Red Shark

“Scott’s probably got his hands full. Think we can raise him?”

“We can try, sir.”

“Do it. We may have to fuck with that Chinaman, and Scott had better know.”

Bent low, Scott sprinted up the steps cut into the bluff. A few lights still burned in the villa, but it was mostly dark. He stayed low and moved up slowly, step by step, wondering if he was a moving target for an unseen shooter looking down from the veranda. He stopped briefly to scan the bluff face looming above him through NV goggles but saw nothing alive.

He started up again but stopped cold when something alive moved, something he sensed more than saw. He dropped to his haunches and saw a man armed with an AK-47 materialize from the mounds of sharp rock and loose brush bordering the steps. Scott didn’t hesitate; he drew his silenced Sig Saur, aimed, and fired twice. Both hits sent the man reeling, crashing against the bluff’s jagged rock face, his weapon clattering into the boulders.

Scott, blood pounding in his ears, leg muscles trembling, forced himself to move now, so he wouldn’t become a target for another hidden shooter. Eyes scanning left and right, he sprinted up the narrow switchback of steps. He stopped to catch his breath each time he came to a landing, expecting any moment to feel a 7.62mm round’s white-hot punch.

He moved out again but missed a step, stumbled, crashed a shoulder against stone, got up, and, legs pumping, breath exploding from his lungs, climbed higher. As he approached the summit of the bluff just below the veranda, he heard a woman scream something unintelligible. Her scream was followed by the deafening staccato of automatic weapons fire coming from the veranda.

“Up! Move!” Scott growled. Jefferson and the SEALs were engaging Fat’s men from positions on the road behind the villa and had run into a firestorm unleashed from the veranda.

He heard long bursts of gunfire — the drug-traffickers unloading whole magazines at the SEALs, the SEALs firing back with short controlled bursts. In between he heard the thud of a heavy machine gun and distinctive crack of Russian PKs. Tracers whipped across the black sky and through palm tree tops; rounds smacked off the villa’s masonry, splintering wood door frames and piercing windows.

Scott crouched behind the wall around the veranda. He made certain his footing was solid, then peeked over the top of the wall at six black-clad figures aiming weapons over the edge of the opposite wall, slamming rounds down onto the SEALs fighting their way up the road. He felt the weapons’ heat on his face and hands as they spit bullets.

Scott ducked behind the wall and caught his breath. He felt inside a bag hung on his H-gear and palmed a fragmentation grenade. He took a deep breath, pulled the pin, and, with a roundhouse swing, hooked the grenade into the mob of shooters before he ducked down behind the wall.

An instant later he felt the concussion and felt a searing blast of heat roll over the top of the wall. He heard a muted cry, and after he confirmed that the shooters were all down he vaulted the wall, one-handing the M4.

The grenade had blown the shooters to pieces, scattering shredded gristle and white bone. He moved toward them cautiously, stepping on piles of spent brass cartridge cases and floor tiles slick with blood. The shooters, two of them women, were dead.

“You’re clear up top,” Scott said shakily over the squad line, after assessing the carnage.

A heavy whomp and another blast of heat forced Scott to duck behind the wall as a white fireball erupted behind the villa. A white phosphorus grenade fired by one of the SEALs had destroyed a guard tower from which a steady rain of machine gun fire had stalled their advance. He raised his head to look and saw screaming, burning figures trapped in the tower, silhouetted against the flare of searing phosphorus.

Scott’s ear mike hissed. Jefferson’s voice came out edgy and with a rush, “Copy that, Scott. Thanks. Still got our hands full!”