Howie guessed that the detective would have some kind of an automatic weapon. He would need the same. He grinned and went into his bedroom, removed a false bottom in a big chest and lifted out a nearly new H&K MP5. It was the one that they had “lost” one day on a training mission. He had seen Khai drop it when hundreds of wasps had attacked them. Their nest had been accidentally kicked over and destroyed when the SEALs were running across some sparse territory in their private shooting grounds up in the mountains beyond Pine Valley. Two days later Anderson went back alone and found the submachine gun. The loss was written off as a platoon training accident and nobody had to stand a statement of charges.
He hefted the little weapon and picked up two loaded, thirty-round magazines. If sixty rounds wouldn’t do it, he didn’t know what would. With the shoulder stock pushed in, he could hide the weapon under a floppy shirt on a cord around his neck. Surprise, surprise.
He strapped on a .38 ankle hideout and kept a .45 on his hip. Yeah, that should do it. He’d make mincemeat out of the little Mexican cop in twenty seconds. Would he let the cop fire first? Not a chance. Shoot first, kill first, an old SEAL tradition.
Midnight was the call-out time. His watch showed 2200, two hours yet. He’d go early, get there about eleven, drive out partway, the last two miles with no lights and park on the shoulder. He knew a place. Then walk in circling around to come at the restrooms from the back. Yeah.
It worked out just that way. He came into the state beach on the bay side and went to ground studying the area. One car in the far end of the parking spaces, a quarter mile away. No threat. He couldn’t see anyone behind the restrooms, but that wall was in deep moon shadows.
In those shadows, Sanchez thought he heard something behind him. He turned and scanned the darkness there illuminated somewhat by the bright moon. Now his Army training came full circle. He had been with the Mexican Army Rangers, line crossers, the elite of the Army’s attack and covert forces. He could smell an enemy soldier at fifty yards.
Now he came fully alert. There was someone or something out there. A coyote, a rabbit, or a man, maybe Anderson. He slid around the corner of the restroom still in the shadows, lay on his stomach and peered out from ground level at the area he suspected. Nothing, not yet, just that vague hypersense that alerted him.
Howie Anderson was not the quietest man in the platoon, but he had learned to move over ground with a minimum of sound. Now he used that technique, walking crouched over to cast a smaller shadow, testing each footstep to be sure it would not break a stick or kick a rock. Soon he was fifty yards from the restroom. He could see nothing in back of the restroom in the shadows.
He wished now that he had a pair of night vision goggles. He’d have cut the little Mexican cop into pieces by now. He had to be there. He said he would, and he’d come early. But where, damn it, where was he?
Howie moved again, slower now, easing his feet into the sandy black top of the parking lot. The bastard was here close, somewhere. But where? Had he moved around the edge of the building? Had he somehow figured that being a SEAL, his target would come in the unexpected way?
Sanchez rubbed his eyes and stared into the darkness again. Had he seen a moon shadow down there thirty yards moving slowly toward him? Or had it been a cloud? No, not a cloud. He lifted the M16 assault rifle fitted with a laser aiming light and brought it around to where he figured the shadow had been. A damn SEAL would come in the back way. He’d park out of hearing and walk in, then attack soundlessly. He probably had a submachine gun.
Yes! The shadow moved. It came another step toward his position, then went prone watching forward. Sanchez clicked on the laser sighting light. It would project a red dot on the target wherever the barrel was pointed. Get the dot on target and the bullet would follow with incredible accuracy. The rifle had been charged with a round while he was still in the car and the safety put on. Now he snicked off the safety and swung the barrel around at the target.
Howie Anderson thought he heard something, a safety on a weapon sliding to the off position? He wasn’t sure. He rested a minute. His heart was hammering in his chest. He hadn’t had such a high since he’d taken out that drug supplier in TJ. He moved a foot forward, then saw something on his hand.
Christ! A laser dot. He dove to the left away from it just as the M16 opened fire on full automatic.
Howie felt the first bullet hit him in the arm. It was a long trail of fire up his arm into his shoulder. Then another slug ripped into his upper chest and a third and he stopped rolling. He had slued sideways so his body was open to the rounds. Three more thundered into his unprotected chest. Howie felt them hit, he tried to scream, but nothing came out. The pain boiled through him then, searing, scorching like a blowtorch on his bare skin. The agony zoomed a million times, churning, tearing at him, smashing his whole nervous system into a mass of wreckage. He felt more rounds hitting his legs and then working back up to his chest. The faint moonlight faded, and a moment later Howie Anderson gave a shrill scream that ended when two rounds drilled through his head, slamming him backward into the sandy blacktop paving and straight into hell.
Sanchez stopped firing. He ran to the crumpled man who lay on the parking lot dressed in his desert cammies. A submachine gun lay at his side. Sanchez was tempted to take it. No let the weapon stay there. It would be a puzzle for the police and the Navy to solve.
Detective Sergeant Sanchez lifted his M16 rifle and trotted toward the rented car in the far end of the lot. He drove into Coronado on the Strand, then through the quiet streets and over the Coronado Bay bridge into San Diego. He was halfway to the border on U.S. 5 when he took out a cell phone. He dialed 911 and spoke quickly and clearly.
“There has been a shooting on the Silver Strand State Beach just down from Coronado. It’s serious. Someone has been shot several times.”
“Yes, I understand,” the operator said. “Who is this and where are you?”
“On the Silver Strand State Beach, a man is seriously wounded. Send an ambulance at once.”
“Yes. I have that, a unit is on the way. Are you close by? Stay on the phone, please so I can get some more…”
Detective Sergeant Mad Dog Sanchez of the Tijuana city police broke the phone connection, and nodded. Sometimes the law wasn’t enough. Killers had to be dealt with in the only way they understood.
It was two days before they located Lieutenant Commander Blake Murdock. That happened only because he called in when Ardith was napping to see what was going on.
“Commander, some bad news,” Master Chief MacKenzie said. “One of your boys has been killed, shot eighteen times, the coroner tells us. It’s Howard Anderson. He was on the state beach out on the Strand. The strange part is he was in his cammies and had three weapons with him including that MP-five we lost six months ago on a training exercise. Coronado homicide got a warrant to search his apartment. They found four automatic weapons, two more that we show as missing from Third Platoon inventory, as well as boxes of ammo and grenades and even two Claymore mines. Something wasn’t right about that boy.”
“Anything I can do?”
“Police have it in hand. They say they had a nine-one-one call about midnight, but the man caller wouldn’t identify himself or remain on the phone. The operator said she was sure it was a Spanish accent that she heard in the voice. That’s all they have. Oh, the rounds that riddled Anderson were NATO five fifty-sixes; the police think they were fired from an M-sixteen.”