Stryker stared up at the body with a dispassionate expression.
Erin looked away.
Jose puked and stumbled out of the room.
“What the hell is this about?”
“Well, they are sending a message,” Stryker replied with a grim voice.
“I’m done here.” Erin walked out of the room.
“Weapon up,” Stryker shouted at her as she left.
She glanced over her shoulder and brought her carbine into the low ready position again.
The small number of shell casings on the floor, and the fact the attackers had taken the time to torture the man on the wall, indicated that some of the navy men had been able to get away from the scene.
He looked around the bar and thought about the scene in the lobby. The man there was probably the sentry for the group and had been the first to go down in what had to be a very short battle.
He debated searching the rest of the hotel for more bodies, but decided it was a fool’s mission.
Stryker walked to the man hanging from the back of the bar, found a hammer sitting on top of the liquor bottles stand, and hoisted himself onto the table top. He pulled the spikes from the body with the claw end of the hammer, and gently lowered it to the floor.
“I’ll come back for you,” Stryker murmured. He grabbed a bottle of tonic water, opened it, and washed his hands in the sink. After drying them with a bar towel, he walked over to where the man lay and stared down at him. He was slender, slightly balding, with greying hair.
Stryker turned away and saw Erin standing in the entrance to the bar with her back to him. He again studied the body and concluded that the man had been brutally tortured before they killed him with what looked to be a stab wound over the heart.
The muscle on the side of his jaw began a restless twitch as he struggled to contain his anger.
He walked out of the lobby and stood next to Erin and Jose.
“We know now how they knew we were coming.”
“How?” Erin asked.
“That guy was tortured before he was killed. They used a blow torch on him and all the mutilation was post mortem. No sign of excessive bleeding from any of the knife wounds except the one to the heart.
Stryker marched out of the lobby, looked around, and saw a trail of expended shell casings on the street that headed toward the port. He followed it to a street corner and then motioned for Erin to follow.
“What are we doing?”
“Let me think.”
Stryker strode to an area behind a dumpster, found a large pile of shell casings, and then walked to the other end of the street where he saw another pile of casings together with two abandoned mags. He looked back to the dumpster and his brain worked to picture what had happened.
It was a story that told itself well, Stryker concluded.
The scenario unfolded in his mind.
The attackers took down the sentry and captured the poor soul Stryker found in the bar. The rest of the crew staying at the hotel engaged in a retreat from the attack, fighting a desperate rear guard action as they fled back to their ship.
Stryker looked around to test his assumptions and could see nothing wrong with them.
“Talk to me,” Erin said.
“They were attacked in the hotel. The guy in the lobby was the sentry.
“I get that, but what are we doing now?”
“These shell casings, and their positions all point to a desperate rear guard action to cover a retreat back to the ship. The casings are grouped so you can see there were two sets of shooters, one following the other, and that the retreating group was desperate because they left mags behind.”
Stryker looked away for a moment, swept his eyes over the battle site, and then did the math of the shooting spots and where the shell casings lay on the ground. He noticed two large pools of dried blood, both of which were in locations the enemy would have been shooting from, and smiled grimly.
Again, it was a scenario that revealed all. The groupings of the casings were all behind cover—in some cases, cars or other vehicles, and in others, street corners. In other cases, they were lying on the road, where they were ejected from the M-16s while the first group retreated.
The navy men had covered each other on the retreat and leapfrogged their way back to the pier, each stopping to provide covering fire for the group in front of them. When the lead element stopped, the group that followed halted, fired a mag, and then continued the retreat.
Rinse and repeat all the way to the ship so far as Stryker could tell. Whoever led the journey back to the ship knew what he was doing. The hardest thing to do in combat is cleanly break contact with the enemy, and that is exactly what happened during the retreat.
Stryker wondered who it was. He doubted anyone in the navy trained to this sort of maneuver. He filed the question away to be posed when they encountered the sailors.
When he was satisfied he was correct in his conclusions, he walked over to Erin, pulled a water bottle from his pack and drank deeply. He poured some of it over his head, ran a hand through his hair to make it lay flat, and stared down at her.
“So, what do we do?”
“We go to the ship and see if the survivors are there.”
She cocked her head. “If they aren’t?”
“We go back to San Diego and bag the whole thing.”
“You don’t want to fight the gang if we don’t have to?”
“We lost all the stuff that could let us win a fight against them—the ATs, the grenades, and the Barrett. I don’t see how we could possibly take them down now without air support. I’m down to three mags and you are the same.”
“We could go find some more stuff and come back. That’s what the last ISIS group did to us, so why don’t we just tear a page out of their book and find some more weaponry?”
“Well, there is a Mexican National Guard Armory here in Cabo,” Stryker replied.
“How do you know it’s here?”
