Читать книгу Scorpion Strike - John Gilstrap - Страница 12

CHAPTER 6

“WAIT. STOP,” JONATHAN SAID. HE RAISED HIS HAND TO BRING them to a halt. The moonlight lit their trek well enough to keep them from running into trees or falling off a cliff. “Is that a motor?” They’d been following a rough trail, and since their first steps on it, he’d been worried about encountering vehicles.

The others stopped. “Is what a motor?” Hunter asked.

“Shh.” In the distance, beyond their field of view, Jonathan could make out the whine of an electric motor.

“I know that sound,” Gail whispered. “It sounds like a golf cart.”

“One of those golf cart taxis they used to take us to our room on the first day.” It was nice to hear Lori speaking for the Edwards family now.

“They’re coming to get us,” Hunter said. He headed for the jungle to the left. “We need to get out of sight.”

“Okay, Gunslinger, what say you?” Jonathan used the alias that Gail had disliked for years, but couldn’t shake because it was such an apt description of her talents.

“I think it might be nice to have wheels,” she said.

“See?” Jonathan said, flashing a smile. “I knew this trip would bring us closer together.”

The sound of the motor was getting closer. From around the curve, a brief flash of white light illuminated the path, and then went out. Whoever the driver was, he didn’t want to use his headlights.

“How do you want to do this?” Gail asked.

“We’ll flank the road and hit him with white light as soon as we see him. Frankly, I think it’s one of us—an escaping good guy.”

“If you’re wrong?”

“We’ll have a shoot-out.”

This was one of very few times that Jonathan had performed anything close to a hot operation without his lethal friend and fellow operator, Brian Van de Muelebroecke, aka Boxers. He would have liked the shoot-out line. As it was, Gail just took her place on the opposite side of the path without saying anything.

There was nothing special about the SureFire light clamped to the muzzle of his M4—just a white light with about a bajillion lumens. To get nailed in the eyes with bright white—

The cart turned the corner into view.

Jonathan brought his M4 to his shoulder and his thumb found the rubber button on the back end of the light. Both his and Gail’s lights erupted at the same time, and night became day times two. In the initial two seconds, Jonathan noticed two things. One, the driver wasn’t armed. Two, the driver was a kid. A teenager.

The driver let out a startled yelp and steered the golf cart into the ferns and bushes that lined the path. “Don’t shoot!” he yelled. “Please don’t shoot!”

Jonathan killed his light, and Gail redirected hers so it was no longer in the kid’s eyes.

The driver hopped off the cart and started to run into the jungle when his feet tangled and he face-planted. “Please don’t shoot. Please!”

“Hush!” Jonathan snapped. “We’re good guys. We’re escaping, too.” He spoke more loudly than he wanted to, but he had to break through the kid’s panic. He thought he actually recognized him. “Your name’s Taylor, right?”

The kid rose to his feet, but he didn’t approach. “Tyler,” he said. “Stratton. Tyler Stratton.”

“Your father works here, doesn’t he?” Gail asked.

Tyler’s head whipped around to Gail. Apparently, he hadn’t realized she was standing there. “Works here? Yeah, sort of, I suppose.”

“Owns the place, right?” Jonathan prompted.

Tyler cocked his head. “How did you know?”

“It’s not like you keep it a secret,” Jonathan said. “Is there any female between the ages of eighteen and thirty that you haven’t hit on with that as your lead-in?”

A smile bloomed on the kid’s face. “It works.” He pointed at their weapons gear. “Where did those come from?”

“Their former owners,” Jonathan said. “Where were you going in the cart?”

Tyler said nothing. He was gauging them.

“It’s not a hard question,” Jonathan said.

“Trust is hard to come by on a night like this,” Gail said. “We understand.”

Tyler still didn’t want to answer.

“Where were you going in the cart, Tyler?” Jonathan pressed.

From behind: “I guess this means it’s safe to come out?” Apparently, it had been too long since Hunter had heard the sound of his own voice.

