John Gilstrap - Hostage Zero

“They’re gonna seek shelter in one of the remaining buildings,” Boxers predicted.

Jonathan smiled. “With any luck.” Hand grenades were invented for eliminating enemies hunkered down inside buildings.

There was no need to review the strategy. They’d both done this drill so many times that it was nearly as instinctive as breathing.

When the radio broke squelch, Mitch Ponder heard the sounds of battle before he heard any voices.

“They’re blowing up the whole factory,” Victor shouted in Spanish. “Huge explosions! There must be twenty of them! Hurry!”

Without having to be told, the pilot cranked up the engine of their luxurious, leather-upholstered Sikorski S-76 chopper. They’d been standing alert, thirty miles away in the yard of a business associate, awaiting the attack that Ponder had known was on the way. The spin of the turbine woke up the machine gunner in the back.

“Everything’s on fire!” Victor hollered. “They’re killing everyone. The factory is being destroyed.”

Something jumped in his chest. “What do you mean, destroyed?”

“Listen!” The mike remained open, and in his mind, Ponder had visions of Victor holding it out a window. The sound of gunshots was unmistakable.

“Well, stop them,” Ponder commanded. “You’ve got a whole fucking army. I know because I paid for their weapons.”

“We will try,” Victor promised. “But I can no longer guarantee the safety of the white boy.”

“Fuck the white boy,” Ponder spat. He owed a debt to the American secretary of defense, but nothing was worth the millions he would lose if the factory was destroyed. Most cocaine manufacturers were lucky to manufacture a few kilos a month; his operation made hundreds of kilos a week. There was no bigger operation anywhere in South America. “It’s better to keep him alive, but if he has to die, he has to die. We’re on our way.”

He nodded to his pilot, and the ground dropped away as the rotors bit into the humid night. As they cleared the trees and pivoted north, the glow of the attack was evident on the horizon, a dome of yellow and orange that tore the darkness like a floodlight.

“My God,” Ponder muttered. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. He’d agreed to shelter the Guinn boy at the factory because it was the only place under his control where he could be constantly watched and where he could earn his keep.

Victor and his soldiers were supposed to have stopped the rescuers from taking the boy. This helicopter was supposed to have been the last-resort insurance policy to be used only if the rescue had succeeded and the attackers disappeared into the night. Equipped with forward-looking infrared technology, and with each of the crew members wearing night-vision goggles, there would have been no hiding for invaders retreating through the jungle.

In a perfect world, they wanted the Guinn boy to stay alive; but if he died, no one would ever have to know. The father would be told that he was fine, and they would manufacture reasons not to show his picture again. If that turned out not to be enough to keep the man from talking, well, that was not Ponder’s problem.

The distant dome of light pulsed and grew brighter. Ponder set his jaw, ready to kill.

Because the enemy was likely to expect them to emerge from the far side of the building, Jonathan and Boxers instead emerged from the same spot where they’d entered. They cut left when they were clear of the building, through the searing alleyway between the barracks fire and the factory fire, shooting the same fields as before.

When it felt like they’d passed their enemy’s left flank, they buttonhooked to the right and began killing in earnest. Any silhouette with a gun was a legitimate target.

They moved together, their bodies nearly touching, firing and reloading without pause, zigging and zagging at random to frustrate any effort to stop them. This wasn’t about covering fire anymore. This was all about accuracy on the move, firing two bullets at a time, each pair finding their target and killing it. Where an enemy shooter presented a frontal profile, Jonathan went for a double-tap, a bullet in the heart followed by a bullet in the head. If it was a sidelong silhouette, he aimed for the ear. If they were running away, the choice target lay between the shoulder blades.

Where they pointed their weapons, people died. Jonathan made no attempt to count, but he knew for a fact that he dispatched five in the first ten or fifteen seconds. The enemy returned fire, but it was all wild and random. As far as Jonathan knew, not a single round came within five feet of him. By comparison, not a single round that left his muzzle missed its intended target.

Twenty seconds into the assault, the enemy was at a dead run, their instinct to survive obliterating their desire to win. All but a few ran in straight lines, among the surest ways to meet one’s maker during a firefight.

Jonathan and Boxers never slowed. Where bodies clogged the path, they vaulted over them. Under other circumstances, with an enemy who was better trained or more operationally aware, this kind of full-on assault would have opened the door for a counter-flanking maneuver, where bad guys would hold back and wait for the attackers to pass and then assault from the rear or the side. As they charged forward, Jonathan continued to check his six o’clock, but the maneuver never materialized.

They charged northward along the eastern edge of the compound, and as they passed what was left of the gasoline shed-Building Alpha-Jonathan saw asses and elbows retreating into Building Bravo, which, judging from the construction design was a mirror image of the kids’ barracks, but minus the locked doors and wired windows.

Jonathan and Boxers slid to a halt against the near wall of the building, well below the window, but easily vulnerable to anyone who thought to shoot a rifle through the thin siding.

The shooting had stopped, but Jonathan knew that the silence couldn’t last.

“I say we blow the building,” Boxers whispered.

Jonathan agreed. It was the only-

He glanced out into the center of the compound. “Oh, shit,” he breathed.

Evan thought this was like living the scariest movie he’d ever seen-only the explosions were real and the bleeding bodies were real. All of it was real. There wasn’t a single moment of the past few days that made any sense to him, but this topped the charts. People were dying, for God’s sake. Things were blowing up.

And Mr. Jonathan! Jesus. He’d always seemed like a tough guy and all-friendly, but in a hard kind of way-but never in a million years did he imagine the man killing people to rescue him. He felt like his head had been stuffed with glue. There was too much going on for him to understand any of it.

“Evan, what’s happening?” Charlie said way too loudly, unused to the sudden silence. “Who are these people?”

“The guy out there is Mr. Jonathan. He’s-”

“Quiet,” snapped the man who’d joined them back here. Evan had never seen him before, but he seemed nervous. He had the helmet and the gloves and the gun of a soldier, but he seemed scared. That was the thing about Mr. Jonathan: he didn’t seem even a little bit scared. Evan didn’t know if he liked that or not.

“Who are you?” Evan asked. He changed his voice to something north of a whisper but south of a shout so that he could still be heard.

“I’m a friend. My name is Harvey, and I need you both to stay quiet.” As an afterthought, he held out a gloved hand. “You’re Evan Guinn. Nice to meet you.”

Evan cocked his head, confused, but he shook the man’s hand. “Nice to meet you, too.”

“I’m Charlie,” the other boy said, thrusting his hand between the two of them.