Chapter Eighteen
2:13 a.m.
Trinity Sands Resort
Cabana 47
Lanie was right, the wounded civilians mostly had superficial injuries. No bullet wounds. All cuts, sprains, and one woman with a dislocated arm. Jesse couldn’t leave her like that, but popping her arm back into place did him in. He could no longer ignore his own pain and limped outside. He needed air or he was going to pass out. Unfortunately, the earlier breeze had died away and the air was oppressively muggy.
Jesse sank down on the cabana’s narrow porch and leaned back against its stucco wall. About twenty feet away, Lanie and the guys stood together and seemed to be making plans. He knew he should get up and find out their next move, but he didn’t have the energy for it at the moment.
Lanie spotted him and broke away from the group. She walked over and knelt beside him. “How you doing, cowboy?”
Nothing was broken—his ankle had only suffered a bad sprain—but he still felt like a horse had trampled him. No, not just one horse. The whole fucking Kentucky Derby. “I’m okay.”
“Uh-huh.” Doubt hung heavy in her tone. She nodded toward the boots he still hadn’t taken off. He was afraid he’d not be able to get them back on if he did. “Bet your ankle is swollen up like a balloon. Have you taken anything for the pain yet?”
“No.” He ground his teeth. Part of him hated that she knew him well enough to see through his bullshit. Another part of him, the foolish heart that always led him into trouble, fell a little bit more in love with her for her concern.
She shook her head and stood. “I’ll get you something.”
She came back a few minutes later with aspirin, a bottle of the hotel’s water, and his cell phone. She shook out some pills and handed them over, then the water. She only gave him his phone after he’d finished the tiny bottle.
The screen showed a missed call and voicemail from a number he didn’t recognize. He accessed his voicemail and sagged with relief as he listened. It was good to hear Jean-Luc’s voice. At least the Cajun wasn’t dead somewhere in the hotel. And Connor was safe, thank Christ.
He called back, and Jean-Luc picked up immediately. “Please tell me you have a plan, mon ami.”
“We’re workin’ on it.”
“Work faster,” Jean-Luc said. “I’m not looking to relive the Alamo here with a handful of civilians and a bunch of half-trained kids.”
“It’s not goin’ to be the Alamo.” At least, he hoped not. “According to Marcus and Danny, the hostage takers seemed to be lookin’ for somethin’. Once they realize it’s not here—”
“Not something. Someone. They want Claire.”
Claire. He’d forgotten about her. He hadn’t seen her inside among the wounded, and a quick scan proved she wasn’t out here, either. He covered the receiver and asked Lanie, “Where’s Claire?”
Lanie shrugged. “The cabana was empty when Marcus and Danny got here with the wounded.”
Well, shit. “Claire’s gone,” he told Jean-Luc. “She took off when Lanie and I were at the hotel.”
“Ça c’est bon. I told her to get away.” There was some shuffling, and a door opened. Jean-Luc grunted softly like he was in pain. “But they’re also looking for her business partner, Tiffany. Don’t know a last name. We have her. She’s our critically wounded civilian. Looks like she was shot. I’m not sure what to do for her, mon ami.”
More wounded. Jesse glanced behind him at the injured people he hadn’t yet treated. There were so many that they spilled out of the cabana and onto the beach. Lanie had moved off to offer them bottles of water. She must have felt his gaze because she straightened away from a woman with a hastily bandaged head and glanced toward him, concern pulling her brows together. His instinct screamed to go to her, wrap her up in his arms, and tell her everyone would be all right. That he’d be all right. It was a ridiculous urge. Knowing her, she’d probably sock him in the gut and tell him to get back to work.
He didn’t know why, but that thought steadied him. “Okay, Cajun, are you with the patient now?”
“Oui.”
“You need to find the wound, tell me where it is and what it looks like. Even better, can we switch to video?” He waited a moment, but the only response he got was a dull thud from somewhere on the other end of the line. “Jean-Luc?”
More scrambling, cursing, a lot of voices talking over each other. His heart kicked. “Hey, pal. Talk to me. What’s goin’ on in there?”
“Dad?” Connor’s voice sounded tiny and frightened. It threw him back a decade to the time Connor thought he could slay any monster, including the one under the bed.
He straightened away from the wall and pushed to his feet, ignoring the pain in his ankle. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m here, Connor. What happened? Where’s Jean-Luc?”
“He passed out. I-I think he’s hurt.”
Jesus. Two wounded. “Is he breathing? Does he have a pulse?”
