Mega #02 Baja Blood (8 page)

“WEAPONS DOWN! HANDS IN THE AIR!”

A SWAT team came running from the other side of the house the brothers faced, their rifles up and aimed at the two men.

“There’s still a shooter!” Max yelled as he set his pistol on the ground.

“I got the other one, thank you!” Shane shouted as he laid his rifle carefully on the grass.

“On your faces! Hands laced behind your heads!”

More shots rang out and the SWAT team turned their attention to the townhouses. They scrambled for cover, which was the shot up cruisers behind the Jeep, and all hit the deck.

“Told ya there was another shooter!” Max said.

“I said to get face down with hands behind your head!” the SWAT commander yelled. “Do it! NOW!”

“Asshole,” Max grumbled as he and Shane complied.

“I can take him out,” Shane said. “See the big gun I have? That’s called a sniper rifle. It shoots bad guys.”

“Shut up!”

“Fuck you!” Max said. “We’ll be here all day and there is a woman and her children that need our help!”

“I said shut up!”

“Fucking asshole,” Max said. He looked over at his brother. “What now?”

They both heard the squawking of radios and looked towards the SWAT team.

“State your names!”

“Max Reynolds!”

“Shane Reynolds!”

There was more radio noise. Then hushed voices followed by, “Take the shot.”

“Uh…what?” Shane replied.

“If you can take the shot then take the shot!”

“Cool,” Max smiled.

“I’ll need some cover,” Shane said.

Three SWAT members leaned out from the cruisers and started firing towards the townhouse. Shane took his opportunity, grabbed his rifle, rolled away from the Jeep and took aim.

The shooter wasn’t in the same window as the other one, but Shane quickly found him two windows down. The man ducked back as the SWAT members fired on him then leaned out quickly to return fire. He never got to duck back again as Shane took the shot.

Everyone waited for a couple minutes.

“Move in!” the SWAT commander ordered and the team rushed forward to the townhouses. “You two! Stay put!”

“Not moving an inch,” Shane said as he got to his knees, his rifle held above his head.

The SWAT commander stomped over to them, his face pinched with rage.

“I don’t know who the fuck you yahoos are, but you’re lucky you have friends in high places.”

“We’re the Reynolds,” Shane smiled.

“We have friends in high places?” Max asked.

***

“Fuck this,” Kinsey said and stood up, her M-4 barking as she put several rounds through the walls on each side of the doorway.

Men screamed and bodies fell then there was silence.

“Fuck, Kins!” Gunnar yelled as he crawled to her and pulled her back down on the ground. “What the fuck? They could have shot you!”

“You hear anything?” Kinsey asked. “Because I don’t.”

She stood back up and grabbed a shirt off the floor with the barrel of her carbine. She inched forward and stuck it just barely out the door. It was ripped apart by gunfire.

“How many?” Gunnar asked.

“No clue,” Kinsey said. “At least one. Maybe more.”

“That’s good math, Kins,” Gunnar frowned.

“I’m not fucking psychic, dickhead,” Kinsey snapped.

There was a crash outside the room then a gunshot followed by two more.

“Kinsey? Gunnar?” a woman’s rough, gravelly voice shouted. “Talk to me.”

“Darby?” Kinsey yelled. “That you?”

“It’s me,” Darby replied. “It’s clear. Come on out.”

Kinsey scrambled over the dresser, M-4 still in hand. At the end of the hall, standing over three bodies, was Darby, Ballantine’s bodyguard and member of Team Grendel. Barely five feet tall, but muscular and looking like business was all she meant, Darby held a Beretta 92Fs pistol in each hand. She locked eyes with Kinsey and nodded.

“Good to see you,” Darby said, her voice harsh from nearly being choked to death by a Somali pirate almost a year earlier. “Where’s Gunnar?”

“Here,” Gunnar said, peeking his head out of the bedroom.

“Good,” Darby said. “We need to go.”

“Go? Go where?” Kinsey asked.

“First, to pick up your cousins,” Ballantine said, walking from the living room into the hallway behind Darby. Middle-aged, but fit, tan and built like he could handle himself, Ballantine stood there looking like a golf pro in his khakis and polo shirt. But Kinsey and Gunnar knew he was nothing so mundane. “We have a job. A big one. And not much time. Pieces have already started shifting on the board and we are a few moves behind.”

“What about my dad?” Kinsey asked. “And the rest of Team Grendel?”

“All taken care of,” Ballantine said, leading them outside.

