by Mark Allen
Kane: Tooth & Nail
(Fear The Reaper 1)
Mark Allen
Contents
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Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
If you Liked Kane: Tooth & Nail, you might enjoy The Termination Protocol (Scott Stiletto Book 1)
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About the Author
Based on characters by Brent Towns.
Kane: Tooth & Nail is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Kindle Edition
Copyright © 2019 Mark Allen
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Wolfpack Publishing, Las Vegas.
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Ebook ISBN 978-1-64119-682-6
Paperback ISBN 978-1-64119-683-3
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Kane: Tooth & Nail
Prologue
Ciudad Victoria, Mexico
Blood and bullets. Gunfire and guts. These days, it felt like that was all his life had become. War was hell, make no mistake.
Kane felt the weariness. He had begun to see the scars on his soul reflected in his eyes whenever he looked in the mirror. The price of being a warrior. Sometimes in order to protect the living, you started to feel dead inside. You brought it to the bastards, damn straight, but no matter how righteous the violence, it took its toll.
He lay prostrate on the roof of an abandoned church in a slum section of Ciudad Victoria, frequently rated as one of Mexico’s most dangerous cities. He was dressed in black to blend in with the shadows, although the moon overhead glowed brighter than he would have preferred due to a lack of cloud cover. For some reason, he craved a smoke, even though he hadn’t indulged in a cigarette in a long time.
Through a pair of night-vision binoculars, he studied the dilapidated warehouse across the way, surrounded by a fissured, weed-sprouting parking lot. He judged the distance from the church to the warehouse to be approximately three hundred meters—far enough away so he wouldn’t be detected when the targets rolled in, close enough that he could close the gap quickly and crush them like human cockroaches. Because unless things took a pooch-screw turn and forced him to use a long-range option, this strike would be a close-quarters affair.
Kane glanced at the large cross that stabbed into the night sky from the top of the church’s bell tower. Plotting bloodshed in the shadow of a holy place might have given some men pause, but Kane wasn’t particularly religious. He had survived so long on the killing fields that it was easy to think his mission in life—to serve gunfire justice to the cartels—was divinely sanctioned. The reality was, he didn’t give it much thought. He fought his wars for his own reasons, not because he believed them to be blessed by some higher power.
Clouds wisped across the face of the moon as Kane went over the mission parameters in his head for at least the hundredth time. Right now, the night was still and peaceful, but soon, it This strike was a solo assignment, undertaken at the personal—and private—request of Hank Jones, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. His nine-year-old goddaughter Kristina—Krissy, he called her—had been abducted just outside a resort in Mexico while on a family vacation.
Kane remembered thinking the bastards who took her would have been better off slathering themselves in salmon guts and bitch-slapping a hungry grizzly bear.
“I want them dead,” Jones had said. “You hear me, Reaper? Not wounded, not in prison—dead. Get Krissy back, and kill every son of a bitch who had a hand in taking her.”
“Understood. Does General Thurston know?”
“We can tell her when it’s over. Right now, nobody knows but you and me, Reaper. Promise me you’ll keep it that way.”
Kane had promised. The reason remained unspoken between them, but he knew why Jones had sent him in alone, without the team’s knowledge. This was an assassination, and while Team Reaper had gunned down hundreds of bad guys during their missions, they were not considered a kill squad. Even by nebulous black ops standards, specifically targeting foreign citizens for termination was dirty work. Kane had been asked to get his hands dirty but keep his team clean. He had agreed without hesitation.
He also knew Jones trusted him to pull the trigger when the moment came.
Using all the considerable sources available to him as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Jones had identified the abductors as child pornographers, bottom-feeders in the Zeta cartel, which specialized in kiddie snuff films. Just the thought made Kane’s blood boil. The scumbags used various warehouses and out-of-the-way places to kill the kids while the camera rolled. No grainy film reels either; this was high-end slaughter, the carnage in crystal-clear 4K.
The sleaze merchants generally operated as a seven-man team: five men providing site security, one camera operator, and one sick son of a bitch—Ignacio “Igniter” Alvarez, whose calling card was murder by immolation—to commit the abuse and killing.
Not tonight, Kane vowed. Tonight, he would be the only one doing any killing.
A team of seven was child’s play for a seasoned warrior like Kane. Tonight, they would come to the warehouse, unaware that the darkness concealed a predator far more deadly than they. They would come, he would hunt them down, and they would die. No prisoners, just the way Jones wanted it. The kind of filth capable of committing horrific acts on innocent children did not deserve to keep sucking God’s good air.
While Kane waited, he checked the SIG-Sauer M17 riding in a low-slung holster on his right thigh. The twenty-one round magazine was loaded to max capacity, and a cartridge bristled in the chamber. A suppressor threaded onto the muzzle ensured that no loud gunshot would be heard during this strike.
