Hail Warning

Snake Island, Nigeria

When Baako reached the bottom of the stairs, he encountered a very confused guard who was crouched down, swinging his weapon side-to-side, looking for potential targets.

“Why did you let them go up?” Baako yelled at the man.

“They told me that there was an attack on the beach, and they wanted to go into the house for safety.”

Baako yelled at the man, “I want you to get as many men as you can into Jeeps and seal off all roads that lead out of the compound. No one gets on or off this island, especially that man and woman.”

The guard grunted an acknowledgement. He then removed a radio from his belt and began to speak into the microphone. Baako sidestepped the guard and began running up the stairs.

Kara and Kornev reached the top of the stairs. Kara was in the lead with Kornev closely on her tail, huffing and puffing like he was going to pass out. Kornev’s recent wounds were taking a toll on him, and his lungs felt like they were on fire. It had been a long time since he had run an all-out sprint, and the deep sand and stairs had his leg muscles shaking and feeling like rubber.

Kara made a beeline for the kitchen for the keys that were hanging on the pegboard. The day before she had studied the keys, and she already knew which ones she wanted. Four of the fobs had little plastic labels on them that read Suburban-1, Suburban-2, Suburban-3, Suburban-4. She grabbed all the Suburban keys, shoving them in her shorts pocket. She then wrenched the entire pegboard off the wall, opened a lower kitchen cabinet, and tossed the pegboard with its remaining keys through the opening.

“We need to get to the garage,” she told Kornev.

Kornev was in no position to argue. He understood their lives depended on getting the hell out of there.

They ran over to the elevator and Kornev pressed the button.

The wait for the elevator was excruciating. She kept watching the openings where the sliding glass doors had once been, expecting at any time to see Baako run inside. Most likely he either was accompanied by a gun-toting guard or he had his weapon at the ready. She was certain Baako would be plenty pissed the missile had vaporized his brother. It didn’t take a college degree to understand that she and Kornev had something to do with the misfiring of the weapon. Compounding their guilt was the fact that they had run from the scene before the missile had fired.

The elevator arrived and the doors opened. Kara withdrew the keys to the vehicles from her pocket and separated them, so they would be ready. As the elevator doors began to close, she got her first glimpse of Baako. This time his face was not adorned by his usual smile like in the past. Instead, he looked more like Afua with the same unattached look of danger.

Baako saw Kornev and Kara framed inside the elevator. He made a break for the open elevator, leaping over the couch, but the doors closed just as he reached them.

Baako cursed as he repeatedly pressed the elevator button. He ran into the kitchen and headed straight for the pegboard. He knew it held the key to open the door that led down the stairs to the garage. But to Baako’s frustration, the pegboard was gone, which meant that the keys were also gone. Not knowing what to do, Baako began searching for the keys in a frenzy. First, he checked the trash can, followed by opening the dozens of top-level kitchen cabinets. Unsuccessful, he urgently opened the lower cabinets. Baako discovered the pegboard of keys in the cabinet that held the pots and pans. He pulled out the board, distraught to see that none of the hooks held any keys. They had fallen off inside the cabinet.

Like a madman, he began frantically pulling out pots and pans, looking in each one for the key he needed. Several minutes later, and after more cussing, Baako found the little Schlage key that opened the steel fire door leading to the garage stairway. Baako went into the pantry to retrieve his Sig Sauer 1911 Ultra .45 caliber pistol hanging on a hook above the doorjamb. He didn’t have to check if the gun was loaded. It was always loaded as were the dozens of other guns hidden around the home. They were well out of the children’s reach.

Leaving the kitchen, Baako ran across the living room to a door next to the elevator. After unlocking the door, he began running down the stairs toward the garage.

Once they reached the garage, Kara yelled to Kornev, “Find something to block the elevator door so it remains open.” She left the Russian with his foot propped in the elevator door and ran toward a line of black Suburban SUVs.

