War Hawk: A Tucker Wayne Novel (35 page)

The only hope lay in getting them into the nearest cove.

He resisted the impulse to look over his shoulder.

Drive, drive, drive . . .

As Tucker kept up his serpentine maneuver, the island grew rapidly in size ahead of him. To his right, he spotted a break in the white line of surf.

One of the coves
.

It was still two hundred yards away.

They’d never make it.

“Jane, grab our packs! We’re bailing out.”

Their boat was too large a target, but in the dark water, they’d be harder to spot.

Before he could order them to abandon ship, a geyser of water shot up a few feet off the boat’s starboard bow. Spray washed over his face. Tucker imagined the drone was bracketing them, fine tuning for its next shot, which if he was right, should strike off the port side—so he spun the wheel hard to
starboard
.

As the runabout lunged into the turn, another plume erupted beyond the port gunwale. He then straightened the boat’s course and aimed for the cove.

“Ready, Jane?” he called.

“As I’ll ever be.”

As Tucker abandoned the driver’s seat, the runabout jolted. He got slammed forward, banging his forehead against the steering wheel. He blinked hard. His vision swirled. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a jagged series of holes strafed across the floorboards near the stern. Water gushed through the openings.

“Over the side! Go!”

Jane got to her knees, threw her torso over the gunwale, then disappeared beyond the edge. Tucker reached sideways, grasped Kane’s vest collar, and heaved the dog into his lap. He then stood up and rolled over the boat’s other rail.

Dark seas enveloped them. Tucker got bowled through the water, holding hard to Kane. Once his momentum bled away, he kicked to the surface and broke into the air. Tucker released Kane from his embrace, but he kept ahold of the shepherd’s collar.

Twenty feet ahead, the runabout sped into the cove. The Shrike fired down at it, chasing after it. The drone then silently shot upward at a steep angle, barrel-rolling to set up for another attack run.

“Jane?” he called out.

“Here, right here.”

He spotted her and swam over. By the time he reached her, the runabout had disappeared from view around a sandbar in the cove. A loud splintering crash echoed to them as the boat ran aground.

Still, the Shrike dove out of the night skies and continued to fire in that direction, apparently not yet satisfied with the level of destruction.

But how long until it turns its attention this way?

Tucker pushed that thought out of his head and concentrated on swimming toward a sandbar fifty yards to his left. The others matched his pace. With every stroke, Tucker expected the Shrike to come skimming across the water, its cannons blazing in the dark.

But the distraction of the boat’s flight and crash bought them the two minutes necessary to reach the sandbar’s shallows. Tucker stood up and helped Jane to her feet. They trudged through the knee-deep water. Twenty feet to the right rose a wall of palm trees and brush.

Tucker pointed Kane in that direction. “C
OVER
.”

The waterlogged dog sprinted toward the trees, with Tucker and Jane chasing behind. The trio ducked into the undergrowth. Once a safe distance into the jungle, Tucker ordered them to drop flat. He rolled to Kane and gestured for the dog to crawl back to the edge of the tree line. He wanted to use the dog’s night-vision camera to spy on the cove.

As his four-legged partner moved into position, he turned to Jane, who panted beside him. With his eyes adjusted to the dark, he noted a trickle of blood running from her scalp across her right cheek. Until now, the seawater had been keeping her face washed clean.

“You’re hurt,” he said.

She fingered the wound. “Burns like a mother. Clipped my head on the edge of the boat after bailing out.”

She was lucky she hadn’t run afoul of the boat’s propeller.

Concerned, he risked pulling out his penlight. Shielding the brightness, he checked her wound, then her pupils. One seemed less responsive.

He doused the light. “Are you feeling nauseous?”

“Can’t say I’m feeling great,” she said, trying to pass off her words as a joke.

“You might have a slight concussion.”

“Better that,” she mumbled, “than floating facedown in the Caribbean Sea.”

Let’s hope it doesn’t still come to that
.