Still and silent, he felt the adrenalin pulsing in his bloodstream but kept it tightly leashed. He was about to charge into yet another snake pit and stare down the roaring throat of the evil hydra that would never truly die. More notches on his gun, more deaths on his soul, another bloody mile on the hard road he had chosen to ride. He was not haunted by all the killing he had done—everyone he had ghosted deserved it—but he did feel the burden of the lives he had taken.
How long could he keep going? Was there any kind of future for him beyond the blood and thunder? What might life look like after the bullets and the bodies and blitzes? Or maybe there was no “after” for him. Maybe for a warrior like him, the gunfire wouldn’t die until he did.
Maybe the only way to survive on the killing fields without going insane was to forget the past, ignore the future, and just live for today.
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
He’d heard that scripture verse somewhere, and it seemed to apply. Especially since he was lying on top of a church
.
Headlights appeared on the potholed road that led to the warehouse. Seconds later, Kane heard the distant sound of the vehicle’s engine. He quickly raised the binoculars and studied the scene three hundred meters away, painted in shades of green by the night-vision optics.
A cargo van pulled up to the ruined building, and five goons packing Micro-Uzis exited and performed a quick sweep. It was sloppily executed, about as half-assed as you could get, but these guys weren’t pros, and they weren’t expecting any trouble out here in slum country, especially since the turf was under the control of the Zeta cartel.
Kane intended to teach them the error of their ways.
Four of the gunmen remained outside, while one cleared the warehouse. Unaware they were being surveilled from a distant rooftop, they judged the area safe. Three of the men let their Micro-Uzis dangle from shoulder straps as they fired up cigarettes. The non-smoker slapped the side of the van, and a moment later, the door slid open. A thin, bespectacled man climbed out, holding a video camera in one hand and a tripod in the other.
Even through the scope, Kane thought the man looked tired, as if he were weary of all the horrific carnage he had seen through his camera lens. Not that Kane had any sympathy for the videographer. Hell, no. But if the man was tired of filming kiddie snuff flicks, Kane would be happy to put him down for a permanent dirt nap with a 9mm sleeping pill.
As the cameraman lugged his equipment into the warehouse, another man, this one wearing a leather jacket and sporting a buzz cut, emerged from the van with a body draped over his shoulder. Kane recognized Alvarez from the photos Jones had provided. He also recognized Krissy. Her long brown hair hung down and swayed from side to side as she was carried to the warehouse. Judging from her closed eyes and the way her limbs dangled limply, she had been drugged for the trip. If he didn’t know better, Kane might have thought she was already dead, but there was no way they had killed her yet. They wouldn’t get to that bit of nastiness until the camera rolled.
The thought made Kane grind his teeth. Any harder, and he would crack enamel. He terminated targets out of a sense of duty, not pleasure, but he would be lying if he said he didn’t take some primal satisfaction in executing those who preyed on children. Predators who feasted on innocence deserved no mercy. Even if Jones hadn’t requested it, this would be a corpse party all the way.
Kane shinnied down to the ground and ghosted through the darkness, creeping along the edge of the church, ducking through a hole in the mesh-wire fence surrounding the warehouse, and moving silently toward his target.
As he closed on the warehouse, Kane drew a Ka-Bar combat knife from its sheath, filling his fist with deadly steel as he hugged the deep shadows on the south side.
He needed to eliminate the sentries as quietly as possible without warning the men inside the warehouse, and razor-edged steel was the best tool for the job. Even suppressed pistols made enough noise to alert the other guards, and Kane knew any raised alarm would result in Krissy’s immediate murder. He couldn’t risk it, so the only option was close-quarter kills. Instead of headshots, he would go for cut throats.
Kane closed on the first hoodlum easily. The man leaned against the wall of the warehouse and studied his cell phone. As Kane crept closer, he saw the guy busily flipping through photos of nude women posed with bright-colored vegetables. The last image the sentry would ever see was a curvy redhead licking a zucchini.
The photo disappeared beneath a hot, splattering torrent of blood as Kane slapped a hand over the man’s mouth and sliced his throat from ear to ear. His dying breath whooshed out of his severed windpipe.
Kane eased the convulsing corpse to the ground and wasted no time moving to intercept his next target. As he hugged the wall, he heard footsteps approaching the corner and the sound of someone whistling an out-of-tune rendition of Metallica’s Seek & Destroy. Kane almost smirked; the gods of war were whimsical tonight, dishing out warped irony.
The man stopped whistling as soon as he stepped around the corner because it was really hard to whistle with seven inches of steel buried in your esophagus. Kane twisted the blade and ripped it out sideways. The man staggered backward with blood spurting from his slashed carotid, then tripped over a broken cinderblock and went down flat on his back. He wouldn’t be getting back up.