Jonathan ignored the other man as he kept his eyes focused on Tyler.

“So, there are more of us?” Tyler said, noting the approach of the Edwardses. At least he said “us.” Jonathan took that as a good sign.

“I imagine there will be a few more, too,” Jonathan said. “People don’t like to be caged.”

“You don’t understand,” Tyler said. “They’ve separated kids from adults. If anyone tries to get away, not only will they shoot the one who’s running, but they’ll shoot the whole family.”

“Oh, my God,” Lori said.

Jonathan looked to Gail, who winced.

“That sounds like a bluff to me,” Hunter said.

“And to me, it sounds like a damned clever strategy,” Jonathan countered.

“We don’t need a smart enemy,” Gail said.

“Any clue what any of this is all about?” Jonathan asked Tyler.

“No. But if it has something to do with my stepfather, they’re gonna be pretty pissed. He’s not here.”

Jonathan waited for the rest.

“He’s over on the mainland. Some overnight business meeting that came up suddenly.”

Jonathan’s inner warning bell dinged. “What kind of business, and how suddenly?” As a rule, Jonathan didn’t believe in coincidences. When said coincidences happened in concert with bad events, he presumed them to be intentional acts.

“I have no idea,” Tyler said. “We don’t talk about business very much. Actually, we don’t talk about anything very much. We don’t talk about business at all.”

“You’re the owner’s kid!” Hunter exclaimed.

Welcome to the show, Jonathan didn’t say.

“How did you get away?” Gail asked.

“I slipped out when they weren’t looking,” Tyler said. “I know stuff that regular guests don’t know.”

“Like how to slip out when people aren’t looking,” Jonathan said, drawing a smile.

“I figured that once they figured out who I was, and where my stepfather isn’t, I’d wish I was somewhere else.”

“Weren’t you with a young lady?” Lori asked. Her voice was heavy with disdain.

“Annie,” he said.

“But didn’t I hear you say that if one part of a couple ran away—”

“The others would be killed, yeah.”

Tyler’s words sort of sucked the air out of the jungle for a second or two.

“Look,” he said, “I’m not proud that I left, okay? I asked her to come with me. Begged her, but she wanted to stay.”

Jonathan cleared his throat. He got where the kid was coming from, but he wondered how he was going to feel about the decision later if something bad happened to his girlfriend.

“And besides, it’s not like we’re an actual couple,” Tyler pressed. “There’s no record of her being here, either. And even if they connect us, my last name is different than my stepfather’s. So, even if they puzzle out who I am, what are the chances they’ll figure out my relationship with her?”

“All it would take is for one of the other hostages to want a favor at her expense,” Hunter said.

“Moving along,” Jonathan said. “What’s done is done, and it’s not our job to judge you or anyone else. Chances are, this whole thing will take care of itself quickly, and there’ll be no more loss of life.” That last part was total bullshit. In fact, Jonathan fully expected this to get much, much worse before it even began to turn the corner.

He changed the subject. “You were going to tell us where you were going.”

* * *

When the kid talked about a shantytown, Jonathan had wondered if he knew what that meant. It was clear that he did. There were ten of them in all, constructed of tar paper and two-by-fours and arranged in parallel rows straddling the overgrown remains of what had once been a road. The structures had not aged well. Windows were mostly broken, and relentless water and humidity had inflicted brutal damage to the roofs and floors in particular.

“Are you sure it’s safe to use a flashlight here?” Hunter asked. “Aren’t we going to attract attention?”

“It’s a big jungle,” Jonathan said, “and we’re on the other side of the mountain. There are no guarantees, but rest assured that if I thought it was a bad idea, I wouldn’t do it.”

“How long ago were these abandoned?” Gail asked.

“At least twelve, maybe fifteen years,” Tyler said. He pointed to the shack that was farthest down on the right. “That last one down there isn’t in too bad shape. Me and a buddy sort of keep it up. We don’t have glass for the windows, but there’s that roll-up plastic stuff for the bad storms. We cover the windows when we’re not here, and the roof is in pretty good shape.”

