Page 86 of Vaquero
He’d no more than entertained that sure knowledge, when a shot rang out and a single black diving-suit clad body fell through the door in question. The handgun in her hand fell out onto the sand while what was left of her landed inside the helo with a gurgling, “Ooomph!”
Extending one boot, Julio shoved the dead body out. He looked up just in time to see another shadow hunched low and creeping toward the helo from the same direction. He would’ve turned completely around, altered the angle of his aim to protect himself, and ended this assassin, too. But like before, a shot rang out and that Doll also went down.
Julio left the door open in case things got too hot and Walker returned.
Returning his attention to the other side of the helo, the side where he’d strafed the beach, he didn’t care if these invaders were Dolls or not. They’d started the war. He meant to end it. With Walker on his six, he could.
Lowering his barrel, he sent another pulverizing spray at anyone stupid enough to be still on their hands and knees in the surf. One, two, then three and four more lime-green assassins succumbed in the water. But, as expected, a couple dark shadows had gotten in too close. They attacked from his left and right while he was still firing, his eye to his scope, and his peripheral off-line. Their arms and upper bodies appeared too quickly through the door.
One jerked his rifle as if she thought to simply pull it out of his hands. Not so. The barrel was hot, and diving gloves were not heat-resistant. That idiot cursed, but let go and backed off, shaking her hand as if that would slow the pain of third-degree burns.
The other brandished a long blade. He almost felt sorry for her when she took too long lifting the blade over her head. That was all the invitation Walker needed. Another shot vibrated through space and time. She arched backward, then folded to her knees with a drawn-out hiss of death. The blade must’ve been heavy. The top of it dug into the sand behind her, pulling her backward as she fell.
Several more Dolls succumbed while Walker cleared the shore, picking these overconfident females off, one by one. They still didn’t seem to realize they were being targeted from somewhere other than inside the helo.
Julio punched the last shadow standing, the one with burned hands, in the throat. She went down hard, but he needed this one alive. Switching hands, he set his rifle aside and unholstered one of his Berettas. Tipping his upper body forward and out of the helo, he grabbed onto the assassin with the burned hand. She pitched a fit, and it took a full minute of wrestling to drag her inside. But in the end, she was no match for him. All it took was squeezing that burned hand and her stiffened knees went slack. She cried out a string of Russian curses.
Not like Julio cared. Swiftly, he jerked her inside and beyond the reach of her girlfriends. It took one solid whack with his pistol grip to her forehead, and that was that. She sagged face first to the floor. Good enough. Keeping an eye beyond the surf where these assassins had landed, he tugged another set of cuffs out of his jacket pocket and secured her to one leg of the metal bench seat once and for all. That put her far enough from Hazelton that they couldn’t assist each other’s escape if they happened to wake up too soon, which he doubted.
“If you move, I will kill you,” he promised the sleeping murderers. “Please, senoritas. Try me.”
It would’ve been better if he’d had a way to communicate with Walker. Julio would know what Walker was looking at then, and how many other Dolls he’d taken out besides those nearest the helo. Or if he’d been injured, was down, and needed help. The not knowing always worried Julio.
With two Dolls now subdued inside the helo, he stepped out into the night and onto the wet, packed sand, needing to see who was left. The several shapes sprawled in the foamy surf were definitely dead bodies. That two Dolls had gotten close enough to come at him from behind was disconcerting.
How many of these Russian assassins were there, and how had they gotten to shore? There were no RHIBs,Rigid Hull Inflatable Boats,bobbing beyond the never-ending breakers, that Julio could see. No chuffing whine of outboard motors came to him on the wind. Not anything. Which made him think submarine. Which made sense. A sub could’ve certainly lingered anywhere along the Brazilian coastline, close enough to have monitored Hazelton.
He stilled, relying on his years of training and experience to detect the slightest sound, even the rub of a body against sand. The quiet murmured command to kill. Another onslaught of ninja warriors—or worse. The screaming whine of surface-to-air missiles. The flash of rocket-propelled grenades.
But the only sounds that came to Julio were the ever-present crash of waves eating away at this sandbar, and then—Gracias Dios!—the far-off thwack-thwack-thwack of heavy-duty rotor blades. That had better be Chief Warrant Officer Trevor Duncan.
Still on high-alert and poised to defend himself from all sides, Julio secured the Blackhawk. He’d just closed both doors when a lightning bright spotlight stabbed through the darkness off shore and zeroed in on him.
A loudspeaker boomed. “That you, Agent Juarez? Permission to land.”
He waved at the helo, sending a thumbs-up.
In seconds, the noisy rotors were kicking up dust, dirt, and stinging sand. Several geared-up, large-bodied guys fast-roped down to the beach, each sticking wicked three-point landings. Like sumo wrestlers, their hefty bodies landed in positions to action. While the helo banked sharply, circling the minute island in a tight spiral that grew larger with every blistering pass, two of the Rangers, or whoever they were, busied themselves searching the bodies in the surf and looking for others.
The third jogged straight for Julio. NVGs always made a warrior look like something out of a science fiction movie. Julio was surprised when this guy shoved his goggles up and revealed features similar to Meg’s.
“Chief Duncan,” he said, one gloved hand extended.
Duncan caught Julio’s hand in what he undoubtedly meant to be a finger-crushing grip. It was always the same between warriors. The first man who flinched lost the time-honored battle of one-upmanship. “You must be Agent Juarez. I see you couldn’t wait to get this party started.”
“I had help,” Julio replied, not blinking and matching that handshake with equal power.
“So I understand. Where is that son of a bitch Hotrod?” Duncan asked as he released his hold on Julio and looked past him to the helo. “Shit. Looks like you’ve been in a war.”
“She’s a little scraped,” Julio admitted, looking over his shoulder, expecting Walker to materialize any minute now. Where was he? Couldn’t he see that all was secure and that help had arrived? “Hotrod’s undercover on the far end of this sandbar. I suspect he’s hunkered down behind our one and only palm tree.”
“You call that a tree?” Duncan waved one of the men who’d fast-roped down with him over. He gave curt instructions to get the two females inside ready for transport, then radioed the helo still circling above, and ordered it to prepare to take on four more passengers.
While Julio waited on Duncan, a sickening cramp clenched the pit of his stomach. “Excuse me, sir, but I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll go with you,” Duncan said, his tone as steady as if he did these kinds of exfils every day. Which he might. He was a Nightstalker.
With his Berettas still in hand, Julio set a quick pace to that scraggly tree, only to find nothing but expended brass shells littering the sand beneath it. No sign of Walker. Swallowing hard, he cast a searching stare back the way he and Duncan had just come. The helo rested at the opposite end of the island. Nothing lay between the tree and that bird. No way could Walker have gotten off this sandbar.
