Michelle Gagnon - The Gatekeeper

Randall’s jaw tightened. Whatever happened to him and Madison, here he drew the line. And if he was going to die anyway, he planned on taking these assholes with him.

Jake strapped on his vest, checking out the rest of the team under lowered eyelids. Four men who all had that Delta Force look, close-cropped hair and cold eyes. Probably former Special Ops soldiers who survived the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, finished their tours and decided they were done with the military. That’s what his brother tried to do, after more than twenty years of active service. What they didn’t realize was that life and the experiences that came with it weren’t things you could just walk away from. Most of them ended up returning less than a year later, either reenlisting or working for a private sector company like Blackwater that offered a real paycheck. Or, apparently, with The Longhorn Group.

“Any of you done hostage rescue before?”

They all raised their gaze in unison. He practically expected them to bark, “Sir, yes, sir!”

The one closest to Jake, a kid who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five but looked like he ate nails for breakfast, said, “My unit was in Afghanistan for two tours, sir. We did more than ten snatch and grabs.”

“Yeah? I thought only one hostage total had been rescued in Afghanistan.”

They exchanged glances. “One that you heard of,” someone muttered.

Jake ignored the jab. “So how many of those were considered successful missions?”

“They were all successful, sir. That doesn’t mean everyone survived.”

One of the other guys grunted a laugh. They went back to checking their gear.

Jake made sure his HK USP.45’s clip was full and that he had two backups. He wasn’t crazy about this plan. Without doing any recon they were going in blind. There could be two guys holding Madison, or twenty. They might be dealing with a couple of hack ex-cons or well-trained mercenaries. And they didn’t even have time to get the lay of the land.

Twenty minutes earlier Syd had left to requisition a boat. Jake heard a dull roar in the distance and saw her at the helm of a Zodiac, skirting the waves. She’d originally wanted to approach as a dive team to maintain silence and the element of surprise, but Jake wasn’t keen on the idea. It was going to be hard enough getting on the boats without having to deal with thirty pounds of dive equipment as well as the rest of the stuff they needed. When she announced the change of plans, he’d gotten a few glances from the Delta guys. He shrugged it off. Didn’t matter what they thought of him. The important thing now was to get Madison out alive. If they hadn’t killed her already.

They were on the outskirts of Benicia, about forty miles northeast of San Francisco. Jake gazed across the water. Suisun Bay was a ship graveyard, where decommissioned naval vessels were stored until someone decided what the hell to do with them. Dubbed “The Mothball Fleet,” everything from Liberty ships to destroyers were tied side by side in daisy chains. Proud warriors of decades’ worth of wars, they were now rusted and fading, all but forgotten. Apparently someone had remembered them. It was the perfect place to stash a hostage. Barely monitored and protected from prying eyes thanks to their distance from shore. And once aboard, you were in the ultimate defensible position. It wasn’t a location someone like Mack Krex would have come up with on his own, that was for sure. Jake wondered again who the hell they were dealing with.

Syd waved them over. One of the Delta guys grabbed the bowline, holding it while the rest of the team passed their gear into the boat. Syd kept the engine running. As they climbed in, the boat rocked and sank almost to the gunwales. Syd was dressed the same way they were: gray camo, armor, weapons at both hips and an ankle holster. Her blond hair was tied back, cheeks flushed with excitement. “Let’s go,” she said.

They were approaching from the far side of the bay, to lessen the chances of being spotted. They’d debated going in street clothes, hiding the weapons until they were on board, but decided against it. Not many people would believe this group was out for a pleasure cruise.

Jake clutched a rope strung along the port side and watched the ships grow larger. It was hard to ignore his growing apprehension. He chalked some of it up to the usual nerves before an operation, but partly it was also the sense that this had spun out of his control. Syd was clearly holding the reins now. Even though this had been her case to begin with, her personal connection, he wasn’t sure he liked that. She seemed to be enjoying herself a little too much, especially considering what was at stake.

There were eighty-four vessels total, strung together in clusters ranging from nine to eighteen. And Madison could be on any of them. If the GPS signal was still active they could have pinpointed her location, but even from this proximity Syd wasn’t getting a read. It could take them all day to search, risking discovery by the Maritime Administration guards who periodically patrolled. All in all, Jake figured they had a hundred to one chance of everything turning out okay. Not the kind of odds he’d bet a life on.

They neared the first string of boats. Everyone stiffened, straightening slightly in their seats. They were about a nautical mile offshore. The water was flat and gray around them, matching the hulls. The sheer size of the boats was awesome. They rose out of the bay like giant monoliths, cold and impersonal.

“How the hell do we get on board?” Jake asked.

“I’m going to anchor at the far side, we’ll throw a line up and climb,” Syd responded. The rest of the team nodded as if this was something they did twice every day. Jake groaned internally and wished he’d spent more time in the gym. He wasn’t exactly in rope-scaling shape.

Syd eased the Zodiac around the port side of the last boat in the chain, the farthest point from shore. She was careful to stay in the shadows. Jake had to hand it to her, she was good. Impetuous but careful, an odd combination. As they rounded the stern, Jake caught a movement. He squinted against the reflection off the water, raising a hand to his eyes.

“Holy shit,” he said.

Syd followed his gaze. In the next line of boats a hundred yards away, they saw a small figure racing across the deck of a destroyer. A larger, lumbering man was in pursuit. Syd raised a set of binoculars to her eyes.

“That’s her!” she said, throttling the motor. “Looks like it’s game on, boys!”

Madison felt like her chest was about to explode. When she jumped off the ship, she hit the wooden block separating the boats hard, almost falling into the water below. She edged along it, then stood and gathered herself, vaulting a four-foot gap to reach the deck of the next boat. She landed funny, twisting her ankle. She rolled and clutched it, gasping in pain. Lurch’s head popped into view less than ten feet away. His initial expression of shock quickly transformed to rage, and he clambered over the railing, prepared to make the same jump. Madison scrambled to her feet and ran.

She’d had to repeat the maneuver twice already, bracing herself before jumping, praying she wouldn’t miss and drop into the chasm between the boats, hitting the icy water stories below. She didn’t look down, focusing instead on where she needed to land. Her ankle throbbed with each step but she ignored the pain. She didn’t let herself think about what she’d do when she reached the final boat. The shoreline still looked impossibly far away, and she’d never been a strong swimmer. But she wasn’t going to give up now.

Madison heard a loud thud and swiveled, hopping awkwardly on her good foot to take some of the weight. Lurch had nearly missed the last jump. He was hanging from the wooden block by both hands, fingers flexed as he struggled for a purchase. He looked at her, eyes wild. “ Madison! Help!”