“Y-yes. His face is really white, Dad.”
He shuddered at the fear in his son’s voice, but somehow managed to keep his own calm. “What about the woman?”
“She’s awake. Kinda. She’s moaning and mumbling something about Wonder Woman. I-I think she’s in pain.”
“All right. All right. You’re doing great, Con. If the woman doesn’t appear to be in immediate danger, let me see Jean-Luc first.” Triaging patients when he couldn’t see them was a hard call to make, but everyone there was fucked if Jean-Luc died. He was the only one there with real combat experience.
Connor switched on the camera and he caught a fleeting glimpse of his son’s stricken face before the lens turned toward Jean-Luc. The big guy was on his side next to the injured woman, his face white, his T-shirt soaked through with blood. “Okay, Connor. Can you hear me? He’s losing blood. That’s why he passed out. You need to find the wound and put pressure on it to stop the bleeding.”
Another set of hands appeared in the frame, small and feminine with a fresh, shiny coat of black polish on the nails. They had to belong to the sole female recruit, the computer girl, Sami. She helped Connor search Jean-Luc until they found the source of the blood. The crazy bastard had been shot.
For a second, Jesse froze. He was back hanging from the terrace, flinching as the gun went off, falling…
And then farther back, stuck in that snowy airfield in Eastern Europe, Gabe’s blood soaking through his gloves as he tried to curtail the bleeding.
So much blood…
“Dad!” Connor appeared on the screen, his voice cracking with fear. “What do we do?”
The sight of Connor’s pale face and too-wide eyes brought him back to the here and now. He swallowed to ease the tightness in his throat. “Let me see the wound.”
Again the camera moved. Sami pulled Jean-Luc’s shirt aside, revealing an ugly tear in the skin and muscle of the left side of his stomach. It bubbled blood every time Jean-Luc’s stomach moved with his exhale.
“Okay. Connor? It looks bad, but as far as I can tell, the bullet just skimmed the surface. It’s not inside him, okay? Biggest concern—and the reason he passed out—is blood loss. Put pressure on it to stop the bleedin’, and then bandage it with a clean towel.” As he spoke, the camera moved. He caught glimpses of the other recruits standing around, looking shell-shocked. They were all so young and green. None of these kids had seen combat beyond the simulated stuff they’d gone through at the training facility. That had been by design because they hadn’t wanted another case like Seth, who still struggled with PTSD, or Quinn, who had hidden his traumatic brain injury until he couldn’t any longer. Recruiting from outside the military had seemed like a good idea at the time, but these kids were nowhere near ready for this.
For chrissakes, they hadn’t even begun using live ammo in their training yet.
Connor gathered towels from the bathroom and hurried back to Jean-Luc’s side. The bleeding slowed almost as soon as Connor put pressure on the wound, which was promising.
“That’s it,” Jesse coaxed. “That’s it. Now keep an eye on him, and if he doesn’t wake up…” Then Jean-Luc was in serious trouble because it probably meant internal hemorrhaging, but he didn’t want to scare his son with the worst-case scenario. “Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Let me see the woman now.”
And they went through it all again, Jesse talking them through. The woman, Tiffany, had also been shot. The entry wound was a neat little hole just below her diaphragm, and there was a lot of bruising across her upper stomach, which could mean internal bleeding. She was not in good shape.
He needed to get her out of that hotel, ASAP.
He caught Lanie’s gaze again and signaled for everyone to come over. He didn’t want Connor or the others to overhear, but as he lowered the phone, Connor panicked.
“Dad! Dad, are you there? Please, don’t leave us alone.”
He put the phone back in front of his face. “Hey. I’m not hangin’ up. You hear me? I won’t leave you, but I need to talk to Lanie and the guys. I’ll be right back.”
“What’s going on?” Lanie asked as she reached him. Ian, Seth, Marcus, and Danny were right behind her.
He muffled the phone with his hand. “Jean-Luc’s been shot. We need to get in there.”
“A frontal assault is suicide,” Ian said, typical scowl firmly in place. “Didn’t we learn that lesson already?”
“He’s right,” Seth agreed. “We only have a vague idea of how many hostage takers and no idea how many hostages. We don’t know what kind of weaponry they have or even where in the building they are. We’d be going in blind.”
“Then we need eyes,” Lanie said. Everyone turned to look at her, but she was staring down at Tank, who sat faithfully by Ian’s side. All gazes shifted to the dog. He thumped his tail, happy at the attention.
