Sharks - Matt Rogers (classic books for 11 year olds txt) 📗

83

It was a mighty impressive security perimeter hidden in plain sight.

The resort’s patrons had no idea anything was amiss, but Kane Walcott had set up four sentries in the tree line, buried in the undergrowth, each armed with an automatic FN SCAR battle rifle. It was overkill in terms of firepower, but Kane was just about done with the concept of hiding in plain sight. It didn’t matter if civilians had to die, or if the island had to go into total lockdown after the tourist sectors were threatened by gang warfare. His father had kept Grand Bahama peaceful and unremarkable by successfully integrating his operations with the pre-existing infrastructure, but that was Dylan’s way of doing it, and generations differ.

Kane was done with the Bahamas, anyway.

In his possession he had two gorgeous women, an old lady, and a kid. None of them mattered to him, but he wasn’t going to kill them just yet. He might need them if everything went to hell. But it wouldn’t, because Jason King and Will Slater were just men, despite their feared reputations. He’d been piecing together information about their exploits with the intention of hand-delivering the dossier to his father.

Before he learned his dad was no longer in the land of the living.

It didn’t exactly faze him — that’s what he’d been planning all along — but it was certainly a speedbump. Now Kane would have to sort out the mess his old man had left behind.

So King and Slater would pay with their lives, and Kane would use the reputation he earned from their deaths as fuel to make a new name for the present and future Walcotts. No more long-term plans, no more bribes to politicians and regulators. That was the old way.

The new way was doing whatever you wanted and letting the complaints and accusations fall on deaf ears.

It sure worked in modern politics.

Now Kane assessed his forces. There were the four sentries scattered down the path, each with overlapping fields of fire, able to detect whether anything was amiss along the line. That prevented anyone getting jumped from behind, so there was no chance of them getting stealthily taken out one by one. Then there was Kane and one additional man out front of the villa, buried in the hedges, and two more men in the house watching over the hostages.

That was the entirety of the resources Dylan Walcott had left.

Kane had rallied everyone.

He tried not to think of it as a last stand, instead treating it as the first operation he’d had the chance to solely control.

It was the start of something great, not the end of something broken.

Good riddance to the patriarch.

Then it happened.

He first heard the noise of the engine. It ruined the ambience from close to a mile away, disrupting the quiet of the waterside resort. First Kane’s blood pulsed with nervous energy, then he relaxed into it and smiled from underneath the vegetation. He clutched his sub-machine gun tighter, ignoring his slick palms. Nervous energy could either be interpreted as fear or excitement. His old man had taught him that.

The roar grew closer until it was right on top of them.

Kane couldn’t believe it could be this easy. King and Slater had no allies on this small island, no one to turn to in their hour of need, so that meant this was the entirety of their plan. A brazen frontal assault, which they were in fact renowned for, but Kane figured the stories had to be overblown.

Sure enough, a plain old sedan with a faded paint job and no visible armour roared through the resort’s entrance.

Its windows were tinted, and its engine screamed in protest at the burden it was required to bear.

But it came in fast, and Kane found himself thinking that in combat things happen much faster than you think they’re going to.

All four sentries unloaded their weapons at the sedan.

The resort erupted into chaos.

Distant screams and shouts of distress punctuated the gaps in automatic gunfire, and Kane grinned at the sheer carnage of it all.

Then the grin faded.

Because the tyres hadn’t blown out yet.

They must be modified, bulletproof.

No matter.

The sedan itself wasn’t.

All the windows shattered and bullets ripped through the doors and churned the upholstery inside. Whoever was inside had nowhere to hide, nowhere to shelter. They were mince meat by now, chewed and churned to a pulp, their insides coated across the dashboard.

Except the car kept coming.

In fact, it picked up speed.

Through the window frames Kane could see some object blocking the driver from view, but he hadn’t the slightest clue what it was. It looked like insulation of some kind, then he couldn’t think about that anymore because the sedan was still coming, doing sixty miles an hour now, its doors and hood and trunk practically hanging off due to the sheer number of rounds it had absorbed.

Its wheels still worked, though.

It began to slow maybe thirty feet from the villa, its engine sputtering out under the relentless barrage of bullets, but momentum carried it. Kane fired a wild burst from his sub-machine gun, coating the shattered windshield, but adrenaline pulsed at his temples, and he had no idea whether he’d hit anything.

The sedan ploughed across the lawn, roared down the path, and obliterated the front door of the villa, taking chunks of stone and brick out of the walls on either side.

It came to a stop with its bodywork destroyed, wedged half-in and half-out of the house. Brick and plaster and glass rained down on it, exposing clear gaps on either side of the car that could be used as points of entry into the villa.

Kane gulped.

The saliva hadn’t even gone down his throat before what was left of the driver’s door flew open, kicked from within, and a man stepped out with a heavy ballistic shield strapped to each forearm. They were the type used by riot police the world over, complete with armoured viewing ports made of