Scorpion Strike

by John Gilstrap

  “Who is this?” a second voice asked on the radio.

  “This is X-ray. We have found the killers from Bungalow Nine. They are on their way to Home Base.”

  Jonathan relayed what he’d just heard. This wasn’t good.

  “Verify their names,” said Alpha.

  “Stand by.”

  During the short break, Jonathan said, “We might have hung around too long already.”

  “Then let’s get going,” Gail said from very close by.

  He whirled to see her crouched maybe four feet away, her posture matching his. Papers were erupting out of the pockets of her vest.

  “Got room for a couple of hand grenades?” Jonathan asked, handing her three of them.

  “You do know how to sweet-talk a girl, don’t you?” She hung them by their safety spoons from the PALS loops in her vest—Pouch Attachment Ladder System. Gotta love Uncle and his acronyms. “Time to move?”

  Jonathan stuffed five grenades in the loops of his own vest. “One more minute. I want to grab some more ammo.”

  “Suppose we don’t have another minute?”

  “All the more reason to grab more ammo.” Jonathan slammed the axe blade down onto the crate marked with the Class 1.4 label. The wood crunched, and with two more whacks, the contents lay exposed. “Bingo,” Jonathan said. It took some pulling and maneuvering, but he was able to lift a green ammo can free of the container. A painted stencil on the side read: Ball Ammo 5.56 mm NATO. From the weight, there had to be four or five hundred rounds inside.

  “Alpha, this is X-ray,” the voice said in Jonathan’s ear.

  He held up a finger. “They’re talking again.” But this time, he walked as he talked.

  X-ray continued, “Their names are Hunter and Lorelai Edwards.”

  “Oh, shit,” Jonathan said. “Mr. and Mrs. Asshole just got themselves snatched.” He led the way back toward the gangplank.

  “Are you sure they are the ones who killed our men?” Alpha asked.

  “They say no, but who else can they be? They were in Sector Eight, and Hotel and Foxtrot are dead. If they are not the killers, then they must be . . . assotsiirovannykh.”

  “English,” Alpha instructed. “The word is associates. Do nothing with them where you are. Bring them back to the Plantation House for questioning.”

  “What about the call for help from Home Base?”

  “You are in two vehicles, are you not? Put your prisoners in one and send them back here. Send the other truck to investigate the ship.”

  Jonathan stopped at the top of the gangplank and turned to let Gail go ahead of him. “They’re on the way right now,” he said. “We need to pick up the pace and get under cover.”

  “We’re not going to engage.” She said it as a declaration.

  “Not unless we have to,” Jonathan said. “God grant me the serenity to walk away from the fights I cannot win, win the fights I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

  Once on the pier, they had no option but to sprint back the way they’d come—back toward the road. If they got caught out here, they’d be without cover, totally exposed.

  “You go first,” Jonathan said. “I’ll cover you from here. Duck into the darkest shadow you can find on the far side. When you’re in place, cover me.”

  “We should go together.”

  “Gail, if I see a vehicle, they’ll all be dead before they know they’ve been shot. Can’t do that and run at the same time. Go.”

  He dropped to a knee. He brought his M4 to his shoulder and leveled the muzzle at the mouth of the road, where it met the ramp of the pier. With both eyes open, he could simultaneously aim and watch Gail dash down the length of the wooden structure. He was genuinely impressed with her recovery, though he noticed the beginnings of a limp that he had not seen earlier. They needed to rest.

  As soon as Gail was within a couple of strides of shadow, Jonathan took off. There was nothing tactical about this sprint. He just wanted to get the hell off the X and get under cover. All this bright light and high exposure left him feeling jumpy. His feet pounded on the wooden decking and his gear bounced awkwardly against his body as he closed the distance and slid to a stop in the leading edge of the shadow. From here, he worried about colliding with Gail.

  “Are you there?” he whispered.

  “Twenty feet ahead and a little to your right.”

  He followed the sound and took a knee beside her. “Holding up okay?” he asked.

