Chapter 9 - The Blood-Soaked Airstrip
Great Inagua Island was a jagged sliver of limestone and scrub brush rising out of the churning Atlantic waters.
The runway was two thousand yards of cracked, weed-choked asphalt carved out of the mangrove swamp during the Cold War.
A violent squall was rolling in from the north, whipping palm fronds flat against the sand and driving stinging sheets of rain across the runway.
The Gulfstream G550 touched down with a violent screech of burning rubber, its tires skipping across standing water before the thrust reversers roared to life.
The aircraft taxied toward three rusted corrugated steel hangars at the far end of the strip.
Waiting near the open bay of the central hangar were two black four-wheel-drive flatbed trucks with high-intensity floodlights mounted to the roll bars.
Surrounding the trucks were eight men dressed in wet-weather tactical gear, armed with Belgian FAL rifles and machetes.
Leading them was Hector Salazar, a high-ranking lieutenant for the Jalisco cartel who handled maritime distribution through the Caribbean corridor.
Salazar was forty, scarred across his bridge of his nose, his gold teeth glinting beneath the brim of a dripping oilskin hat.
The jet’s airstair door swung open, hitting the wet concrete with a dull thud.
Declan Walsh shoved Khloe Hayes down the narrow steps, his gun pressed hard against the back of her skull.
Khloe stumbled on the wet metal rungs, barely catching her footing on the slick asphalt.
The tropical rain hit her instantly, plastering her dark hair to her forehead and soaking her torn clothes.
"Hector!" Declan shouted over the roar of the wind and the idling jet engines.
Salazar stepped forward, spitting a dark plug of tobacco into the gravel, his eyes sweeping over Khloe with cold, predatory evaluation.
"You brought heat with you, Declan," Salazar said, his Spanish accent thick and dangerous.
"My radio operator says the American Coast Guard has two cutters heading south from Mayaguana."
"The maritime trust in New York put an international seizure order on that jet."
"I don't need federal eyes on my refueling depot."
"I have the codes, Hector!" Declan screamed, his voice bordering on madness as the rain ran down his face.
"This woman is Russo’s personal brain!"
"She controls thirty million dollars in untraceable bearer assets across the European ports!"
"Give me two of your offshore boats to reach Cuba, and half of the take is yours!"
Salazar walked up to Khloe, reaching out a gloved hand to grip her chin, forcing her head up into the blinding glare of the truck’s halogen lights.
Khloe looked directly into the cartel boss’s black eyes without blinking, even as the rain stung her exposed skin.
"She doesn't look like an empire," Salazar murmured, his thumb running over the fresh bruise on her cheek.
"She looks like an expensive secretary who is about to drown in a swamp."
"Check the token!" Declan yelled, thrusting the ruggedized laptop into Salazar’s chest.
"The transfer is staged!"
Before Salazar could look at the screen, a high-pitched, metallic whistle cut through the storm from the sky above.
It was not the sound of thunder.
It was the distinct, turbine-driven shriek of a high-performance jet descending without running lights.
Through the low-hanging storm clouds, a sleek, matte-black Dassault Falcon 8X dropped out of the sky like a diving falcon.
It was flying dangerously low, barely fifty feet above the mangrove canopy, its navigation lights completely blacked out.
"What is that?" Salazar barked, his men immediately raising their FAL rifles toward the dark sky.
"That’s not the Coast Guard!"
The Falcon 8X roared over the runway at three hundred knots, the sheer backdraft of its three turbofan engines blowing over two of Salazar’s fuel drums.
Then, from the belly of the black jet, four dark silhouettes detached into the rain-lashed sky.
Steerable tactical parachutes deployed two hundred feet above the tarmac, popping open with the sound of rifle shots.
"Ambush!" Salazar roared, drawing a chrome-plated .38 Super from his waistband.
"Kill the woman! Burn the plane!"
Before Declan could squeeze the trigger of his Colt, the world exploded into blinding, white phosphorescent fire.
Two high-output flash-bang charges detonated fifty yards down the runway, turning the night into an agonizing wall of light and sound.
The shockwave tore through the hangar, disorienting Salazar’s gunmen and causing their ears to bleed.
Damian Russo touched down on the wet asphalt with the precision of a hunting hawk.
He collapsed his black tactical canopy with a single pull of his quick-release harness, coming up from a forward roll into a low, predatory crouch.
He was dressed in full black tactical armor, his face smeared with dark camouflage grease, his hazel eyes burning with murderous intent.
In his hands was an HK416 assault carbine with a carbon-fiber suppressor.
He didn't yell.
He didn't issue commands.
He raised the weapon and fired three controlled double-taps through the driving rain.
The two gunmen flanking Salazar’s truck collapsed instantly, their chests punched through by heavy 5.56mm tungsten-core rounds.
Leo and two elite Russo operators touched down twenty yards to the right, laying down a devastating crossfire of suppressed automatic fire.
The cartel enforcers panicked.
They were trained to intimidate unarmed smugglers, not to withstand an assault by an elite urban strike force operating with absolute military discipline.
Salazar dove behind the heavy steel wheel of the flatbed truck, screaming curses into his radio as bullets ripped through the sheet metal.
Declan Walsh shrieked in terror as he recognized the monstrous figure advancing through the rain.
"Russo!" Declan screamed, his voice cracking into a high-pitched wail.
Declan grabbed Khloe by the back of her neck, hauling her backward toward the interior of the darkened maintenance hangar.
"Don't move, you bastard!" Declan shrieked, backing into the cavernous shadows of the rusted iron building.
"I'll blow her brains all over the wall!"
Damian dropped his empty magazine with a flick of his index finger, slapping a fresh thirty-round clip home with the heel of his palm.
He stepped over the twitching body of a fallen mercenary without looking down.
"Leo," Damian said, his voice terrifyingly calm through his throat-mic transceiver.
"Take Salazar and the trucks."
May you like
"Leave the hangar to me."
Damian raised his carbine, stepped over a river of blood mixing with the rainwater on the asphalt, and walked directly into the black mouth of the hangar.