He huddled over his satellite phone and pulled up Kane’s feed. Jane shifted closer to see. Shoulder to shoulder, they watched Kane sink low in the underbrush at the edge of the beach. The camera’s view showed the curve of the palm-lined beach. Twenty feet from the waterline lay the remains of the runabout. The violent grounding had all but shredded the craft. A debris-strewn rut in the sand marked the runabout’s path, ending at the capsized bow section.

Jane mumbled, “You’re not gonna get your deposit back on that boat.”

At least her humor was still intact.

“What now?” she asked.

Tucker waited a full minute, but he saw no further sign of the Shrike. His ears strained for its telltale buzz, but all he heard was the gentle slap of waves on sand.

Jane noted the same. “Has the Shrike left?”

“It could be off searching the neighboring waters.” But another more disturbing possibility rose to mind. “Or maybe it’s completed its mission.”

Jane glanced to him, wrinkling her brow.

He explained. “Its primary purpose was likely to kill us, but failing that, maybe it had been instructed to drive us to ground here on the island and strand us.”

He remembered how the Shrike had continued to fire into the wreckage of the beached boat, making sure the craft was completely disabled.

“If you’re right,” Jane said, “then Lyon’s men must be close by, preparing a welcoming committee for us.”

“Which means we need to move. While they might not know which cove we’d be stranded at, you can be sure they’re closing in here now.”

A low growl sounded in his earpiece. Kane’s sharper senses must have detected something. Tucker could guess what that meant.

“We’re about to have company,” he warned Jane, then subvocalized into his throat mike, ordering Kane back to their side.

He helped Jane stand, but once on her feet, she weaved unsteadily. He had to grab her arm to keep her from falling.

“Oh, God . . .” she said, then jackknifed in half and vomited into the shrubs. She stayed bent over for several breaths, wiped her lips, and straightened. “Sorry.”

“At least you missed my boots,” he said, but he couldn’t keep his words light.

Concern ached through him. She definitely had a concussion. With no way of telling how bad it was, he knew she shouldn’t be moved, but they couldn’t stay here. He scooped an arm around her waist and supported her. She didn’t refuse his help, which alone told him how sick she was feeling.

In the distance, a new sound intruded—faint at first, then louder. It was the thumping of helicopter rotors. Tucker looked toward the beach. Through the foliage, blinking red-and-green lights headed toward the shoreline.

“Too much to hope it’s a rescue party?” Jane said wryly.

Kane slipped through the brush and joined them, panting lightly, his eyes bright in the darkness. Tucker patted the dog’s side, welcoming him back. Kane didn’t wag his tail, still on full alert. Under his palm, Tucker felt the tremble of tension in the dog’s flank muscles. After Kane’s near suffocation in the collapsed tunnel, Tucker feared he might be pushing the dog too far, too quickly.

“Follow,” he whispered to Kane, but it was less an order than a plea.

Even Kane heard this change in tone and gave him a small whisk of his tail, as if to say he was okay.

That’s a good boy
.

With Jane under one arm, he set off deeper into the forest, driven by the growing thump of helicopter rotors. Ducking and weaving through the undergrowth, he headed inland until he had covered a hundred yards.

“Let’s stop here,” he said, now all but carrying Jane.

He lowered her down and dropped to a knee beside her. Half of her face was covered in blood, seeping from her head wound. His heart thudded in his chest. Kane pressed his body against Tucker’s thigh—both reassuring him and looking for the same in return.

Tucker stroked the dog’s head while listening with an ear cocked.

By now, the sound of the rotors had faded. Though unable to see the helicopter, he knew such aircraft well enough to tell from the sound of the engines that it must be hovering over the beach. He twisted in that direction. As he did so, the helicopter’s spotlight flared through breaks in the foliage. The onboard crew must be inspecting the runabout’s wreckage for bodies or signs of survivors. It wouldn’t take them long to discover the set of footprints and paw prints leaving the surf.

As if cued by this thought, the spotlight slid sideways, toward where he and the others had entered the jungle.

The engine began spooling down as the helicopter prepared to land. They’d be offloading a search team in moments. He had no doubt Lyon would be with that party. Back at the hotel, the former soldier had struck Tucker as a hands-on type of guy.

