“I still don’t like us splitting up,” Frank said.
“It’ll be hard enough for Kane and me to sneak out of the hotel on our own. With all of you in tow, it would be all but impossible to slip past whoever must be watching this place.”
Frank did not look convinced. “But if we use Rex—”
“Rex has plenty on his plate tonight as it is. I need you and Nora to get this bird in the air and out into the night. While I investigate this island, you all tap into the digital infrastructure of the city and try to find out what the enemy is planning. Rex may be all that stands between Tangent and the destruction of this city. For all I know, this trip to Patos Island could be a wild goose chase.”
And if not, it would be too dangerous to bring the others.
Tucker pressed the matter. “With Rex in the sky, having your back, you’ll all be safer laying low here. If worse comes to worst, I’m leaving you and Jane with the other two SIGs.”
Jane stood nearby, donning her shoulder holster.
Nora unhooked the leads running to the drone. “Tucker is right. We need Rex here, and I might need your help, Frank. Especially with that side project you and I were working on.”
Tucker frowned. “What side project?”
Frank matched his expression. “You have your secret mission. We have ours.”
Nora shook her head at their antics. “It’s actually too technical to explain in a short time.”
Jane smiled. “Tuck, I think she just called you stupid.”
Probably right.
Tucker didn’t feel like pressing the matter. “Fine. Let’s get Rex in the air.”
They all backed away as Frank used the CUCS unit to start Rex’s motor and set the four propellers to spinning. A low buzz filled the space, tickling the small hairs on the back of Tucker’s neck. The drone rose smoothly off the coffee table and hovered in the middle of the room.
It was an eerie sight to see this war machine hanging in the air, barely moving. Tucker knew that beneath that matte-black exterior was the true heart of the next generation of warfare. The prickling over his skin grew, as if he could feel the eyes of the drone upon him, this future electronic warrior staring down at its outdated and obsolete counterpart of flesh and blood.
Jane and Nora hurried to the balcony doors, pulled the curtains, and opened the sliding doors. Frank guided the drone forward and out to the balcony. Once Rex sailed beyond the railing, the women closed the doors and resecured the curtains. Nora joined Frank as he continued to monitor Rex’s ascent above the city.
Tucker dropped to a knee next to Kane. He scuffled the dog’s ears with both hands. “Ready to do some hunting, big boy?”
Kane’s tail swished more vigorously, carving his excitement through the air.
He gave the shepherd a one-armed hug, then rose and grabbed his backpack, which held all of Kane’s tactical gear. He already had his SIG Sauer holstered with spare magazines weighing down his pockets.
He checked his watch. “You know what to do?” he asked Frank.
The man waved at him dismissively, his eyes still on Rex’s flight. “Go already!”
He headed to the door with Kane. Earlier, they had used Rex’s electronic warfare suite to hack into the Hyatt’s computers and extract the schematics for the hotel property and tap into the security cameras.
“Am I clear?” he called to Nora who sat at her laptop.
“Hall’s empty,” she confirmed for him. “The rest of the way down looks good, too.”
He nodded to her, opened the door, and dashed outside. He led Kane to the stairs. They hurried down the steps, descending the twenty floors to the lobby, but Tucker continued to the subbasement level, where access was restricted. An electronic keypad secured the door to this lower level, but Rex had obtained the key for him.
Tucker tapped in the code and the door unlocked. He hurried through and into a cavernous garage space. Black limos with the Hyatt logo on their doors were parked along one wall. There was also an airport shuttle. He paused at the door to make sure the private garage remained empty. Failing to spot anyone, Tucker rushed to a locked and alarmed cabinet beside the first limo. He dialed in the proper code courtesy of Rex and got the green light. He opened the cabinet and searched the keys until he found the one for the shuttle.
He nabbed it, closed the cabinet, and rushed with Kane to the small bus.
Once close enough, he used the fob to electronically fold open the side door and waved Kane inside. He began to follow when the hotel door to the garage opened behind him.
Crap.
