Scorpion Strike

by John Gilstrap

  Lori cocked her head. Anatoly’s expression told her that she should be reading something dire in his words, but she didn’t understand the message. And then she did. “Oh, my God.”

  “You are a widow now, Mrs. Edwards. I am sorry for your loss, but you must realize that I had no choice.”

  It was too much. Pain and sadness and shock all flooded over her at once and she couldn’t process it. She should be crying. She should be upset. But all she was, was scared.

  “Tell me who killed my men,” Anatoly said. He took another step forward, where he towered over her, looking down. “That is your one hope to avoid a bullet.”

  Lori thought of all the terrible thoughts she’d had about Hunter earlier tonight. The stupid arguments. There was no taking those back now. She’d—

  “Mrs. Edwards.”

  She looked up. She didn’t try for eye contact at this distance. It would have hurt her neck to crank it back that far. She settled for looking at his belt buckle, instead. “I’m right here.”

  “I do not like repeating myself.”

  Jesus, what had he just asked? Oh, yeah. “I don’t know their names,” she said. “They call themselves by code names. They were in the bungalow next to ours. The bungalow where they put the bodies.”

  “So, you were there.”

  “You already knew that.” A hard slap to the left side of her face retriggered her nosebleed.

  “Do not be flippant.”

  Lori said nothing. She couldn’t think of anything to say that would not earn her another slap.

  “Their names are Stephen Terrell and Alicia Crosby,” Anatoly said. “And at least one of them is a skilled fighter.”

  “You have to understand that there was not a lot of time for conversation. We—”

  Fast-approaching footsteps from outside the double doors drew everyone’s attention. After a rapid three knocks, the man who’d been thrown out only moments ago rushed back in. He spewed out an urgent message in the language that was sounding more and more like Russian to Lori’s ear.

  As Anatoly listened, color rose from his neck into his cheeks. He trembled. When he returned his gaze to Lori, she knew she was going to die.

  * * *

  “Jesus, they shot the husband,” Jonathan whispered. They hadn’t moved from their concealment, watching as the team of four soldiers filed up the gangplank to investigate the crewman’s distress call. The news broke over the monitored radio channel.

  “Oh, my God,” Gail breathed. “The bastards. What about Lori?”

  “No word.”

  “They’re animals.”

  Jonathan didn’t respond. What was there to say? They were posed almost identically, side by side, three feet apart on their left knees, rifles at the ready.

  “Murder doesn’t come for free,” Jonathan said finally.

  Gail pivoted her head toward him, waiting for more.

  “Hunter didn’t kill anyone. He was just a pussy who was in the wrong place at the right time.” He returned Gail’s gaze.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “We’re going to kill these guys when they’re coming back down. We need to start culling their herd.”

  Gail said nothing as she turned back to her rifle and its sight picture.

  “We have to get them all,” Jonathan continued, “and we have to drop them fast, before they can radio for help.”

  Gail still did not move, did not respond.

  “Are you hearing me?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Are you in?”

  “Would it matter?”

  Jonathan felt anger swelling. He got that she was tired, and that this was stressful, but this was hardly the time for passive-aggressive bullshit.

  And that’s exactly what I’m engaging in.

  His ear lit up with the announcement that the boarding team had found the ship’s captain dead.

  “They found our surprise,” Jonathan relayed.

  “My surprise,” Gail corrected. “What’s our next move?”

  Jonathan held up a finger as he listened to the radio. “There’s some discussion about whether or not they should search the ship,” he said. He listened some more. “Nope, they’ve been recalled to the plantation, where they’ll figure their next move. That’s smart. Four people isn’t enough manpower to track down a shooter on a ship.”

  Gail gave him a wild-eyed look. “We did it with two.”

  “We were looking for people, not shooters,” Jonathan corrected. Then he flashed the smile that had melted so many hearts over the years. “And people rarely accuse me of being smart.” He shifted his tone to a more serious one. “When they come down the gangplank, if they come as a cluster, that will be our best chance to nail them. If they play out in a longer string, we might have to divide our shots between the gangplank and the pier. No matter what, no one gets closer than the spot where the pier meets the paved apron. Does that make sense?”