  “I’d consider it a personal favor if you stopped asking me that question.”

  “Y’all know I’m still here, right?” Venice asked.

  Jonathan smiled. “Thanks for the help and the attention, Mother Hen,” he said. “We’re going to turn you off and preserve battery power.”

  “Not yet,” Venice said. “We need to set a time for you to call back.”

  Jonathan looked at his watch. “It’s zero two forty-seven local time. We’re going to need to get some rest. How about I call you at zero six hundred my time?”

  “That works for me,” Venice said. “Talk to you in a little over three hours.”

  They clicked off. Jonathan kept his phone in his pocket as he pressed the button to power it down. He didn’t want to risk an inadvertent flash of light.

  “What now?” Gail asked.

  Two seconds later, the glow of headlights painted the jungle around them. Jonathan put his hand on Gail’s shoulder and pressed her closer to the mulchy ground. He lay on his belly next to her. “From here, I think we just wait to see what happens,” he said.

  * * *

  There’s something terrifying about a telephone call at zero dark early. Beyond shattering the peaceful silence of the sleeping hours, a ringing phone portended bad news 100 percent of the time. People simply did not wake you up to share the news of a job offer or a funny story they heard at work.

  So, when that goddamn bell ripped through the Wests’ bedroom, Henry was wide-awake and bolt upright with the receiver in his hand before the first ring had stopped. He had to reach over Sarah to do it. She barely moved. Perhaps it was his past or his current line of work that made him so allergic to the late-night interruptions.

  “Yeah,” he said. Or at least he tried to. He cleared his throat and tried a second time.

  The voice on the other end said, “Conan, we have a problem.”

  His stomach flipped. He hadn’t been called Conan in a very long time, a whole life ago. He recognized the voice, but couldn’t place it.

  “It’s Boxers,” the voice said. The timbre of the voice was equal parts Darth Vader and earthquake.

  Definitely not someone he’d expected to hear from. “Big Guy. Jesus, what time is it?”

  “You don’t want to know. We need to talk.”

  “Now?”

  “I wouldn’t have called you if it wasn’t important.”

  Fair enough. Henry hadn’t seen Box in quite a while, but there’s no way he could have evolved into a chatty guy.

  Henry looked at his sleeping bride. Whatever was coming, he was certain that she neither needed nor wanted to hear it. “Call me back in five minutes,” he said. “Let me splash some water and wake up.”

  “Five minutes,” Boxers said. “No more.”

  “Yup.” Henry laid the receiver back on its cradle, then reached behind to unplug it. Sarah was asleep now, and given his suspicions, he didn’t want her waking up for the next call, either. He went to the bathroom, washed his face, gave his teeth a quick brushing, and was just crossing the threshold of his home office when the phone rang exactly four minutes and sixty seconds later.

  “Hey, Box. What’s going on?”

  “Digger and Gail have been taken hostage. It’s a resort island off the coast of Mexico and we need to go get him.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Henry said. “Slow down. First of all, who’s Gail?”

  “Gail Bonneville,” Boxers explained. “Gunslinger. She’s part of our team and she’s Digger’s on-again, off-a
gain squeeze.”

  “Is that the same as a girlfriend?”

  “We don’t have time for the usual shit, Conan. This is serious.”

  Henry had never heard Big Guy so agitated. He was famous throughout the teams as the stout rock in the middle of the howling sea. “Okay, sorry. What happened?”

  “We don’t know, exactly. We got an alert from Dig that bad guys had stormed the island—it’s called the Crystal Sands Resort—and they took everyone hostage.”

  “How did he contact you if he was a hostage?”

  A beat. “Well, okay, they’re not hostages exactly, but everyone else is. They tried to grab Digger, but it didn’t go well for the bad guys.” For the first time, there was a trace of a smile in his voice.

  “Have you called the Mexican police?” Henry asked.

  “I haven’t called anyone. But the lady in my office—”

  “That would be Mother Hen?”