He lunged into the shuttle and hit the fob button to close the bus’s doors. He stayed low, hoping he hadn’t been spotted. But the shuttle’s interior lights remained lit, apparently on a delayed timer. In the dark garage, the bus was lit up like a Christmas tree.
He heard a rush of steps coming his way.
He freed his pistol, his mind flashing through various scenarios. If it was one of Lyon’s men, Tucker planned on dealing with him quickly. If it was simply hotel security, that would be a trickier matter. He thought of ways of subduing the man before any alarm could be raised, but even if Tucker was successful, the delay could upset the timetable. Everything from here depended on perfect timing.
A fist rapped on the door. “Is there room for one more?”
Despite all his planning, he had failed to anticipate this scenario. He stood up and hit the release for the door with the flat of his hand.
Jane smiled at him and climbed into the shuttle. “You didn’t really think I’d let you and Kane leave without me?” She pushed past him and dropped into the driver’s seat. She held out her palm. “Keys, please.”
“Janie—?”
“The others have Rex to guard them, and Frank is armed and trained for combat. I’m not about to stay up there twiddling my thumbs while you and Kane put yourselves in harm’s way.”
She glanced back at him, her eyes stone cold. This was clearly not up for discussion. He knew a large part of her anxiety about waiting in the hotel likely centered on a certain towheaded little boy. She needed to keep moving. He sagged, accepting the inevitable, though not liking it. Kane, on the other hand, seemed more than happy to have the trio reunited. The shepherd nosed her and wagged his tail merrily.
“I’m obviously outvoted,” he said.
Jane tapped her wrist with a finger. “And we’re on a bit of a time crunch.”
Tucker sighed and slapped the keys into her hand. “Try not to hit anything.”
She scowled at him, started the engine, and got the bus turned around and slowly headed up the ramp toward the exit. She took her time. As she drew near the closed security door at the top, an electronic key on the dashboard flickered and the gate began to rise.
“Hunch down,” Tucker warned her, while he crouched next to Kane. He checked his watch. “We have another twenty seconds.”
She nodded, hunkering lower.
They watched the garage door continue to open.
“Five seconds.”
Earlier, Tucker had anticipated that Lyon would not leave this exit to the hotel unwatched. And while the cover of a hotel shuttle bus might escape casual scrutiny, Tucker wanted extra insurance.
He watched the last second click away.
“Go,” he said.
As Jane goosed the engine and got the shuttle rolling toward the open door, their unseen partner on this mission performed right on schedule. The scatter of garage lights blinked off as the electricity to the hotel was cut off. Outside, streetlamps flickered and went dark.
Good boy, Rex.
The drone, using its bundle of electronic warfare tools, had tapped into the city’s power grid and blacked out this corner of Port of Spain. The island was plagued by periodic outages, so what was one more? The power would be restored in another minute, which offered Tucker and Jane the additional blanket of darkness to help cover their escape.
Unfortunately, cutting the power had one unanticipate
d effect.
The garage door started to lower ahead of them, likely an emergency precaution against looters. Jane noted the same and gunned the engine, jolting the shuttle forward. Tucker grabbed the back of the driver’s seat to keep his position.
The bus shot under the dropping door.
They were not going to—
Tucker winced as metal grated on metal. Jane did not slow. Hunched over the wheel, she forced the bus forward, ignoring the grinding complaint of the descending door. They finally dragged free and made it to the street. Jane turned them sharply and got them moving even faster through the darkened section of the city.
Tucker straightened, glancing to the roof. “What did I tell you about not hitting anything?”
She waved him off. “Quit being a backseat driver.”
9:03 P.M.
Tucker eased back the throttle of the old powerboat and glided to a stop. Swells lapped at the wooden hull, causing the craft to rock on the darkened surface of the water. High above, the sickle of the moon shone brightly in a cloudless sky. The engine puttered softly, as a balmy night breeze swept across the bow, bringing with it the salty scent of the Caribbean Sea.
Tucker checked the GPS map on his sat phone. “We should be about there.” He gazed ahead but saw nothing but the black waters etched in traceries of silvery moonlight.
