Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Deception

Come on, he thought, calling to Kta’eb Hezbollah in his mind. He’d planted the cheese in the trap. He’d set the table for them. All they had to do was take it, not wanting to think about how much could go wrong. Everything depended on a dubious CNI agent and a dirty Spanish cop.

It was just after three in the morning when he was alerted by his EV-DO phone vibrating. By the voice, it sounded like the sniper, Rodriguez. He and Webb were stationed in prone positions on different sides of the villa’s roof.

“Melissa. Movement in the trees,” Rodriguez said, and clicked off. Almost at the same moment, Scorpion heard the sound of an engine coming up the road. A white van loomed in the night vision goggles; IBERDROLA, the electric company, was painted on its side as it raced past. He called on his EV-DO.

“Melissa. Van approaching fast. Could be explosives. Don’t let it get close.”

“Elizabeth,” Webb started to say. “Romeo tha-” He was cut off.

There were two or three shots, then a fusillade of gunfire-the rattle of sound-suppressed MP7A1s and the unmistakable staccato of AK-47s-from somewhere close to the villa. The shooting sounded like it came from the woods behind it. Then a loud explosion echoed through the trees and a bright white flare of light filled the night goggles.

Scorpion ran to the Citroen. The gunfire didn’t sound like it was coming from the front of the villa where the van would pull in, but from the pool terrace.

Mini Me! The sons of bitches came up the cliff! Scorpion thought as he jumped into the Citroen and started it. He moved the car so it was parked horizontally across the road, preventing anyone from getting past. Locking the Citroen, he ran back to the woods, moving on all fours, Delta style, through the trees and toward the villa.

The Saw-scaled Viper-it had to be him-must’ve launched a three-pronged attack: from the pine woods behind the villa, up the face of the cliff, and with the electric company van. There was a sound of metal crashing-maybe the van smashing through the villa’s wrought-iron gate and then the bang of a single shot that could only have come from Rodriguez with the M25 sniper rifle. Taking out the driver of the van, Scorpion hoped.

Ahead, through the foliage in his night vision goggles, he could see the high stone wall that went around the grounds of the villa. On the other side came the sound of intense gunfire. It was coming from all over. No way to tell who was shooting at whom or from where, but he could hear the sound of bullets hitting the stone wall, some ricocheting, some of them-probably the MP7A1’s DM11 4.6x30mm bullets that could go through damn near anything-ripping holes in the wall, he thought, hitting the ground to try to avoid being tagged by one of them.

As he wriggled on the ground along the wall, he heard the crump of two grenades going off, one right after the other, then the crash of the M25 and more automatic fire. It was like a war on the other side, he thought, angling through the leaves on the ground toward where the wall ended at the edge of the cliff. Just as he reached the cliff edge, the sight of the cove and the sea and the moon eerily bright through the night vision goggles, a giant explosion hurled shards of metal, glass, and bodies like shrapnel against the other side of the wall, ripping trees, tearing down limbs and leaves, even taking down a part of the stone wall about twenty meters behind him.

He took out the EV-DO.

“Melissa. Scorpion. Do you copy?” he whispered into the device.

No one answered. He tried again. Nothing. My God, he thought. Have I lost all six of them? He had to find out!

Ears ringing from the explosion, he slid feet first over the edge of the cliff, feeling with his toes for a foothold. Nothing. He stretched his toes out as far as he could while keeping the weight of his upper body on level ground so he wouldn’t go over the rocky edge of the cliff, especially with all his gear. He had to get around to the other side of the wall and see what was happening.

He felt something. A crevice in the rock face for his toe. It would have to do, he thought, putting his weight on the toes of his left foot pressed into the crevice and swinging his body over and around the edge of the wall. With his right foot, he desperately felt on the rock face for something he could gain a purchase on. He clung to the wall with both hands, feeling blindly with his right toe. Then he felt something, a root or something else sticking out perhaps half an inch from the surface. Here we go, he thought, rested his weight on it and swung over with his upper body while clawing at the iron terrace railing. Pulling himself up, he rolled over the railing into the bloody mess that was all that was left of Mini Me and whoever had been wearing the suicide vest that killed them both.

That had been the first explosion he heard, he thought, scanning for movement and cover. All around there were flashes of light from gunfire. A bullet zinged off the iron railing. He dived into a rosebush and crawled on the ground below the side of the stone pool terrace. Cautiously raising his head, he peered over the terrace edge.

The electric company van was obliterated down to the chassis. That had been the big explosion. The back of the villa was completely demolished, upper floors buckled and exposed as if someone had cut away the entire wall. There were flashes of gunfire between someone next to the side of the villa and at least two persons, maybe more, firing from behind a stone flower urn on the terrace. Suddenly, from the battered roof of the villa, came a laser aimed above the urn. In the night goggles, Scorpion saw as a straight line of white light. It was followed by the crump of a weapon and an explosion as a grenade exploded above and behind the urn. Webb with the XM25 grenade launcher, he thought. The game changer. It calculated the distance and trajectory to the target from the laser and exploded the grenade so it took out those hiding behind an obstacle. The guns firing from behind the urn fell silent.

“Melissa. More from the woods,” someone said in the EV-DO.

A second crump came from someone hiding up in a tree next to the villa, followed by an explosion and screams from the woods. Delucca and the second XM25, he thought. There were moving shadows and flashes of rapid fire, the shattering staccato of AK-47s and the crackling of an MP7A1, followed by another grenade explosion inside the house that for an instant lit the entire scene in harsh light. Two more dead attackers and one of the SOGs-no doubt Rutledge, who’d been hiding in the closet-whirling in a kneeling firing position as two figures streaked toward the villa wall. Rutledge cut them down with a long burst from his MP7A1. But an RPG fired from the vicinity of a tree in the front courtyard came streaking into the shattered villa and exploded in a blaze of light, and when Scorpion, blinking, could see again, Rutledge was gone.

Scorpion looked back toward the tree and thought he saw one of the attackers moving. He took a breath and started to aim. Before he could fire, there was another explosion by the shattered front gate to the villa property. An IED, one of those laid by Mini Me, he thought, and saw four shadows running toward him. They leaped from the pool terrace down to the garden and ran toward the cliff. He pressed against the stone side of the terrace and after they passed him sat up and fired his MP7A1, cutting down two of them. As the other two leaped over the iron railing, something came flying through the air back at him. A grenade. He barely had an instant, hearing it bounce on the stone surface of the pool terrace as he pressed himself against its side.

The hard shove of the blast ripped the air above him, shrapnel shredding a nearby hedge. Incredibly, he was okay. It had come within a hair of taking him out. Being below the blast and against the side of the terrace had saved him. He grabbed the EV-DO phone and clicked on.