None of the SUVs were numbered in any fashion. To find the Suburban closest to her, she began a process of elimination. Nothing happened when she hit the door button on the first key fob. The second unlocked a vehicle down the line. She was relieved when the third fob unlocked the door of the Suburban in front of her. Kara opened the driver door and she jumped in behind the wheel. The new vehicle had a proximity ignition. She put her foot on the brake and pushed the ignition button. The SUV’s huge engine growled to life, and she racked the gear shifter into reverse while hitting the gas. Inside the garage, the screech of the tires sounded like someone was being tortured. She slammed the car into drive and began driving toward the exit. Up ahead, she saw Kornev still holding his foot in front of the elevator door. Kara lowered the window and pressed the unlock button. She screeched to a stop next to Kornev and yelled, “Get in!”

Kornev grabbed the passenger door handle behind Kara and pulled it open. Instead of sitting in the front, Kornev dove into the backseat of the SUV.

“I told you to find something to hold the doors open,” Kara yelled at him.

“I couldn’t find anything,” Kornev told her, his head popping up from behind Kara.

Kara stepped on the gas, and Kornev positioned himself into an upright position in the backseat.

Ahead was the closed garage door. Kara began pushing all the extraneous buttons on the panel above the windshield. An overhead light snapped on, and the passenger reading light came on. But the garage door remained closed.

“If it doesn’t open, I will have to ram it,” Kara told Kornev.

“No way,” Kornev told her. “It’s a hurricane door. It won’t fail.”

Kornev reached over the front seat and pressed one of three buttons that protruded from under the rear-view mirror. The garage door immediately began to rise.

Kara looked at the button Kornev had pressed, making a mental note of the location of the button used to open the garage door. It would be useful information for the next time she was in a Suburban with a Russian arms dealer, while being chased by the twin brother of a terrorist on an isolated island inside a massive garage.

Her eyes shifted from the button to her rear-view mirror.

She saw a white door open and saw Baako enter the garage. He looked toward the sound of the SUV and loud garage door. He raised the Sig and pointed it at the fleeing vehicle.

“Get down.” Kara warned Kornev before Baako pulled the trigger. The back windshield of the SUV shattered, and Kornev’s left earlobe was clipped free, flew forward, and stuck to the inside of the front windshield. The bullet had wedged itself into the thick padded dashboard of the vehicle. Kornev grabbed the side of his head and cupped his ear with his left hand. He grimaced in pain and then checked his hand. He was bleeding, but he was grateful his head hadn’t been positioned two inches further to the left. He would have still been bleeding, but he wouldn’t have been alive to know it.

Kara cranked the wheel hard to the right. She heard two more gunshots as she blasted onto the driveway. She turned the Suburban sharply to the left, and the SUV danced for an instant on two wheels before it succumbed to gravity. Kara straightened out the wheel and pointed the car toward the road leading to the runway.

The sudden turn caught Kornev by surprise. Still pinching closed the bottom of his ear with one hand, he flailed out with his other arm to stop his fall, but it hadn’t helped. He ended up on the floorboard in the backseat — facedown and wedged between the seats.

“You better put on your seat belt,” Kara yelled back at him. “And what the hell is this glob on the windshield? What body part are you missing?”

Having to use both of his arms to extricate himself from the floor, Kornev sat back up and told Kara, “It’s a piece of my ear.”

Up ahead, Kara saw a fork in the road and said, “That’s got to hurt. Should we go right or left?” she asked. “I can’t remember.”

Kornev looked confused for a moment and told her, “Right, I think. But, where are you trying to go?”

“For a start, I want to get the hell off this island,” Kara shot back. “Our best bet is the airfield. Hail might be able to help us if his drones have some open ground to work with.”