Down in the parking lot was a MH-65F Dolphin helicopter. Primarily used by the Coast Guard’s HITRON (Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron) unit to take down possible terrorist threats to the US, which included drug smuggling, the Dolphin was fast, maneuverable, and in the hands of the right pilot and gunner, a deadly bird of prey.

“Wyrm II?” Gunnar asked as he saw the name stenciled on the side. Several of his neighbors were staring at the helo and Gunnar waved at them weakly. “Still holding onto that Anglo-Saxon poetry theme?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t call it a theme,” Ballantine grinned as he placed a pair of aviator sunglasses on. “More of an obsession, really.”

***

The two teenagers sat on the decrepit dock, their arms around each other, the smell of pot and beer wafting off them. The boy leaned the girl back onto the boards, his hands fumbling about her shirt until she swatted them away.

“Come on,” he whispered in her ear. “No one’s around.”

She pushed him back and shook her head. Even with a good buzz on, she knew she didn’t want to do it there on a dock that was missing more boards than it had.

“No,” she said. “We can do other things. But not that. Not yet.”

“Okay, okay, that’s cool,” the boy said. “Want another beer?”

The girl frowned. “I’m not going to change my mind just because you get me even more…drunk…”

Her eyes went wide and her hand went to her mouth. The boy turned in the direction she was looking and his jaw dropped.

“Is that a whale?” he asked.

The whale moved up close to the old dock and then stopped. Forty feet of massive, blue mammal just floated there and the teens couldn’t believe their eyes. It was even more unbelievable when part of the whale’s back split and a hatch opened.

“Hey, either of you have a cell phone I could use?” Mike asked as he took a deep breath of the fresh San Diego air. “Hey! Do you have a cell phone?”

The girl fished around in her pocket and held out the phone.

“Can you toss it me?” Mike asked, pulling himself all the way out of the sub. “Kinda hard for me to climb up there right now.”

“Dude,” the boy said, leaning into the girl. “Was that pot laced with something? Because I think I’m seeing a legless guy crawling out of a fucking whale.”

Chip left the white sands of the Baja Mexico coastline behind him as he raced through the Pacific Ocean swells on the rented Wave Runner. He laughed heartily, his body fueled by tequila and too much sun, as he hopped wave after wave, pushing the machine to its limits.

Behind him on his own Wave Runner, and not having near as much fun, was his friend Luther, a young man anxious to get out of the water and back to the cabanas of Playas Rosarito so he could drink a few pina coladas and just chill.

Luther was not a fan of the open ocean. He was also not a fan of sweating, working hard, or water on his face. Baja was not Luther’s idea.

“Chip!” he shouted as ocean spray whipped him in the face, irritating him with every drop. “CHIP! Come on, man!”

Chip couldn’t hear his buddy over the racing machine beneath him. He probably wouldn’t have cared even if he had. Luther was there because he had a car and he had a sister with a rockin’ bod. Oh, and the money to pay for a trip south of the border. Otherwise, Chip could do without the doughy mama’s boy.

He hit a wave at a steep angle and soared into the air, twisting the handlebars to the side so the back end of the Wave Runner kicked out, sending a stream of water out behind him. He came down hard and didn’t quite have the coordination, or experience, to stick the landing. Chip found himself flung from the Wave Runner and into the bright blue of the Pacific.

“Chip!” Luther yelled, gunning his Wave Runner as fast as he was comfortable with, which wasn’t very fast, and aimed towards where his friend went under. “Chip!”

Other watercrafts and pleasure boats dotted the water all around them and several less than sober eyes were turned towards the young man with the too tight wet suit. Luther ignored the stares as he raced to the abandoned Wave Runner that bobbed along in the waves. Once there, he reached back and grabbed a towline then tossed it around Chip’s Wave Runner.

“Chip!” Luther shouted.

“Right here, dork,” Chip laughed as he slapped the back of Luther’s machine. “That was awesome! Did you see that?”

“Yeah, I saw it,” Luther said, glad he didn’t have to call Chip’s parents to tell them he was dead.  “Can we go back in now? This wet suit chafes.”

“That’s because you need to lose a few, dude,” Chip said. “I ain’t saying you’re fat, just that you need to work on your core, bra.”

“Screw you,” Luther said, shaking his head. “I’m going back.”

“Ah, come on, I was just fucking with you,” Chip laughed. “Chill out.”