Kane hopped from the neighboring passenger seat and crossed to the rear bench. He lifted his nose to the breeze, sniffing deeply. The shepherd was once again decked out in his K9 Storm vest and tactical equipment. The weight of his gear always set Kane to full alert. The dog knew it was time to get to work.
Jane settled into the seat vacated by Kane. She picked at a curl of paint along the rail next to her and cast up an eyebrow toward Tucker. “Did you have to rent the worst boat they had?”
He shrugged.
The twenty-two-foot runabout was at least fifty years old, its wooden hull splotched by mismatched layers of varnish and fiberglass tape. Its vinyl seats and plastic dashboard looked held together by nothing more than duct tape and bailing wire. The Plexiglas windscreen even had a bullet hole directly in front of the driver’s seat.
They had rented the boat from a small village northwest of Port of Spain. The proprietor of the tiny marina, a short man named Petrie, had shrugged when Tucker had questioned the boat’s state. “Meh,” he said. “Take, no take. Okay by me.”
Since there was little other choice at that hour, Tucker chose to take.
Jane dug out a pair of the binoculars from her backpack, rose from her seat, and aimed the glasses into the darkness. “Well, it got us here,” she said after a moment.
Keeping their speed at a moderate pace, it had taken them a half hour to cross the thirteen miles of open sea that separated Trinidad from this tiny island off the Venezuelan coast. These waters were called the Bocas del Dragón—or the Dragon’s Mouth. Like the bullet hole in the windscreen, the name was not the most positive of omens.
Jane passed Tucker the binoculars. He searched the sea and spotted a dark smudge, a tiny speck of land, about a half mile off the bow. A churning white line marked where the surf met the shore, which appeared to be an unbroken line of ten-foot cliffs.
“It doesn’t look like much,” Jane said.
“It might be small, but it’s got room enough to hide a small fleet of drones.”
Jane huffed out a breath, plainly agreeing with him. “If Tangent was looking for a place from which to launch a coup, Patos Island would be a perfect choice. This empty spit of land lies just outside Trinidad’s territorial waters but within a few minutes’ flight of Port of Spain.”
Tucker pulled out a set of sea charts from his pack, courtesy of the marina’s proprietor. “According to the map, a set of coves breaks up these cliffs near the western tip of the island. I’m guessing somewhere around there is where Tangent would have set up its base of operations. We’ll have to go in dark and hope—”
Kane let out a warning growl behind him. Tucker turned and looked toward his partner, who was still half up on the rear bench. The dog’s body had gone taut. Kane’s head panned from left to right, as though trying to pin down something. Suddenly his gaze snapped directly astern.
Tucker saw nothing but flat, black ocean. Farther in the distance, the lights of Port of Spain glowed.
“What’s wrong with Kane?” Jane asked as another growl rolled from the dog’s throat.
Tucker grabbed his sat phone and tapped to bring up the feed from Kane’s camera. Through night-vision mode, the seas appeared far brighter, almost luminescent. On the screen, an object emerged from the deeper gloom, a spherical shape gliding ten feet above the surface of the water.
Tucker’s heart filled his throat, recognizing that silhouette from the Alabama swamps. “It’s a Shrike. Incoming.”
27
October 25, 9:19 P.M. AST
Bocas del Dragón Strait, Venezuela
“Get down!” Tucker yelled.
Jane dropped flat to the boat’s floorboards, while Kane hopped off the rear bench and tucked himself against the backseat’s riser. Tucker ducked lower and slammed the throttle forward. The aging engine growled, and the boat surged forward.
“Hold on to something!” he shouted.
He spun the wheel hard to port, then back to starboard, slaloming across the water, trying to confound the drone’s targeting. But he knew that once the Shrike locked on to the boat, its rounds would shred the runabout—and them.
The only hope lay in getting them into the nearest cove.
He resisted the impulse to look over his shoulder.
Drive, drive, drive . . .
As Tucker kept up his serpentine maneuver, the island grew rapidly in size ahead of him. To his right, he spotted a break in the white line of surf.
One of the coves.
