The man’s eyes widened as far as Will had ever seen in his life and the guy lifted his AR-15. Will shot him first from almost point-blank range with the Remington. The distance between them was nonexistent, and Will didn’t even have to lift the shotgun to aim. The man’s body seemed to sink right into the stones under his boots, exposing his two comrades standing behind him.
The two men were turning, lifting their weapons, when Will racked the Remington and shot one, then the other.
He didn’t even have time to ponder the bloody mess smeared across the cobblestones before he heard a thunderous boom! from behind him.
Will knew instantly what that meant. He spun around just in time to see thick white smoke sprouting up from the Tower’s third floor like chaotic smoke signals, while brick and concrete tumbled down all around the building like hail.
“What was that?” someone shouted in Will’s ear. Blaine again. “What the hell was that?”
Will began running up the cobblestone road, back to the hotel grounds, back to the Tower.
Bobby, where the hell are you?
He saw them moving across the grounds of the hotel almost as soon as he burst out of the woods and into the clearing. They were fanning out. Dark figures, looking for targets. They were smart enough to keep away from the LED lampposts, and he saw one of them randomly shooting at the solar-powered lamps scattered about the area. There might have been five, maybe more. A couple were already circling the Tower, while one was trying to kick in the front door.
Will slung the shotgun as he ran, pulling the M4A1 free. He could still hear gunfire behind him, from the beach. Blaine and Maddie, still slugging it out.
My amateurs are better than your amateurs, Kate.
He looked up at the Tower in the distance, his gut sinking. The initial explosion had sent most of the Tower’s roof down into the surrounding area around the base of the structure. The third-floor windows that he could see, amazingly enough, remained intact, along with the floodlights under them. Where there used to be a cap at the top, there was now only a jagged opening with smoke still rising lazily out of it as if it were a chimney.
His attention snapped back to the grounds around the Tower when he heard a series of gunshots. Rifles, then shotguns, firing back and forth. He looked up just in time to see sections around one of the Tower’s second-floor windows breaking free from a shotgun blast.
Will was halfway across the grounds when he caught sight of one of the attackers stepping into a pool of light. The man had on black face paint and was wearing a knit cap. Will shot the man in the back of the head from thirty meters away. The man crumpled into the grass as if he had simply been swallowed up.
A figure in front of Will turned and opened fire. Will saw flames stabbing out of the man’s weapon from forty meters away and felt bullets slashing past his head. Then something hit him in the left arm and for an instant he was tossed to one side.
He darted behind a big palm tree as the man kept firing. Tree bark shredded and bullets zip-zip-zip around him harmlessly. His left arm was bleeding and had gone numb, but he could still hold the rifle and shoot, so it couldn’t have been that bad.
When the man finally stopped shooting, Will stepped out from behind the tree and calmly shot him in the chest while he was struggling to reload.
Then he continued running toward the Tower.
He arrived in time to see a man armed with an M16 rifle feeding something into a tube attached to the bottom of the barrel. He recognized the M203 grenade launcher attached underneath the rifle. That was what had taken off the top of the Tower’s third floor.
Will glanced up and saw Lara appear in the second-floor window directly above the man loading the M203. The man saw her and took aim.
Will screamed, “No!”
That got the man’s attention. He looked over at Will, momentarily distracted, but quickly turned back to the window and fired. Will’s gut sank at the ploompt! sound as the M203 launched, and Will watched, horrified, as the grenade round smashed into the window frame just above Lara’s head—then ricocheted back down.
It didn’t arm!
The M203 fired impact grenades that needed to travel a certain distance before they armed themselves. The third floor had been far enough, but not the second-floor window. When Will saw the grenade hit the top of the window frame above Lara’s head, sending her stumbling back in shock, he knew it hadn’t achieved the proper distance.
As the grenade fell back down to earth, Will watched the man who had fired it scrambling to get away. But the man had misjudged the trajectory of the grenade and was going in the wrong direction. When the grenade landed two meters in front of him, the man shouted out a curse that was quickly swallowed up by an explosion that ripped out a piece of the Tower’s base along with it. Any closer, and it would have punched a hole in the Tower itself.
He caught a glimpse of Lara, alive and well, looking out the same window at the remains of the man below her. He wanted to laugh and run to her, grab her, and kiss her.
Instead, he crouched in the darkness and scanned the area. He didn’t see anything. Or anyone. Where had they come from? Probably the west side of the island, past the power station. It was the lowest point on the island other than the beach in the south.
Will got up and moved toward the Tower. He was ten meters away when he almost stepped over a body in the grass. He crouched next to it and looked down at the young face.
Bobby.
There was a big bloody spot on his chest where he had been shot at close range. His M4 rifle lay nearby, along with a man with camouflage on his face and a bullet hole in his left cheek. Will imagined the kid heard the attackers coming and ran over to intercept.
He looked up at the realization that the gunfire behind him, from the beach, had stopped, and the island had become ghostly quiet.
He clicked his PTT. “Situation report.”
“Beach is cleared,” Blaine said in his right ear. “Maddie’s hurt.”
“How bad?”
“She’s been shot a couple of times. Thigh and arm. The arm looks like a flesh wound. She wants to know if anyone’s seen Bobby.”
“Tell her I’m sorry. Bobby’s dead.”
“Fuck.” Blaine was silent for a moment. Then, “What about the Tower? What was that explosion I heard?”
“One of the attackers had an M203 grenade launcher. He took out the roof. I’m checking on it now.”
Will jogged the final distance to the Tower. He looked up at the smoke still puffing out of the remains of the third floor. It didn’t look like the grenade had gotten inside the building itself, which would have been catastrophic.
He pressed the PTT again as he neared the Tower. “Lara, can you hear me? Lara.”
There was no reply.
“Sarah. Danny. Gaby. Anyone in the Tower. Give me a situation report.”
Nothing.
Will reached the door and banged on it. There were more than twenty bullets embedded in the thick mahogany wood. But it had held.
“Open the door!” he shouted. “Whoever’s in there, if you can hear me, open the door!”
Mercifully, the door began to open, an inch at a time…
Blaine looked like week-old shit under the morning sun. And frankly, so did he, if he were to look in a mirror. They were operating almost entirely on fumes and painkillers. Even so, Will’s body protested every movement, and he could only imagine how Blaine was feeling at the moment. The big man didn’t complain, though.