Chip swam over to his Wave Runner and struggled to get back up on it. Every time he tried to hook a leg onto the running board, he just slipped back into the water, too drunk to get a good grip. Luther shook his head some more and reeled in the rope so the Wave Runners bumped up against each other.

“I’ll hold it while you get on,” Luther said. “Then we go back to the beach. I’m hot and thirsty.”

“You know who’s hot and thirsty?” Chip said, still failing to get on. “Your sister, dude.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Luther said. “And stop fucking around. Get on the damn thing.”

Chip slipped again, this time going all the way under the water. He came up spluttering, his eyes wide with fear.

“Holy fuck!” he cried. “There’s something down-”

Luther didn’t hear the rest as Chip disappeared under the water once again.

“Ha ha, asshole,” he said. “I’m sick of your shit, Chip! Get up on the Wave Runner!”

Chip’s response was to burst from the water thirty yards away, his arms flailing and mouth coughing blood.

“Fuck!” Luther yelled and turned his Wave Runner towards his screaming friend.

Blood spewed from Chip’s mouth like a fountain of red.  Then he was gone, taken back under. Luther stopped the Wave Runner and looked at the shoreline. He had seen what had a hold of Chip’s bottom half. He wanted nothing to do with that.

It didn’t take him long to decide between his loyalty to an asshole or his desire to stay alive. Luther let go of the towrope and gunned his Wave Runner towards the beach. He slammed across wave after wave, praying he was fast enough to outrun whatever it was he saw.

His Wave Runner launched into the air and Luther at first thought he must have hit a wave just right. But when he looked down and saw he was still going higher and higher, not because he launched off a wave, but because he was clutched in the jaws of the largest shark he’d ever seen, Luther shat himself.

The shark crunched down and the huge teeth ripped into the Wave Runner, and Luther’s legs, before crashing back into the waves.

Luther screamed as he was dragged under. He thrashed about, trying to reach the shark so he could punch it in the nose like all the nature shows said to do, but his body wouldn’t obey; the pain was too much. Water filled his lungs as the shark bit all the way through the Wave Runner, taking Luther’s legs completely off at the thighs.

Choking, drowning, dying, Luther tried to use what faculties he had left to swim to the surface, but he no longer knew which way was up. All around him he was surrounded by his own blood; the water was clouded and dark with it. He gasped one last time, topping off his already water filled lungs, blinked, then began to sink to the bottom. He twisted and could see the sand below him.

There were crabs. He liked crabs.

Then it was all gone.

***

The girls screamed as they watched the shark fall back into the water. The man piloting the speedboat thought they were just having fun as he zipped and zoomed across the blue water. He always knew having a boat would be they way to get the gringas to pay attention to him. Seeing their tight American bodies crammed into those tiny bikinis was worth the night shifts and weekend hours he had to work to pay for the boat.

Hands started slapping at his shoulders and he turned, his sunglass-shaded eyes looking the blonde up and down.

“What’s up, chica?” Hector grinned. “Having fun?”

“There’s a shark!” the blonde screamed. “It just ate a guy!”

Hector frowned at her and slowed the boat. “A shark? I don’t think so. I haven’t seen a shark in these waters in years.”

“There!” one of the other girls screeched. “Oh, God! It has someone else!”

Hector looked where the panicked girl pointed and ripped his sunglasses off his face so he could get a better look. Only fifty yards away a boy was being shoved through the water, half his body swallowed inside the massive jaws of a shark that defied logic.

“Ay dios mio,” Hector whispered.

“Get us out of here!” another girl screamed. “Take us back! TAKE US BACK!”

“Yeah, yeah, no problem,” Hector nodded and turned back to the wheel.

He gunned the throttle and spun the boat back towards the Playas Rosarito pier. It took all his strength not to concentrate on the water in front of him and not the water behind. If he looked back and saw that shark again, he was certain he’d freeze up. How’d that look in front of the pretty gringas?

“It’s coming!” the blonde screamed, her hand pounding his back. “Hurry!”

“I am!” he shouted, swatting back at her. “Stop it!”

The blonde, in shock and scared for her life, didn’t stop, just kept pounding on Hector and screaming at him to go faster. He was fine until she grabbed his arm, causing him to swerve violently.

“Knock it off!” he shouted, shoving her away.

And right off the boat.

The girls screamed for him to stop, but Hector had no intention of doing that.

***

As the boat sped away from Vanessa, she couldn’t believe it was all happening. She’d saved up all year to go on the summer trip to Baja with her friends. It was her last fling before senior year at UCLA.