  “Yeah. She said—”

  “Does she have any idea that you refer to her as ‘the lady in my office’?”

  “God damn it, Conan, I don’t have time for that shit.”

  “Because she’d kick your ass.”

  The phone went dead.

  “Oh, shit.” Maybe he’d pushed too hard. Henry understood that Big Guy and Scorpion were close, and maybe he should have cut him more slack. But if—

  The phone rang again, and Henry picked it up.

  “Sorry, Conan. I was out of line.”

  Holy shit on a shingle. Did Big Guy just apologize? Jesus, this really was serious.

  “The island is off the coast of Mexico,” Boxers explained, picking up where they’d left off. “But it’s not a part of Mexico. It’s a part of Costa Rica, which has no military.”

  “But you said it was a resort,” Henry said. “Surely, some of the guests—Digger and Gail included—come from a nation that has a military.”

  “You know how long that would take,” Boxers said. “These assholes are killing people now.”

  For the first time, it dawned on Henry what this call was really about. “Where is this going?” He needed to hear it articulated.

  “I’m putting together a team to go out there and get them.”

  “And I’m on your list.”

  “Wow. And to think you’re not related to Sherlock Holmes.”

  Henry fell silent, and Boxers had the good sense not to interrupt it. “This is a big ask, Box. I haven’t kicked a door or shot a gun in over seven years.”

  “But you’re still in the Community,” Boxers said. “The rest is like riding a bike.”

  “Give me a day to think about it,” Henry hedged. Jesus, if Sarah found out . . . He’d made a promise and—

  “Digger doesn’t have a day. For all I know, he’s already dead. We have to move now.”

  “Now?” Henry thought maybe his sleep-addled brain wasn’t processing things correctly. “As in, right now?”

  “As in within the next few hours,” Boxers said. “I’ll be in touch with the details. I have your cell number.”

  Henry shifted the phone to his other ear. “Jesus, Big Guy, this is so out of left field. I’ve got work obligations—”

  “You’ve got vacation and sick leave. The good works of the NSA can churn on for a few days without you.”

  “What about my family?”

  “They can churn without you, too. How many unexpected work trips do you take as it is?”

  “But this is one I might not come back from.”

  A long beat. “And Digger had nothing else to live for when the Taliban had triangulated your hidey-hole? Do you remember that day?”

  “Don’t go there,” Henry said. “You don’t need to. Who else is on the team?”

  “So far, it’s you and me. Meet me at the Manassas Airport at eleven. I’ll have a better idea by then.”

  CHAPTER 11

  HUNTER WAS HURT WORSE THAN LORI HAD THOUGHT. SHE COULD tell by the way he listed to one side and the way he gripped his belly. His nose had clearly been broken, the bridge swollen to three times its normal size. The flow of blood had slowed to a trickle, but a deep purple hue had begun to set in around his eyes. The bumpy ride in the bed of the pickup clearly erupted a new jolt of pain with every root or pothole.

  “How bad is it?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Hunter?”

  “I think they might have ruptured something in my gut.” As he spoke the words, he turned his head to the side and vomited.

  “Both of you shut up,” ordered the soldier who’d been assigned to guard them. “There will be enough time later for you to say whatever you want.”

  “He’s my husband,” Lori said.

  The soldier hit her hard with an open hand, whipping her head to the side and filling her sinuses with the smell of copper. “Silence.”

  A few seconds later, she felt a trickle of blood tracing its way through her left nostril, and she was powerless to stop it as it dripped onto her crossed legs. She looked over to Hunter, but he’d gone somewhere else, mentally.

  Their route took them past the backyard of their bungalow, and around to the rear of the swimming-pool complex. Even through the metallic stench of blood, Lori could make out the smell of chlorine. She could also hear voices, but could not make out the words.