He stared over at Jane. She had seen enough combat herself to recognize the same. “We have to keep moving,” she said.

He nodded.

But to where?

Tucker got Jane back on her feet. He tried to recall the geography of Patos Island. The tallest and most thickly forested sections were to the northeast, so Tucker headed that way.

As he set off, the helicopter’s engine whined down, and a voice shouted from the direction of the beach, echoing through the trees. There was no mistaking the harsh French accent.

“. . . three teams . . . that way . . . head north . . .”

Even if those teams were only two men each, that meant a minimum of six combatants. With those bad odds, they needed an advantage—and there was only one way to achieve that.

Dread iced Tucker’s gut. He stopped and leaned Jane against a tree. As she rested there, he crouched before Kane and looked into those trusting eyes. It took all of Tucker’s effort to lift his arm and point west, away from their path.

A string of orders flowed from his lips. “H
IDE
AND
SEEK
. M
AKE
NOISE
. E
LUDE
AND
COVER
. S
HADOW
ATTACK
BRAVO
.”

While these commands were simple enough by themselves, when they were strung together as an action plan, only a handful of dogs were smart enough to understand what was being asked of them. He was ordering Kane to play cat and mouse with the enemy, like the shepherd had done outside the cabins at Redstone. Only now, Tucker was also asking his partner to purposefully make noise and lure Lyon’s men away from Tucker and Jane’s trail, to risk his life for their sakes.

Tucker leaned down, pressed his face against Kane’s snout, and kissed it. With guilt eating a hole in his heart, he whispered, “G
O
.”

Kane follows the acrid note of burning oil that cuts through the forest, carried by the night breeze off the ocean. Other scents fill out his world in this strange new place: the rot of leaf under his paws as he runs, the decay of mold on the fallen trunk he vaults over, the bitter spoor under a nest in a tree.

All is cast in salt by the sea.

Even his own coat is brackish from his short swim.

But he stays focused.

As he nears the beach, a more familiar odor is carried on the stiffer gusts off the sea: sweat rising from skin, smoke on breath, unwashed clothes ripe with bodily stains. Obeying the first of his orders—H
IDE
AND
SEEK
—he circles that swell of scents. He notes his targets’ positions, listening to the cracking of twigs, the crush of undergrowth, the rip of cloth on thorn. Once satisfied, he shifts in the direction his partner had ordered, away from where he takes the woman.

Only then does he reveal himself, following his next instruction.

M
AKE
NOISE
.

Kane draws his chest full—and howls into the dark forest. As his challenge echoes through the trees, shouts rise behind him. Branches now break, boots smash through brush, even the pant of breath reaches his taut ears. The enemy closes upon him, but he is already gone, gliding farther into the forest, away from his partner.

He barks again, to make sure the others keep on his trail.

E
LUDE
AND
COVER
.

Scents and sounds paint the world around him as vividly as anything his eyes reveal. He senses the enemy being dragged in his wake.

He howls again as he runs, this time not to draw the others with him, but to call to his partner, to let him know he lives, but also to share one certain truth.

I’m a good boy
.

“Is he going to be okay?” Jane asked, leaning heavily on Tucker, her boots half dragging beneath her.

Tucker kept a firm grip around her waist. His own breath had grown ragged by now, partly from the exertion, but also from the anxiety as he listened to Kane’s barks and yips.

“Of course he’ll be okay,” he answered, but his words of reassurance were more for his own benefit than for Jane’s.

Occasional shouts echoed through the forest as Lyon’s hunters pursued the shepherd’s trail. The task he had given Kane was a daunting one, a challenge that would tax even Kane’s substantial experience. While over the years his partner had proven adept at this game of cat and mouse, this night there were too many cats in the field, all intent on killing them.

Still, Tucker trudged on, intending to use every second that Kane bought them to get Jane somewhere safe. He continued northeast, while Kane drew Lyon’s men to the west. The jungle thickened around him, and the grade steepened as they neared a low hill of broken cliffs that rose on this end of the island.