Ian’s entire body tensed. “What are you thinking?”
…
Nobody had liked her plan.
“No,” Jesse and Ian had said simultaneously when she’d laid it out for them. It was probably the first time the two men had ever agreed on anything. Unfortunately for them, nobody came up with a better idea. Besides, it was hard to argue with solid logic. The Tangos hadn’t seen her with the guys, and weren’t going to bother with a woman walking her dog down the beach, which gave her plenty of opportunity to recon.
So here she was, walking barefoot in the sand like she hadn’t a care in the world, Tank trotting by her side, his favorite ball in his mouth. When Ian had given her the ball, he hadn’t wanted to let it go at first, as if his fingers were glued to the thing. Tank had watched them with rapt attention, eyes wide and ears perked.
She’d covered his hand with her own. “I’ll take good care of him. I promise.”
“Please,” Ian’s voice had been barely above a whisper. “He’s all I have.”
She’d be lying if she said he hadn’t broken her heart a little with those words. Ian was a mystery to her—insular and stand-offish—but there was no denying he loved his dog.
She gazed down at Tank now. To think that only a couple years ago he’d been an abandoned dog in Afghanistan. He looked like the Belgian Malinois often used in police K9 units. He was obviously a mix—he was too lanky and his coat was too fluffy to be a pure bred—but he had the black erect ears and black mask customary of the breed. His tongue lolled out the side of his mouth around the giant red ball and he trotted along like a regular dog excited to be out on a walk. He appeared to be everything his master wasn’t—friendly, sweet, lovable—but she’d seen him in training and he possessed the same deadly intensity that made Ian so dangerous.
With the ocean breathing softly to her left, the moon a sliver crescent in a star-spangled sky, and the barest hint of dawn lightening the eastern horizon, it was a gorgeous night, but she couldn’t appreciate it. Any second now, the tangle of palm trees to her right would give way to the manicured resort grounds, and then she’d be exposed.
And there was the hotel, the restored plantation a glittering jewel among the palms. Every light gleamed inside the massive four-story house, but the terraces, and the surrounding grounds were now deserted. It gave the place a weird ghost town feeling, like if she stepped in the wrong place she’d disturb the long-dead slaves that used to work the sugarcane fields here.
A bead of sweat that had nothing to do with the muggy night trickled between her breasts. She’d changed back into her bikini and a pair of shorts to help cement the idea that she was just a local woman taking her dog for a pre-dawn stroll on the beach, but the lack of clothing made her feel even more exposed.
This was a shitty idea.
But it was all they had.
“Tank.”
He looked up at her, ears cocked.
She held out a hand. “Ball.”
He obediently dropped it into her palm and she gave him the hand signal to sit. Ian had run through some basic commands with her before they left, like “sit,” “stay,” “attack,” and how to call him off. Sure enough, at her raised fist, Tank’s butt dropped to the sand. His eyes stayed glued to the ball.
She tossed it into the water. Tank’s butt wiggled with excitement, but he didn’t move until she gave him the signal. He bounded after it, splashing through the surf, having the time of his life in the waves. After a few minutes, he brought it back and dropped it at her feet. They continued like that for a while—relaxed, unhurried, giving the impression to anyone watching that they were no threat. All the while, she watched the hotel. She saw movement on the bottom floor in the lobby. She’d need to see who was Tango and who was hostage, but she didn’t imagine the hostages were doing much moving. The second and third floors were lit up, but silent, the French doors along the galleries smashed and ripped open. She glanced up at the fourth floor where Jean-Luc and the recruits had barricaded themselves. The old plantation house had been built like a wedding cake, with wide galleries rimming the first, second, and third floors. The top floor was the smallest with no gallery, which worked to Jean-Luc’s advantage. He only had to defend the floor from an interior attack and not worry about the bad guys coming in through unsecured French doors. Really, the building’s architecture was probably the only reason he and the recruits weren’t also hostages at the moment.
She again tossed the ball for Tank and laughed when he ran face-first into a wave. He came up sneezing. Silly dog.
She returned her attention to the building and told her heart to calm the fuck down. If it beat any harder, it was going to give her away. Again, there was movement on the first floor. She lifted her small field binoculars, and wished she had NVGs instead. She couldn’t see anything. Too far away. She had to get closer.
The next time Tank brought her the ball, she tossed it along the beach and began a nice, easy stroll after him as he chased it. Just a local woman and her dog out for a walk. Nothing more.