  Their pickup truck plowed past all of that, into alternating darkness and lit confusion that looked entirely unfamiliar. She figured that they must now be in a part of the resort where guests never went—the servants’ quarters, if you will, where the man behind the curtain made hospitality look easy. This was where the maintenance teams were headquartered, where the trash was disposed of, and, she imagined, where vermin were incinerated before they could make an appearance and raise the blood pressure of a visitor.

  Only a minute or two later, they emerged into more familiar territory. She recognized the elaborate porte cochere of the main entrance of the Plantation House. In this spot, just two days before, they had been greeted by uniformed bellmen who made sure they had a mimosa in hand before they crossed the threshold into what was to be the vacation of a lifetime.

  As the pickup pulled to a stop, other soldiers filed out of the front door to surround it. One of them dropped the tailgate and motioned for them to get out. “You will follow me.”

  Lori struggled to find her feet with her hands bound. The soldier helped her by steadying her shoulder as she scooted on her butt to the edge of the tailgate, where she got her feet over the side. He steadied her shoulder again as she slid to the ground. Then he took her by her arm and guided her toward the giant wooden and cut glass doors.

  “What about my husband?” she asked, craning her head to look around to him. He still listed to the side. In the bright light of the porte cochere, he looked terribly pale.

  “Worry about yourself,” the soldier said. “He will come along.”

  Lori allowed herself to be escorted across the sparkling tile of the entryway and up the grand staircase. From there, she went through the doors that led to a hidden staircase that ultimately took her to the third floor. Her heart hammered and her knees felt weak as her escort changed his grip from a gentle force on her biceps to a broad hand flat against her shoulder blades. He pushed her toward a set of interior double doors. They opened as she approached, which frightened her even more. It meant that someone had been watching her.

  More soldiers. To her, they all looked alike. Actually, that wasn’t true. She had no idea what they looked like. All she saw were the guns. Many, many guns. Rifles and pistols. The room smelled of sweat and oil and solvent.

  One of the soldiers stepped forward. “Mrs. Edwards,” he said. “How nice of you to join us.”

  Lori detected the trace of an accent, but she couldn’t place it. “Could you untie my hands, please?”

  “Absolutely not.” He smiled after he said the words. Not in a mocking way, she didn’t think. Commiseration, maybe? “You are a prisoner, and will be treated as such.
”

  Another soldier said, “We told you what would happen to people who tried to run.”

  “Shut up,” the lead soldier barked.

  “What?” Lori said. “What would happen?”

  “You will be shot.”

  “I said, shut up!” the commander yelled. “Get out of this room. This instant.” Then he said something in a language Lori didn’t understand. It sounded Eastern European.

  The other soldier hesitated, and then stormed out the door through which Lori had just entered.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “That is none of your concern. You killed two of my men.”

  “Are you going to shoot me?”

  The man’s eyes narrowed, and the smile returned. “My name is Anatoly,” he said. “I am the man in charge of this little army. I make every decision. When we are done with our discussion here, we will both know whether or not you will be shot.”

  Lori felt the panic swelling inside, growing like an inflating balloon in her belly. “But I never heard your warning about leaving.”

  “That’s right. I understand that. How could you possibly have heard when you’d already killed my men and run away?”

  The room shimmered and moved in her clouding vision. “May I sit down, please?”

  “No, you may not.”

  She sat, anyway, landing heavily on an overstuffed cushion on the sofa. It was that or fall. Anatoly seemed to understand.

  “I didn’t kill anyone,” Lori said.

  “This does not surprise me,” Anatoly said. He took a step closer. “You do not look like the type of lady who knows how to fight. But you were with those who did kill my men, were you not?”

  “It wasn’t Hunter, either. My husband. He doesn’t know how to fight, either.”

  Outside, beyond the windows, commotion rose in the night. People were upset. A few screams, and then a gunshot. The noise peaked, and then after more gunshots, it settled down to a murmur. From where she sat, Lori could see only the back of a soldier who blocked her view with his body. When the soldier turned, he jerked a nod at Anatoly.

  “He certainly will not fight now,” Anatoly said.