“God damn it, I’m hit!”
Boxers didn’t hesitate. He switched his 7.62-millimeter cannon to full auto, and he raked the wall and the door with a thirty-round rip. Then he dropped his empty mag, loaded a fresh one, and sent thirty more downrange.
The wall and door were both shredded when Big Guy kicked the door open and casually tossed in two M67 fragmentation grenades.
“Frags friggin’ away!” he said, and then he sprawled himself on top of Jonathan.
The grenades tore the office apart blowing out the windows and toppling artwork.
Boxers did a push-up to rise off Jonathan, and said, “Be back in a minute.” Big Guy strolled into the devastated office. “Okay, who else wants to mess with me?” he boomed. “Who else wants to die tonight?”
Jonathan rose to his hands and knees, reasonably confident that his plates had protected him, and watched as Boxers examined the devastation. Big Guy saw someone that Jonathan didn’t and shot him twice at point-blank range.
Boxers keyed his mic. “Yeah, we’re pretty goddamn clear here.”
CHAPTER 36
HENRY STRAINED TO SEE. “THAT’S NOT THE CIA SHIP, IS IT?”
“The Katie Starling? No. It’s the other one.” Torpedo looked back at the others. “But the Katie Starling looks ready to pull out, too. Did they get the nerve agent stuff transferred?”
Henry and Rollins exchanged looks. “I can’t say for sure one way or the other,” Rollins said.
Jolaine adjusted herself to a more comfortable position. “Follow her,” she said. “Follow the terrorists’ ship. I’m good or I’m not. We’ll all know sooner or later.”
“Follow her to do what?” Jesse asked.
“I vote we blow her up and sink her,” Jolaine said. She hoisted up her M4 and grenade launcher as best she could. With a feigned Cuban accent, she said, “Say hello to my little friend.”
Now that was a good idea. “How many rounds do you have for that thing?” Henry asked.
“Four. HE.” High explosive.
“Not enough,” said Rollins and Henry in unison.
* * *
Yankee One needed to wade back to shore one more time for the grenades, C4 and detonators, and then bring them back to the boat. “Big Guy is gonna be so pissed that we blew up a ship without him,” Rollins said with a laugh.
“Don’t get cocky,” Henry warned. “We haven’t done anything yet.”
Yankee One approached the Olympia 3 at full throttle, closing the distance quickly. They kept their lights off, as did the larger vessel, but again, night vision won the day.
“Is it safe to run up on them this fast?” Jesse asked.
“There’s nothing about this night that is safe,” Rollins said.
“I mean, won’t they see us and start shooting?”
“A distinct possibility,” Henry said. “But the machinery in that old bucket is so loud that unless they’re looking for us, they probably won’t notice until it’s too late.”
“Probably,” Jesse said. He clearly didn’t like the taste of the word.
“No guarantees in the shooter’s life,” Henry said with a smile. He pulled a digital rangefinder out of a pocket on his vest and scoped the distance separating them. “We’re at about three hundred yards,” he said. “You can slow down, but keep closing the distance.”
“How close do we need to be?”
“A hundred fifty yards or less,” She Devil said.
“So, you’re still with us,” Henry said. “Want to take the first shot?”
“I’d love to,” she said, triggering a bloody cough. “But I don’t trust my marksmanship skills so much right now.”
“How about you, Madman?”
“I’ll take some shots if you need me to, but I haven’t used an M203 in a long time.”
Henry chuckled at the irony. There was no greater sign that you’ve been out of the game a little too long than realizing that your familiarity with the toys of the trade was slipping. “Well, you know the old saw, right?” he said as he opened the launcher’s breach and slid a stubby round into place. “Close only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades.”
“What are you loading with?” She Devil asked.
“HEDP.” High explosive, dual purpose. “We brought twenty rounds. I figure to just lob them aboard and hope we hit something important. Maybe set it on fire.”
“What about the nerve stuff?” Torpedo asked. “What if you blow that up?”
“We’re not even sure they got any aboard,” Rollins said.