Now she had a view inside the large window in the lobby. Not a great view, but it didn’t matter. Even from a distance, she recognized the big man the Tangos were moving across the lobby toward the front desk. He was limping.
Gabe.
Oh God. He was alive. Jesse had said he’d been shot at, but he seemed well enough. She squashed down the rush of relief that made her knees want to buckle. There would be time for that later.
She watched in horror as one Tango—the guy who seemed to be in charge of the group—jumped down from his seat on the desk and pointed a gun at Gabe’s head. Her heart seized. For a second, everything stopped working. Heart, lungs, brain. She just froze, cold to the bone with terror.
She’d been in that snowy airfield in Ukraine, sitting helplessly by while Jesse worked to save Gabe’s life. She’d watched the man’s blood leak into the snow, stain the ground pink. And although she hadn’t known him well at the time, she’d been terrified that she was witnessing his last moments.
Now…
God, she didn’t want to go through that all again. She knew Gabe now. Knew he threw his head back when he laughed, and how the sound boomed through a room. Knew that despite his tendency to be a hard-ass, his wife Audrey somehow always managed to make him laugh that huge laugh every day. She was also one of the only people to know Gabe and Audrey were starting a family—in, like, nine months. She and Mara had been crammed into the bathroom with Audrey when the pregnancy test gave a positive response last week. She had no idea if Gabe even knew yet. Audrey had said she wanted to wait until after the training mission to tell him.
Lanie forced herself to take a breath and move. She gave Tank the stay signal and ran toward the hotel, thankful she was barefoot. She made no sound as she approached the building, hopped the pool gate, and faded into the shadows of the empty poolside bar. Now she wished she hadn’t put her bright red bikini back on. It wasn’t exactly the most inconspicuous piece of clothing for recon work. In fact, it made her a target.
Drawing in a steading breath, she forged ahead, keeping to the deep shadows cast by the building until she made it to the edge of the lobby window. She couldn’t hear anything, the voices inside too muffled by glass, but she now had a very clear view of what was happening. She took out her phone, made sure it was silenced and the flash was off, then started snapping photos.
She counted nine men with guns, some masked, some not. The leader was unmasked and seemed not to care if anyone saw him. He was tall and average looking, his dark hair sprinkled with gray. Good-looking, but not in any sort of memorable way. She wouldn’t have thought twice about him had she met him on a street. He currently had one hell of a black eye that shadowed his cheek with deep splotches of purple.
He still held the gun to Gabe’s head.
They appeared to be having an intense conversation, but Gabe was calm, which helped steady her heart and her hand. She took several pictures of the leader. If she could get a clear enough photo, Tuc would be able to ID him. At least then they’d have some idea of whom they were dealing with.
She shifted to get a better look at the hostages huddled together near the water fountain. Couldn’t get an exact headcount—the cascading water obscured her view—but she guessed at least twenty civilians, plus Gabe, Quinn, and Harvard. The civilians weren’t tied up, but Quinn and Harvard were. So was Gabe. The Tangos obviously knew who the dangerous ones were in the group. Made her wonder what else they knew about HORNET. She took a picture.
A body lay face-up on the floor close to Gabe and the leader, eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling from a wax-pale face. Blood streaked the shiny floor all around him. Too much for just one body. She took a picture.
Way to go, Jean-Luc.
Sometimes she forgot the Cajun wasn’t all jokes all the time. He was deadly as hell when the situation called for it.
The leader was getting frustrated. He shoved Gabe’s shoulder with the tip of the gun. Gabe’s calm expression didn’t change. The leader gestured toward the body and appeared to ask a question. Gabe said nothing. Just stared straight ahead, unblinking. Leader motioned with his gun and two of the masked men dragged Quinn and Harvard to their feet, pointed guns at their heads. Leader asked his question again, but Gabe’s blank facade didn’t crack. No wonder his nickname in the SEALs had been Stonewall.
The leader nodded at his men.
Dear God. They were going to shoot. Quinn, who had a daughter and pregnant fiancée at home. Harvard, who had just turned twenty-five. Hell, he was practically still a kid. Neither of them deserved to die here in a wrong time, wrong place kind of situation. It seemed undignified somehow. An insult to the warriors they were. If any of them were going to die, it should be in a blaze of glory, trying to save the world.
She didn’t think. Just acted. She stepped out of the shadows into the pool of light spilling from the window and pounded her hands against the glass.