In her rear-view mirror, Kara saw a pair of white Land Rovers turn onto the road behind her. She pressed harder on the accelerator, yet cautiously, understanding if the big SUV fishtailed, there was little she could do to recover. The Land Rovers behind them were smaller, faster, and could corner better. Then she saw something else in her rear-view mirror that she disliked even more than the Land Rovers. Each Land Rover had a machine gun mounted to their roll bars. A black soldier appeared from behind the gun in the lead vehicle. He reached out and unhooked the gun from its latch that secured it to a fixed position. Kara watched as he pointed the gun at her Suburban and prepared to fire the weapon.

“Ah, damn,” Kara exclaimed.

Kornev was getting ready to ask what? when his question was answered with automatic gunfire. The bullets thudded into the back hatch of the Suburban. But none of the bullets penetrated the cab.

Kara looked hopeful and yelled, “This SUV must have some type of armored protection. Those .50 caliber bullets would have killed us if it was an unarmored SUV.”

Kornev pinched closed his earlobe and said, “The metal might be armored, but the glass isn’t.” He poked up his head to take a quick peek at the vehicles pursuing them.

The SUV and the Land Rovers now threaded through the dense jungle on an extremely narrow road. It wasn’t built for more than one vehicle at a time. In addition, the road had deep pits and shallows worn into the jungle floor. It was challenging for any vehicle to maintain control when driving at these speeds.

The man who had been firing the heavy machine gun from the Land Rover continued to fire more volleys at the SUV. The gun jumped around wildly on its mount as its tires hopped and skipped over the road’s potholes.

Kara fought to keep from bouncing and skidding out of control. One small miscalculation, and they would slam into the thick banyan trees lining the edges of the road.

Kara could see a clearing ahead.

Kornev yelled to Kara, “You should be coming up to the runway.”

“Yeah, how can I forget?” Kara asked sarcastically. “Lovely fricken trip you planned for us. You really know how to treat a girl, you Russian scumbag.”

Kara was happy that she could finally tell Kornev exactly what she thought of him. During the last few days having to pretend Kornev was the best thing since the Internet had been its own type of torture. Even if they were going to die, at least that repugnant part of her life was over. Thank God!

Ahead of them, Kara could see the runway was elevated. The road they were on was much lower than the surface of the airstrip which made perfect sense. The water table on the island was very high. To prevent the runway from flooding and becoming unusable, it had to be built on an elevated levy. Just before the road met the runway, it ramped up quickly onto the asphalt landing strip.

As Kara rocketed up the ramp at 65 miles per hour, all four tires of the 6000-pound vehicle left the ground. Kornev was taking another look behind them when the SUV became airborne. The law of inertia sent Kornev flying even as the heavy vehicle was coming back down. When the SUV bottomed out, Kornev’s head smacked into the roof of the vehicle with a thud.

“Goddamn it!” the Russian wailed in pain.

“I told you to put on your damn seat belt,” Kara said patronizingly.

Kara spun the wheel hard to the right. The SUV shuddered and centered itself on the long runway.

“When you get to the end of the runway, there is a little road that leads to the only bridge that will get us off this island,” Kornev yelled, touching the lump on the top of his head, and then checking his hand for blood.

Kara looked at the Land Rovers in her rear-view mirror. The first one was flying up onto the runway.

“We’re not going to make it,” she told Kornev. “We’re sitting ducks on this runway. Hell, if I was behind one of those guns, I could take us out in less than fifteen seconds.”

The second Land Rover jumped onto the runway. Both vehicles now turned toward the SUV and drew up alongside one another. Each of the drivers pressed their pedals to the floor as they accelerated down the runway in pursuit of the SUV.

Kara saw two men pop up behind their machine guns. The width of the runway allowed the pursuing vehicles to spread out. They were now running side by side, and no longer in each other’s line of fire. Kara looked closer. She was certain that one of the men behind the guns was Baako. And, he was smiling again.

The .50 caliber Baako was manning opened up, and the big gun violently shook his arms. The only defensive action Kara could make was to press her foot all the way down to the floor.