Lori cleared her throat. “Are the outhouses . . .”

“They work, and we even have toilet paper,” Tyler said, earning a smile from Lori. “But this is still the jungle. I wouldn’t sit without checking first.”

“Thanks for the safety tip,” Gail said.

Jonathan held up his hand, a signal for all of them to stop. “Do you smell anything?” he asked Gail.

She sniffed the air. “Weed?”

“That’s what I got.” Jonathan thumbed the safety switch to FIRE and brought the M4 to his shoulder. “Y’all stay here,” he said. Maybe the bright white light hadn’t been a good idea, after all.

“Wait!” Tyler said, racing ahead. “Jaime, is that you?” he whisper-shouted.

“Who the hell is Jaime?” Hunter asked.

“Dude, if you’re there hiding, step out. It’s me. It’s Ty.”

“Hold where you are,” Jonathan said. “I don’t know who Jaime is, but if that’s not—”

“It’s him,” Tyler insisted. “I know it is.”

“Stop, goddammit!” Jonathan shouted. No whisper to it. “Jaime, if that’s you and you’re hiding, this is the only chance you will have to present yourself.” He opened his muzzle light to its widest aperture and lit up nearly the whole structure.

From somewhere up ahead, a shaky voice said, “Don’t shoot. Please don’t shoot.”

“We’re getting that request a lot tonight,” Jonathan said just loudly enough for Gail to hear.

Tyler turned to face Jonathan and waved both his hands. “That’s his voice,” he said. “That’s Jaime Bonilla. He’s the maintenance guy here.” Then he turned and hurried to the door of the tar paper shanty and pulled it open.

A dark-skinned man dressed in flowered shorts and a wifebeater lunged from the opening and tackled Tyler to the ground.

Jonathan tracked them with his muzzle, but couldn’t get a clear target through the tangle of flailing limbs.

“Jaime! Jaime!” Tyler yelled. “It’s me. What are you doing?”

Jonathan let his rifle fall against its sling and he waded into the fight. It was really more of a schoolyard flail fest, the kind of struggle where both players were guaranteed to escape with only a few bruises. The kind of fight you saw among people who didn’t know how to fight.

Jonathan found a shirt collar, closed his fist around it, and pulled. The fabric pulled then tore, but it held enough to peel Jaime out of the scrum and onto his feet. Barely older than Tyler, he weighed maybe 125 pounds, and he was still flailing. He spun to flail on Jonathan, but whatever he saw convinced him in an instant that throwing that punch would be a bad idea.

Jaime pulled away. “Who are you? What the hell is going on?”

“Settle down, son,” Jonathan said. “We’re in the same boat as you. No clue what’s happening, and just trying to stay alive. Now, are you going to settle down, or are we going to have an issue?”

Jaime looked to Tyler. “Sorry, bro. I thought . . . oh, hell, I don’t know what I thought. Did I hurt you?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“What’s going on down there?” Jaime asked. “I heard all this shooting, and then there was screaming. I mean, what the hell?”

“Terrorists.” Tyler took the better part of a minute to catch his friend up.

As they chatted, Jonathan poked Gail’s arm, and motioned for her to join him, away from the others. Together, they swept the structures in a search for bad guys, but neither was surprised that the shacks were empty.

“We can’t win this fight,” Gail said. “Not if it comes to shooting. Even if we got rifles for every one of them—”

“Yeah, I know,” Jonathan agreed. “Whoever these terrorists are, they seem to have skills. That’s concerning.”

“Right,” Gail said with a chuckle. “That’s exactly the word I was going to use.”

“You were able to snag our cell phones on the way out of the room, right?”

“They’re in my backpack.”

“Okay, it’s time to wake some people up.”

Gail unslung the backpack and was able to reach directly to the phones. “You calling Mother Hen?”

Jonathan took his phone and pushed the button to bring it to life. “Yup. We need reinforcements.”