“I saw a sign for it years ago, and I could find it again.”
The muscle on the side of his jaw was dancing, his eyes seemed on fire, and he marched toward the port with a determined expression.
“What about the Humvee?” Erin said to his back.
“Leave it. I don’t want to announce our arrival.” Erin and Jose followed.
The three of them stood behind a squat building that faced the pier. Stryker glanced around the corner, snapped his mental photograph, and then pulled back to process it.
It was a typical pier, with forklifts, fuel tanks, and a smattering of smaller vehicles used to load and unload vessels. Several other smaller ships were moored to the far side of the dock and included pilot boats and tugs.
He again examined the photograph in his mind and noted no shadows around the corners of the small buildings that surrounded the land-bound side of the pier. So far as he could tell, the gang had left no lookouts to keep watch on the vessel, and he didn’t like that. It made no sense to him.
CHAPTER NINE
The ship sat moored at the cruise ship dock and towered above the pier with a regal and menacing look.
It was one of the newer class of vessel that incorporated stealth technology into the ship’s design. The surfaces of the ship were all angled rather than the traditional vertical surfaces, and it had the tripod mast which made the ship more difficult to detect with radar.
The vessel was also equipped with the “Collective Protection System,” which made it the first class of warship that had air filtration systems that blocked emissions from nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare. It could be “locked down” against any one of those threats, and Stryker had to wonder if that was why Thomas sent them to Mexico. If there was any ship capable of sailing close to a plague ridden shore without losing men, this was the vessel.
The Mark 34 deck-mounted at the prow was fully suppressed and aimed at the pier, telling Stryker that the battle ended at the ship when the American sailors got to the ve
ssel and brought its weapons systems to bear on the fight.
Stryker stood with Erin and Jose behind a container on the wharf with Erin watching their six and Stryker keeping an eye on the ship.
They had followed an intermittent trail of shell casings that seemed to terminate on the pier to the starboard side of the ship, although Stryker was not sure the glinting reflections he saw there were, in fact, shell casings.
“So, what now?” Erin asked in a whisper.
“The ship is locked down and I have to believe some of the crew is aboard. They even took the gangplank away, so there is no way the bad guys could take the ship.”
“You sure about that?”
“No, I think we should keep an eye on it for a while and let things unfold.” Stryker motioned them to the shady side of the container and sat.
Erin and Jose sat on either side of him.
“How long are we going to wait?” Erin asked.
“Until we can figure out if the gang left anyone behind to call when the sailors have to get off the ship. The problem is that person could be anywhere around us. He could be somewhere in one of the buildings, or on the other side of the vessel. I need to get a look around first.”
“We can’t sleep here,” Jose protested.
“We can go to a hotel for the night and crash there, but I don’t want to rush in now. I want to wait until tonight to get my look around the area.”
“Why does that matter?” Erin studied the ship.
“Well, we can be a lot more useful out here than on the ship for starters. The gang knows the sailors are on board. We are the wild card. They don’t know we’re here, and I don’t want to risk them seeing us and knowing where we are.”
“Why do you want to do the recon at night?”
“Because I don’t know where they are, and like most untrained people, they will presume it is okay to cook something or to have a light burning. They think they are the predators and the sailors are the sheep, so they will get careless and that makes it easier to find them without giving away our presence.”
“They won’t be looking for a sheepdog.” Erin smiled at the reference.
“No, they won’t.”
Erin noticed his jaw muscle was still twitching as they waited in the shade of the container. “You’ve changed your mind again; you want to fight them, don’t you?” She watched his face run through a series of emotions before he answered.
“They didn’t need to do that to the sailor,” Stryker replied through clenched teeth.
“Are you reacting to anger or to the mission?”
Jose looked away as though distancing himself from the conversation.
“Hate is a stronger motivator than love sometimes, and I hate what they did to that man. I can’t let it go unpunished and I care about the mission, but I care about getting justice for him also. That man was tortured and killed for no real reason. They did it for the fun of it, and I am all for killing the children that like to torture animals. You get them out of the herd before they can reproduce.”
“That’s pretty cold.” Erin looked away with a disapproving expression.
“The truth is always cold.”
Erin leaned back against the wall and examined Stryker. His face was again impassive, with no clue as to what he was thinking. She ran through other similar situations and decided that nothing matched up to this one. “So are we going help these guys or not?”
“Of course we are.” Stryker snorted. “We are very early on in this thing, and we have lots of surprises for the bad guys.”
“What sort of surprises?”
“I’ll think of them shortly.”
“They better be good.” Erin raised an eyebrow.
“They will be.”
Stryker looked at her with a death’s head grin. “It will be really good.”
“You realize you’ve changed your mind about this four or five times in the last few days.”
“When the facts change, I change my mind.” Stryker looked at Erin with a determined expression.