“And even if they did, it wouldn’t do much harm out here.”
“What about to us?” Torpedo pressed.
“You’re driving the boat,” Henry teased. “Don’t let us get that close.”
Jesse turned to face Henry. There was something ridiculous about the way he looked in the four-tube night-vision array. He looked so skinny and young that the NVGs looked like they were heavier than he was. “This is about to get serious,” he said. “I don’t know if you’re shitting me or if that’s the actual plan.”
That was a fair point. “Okay, that’s sort of the plan,” Henry said. “The rest of it is we’re going to pull up and run parallel to the Olympia 3. Yes, I’m going to lob grenades, but we’re going to do it like an old-fashioned broadside. We’ll make our range about a hundred yards.”
“And you’re really just going to lob them and hope?”
Henry explained, “According to Scorpion, they’ve got munitions topside, near the bow. I don’t know if they’re still there or not, but if they are, I’m going to try to hit them. That should make for a pretty respectable bang.”
“And then what?” Torpedo asked.
“And then we see where we are.”
* * *
Anatoly stood at the rail on the starboard side and told himself that he was not a coward for leaving. His men were not his men at all. They were independent contractors to whom he owed no allegiance, just as they owed no allegiance to him. Had any of them been in the same position as he, they would have done exactly the same thing. Even Moscow wanted no official involvement in any of this.
The Kremlin would be upset that the larger mission had failed, as none of the VX made the transfer. Would the Ukrainian dogs get their chemical weapons? Who knew? He couldn’t imagine that the crew of the Katie Starling would be anxious to stick around.
As for the crew of the Olympia 3, they were grateful to be under way again. Did they mourn the loss of their shipmate? Perhaps. Or perhaps theirs was a crew of soldiers of fortune, as well—men with skills who were willing to sell those skills to the highest bidder.
This was what the world had become in these days of diminishing honor. Anatoly himself had no true memory of the days before the Wall fell—he was barely a teenager at the time—but he had heard stories of the way things used to be when his home was feared by the world and known as the Soviet Union. Those were the days before the oligarchs and their special breed of corruption. Anatoly’s father told him time and time again about the devotion that Soviets felt toward their Motherland. Now people cared only about money and prestige.
Anatoly regretted that he had allowed himself to be pulled in that very direction, but it was simply the way of things. The Russian government wanted things done that no government may cause to have done, so they turn to people like Anatoly and his team.
But again, it wasn’t a team. Teams trained together and shared common goals. And those goals needed to be something loftier—more noble—than merely money deposited in a bank. He didn’t lead this operation so much as he herded mercenaries.
If the men he’d left behind on the island survived, many of them would not rest until Anatoly paid with his life for abandoning them. This did not concern him. Many, many people on this planet wanted to see Anatoly Petrovich Ivanov planted in the ground—or ground in a wood chipper. He’d gotten used to it. But as the list grew, he knew that his odds for long-term survival shrank accordingly. Soon a day woul
d come when he simply would not be able to afford to sleep.
But those were concerns for the future. For the present, he would convince the Olympia 3 to sail to Colombia, where he had many covert contacts who could help him disappear and start a new life. For a price, of course. Always for a price.
The explosion startled him, drove him to his knees, his hands covering his head. A bright flash and a simultaneous boom that sounded, for all the world, like a grenade. It came from the far side of the superstructure, and after a second or two, debris rained down on him.
Who the hell was shooting at them?
A second explosion erupted much closer, shattering the glass in the bridge. Alarms sounded. People shouted. He did not understand their language, but he understood the fear that compelled it. Anatoly started to run, but then he stopped himself. Where would he go?
The third grenade landed on a container of flammable liquid somewhere on the other side of the vessel and spewed flaming debris in every direction. A stripe of burning liquid splattered across his path, spattering his pant leg and setting it ablaze. He dropped to the deck and patted out the flames, but not before burning the skin of his shin.
They were under attack again. Or was it still? At sea. In international waters, against the laws of every nation in the world. He didn’t know who was mounting the attack, and he sensed that he never would.