  “No closer than the apron.”

  “Wait for my command. Your targets will be the closest ones, I’ll take the two in the back.”

  “Got it.”

  And they waited. It seemed like a very long time, longer than it should. And then he saw why. They were carrying the captain’s body down the gangplank. Other crewmen gathered along the rail, watching.

  “Why would they do that?” Jonathan whispered.

  “It would be hard to leave a friend to rot in the heat,” Gail said.

  “Yeah,” Jonathan agreed. “If they’re expecting to go home on that rust bucket, they probably don’t want it to smell of rancid corpse.”

  “Jesus, Dig.” Gail shifted her position. “We’ve got ’em all on the gangplank.”

  All four of the soldiers were lined up on the gangplank, with the two in the rear jammed up behind the body bearers. The two who were not on the body bag were on point, squared away in their stances as they advanced sideways, their rifles to their shoulders. These guys clearly knew that they presented tempting targets.

  “Not yet,” Jonathan whispered. “They’re too amped. They’re scanning for shooters and their weapons are at the ready.” The trick to winning a gunfight was to do it with as few bullets as possible, and with something close to zero return fire. “The body bearers will be your targets. I’ll take the shooters. Wait till I fire, and then take aimed shots.” He knew that this level of coaching was going to piss Gail off, but it had to be said.

  Jonathan watched through his three-power scope, tracking the movements of his chosen targets. He waited until the soldiers with the body were on the level surface of the pier and the shooters were about to make the transition. Instinctively, they shifted their eyes from the target horizon to where they were placing their feet. That presented a perfect profile picture. Jonathan settled his reticle on the first shooter’s ear and squeezed the trigger.

  The second soldier clutched his shoulder and fell.

  “Shit, they didn’t zero their weapons!” he said, but his words were lost in the sound of Gail’s barking rifle. As the lead shooter reacted and started to bring his rifle to bear, Jonathan shifted his sight picture to the right, guessed at the Kentucky windage, and pressed the trigger. The guy dropped, but Jonathan didn’t see where the bullet hit—or if it hit him at all.

  Meanwhile, in the foreground, Gail’s first target dropped under a cloud of brain spray, and the second pirouetted like a top and spun face-first onto the planks of the pier.

  “I’m moving up,” Jonathan said. “Stay put and watch for reinforcements.” He didn’t wait for a response as he left his cover and advanced toward the ship with his rifle to his shoulder. As he passed the first body, he fired another shot into his head, just to make sure. There was a message to be delivered to the assholes who found the bodies, and he wanted to make sure it was crystal clear.

  He skipped the captain’s body, but tapped the second guy Gail had dropped. From the way the body jerked, it was clear that he hadn’t been dead yet. The fact that he hadn’t he
ard any more radio traffic encouraged him that the two on the gangplank might be dead already. He couldn’t trust that, of course—no one was dead until they were by-God dead—so he kept his focus on the side panel that masked the men he’d shot.

  When he was within fifteen feet, he stitched a seven-round string of holes through the fabric into the deck of the gangplank beyond, where he calculated his targets to be. No one shot back.

  Before advancing farther, he replaced the partially-expended magazine with a fresh one and switched to a left-handed stance as he swung the turn to the right. The lead shooter couldn’t possibly be any more dead. The shot to his left ear had avulsed most of the right side of his face. Blood-tinged white brain matter lay gathered in a lump on the aluminum surface of the deck.

  The second gunman was more of a problem. Still alive, he was working hard to pull himself up the incline to the deck of the ship. From the way he moved, dragging his lower body, Jonathan figured that he’d maybe clipped his spine. He drew a bead on the guy, but then lifted his finger from the trigger.

  “Hey, you,” Jonathan called.

  Startled, the wounded man fumbled with his rifle to get it into play.