“I’ve heard that before.”
“You will again.”
“So, this is on for real?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Stryker turned to Jose and saw fear in his eyes. “You don’t have to take part in any of this. You can leave whenever you want and not be involved.”
“I think I’ll stay with you. I don’t know anything about fighting with guns, but I usually win my bets at cockfights. I know a winner when I see one.” He chuckled.
CHAPTER TEN
Stryker padded down the pier with bare feet. He’d removed the boots before he left the hotel, stopped to stretch his toes, and almost groaned with relief.
If San Diego was a dead city, this one was long buried in the past. The sea made no noise. It was a harbor and no sound came from the waves meeting the shore. There was very little ambient light as the sky had clouded up shortly before Stryker left the hotel where Erin and Jose were now sleeping in separate rooms.
It was two o’clock in the morning and the smell of the bay assaulted his senses. The lack of light honed his sense of smell, and although he couldn’t identify every single scent that he encountered, the collective odor was of the ocean; it was salt, decaying flesh, and something ancient that probably lived in his medulla oblongata from the time humans were all less evolved.
Stryker continued down the pier, with the goal of covering the U-shaped set of building that surrounded the dock. He stopped every few steps, honing his hearing and trying to use his eyes to find any light source in the totally black night.
Nothing.
He sat down on a bench next to a building, set his M-4 butt down, and waited. He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds around him. He heard the flapping of what he guessed was a gull’s wings, and then a faint splashing sound from the bay.
Finally, he heard a soft hiss like the sound made when pressure is released from a bottle of pop. It was faint and in the distance, but he was sure he heard it.
Stryker replayed the sound in his head and glanced around. It had come from the mouth of the bay, and sounded as though it was above him. He looked over at a small high-rise building that had four stories – enough to see the deck of the ship – but innocuous compared to the luxury hotels that surrounded the rest of the harbor.
It was the hide site he would choose. They had a clear view of the deck and pier, but would not have to worry about the sailors knowing their location.
Stryker got up and walked slowly toward the building.
He padded down the street with an odd sense of peace; maybe it was the stillness of the night, or the knowledge he wouldn’t do anything about the situation for the time being. He knew he had to figure out their call-in schedule before he could move on them, so this was really just a dress rehearsal.
Stryker moved up to the building and stood beneath the front of the structure. He then sat, holding his M-4 between his legs, and waited.
A few minutes went by, and then a few hours. He was in a state of half-sleep when he heard a patio door open, and then watched a steady stream of what he presumed was urine bounce off the street in front of him.
He smiled.
The door shut and Stryker waited another hour before he got up and left. He hugged the building for some time before he took off across the street on a diagonal course toward the hotel where he’d left Jose and Erin.
He sat down on a curb, two blocks away, holding his M-4, and wondered at his good fortune. He had found the gang members and could take them out at a time of his choosing. But he still felt troubled.
As he thought about it, he realized that he was scared; he really did not want to risk Erin and their potential child but was honor bound to not let it pass and walk away. The sailors deserved a chance to get home, and the man who was tortured deserved a burial and retribution.
Stryker could not remember a time when he wavered as much as he had the last few days. He was startin
g to make himself crazy with his own indecision and wondered how bad it had been for Erin.
His heart was telling him one thing, but his soul was telling him something entirely different. The two did not seem to be able to make peace with one another.
Stryker glanced up at the stars that now twinkled in a clearing sky.
His grandfather stood over him in a general store in Eden, Texas thirty years ago.
A child had stolen candy from the store, and Stryker told his gramps what happened after the fact.
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“I was scared.”
His gramps took a knee in front of him, and Stryker stared and an old and wise face. Gramps had deep wrinkles etched from a Texas sun and his eyes were kind.
“You want to be scared your whole life?”
“Well, no,” Stryker answered, realizing it was a horrible feeling.
“Well, then you have to do the right thing every time,” his gramps said in a gentle voice. “If you don’t, then you’re going to feel the way you do now for the rest of your life.”
“I don’t want that.”
“Caleb, you never get everything you want, but you can control your own life. You need to understand that being honorable is not optional. You have to live your life by a standard, and if you don’t, you’ll be scared of everything for the rest of your life. You will make decisions based on fear rather than what is best. You really don’t want to do that do you?”
“No,” he whispered.
Gramps looked away and then back at him. “There is an old cowboy saying that says ‘Every good horse deserves a stumble.’ Do you know what that means?”
“No.”
“It means that you can be a good person, make a mistake, but eventually you have to recognize that mistake and make it right. So, the next time you see something wrong, you can’t just do nothing or you’re going to be the horse that nobody can forgive.” His gramps looked away and then back. “You don’t want to be that horse, do you?”
“No.”
Stryker looked back up at the sky above him.
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