She clearly heard one of the Tangos say, “What the fuck?” But she didn’t stick around to see what else they said. She spun and sprinted toward the beach, praying they’d give chase. And they did. She heard feet pounding the concrete behind her and put on a burst of speed as a bullet zipped by and struck the sand a few feet in front of her. She stepped on it and it burned her foot, but she ignored the pain and kept going. Up ahead, she saw Tank pacing anxiously in the spot she’d told him to stay. His lips pulled off his teeth in a vicious snarl, more like Cujo than the silly dog with his big red ball.
Another bullet struck the sand too close to her feet, startling her. She stumbled and went down on her hands and knees. She couldn’t hear the men’s footfalls behind her anymore and a glance back showed her why. The two men had reached the beach, and were fast closing the distance between them.
“Tank!”
He stilled, his lean body going taut, muscles quivering. A nocked arrow ready to fly. She gave him the attack hand signal just as the first man reached her. Tank lunged, hitting the man with audible force, his teeth tearing into flesh. The man dropped his gun like his arm had gone numb. Lanie scrambled across the sand, grabbed the gun, and whirled toward the second guy. Her police training was so ingrained she opened her mouth to warn him to drop the gun. Maybe they could end this without bloodshed—but, no, the jack-off was already raising his gun, aiming at Tank.
Yeah. Fuck that.
She pulled the trigger. The bullet hit the guy high in the center of his chest, just below his collarbone. He swayed on his feet for several seconds, blood bubbling from between his gasping lips. With the black mask on, obscuring all but his lips and his eyes, he looked particularly fish-like. Then his knees buckled and he went down.
Terrified for Tank, she spun toward him and raised the gun, but she didn’t need to be worried. He still had a death grip on the Tango’s upper arm, had dragged the guy down to the sand, and was now shaking his head violently back and forth, the man screaming the whole time. She grabbed her phone from where she’d dropped it in the sand and then scrambled over to the dead man and stripped him of every weapon he had. She couldn’t see leaving anything for the bad guys to find when HORNET was already seriously out-gunned.
“Tank.” She called him back with the hand motion Ian had showed her. He immediately released the bite and ran over to her. “Let’s go.”
She ran toward the beach, checking over her shoulder to make sure the surviving attacker wasn’t watching. He wasn’t. He hadn’t so much as lifted his head. He’d either passed out from the pain in his ruined arm or he was damn close to it. She scanned for other threats, but didn’t expect any, and sure enough, the grounds were clear. The Tango leader seemed like a smart enough guy. He had a limited supply of men—which, hallelujah, was awesome news for the good guys— and he wouldn’t risk sending more than two.
Still, that didn’t mean she was going to hang around any longer.
At the water’s edge, Tank scooped up his red ball and splashed into the surf. She called him to her. “Sorry, buddy. Now’s not the time to play.”
But he didn’t seem to mind. He was happy to gallop alongside her, his bloodstained tongue again lolling around the ball.
She had to get back to the cabana and let the guys know what she’d discovered. Yes, the situation looked grim, but it was not impossible. There had to be a way to rescue their guys and the hostages without anyone dying.
As she ran, the sand giving under her feet, the ocean breeze cooling the sweat on her bare skin, a thought occurred to her and she skidded to a halt.
The boat.
Cut off their escape route.
She dropped the dead man’s weapons into the sand and searched until—
Ah-ha. Grenade.
“Tank, stay.” She gave him the hand single and he sat, ball still in his mouth. She ran back in the direction she’d come, but kept going when she reached the main building. With how fast they had closed in on the resort, their boat had to be somewhere nearby.
And there it was, just around the next bend in the beach. Unguarded. Perfect. Grinning, she ran up to it, pulled the grenade’s pin, and let it fly. Just as she turned to take cover, she spotted two figures walking hand-in-hand toward the damn boat. She flung herself at the young couple, knocking them to the sand an instant before the explosion rocked the beach.
The woman shrieked. The man shook his head like he couldn’t understand what was happening. They both had shiny new rings on their fingers. Honeymooners.
Lanie pulled them both upright and looked the man square in the face. “Get your wife out of here. The hotel is under attack. Leave. Don’t pack and don’t go anywhere near the main building. Just get as far away from the resort as you can.”
“W-what?” he stuttered. He stared at the flaming debris from the boat, and her words finally registered. He grabbed his wife’s hand and pulled her to her feet.
Lanie watched until they were out of sight, then inspected her handiwork. Yeah, that boat wasn’t going anywhere on the water.
The bad guys were now stuck on this island, just like HORNET.