The next grenade sailed over the superstructure itself, hit a rail, and bounced onto the deck about twenty feet behind the spot where Anatoly stood. He threw himself onto the wooden deck as he saw the grenade ricochet off the rail. When it detonated, the deck pulsed with the concussion, and shards of hardwood launched into the air. Something tore a hunk of flesh from his ear.
Where do you go when your boat is under attack? Surely, it was more dangerous to be inside where spaces flood than outside, where you always have options. He could not have been more aware of the fact that this vessel was built of wood. How would the fires be extinguished?
The fire on the port side was growing quickly, though Anatoly still could not see the source of the flames. A grenade pierced the window of the bridge and detonated inside.
The smoke obliterated the stars and the moon as Anatoly made his way aft to the open deck, where he crossed to the other side to take in the destruction. Another explosion tore up the bow, just forward of the ruined bridge. In the glow of the fire, he saw the final arc of the next incoming round. He turned and shielded himself from the explosion. As he stood upright again, he finally had some idea of where the assault was coming from.
He couldn’t see the vessel itself through the darkness and the smoke, but it was out there somewhere.
He slid a fresh magazine into his rifle and fired randomly in that general direction. The chances of hitting anything were minuscule, but it gave him something to do.
Just as his bolt locked back on an empty magazine, he again caught sight of the arc of the incoming grenade. As he extrapolated the angle, he knew what they’d been aiming to hit.
The munitions.
And this one was going to be close.
* * *
The explosion whited out their NVGs, and launched a massive pressure wave across the open water.
Henry was able to pull Jesse to the deck the instant the pressure hit hard, shattering the glass of the cockpit, and lurching the light craft far over to its port side.
“Stay down!” Henry yelled. “It’s not over yet.”
The wave of water came next, lifting the boat high out of the water, and then dropping it back into a deep trough.
“Cover your heads! Don’t get up!” As he yelled, Henry dove for the throttles and jammed them forward and he turned the rudder hard to the left to gain distance between them and what was left of the Olympia 3. Its bow all but gone, the burning hull listed hard to its port side. In minutes, it would slip below the surface.
Debris fell like rain for the better part of a minute, starting maybe ten seconds after the detonation. Nothing heavy, thank God, but that wasn’t their fault.
“Everybody okay?” Henry asked.
“I’m good,” Madman said.
“Me too,” said Torpedo.
“She Devil? You okay?”
No answer.
“Torpedo, take the helm,” Henry said.
He and Rollins moved to her together. “Hey, She Devil, come on,” Rollins said. “This is no time to nap.”
She’d slumped to the deck to lie on her left side. Blood pooled on the deck around her.
Henry shook her. “Come on, She Devil. Time to get you fixed up.” He pulled her night-vision array off her face, and then pulled off his own. Next he pulled a standard flashlight out of a pocket on his sleeve and lit her up with white light. With the light gripped in his teeth, he rolled her onto her back as he yanked his glove off to feel for a pulse.
The fixed stare said everything. The absence of a pulse confirmed it.
* * *
Tyler didn’t have the heart to make the kids go down into the utility tunnels. They were scared enough, as it was, and despite all the panic and the blood, they were pretty calm. He had a girl named Erin to thank for that. She was the designated mother, the one they seemed willing to listen to. The one who made Tyler’s job doable.
The shooting seemed to go on and on, and from all different points on the island. He told the children that they were safe now, that the rescuers were here and that all the bad men would be killed. But what if that turned out to be a lie? What would happen to the children then?
What would happen to Tyler then?
As he thought back on all that had happened, he wondered how it was possible for so much to change so quickly. Even if Scorpion and Team Yankee won, and none of the other guests or staff were killed, Tyler’s life would never be the same. Not ever again. Baker was either dead or he would go to jail. The Crystal Sands couldn’t possibly survive after this.