  “You don’t want to do that,” Jonathan said. As he approached, he held his aim. “I’ll kill you if you go near that weapon.”

  The soldier wasn’t convinced. Jonathan could sense him weighing his options. Two seconds later, he ostentatiously lifted his hands from his M4 and did his best to raise them. Jonathan approached no closer than six feet, then stooped down. This man couldn’t have been more than twenty-two years old.

  “What’s your name, son?” Jonathan asked.

  The kid eyed the muzzle that was staring at him and trembled.

  “Not a lot to lose for you right now,” Jonathan said. “Your friends are all dead, and you soon will be, without medical attention. I don’t see a downside to answering a few questions. Now, what’s your name?”

  More silence.

  “You don’t want to die anonymously, do you?”

  The trembling worsened. “Sergei.”

  “What’s the mission here, Sergei? Why did you invade a vacation spot and bring an army with you?”

  “Please help me.”

  “In due time. Answers first.”

  “I am doing job.”

  Jonathan noted the dropped article. “Are you Russian?”

  Sergei hesitated, and then he nodded.

  “Are all of you Russians?”

  Another nod. “Yes.”

  “Are you Russian military?”

  “Once. I used to be.”

  “Is that true of all of you? Are you all mercenaries?”

  The word seemed to confuse him.

  “Soldiers for money,” Jonathan clarified.

  “I do not know. Commander does not like us talking to each other about other days.”

  This made sense to Jonathan. The simultaneous strength and weakness of mercenary forces the world over was that they owed allegiance to nothing but their own bank accounts. The less they knew about each other individually, the less downstream liability for all of them if something went wrong. On the flip side, it’s hard to depend on your buddy dying for you when he’s not actually a buddy.

  “Were you recruited in Russia?”

  Sergei shook his head. “No. In Kiev. Ukraine.”

  “Who recruited you?”

  “A man. I do not know his name. I went to a place and the man gave me money and told me to be in Mexico City by last Saturday.”

  This also rang true under the circumstances. Whoever was in charge, they were hiring guns, not strategists. Guns and the people who carried them needed to know when and whom to shoot. They did not need to know why.

  They stared at each other for a long few seconds. “You kill me now,” Sergei said.

  “I haven’t made up my mind yet,” Jonathan said. It was a statement of fact. The kid had been cooperative. He’d been—

  “That was a request, not a question,” Sergei clarified. “I am paralyzed. I am bleeding. Better to die fast by a bullet than die slow from infection.”

  Jonathan narrowed his gaze. These were the decisions that woke him up years after the fact. Killing in the frenzy of battle weighed on his conscience—how could it not? But selective killing was hard.

  “Please,” Sergei repeated.

  Jonathan settled himself with a deep breath. “Sleep well,” he said. And he pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER 12

  “WAIT. WHAT? WHAT TIME IS IT?” JESSE MONTGOMERY WASN’T SURE he was awake yet, let alone that he was hearing correctly.

  “Zero dark early, kid, and it’s time to rise and shine. I’ll be by to pick you up in thirty minutes.”

  “And where are we going again?”

  “Zihuatanejo.”

  “Gesundheit. Is that a place?”

  “We’re going back to Mexico, sonny boy.”

  Something hitched in Jesse’s stomach. “I thought we were supposed to stay away from Mexico.” The man on the other end of the phone was Davey Montgomery, Jesse’s father. Less than a year ago, they’d helped take a healthy divot out of Mexico’s northern coastline. He didn’t know how to say persona non grata in Spanish.

  “As I understand it, we’ll just be passing through.”

  “As you understand it? What the hell is going on, Davey?”

  “See you in a half hour.” The phone went dead.

  “Well, shit.” Jesse swung his feet to the carpeted floor of his brand-spanking-new apartment and turned the switch on the nightstand lamp. Squinting against the assault to his retinas, he padded to the en suite bathroom and set about the chores that needed to be done. Every time he looked at his new digs, he smiled. All too recently, his accommodations had ranked at the bottom of the shithole scale. Only slightly before that, they had consisted of concrete walls and steel bars.

