslinger and I have guns and we have access to the bad guys’ coms, but these aren’t your average terrorists. They appear to have training. And heart.”

  “Islamic?”

  “Blond hair,” Jonathan said. “Take from that what you wish. We got everything from the dead guys’ pockets, but we haven’t had a chance to go through it all yet. This whole incident isn’t yet two hours old.”

  Venice felt the friction in her brain gears reduce. She was waking up, and a task list was beginning to take shape.

  “Are you in a safe place?”

  “For now, I think so, but they’re gonna come searching for us. Certainly by daybreak, and it would be nice to have some kind of a plan by then. A shadow of a plan will do.”

  “I’ll go to work on it,” Venice said. As she rolled fully out of bed, JoeDog was wide-awake and looked uneasy. She seemed to know that her best friend was in trouble. “How do you want to stay in contact?”

  “For now,” Jonathan said, “wait for my calls. I don’t know how long this will go on, and I don’t know how much access we’ll have to power. I’m going to keep the phones off when we’re not talking.”

  Venice felt like she needed to say something encouraging, but she didn’t know what that might be.

  “I’m hanging up now,” Jonathan said. “I know you won’t let us down. You never do.”

  After the click, Venice stared at the phone until the dial tone returned, and for a while longer after she’d disconnected. Jonathan’s voice carried a tone that she’d rarely heard in the past. He didn’t sound scared, exactly, but something close to it. Rattled, maybe. He needed a plan. He needed resources.

  He needed help. Quickly. At four in the morning.

  She dressed quickly. No shower, no makeup. That could all come later. She had to get to work. JoeDog, for her part, seemed delighted to have something to do, and walked circles around Venice’s legs, threatening to trip her.

  “Do you know this is about your friend Jonathan?” she asked. She’d heard that dogs had sixth senses about their masters, and it was rare to see this much agitation out of JoeDog.

  Venice pulled on a sweater over her jeans and slipped her bare feet into a pair of black flats. It was an outfit that she’d never wear to the office, but that was exactly where she was going, and this was an emergency.

  She opened her bedroom door onto the sitting area of the master suite, padded across the inlaid hardwoods and Persian rug, and opened the massive double doors into the expansive second-floor hallway. Every time she walked these halls, she couldn’t shake a sense of guilt that this was where she and Mama had ended up, given where they’d started. But Jonathan wouldn’t have it any other way. When he’d deeded the family manse to Saint Katherine’s Catholic Church for a dollar, his one condition was that Mama and Venice would always have a home there, and that the structure would be used as the headquarters for Rez House.

  Early on, the mansion was the entire school, from classrooms to dormitories. Over the years, it had expanded to separate classroom and dorm buildings, leaving the mansion primarily as an administrative building.

  JoeDog led the way down the stairs and across the foyer, drawing the attention of Oscar Thompkins, the head of the nighttime security team. After some violence a while back, a permanent security presence had become a necessity. He had one counterpart patrolling the dormitory building and another patrolling the grounds.

  “Evening, Ms. Alexander,” Oscar said. “A little late for a stroll, ain’t it?”

  “Something came up,” Venice replied, forcing a smile. “Gotta go into the office.”

  “Ain’t you gonna take a jacket or nothin’? It’s cold out there.” A native of the Tennessee mountains, Oscar had a good heart and a drawl so thick it sounded fake.

  “It’s only a short walk,” Venice said. She never broke stride as she beelined to the massive panels of the double doors. She was still crossing the porch when she made her first phone call.

  A familiar but gravelly voice answered after four rings. “Um . . .” He cleared his throat. “Hello?”

  “Good Morning, Father,” Venice said. “Sorry to wake you, but this is important.”

  “Venice? What time is it?�
� Father Dom D’Angelo was one of Jonathan’s closest friends, and had been since they’d been roommates all through college at William & Mary.

  “A little after four, but this is an emergency. Digger is in trouble.”

  “I thought he’s on vacation.”

  “Can you think of anyone more apt to find violence in paradise?” She cringed at the callous sound of her words. “I don’t have time to explain now, but can you please place a call to Wolverine and arrange a meeting between her and me ASAP? Then, come to the office?” Wolverine was the moniker for Irene Rivers, director of the FBI, a longtime friend of the Security Solutions team.

  “Of course. Does Boxers know?”

  “He’s my next call.”

  Dom gave a wry chuckle. “Better you than me,” he said. “I’ll be over as soon as I can.” They hung up.

  As Venice let JoeDog lead the way down the stairs from the lawn to the sidewalk, she realized that maybe she could have listened to Oscar. There was a definite bite in the air. She moved a little faster to keep warm during the three-block walk to the end of the street to the converted firehouse that doubled as Jonathan Grave’s home and tripled as the headquarters for Security Solutions, the high-end private investigation firm he ran largely as a means to provide cover to the covert side of the company. It was that very covert side that commanded the bulk of Jonathan’s time and attention.

  Her ID card and six-digit PIN gained her access to the outside door to the office—a separate entrance from that which led to Jonathan’s home. As she stepped inside and climbed the stairs to the third floor, she waved at the security cameras. When she came to the interior door to the bull pen—the overt office space where nearly a dozen investigators and support people worked every day—it buzzed and she pulled it open.

  She turned left, and approached the interior door that led to the Cave.

  “Good evening, Ms. Alexander,” said the guard at this interior security point. “Or, good morning, I guess.”

  “Good morning,” she replied. In no mood for small talk, she nonetheless could not bring herself to be rude. She felt bad enough that she couldn’t remember the man’s name. Typically, if she was working at this hour, it would be from the other side of the security door. “Father D’Angelo and Mr. Van de Muelebroecke will be joining me soon.”