Kane quickly made his way to the other side and finished off the other two sentries, leaving his knife coated in red right up to the hilt. He flicked the blood off the blade and shoved it back in its sheath. Three men still remained inside, but now it was time to go to guns.
Crack the front door, toss in a flashbang, double-tap the dirtbags, and rescue the kid. That was the plan. A simple hit-‘n-git. The lethal version of knock-knock.
Silent as a shadow, Kane drew his Sig and circled back around to the front of the warehouse. Two rickety metal steps led up to the door. Kane crept up the stairs, which threatened to buckle under his weight. When he reached the small landing at the top, he reached for a flashbang.
The door suddenly smashed open from inside, slamming into Kane’s chest and knocking him off the landing. As he fell, he saw the last of the guards standing in the doorway, silhouetted against the backlight, raising his Micro-Uzi. The machine-pistol spat flame in a sustained, staccato burst of high-velocity hornets. Snarling a curse, Kane hit the ground and rolled as bullets chased him, blasting divots from the sunbaked concrete.
Using his momentum, Kane powered into a combat crouch and triggered a shot from his SIG that split the sentry’s face wide open like a 9mm hatchet. Blood exploded everywhere as the guy fell back into the warehouse, heels drumming a death-rhythm on the floor.
Inside the shack, Krissy started to scream.
Kane stormed up the steps with the M17 leading the way. The night air cooled his skin, but beneath the surface, his blood burned hot. He kept his finger locked on the trigger, ready to unleash gunfire justice.
As he crossed the doorjamb, he saw the videographer cowering next to his tripod, the camera mounted and ready to roll. The guy looked like he was about to piss his pants. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead, the fly-speckled bulbs burning with enough wattage to chase the shadows out of every corner.
Someone had flopped a filthy mattress in the center of the large, open space. Iron shackles that looked like they belonged in a medieval dungeon adorned each end, secured to heavy bolts in the floor. A stainless steel table sat an arm’s reach away, littered with instruments of torture, including knives, pliers, axes, and a pair of blood-matted chainsaws with clumps of hair tangled in the metal teeth. Beneath the table was a five-gallon jug of gasoline.
Kane again vowed that nobody would leave this place alive except for him and Krissy. Scorched earth, take no prisoners, blow ‘em all to hell, and don’t look back.
Ignacio Alvarez stood on the mattress with Krissy in front of him. She was a waif and he was a big man, built like a luchador, so she wasn’t much of a shield, but the muzzle of the Glock he pressed behind her right ear made sure Kane kept his distance.
Kane aimed his Sig at the shivering camera operator and growled, “Let the girl go, or I’ll kill this son of a bitch.”
Alvarez shrugged. The Glock stayed tucked against Krissy’s mastoid bone. “Go ahead,” he said, his voice thick and accented. “That stupid cabron don’t mean mierda to me.”
“Have it your way.” Kane blasted a bullet into the videographer’s chest, drilling a hole in his heart. The impact smashed the sleazy filmmaker flat to the floor as if he’d been hit by a train.
Kane didn’t know if the man had killed any kids, nor did he care. If he sat there filming while children were raped and slaughtered, he was no better than the scumbags doing the dirty work. Bottom line, the bastard deserved the bullet.
Kane turned the Sig back on Alvarez. “Looks like you’re the last man standing.”
The Mexican sex-trafficker kept the Glock tight against Krissy’s head. “Now what, huh?” the man growled. “It’s just you, me, and this li
ttle puta.”
This wasn’t Kane’s first standoff. No point in dragging things out. “Let’s cut through the crap,” he said. “We put down our guns and settle this man to man.”
Alvarez snorted. “Do I look like estupido to you? Why the hell would I do that?”
“Because it’s your only chance of getting out of here alive.”
“You seem to have forgotten I’ve got the girl, gringo.”
“And you seem to have forgotten I can put a bullet in your head.”
“If you do, the bitch dies.”
“Maybe,” said Kane. “Maybe not. Sure, if I put one in your brain, it’s possible your finger still pulls the trigger, and Krissy dies. Call it fifty-fifty odds.”
Krissy whimpered at the announcement, and Alvarez smirked. “See, I knew you were bluffing.”
“But,” Kane continued, “if I let you walk out of here with Krissy, the odds are one hundred percent she dies. So unless you put down that Glock and go man to man with me, I’m going with the fifty-fifty odds and taking the shot.” Kane’s eyes glinted as cold and grim as the gunmetal in his fist. “Like I said, this is your only chance at walking out of here alive.”
Alvarez seemed to be kicking it around in his head. Kane imagined a mental pinball machine in there, the steel ball getting batted back and forth between options. He waited, knowing what the answer would be. The Mexican really didn’t have much choice, plus bloodlust burned brightly in his eyes. He wanted to go toe-to-toe with the man who had just wrecked his little empire. He was a predator, and predators fought back when wounded.