But guests had died. Guests had been murdered. None of them deserved that. Hell, no one deserved that. He felt ill when he thought of Hunter and Lori Edwards. The way they’d died, and then how their bodies were defiled. How was Tyler going to unsee that? How was he going to wake up in the morning and feel sane in a world where such awfulness could occur?
All Jaime had ever wanted to do was what he was doing. He wanted to run the maintenance shop, meet a girl, and father babies. He’d have been a good dad. Now that would never happen. Those well-raised kids would never be born.
What the hell was Tyler going to do?
He had no idea if Baker was still alive, and a part of him hoped that he wasn’t. All this suffering lay at Baker’s feet, even though he never pulled a trigger. How many people had died over the past two decades at the hands of murderers who used the weapons Baker provided?
He was such a nice man. Kind to his employees, dedicated to his guests, tolerant—no, supportive—of his often-wayward stepson. How many other nice people in the world were truly monstrous in the other aspects of their lives?
Even Scorpion and Gunslinger and the rest of their team—caring people who yet were capable of such unfettered violence.
Maybe waking up in the morning wasn’t such a good idea.
Something changed in the rhythm of the night as the kids milled about differently, and sounds of distress bloomed like a rose.
Then he understood why. Scorpion and his team members were approaching from the ocean side. Scorpion and the guy they called Chief moved funny, as if every step hurt. Seeing them made him realize that he no longer heard shooting.
Tyler stood as they approached. “Are you okay?”
“Been better,” Scorpion said. “The resort is safe again. The terrorists are all dead, at least as far as we know. I see you didn’t take the kids to shelter.”
Tyler felt himself blush. “I didn’t think—”
“I don’t care,” Scorpion interrupted. “It’d be a good idea to reunite these children with their parents as soon as possible. They’re all a little shell-s
hocked, but I think a reunion—”
The horizon flashed like daylight. Six seconds later, an explosion shook everything. Everyone flinched.
“What the hell was that?” Scorpion said.
Big Guy replied, “I think somebody just made a big hole in the water.”
CHAPTER 37
JONATHAN KEYED HIS MIC. “YANKEE ONE, YANKEE THREE. STATUS REPORT.”
The reply came slowly. Jonathan was about to transmit a second time when squelch broke, and Conan said, “Yankee Three, Yankee One. The Olympia 3 and her crew are gone. The Katie Starling has put out to sea. The status of the victor x-ray is unknown.”
“What’s the status of your team?”
Another long pause.
“Yankee One?”
“Uh, Yankee One’s headed in to exfil.”
Jonathan heard the dread in Conan’s voice. All of them heard it. If it were appropriate to furnish further detail, he would have done it. Jonathan knew instinctively that Jolaine was either dead or beyond hope. He looked up at Big Guy.
Boxers’ jaw had set, and he stared out at a spot that was probably far beyond the trees—a spot that only he could see, perhaps. As far as Jonathan knew, Big Guy hadn’t had many relationships in his life. While the one he had with Jolaine was fleeting, and it ultimately failed, there’d been something.
Gail put a hand on Boxers’ arm. It was an offer of tenderness that was beyond the vocabulary of anyone on the team. In fact, there was no vocabulary for a moment like this.
“Quit staring at me,” Boxers said. “We’ve got a job to do. Let’s find us a truck.”
* * *
Word spread quickly among the parents. Tyler was still trying to wrangle the kids for the trek to the pool area when the first mom arrived. She looked like hammered hell in the moonlight, her face shiny and her hair a wreck.
“Landrum!” she yelled. “Landrum Parnell! Where are you?”
“Mom! Mommy!” The voice came from the middle of the rough line that Tyler had tried to assemble.
More parents followed, and then it was a flood of reunions. Hugs and tears and an unnerving chorus of wailing that Tyler didn’t understand. Within a minute, kids who hadn’t been claimed started to run toward the pool area where the parents had come from. It seemed like a recipe for disaster to Tyler to have kids running blindly into the night, and he tried to keep them at the bungalow. But it was like trying to block an outgoing tide. Those he couldn’t stop just flowed around him, and then he realized that to hold on to a child physically was to hurt the kid even more.
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