But all of her dreams, hopes, aspirations, disappeared in one chomp as the shark came at her from below, taking her entire body into its mouth before falling back to the water. Vanessa’s blood actually spurted from the shark’s gills as water rushed back through them.

***

Hector heard Vanessa’s scream, even over the roar of the boat motor and the shouts of the other girls, but he didn’t slow down. He kept the throttle pushed and aimed the boat for the closest pier.

But his path was quickly blocked as a fifteen foot wide mouth opened before his precious boat. He swerved to the side, sending two girls flying right at the shark. The shark’s mouth clamped down as the girls flew inside. Blood was everywhere and Hector tried not to throw up, but the vomit wouldn’t be held back.

He puked all over himself as he changed directions and hit the throttle again. Yet the boat started to slow, not speed up and Hector slammed his hand against the throttle over and over. The motors whined and then he smelled smoke. He whipped his head around and screamed as he saw the shark that had its jaws clamped onto the dive ledge.

Hector cut the motors and looked around for something to use as a weapon. One girl was still onboard, and when he couldn’t find anything large enough to hit the shark with, he decided to distract it.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” the girl screamed as Hector picked her up and threw her over the side.

She screamed her head off. Then her head actually came off as the rest of her was swallowed whole. Hector shrieked as the head popped up into the air, spinning over and over until it landed right next to him. He tried to kick it away, but lost his footing.

And fell into the water.

Blood. That was all he could see. Blood.

It was so thick he never saw what came at him from the side, killing him instantly as it crushed his body like he was hit by a Mack truck.

***

The other vacationers on the water started slamming into each other as they panicked and tried to get their watercrafts back to the shore as fast as possible. Hunks of fiberglass filled the water along with terrified tourists that splashed and screamed as they were pulled under one by one, sometimes two by two, by chemically driven eating machines.

The monster sharks gorged themselves, oblivious to the plastic taste of sunblock and silicone implants.

***

Gunnar looked at his phone and shook his head.

“Same number?” Kinsey asked, shouting over the roar of the helo’s rotors. “Who the hell is it?”

“I don’t know,” Gunnar replied as he adjusted the microphone on his headset. “I don’t recognize the number.”

“We’re here,” Darby said from the pilot’s seat. She brought the helo around in a tight circle then slowly lowered it to the street below. “Five minutes.”

“Thank you, Darby,” Ballantine said from the co-pilot’s seat. “We won’t be long. Kinsey?”

“Yeah, what?” Kinsey snapped. Ballantine raised his eyebrows at her tone. “Sorry. Shitty day.”

“I can imagine,” Ballantine nodded. “It would have been considerably more shitty if I hadn’t arrived with Darby, don’t you think?”

“Yes, thanks,” Gunnar said.

“Right,” Kinsey nodded. “Thanks.”

“Care to join me so we can fetch your cousins?” Ballantine asked, looking at Kinsey.

“Sure,” Kinsey replied as she yanked open the door and jumped down from the helo.

“Sis!” Shane yelled.

“Kinsey, my binsey!” Max shouted as the two brothers casually leaned against a SWAT van, several angry looking police officers glaring at them.

“My binsey? What the fuck is that?” Kinsey asked as she shoved through the police officers and hugged Max then Shane.

“Fuck if I know,” Max grinned. “Rhymes with Kinsey.”

“It’s not a word, dude,” Shane said. “You can’t just rhyme shit. You have to use actual words.”

“Fuck those rules, snules,” Max said.

“It’s good to see you two,” Kinsey smiled.

“It is,” Ballantine said. He looked around at the chaos of the scene and shook his head. “I’m looking forward to the story that goes with this mess.”

“Oh, it’s a story,” Shane said. He frowned at the helo. “Nice ride. Wyrm II? Really?”

“Your services are needed,” Ballantine said, ignoring Shane’s comment. “Or, Team Grendel’s services are needed, to be more precise.”

“About fucking time,” Max said. “It’s been almost a year. You don’t call. You don’t write. We were beginning to think our time with you meant nothing, Ballantine.”

“It hurt, man. It hurt,” Shane added. “Use us, abuse us, and toss us aside.”

“There have been logistical issues to work out with the company,” Ballantine said.

“You talked to Ditcher?” Max asked Kinsey.

“We will be meeting Captain Chambers shortly,” Ballantine said, gesturing to the helo. “So, if you don’t mind, we are in a hurry.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Max said. “What about the Wrangler?”

“Can’t make us leave his baby here all by herself,” Shane said.