  Then he met a priest who introduced him to a voice on the phone who called herself Mother Hen, and everything changed. Whoever she was in real life, she had some pretty strong contacts that were able to get his probation canceled, on the single condition that he could steal a big-ass boat and get it to Mexico to rescue a guy named Scorpion and a truly terrifying creature who called himself Big Guy (because Gigantor was already taken).

  That job led to others, all of which bore the common thread of stealing stuff for the good guys. Of course, none of what he did was official. That meant if things went badly, he’d be on his own, without official cover. On the flip side, it also meant that payment came in the form of cash, with no IRS 1099s attached. If people asked him where he got his money—and they never did—he’d just tell them that he inherited it.

  The worst part of his new line of work was the frequent proximity of violence, and he was not a violent man. Never did have the stomach for it. His father, Davey, on the other hand, was a retired violence specialist. All he’d tell Jesse was that he worked for the Navy, but he’d never elaborate. Jesse took him at his word, never questioned it. Though he often wondered where Davey really learned his excellent killing skills.

  As he pulled on a pair of jeans and slipped into a T-shirt, it occurred to him that he didn’t know how long they were going to be gone. But he knew all too well that Mexico was hot as hell, so he grabbed a backpack and threw in a pair of shorts, some swim trunks, underwear, and flip-flops. He added a toothbrush and some deodorant and declared himself ready.

  As was typical for Davey, thirty minutes meant thirty minutes exactly. As his old man pulled up in his ’Vette, Jesse stepped out of his front door and into the lightening darkness and Nashville chill. Davey had the top down, despite the cool temperature. It was a Davey thing. If you paid for a rag top, then you by-God drove with the top down. He made exceptions for rain and severe cold, but not until there was a deluge or the mercury had dropped below forty.

  If there was one takeaway for Jesse from prison, it was that being a little too cool was orders of magnitude better than being a lot too hot. />
  “Mornin’, Jesse boy,” Davey said. He was dressed like a hood from the 1960s. Long black coat, T-shirt, black jeans, and motorcycle boots.

  Jesse dropped his backpack into the backseat, opened the door, and dropped himself into the front bucket. “You gonna fill me in on the details?” he asked.

  The Corvette made a throaty growl as it pulled away from the curb.

  “We got another job,” Davey said.

  “Which agency?”

  “This one’s private sector, but the pay’s the same.”

  “In a city whose name sounds like a sneeze.”

  “Nope,” Davey said. He looked over his left shoulder as he signaled a lane change. “It’s on an island off the coast of the city whose name sounds like a sneeze.”

  “Another boat job?”

  “Exactly.”

  “What do we need to do?”

  Davey cast him a sideward glance. “Remember the guys we rescued from Mexico?”

  Jesse felt himself scowling. “Big Guy?”

  “The other one.”

  “Scorpion.”

  Davey grinned. “Yeah. Well, he needs to be rescued again.”

  “From who?”

  “We’re not sure yet.”

  “We?”

  Davey returned his eyes to the road. “Me and Big Guy.”

  The more they discussed this, the less sense it made. “Big Guy is not with Scorpion?”

  “No, Gunslinger is with Scorpion.”

  “Jesus. Who’s ‘Gunslinger’?”

  “Scorpion’s girlfriend. She’s an operator, too.”

  Realization was beginning to dawn. “Wait, do you know these people?”

  “We’ve gotten together a few times.”

  “Since the Mexico thing?”

  Davey gave a shrug. “I used to be part of a fairly small community,” he said. “After Mexico, Big Guy and I kept in touch. We’ve had dinner a couple of times. He called me for help on this.”

  Jesse listened as his father told him all that had been relayed to him by Big Guy.

  Jesse summarized, “So, let me get this straight. Big Guy is assembling a little army to do battle with a big army to rescue two people.”

  “Or maybe we’ll be rescuing dozens of people,” Davey said. “A hundred or more. All of the guests at the resort.”