the golf carts, which toted guests from one end of the compound to another.
The flood of guest hostages continued to swell as sleep-deprived rich people arrived in their clusters of various sizes, each of them guarded by a team of riflemen.
“There are so many of them,” Annie whispered. Her tone sounded like equal parts fear and awe.
Tyler assumed she was talking about the terrorists, not the guests, and he had to agree. These were some badass dudes. He had a horrible feeling in his stomach that people weren’t going to take them seriously enough, and that more of the resort’s guests were going to die before this ended—whatever the hell this was.
CHAPTER 2
WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?
Jonathan Grave’s eyes snapped open. He thought he’d heard gunshots, a quick burst of automatic-weapons fire, distant but distinctive. Perhaps he’d been dreaming, but—
There it was again, and it was definitely gunfire. A sustained burst this time, and accompanied by screams.
“Gail,” he said. “Wake up. Something’s wrong.”
She lay with her head on his chest and was slow to respond.
“Come on, Gail. Wake up. Somebody’s shooting.” As he spoke, he slid out from under her, and she stirred.
At the third ripple of gunfire, she was wide-awake. As she sat up, the covers fell away from her breasts and she moved quickly to cover them. Jonathan shot to his feet and darted naked to the sliding glass door that served as their window onto the beach. Out beyond the glass and the low hedge that surrounded their patio, everything looked normal in the silver light of the moon. It cut a brilliant slice across the calm waters, only to be lost in the rolling luminescence of the waves breaking against the white sand.
“What do you see?” Gail asked. He could hear her rising and dressing behind him.
“Nothing, yet,” he said. “But that was definitely gunfire.” He unlocked the slider and pulled it open.
“Whatever it is, I think pants and shoes would be a good idea,” Gail said. She’d pulled herself into the cream-colored shorts and pink blouse she’d worn to dinner.
Jonathan looked down at himself. She had a point. He locked the door again. “Come over here and keep an eye out,” he said. As she moved into his place, he padded quickly across the bedroom into the massive walk-in closet, where he’d hung his khaki 5.11 pants and golf shirt. He wasn’t much for shorts.
“Talk to me,” Jonathan said as he felt his way along the hanging clothes in the dark. Under the circumstances, turning on a light was a nonstarter. He heard more gunfire in the distance. Single shots this time, but they sounded closer than before.
“I don’t see anything,” Gail said. “But it sounds like they’re working up this way, one bungalow at a time.”
The Crystal Sands Resort was as high-end as a beach getaway could be, and Jonathan had chosen the bungalow farthest from the noise and the light of the clubhouse. The surf rolled two hundred yards from their patio at low tide and about a hundred yards closer when the moon pulled it nearer to shore. On the opposite side of the building—officially the front, he supposed—their ornate wood and etched glass door was separated from the steep sloping jungle by only an access road and another twenty yards of well-groomed undergrowth.
Because their bungalow was last in line, he assumed they had some time, but it would be measured in seconds, not minutes. With every bungalow situated for maximum privacy, it was impossible to tell precisely what was going on beyond the row of trees that separated them from their nearest neighbors.
But the gunfire provided an important clue.
During his years of service for Uncle Sam, Jonathan had become an expert at dressing quickly in the dark. Leaning his back against the closet wall, he pulled on a pair of black athletic socks and then slipped his legs into his pants and his feet into a pair of Merrell hiking shoes. He anticipated a long night, and if there was a single important lesson to be learned about emergencies, it was that shoes are your most important assets. Other clothing was important, too, but you could run naked if you had to, so long as you had something on your feet.
He buttoned and zipped his pants and—
“Digger, they’re here.”
Jonathan swung back into the bedroom in time to see Gail backing away from the glass doors as two men dressed all in black glided through the moonlight. If they’d seen Gail, they made no indication of it.
“They move like they know what they’re doing,” Gail said. “And they have hostages.” A former member of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, she knew training when she saw it. The leader of the two-man team moved with his weapon at low ready, while the other one guarded a young couple that they’d spent some time with at the pool. The second guy looked tough, but from the way he was holding his rifle—they both carried some form of AR 15 clone—he didn’t look frightened. Both attackers wore tactical vests festooned with spare magazines.
“I don’t see night vision,” Jonathan observed. And why would they have it? Whatever they were up to, they had little reason to expect much resistance from a bunch of off-season beach vacationers. That one bit of complacency might provide Jonathan’s best chance for victory.
The bad guys were still fifteen, twenty yards out when Jonathan’s plan came together in his head. “Stay back and get behind something in case they get a shot off,” he said.
“What are you doing?” Gail seemed simultaneously horrified and insulted. She’d never been much of a hider—had always been a hell of a fighter.
Jonathan didn’t have time to explain. Hell, he barely had time to get into position. As he moved to the short wall where the sliding glass door met the lock, he wrapped his hand around the Benchmade Presidio Ultra that was always clipped to his pocket and opened the blade with a flourish. He pressed his back against the wall perpendicular to the door and brought his hands up into a fighting stance.
Gail hadn’t moved. “Digger, what the hell—”
“We won’t be taken,” Jonathan said. “If I’m gonna die, it’s gonna be on my—”
A brilliant white light split the darkness of the bedroom, catching Gail full-on.
“Don’t move!” a voice yelled from beyond the door. Two seconds later, something struck the glass of the door and the panel disintegrated. “Get on the ground!” the attacker shouted. “Get on the ground or I will shoot you!”
The tactical light from the lead attacker’s rifle flared against the drapes as the muzzle crossed the threshold.
Jonathan struck like a scorpion. Grabbing the muzzle of the rifle just behind the brake, he lurched the weapon up to point at the ceiling. As the weapon shifted, the attacker’s finger found the trigger and fired a round into the plaster. In the instant that the shooter’s inner wrist was exposed, Jonathan slashed it with the razor edge of the blade, severing tendons and blood vessels, rendering the hand useless.
Continuing with the momentum he’d built, Jonathan pivoted to the shooter’s other side. While forcing the attacker’s arm even higher, he drove