It was still two hundred yards away.
They’d never make it.
“Jane, grab our packs! We’re bailing out.”
Their boat was too large a target, but in the dark water, they’d be harder to spot.
Before he could order them to abandon ship, a geyser of water shot up a few feet off the boat’s starboard bow. Spray washed over his face. Tucker imagined the drone was bracketing them, fine tuning for its next shot, which if he was right, should strike off the port side—so he spun the wheel hard to starboard.
As the runabout lunged into the turn, another plume erupted beyond the port gunwale. He then straightened the boat’s course and aimed for the cove.
“Ready, Jane?” he called.
“As I’ll ever be.”
As Tucker abandoned the driver’s seat, the runabout jolted. He got slammed forward, banging his forehead against the steering wheel. He blinked hard. His vision swirled. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a jagged series of holes strafed across the floorboards near the stern. Water gushed through the openings.
“Over the side! Go!”
Jane got to her knees, threw her torso over the gunwale, then disappeared beyond the edge. Tucker reached sideways, grasped Kane’s vest collar, and heaved the dog into his lap. He then stood up and rolled over the boat’s other rail.
Dark seas enveloped them. Tucker got bowled through the water, holding hard to Kane. Once his momentum bled away, he kicked to the surface and broke into the air. Tucker released Kane from his embrace, but he kept ahold of the shepherd’s collar.
Twenty feet ahead, the runabout sped into the cove. The Shrike fired down at it, chasing after it. The drone then silently shot upward at a steep angle, barrel-rolling to set up for another attack run.
“Jane?” he called out.
“Here, right here.”
He spotted her and swam over. By the time he reached her, the runabout had disappeared from view around a sandbar in the cove. A loud splintering crash echoed to them as the boat ran aground.
Still, the Shrike dove out of the night skies and continued to fire in that direction, apparently not yet satisfied with the level of
destruction.
But how long until it turns its attention this way?
Tucker pushed that thought out of his head and concentrated on swimming toward a sandbar fifty yards to his left. The others matched his pace. With every stroke, Tucker expected the Shrike to come skimming across the water, its cannons blazing in the dark.
But the distraction of the boat’s flight and crash bought them the two minutes necessary to reach the sandbar’s shallows. Tucker stood up and helped Jane to her feet. They trudged through the knee-deep water. Twenty feet to the right rose a wall of palm trees and brush.
Tucker pointed Kane in that direction. “COVER.”
The waterlogged dog sprinted toward the trees, with Tucker and Jane chasing behind. The trio ducked into the undergrowth. Once a safe distance into the jungle, Tucker ordered them to drop flat. He rolled to Kane and gestured for the dog to crawl back to the edge of the tree line. He wanted to use the dog’s night-vision camera to spy on the cove.
As his four-legged partner moved into position, he turned to Jane, who panted beside him. With his eyes adjusted to the dark, he noted a trickle of blood running from her scalp across her right cheek. Until now, the seawater had been keeping her face washed clean.
“You’re hurt,” he said.
She fingered the wound. “Burns like a mother. Clipped my head on the edge of the boat after bailing out.”
She was lucky she hadn’t run afoul of the boat’s propeller.
Concerned, he risked pulling out his penlight. Shielding the brightness, he checked her wound, then her pupils. One seemed less responsive.
He doused the light. “Are you feeling nauseous?”
“Can’t say I’m feeling great,” she said, trying to pass off her words as a joke.
“You might have a slight concussion.”
“Better that,” she mumbled, “than floating facedown in the Caribbean Sea.”
Let’s hope it doesn’t still come to that.
He huddled over his satellite phone and pulled up Kane’s feed. Jane shifted closer to see. Shoulder to shoulder, they watched Kane sink low in the underbrush at the edge of the beach. The camera’s view showed the curve of the palm-lined beach. Twenty feet from the waterline lay the remains of the runabout. The violent grounding had all but shredded the craft. A debris-strewn rut in the sand marked the runabout’s path, ending at the capsized bow section.
War Hawk: A Tucker Wayne Novel Page 26