Retribution Road by Jon Coon (e reader comics .TXT) 📕

a crash earlier this year. You may recall their daughters were kidnapped, and we made a raid and brought them home from a Mexican cartel. What you probably don’t know is that Bobby and Susan were murdered because Senator Benson wouldn’t back off on the raids. In this letter, Bob says he fully supports what I’m about to tell you.”

He handed the letter to Bill, on his right.

“Wasn’t there some TV coverage about that?” one of the men asked.

“Oh, that’s right. My memory isn’t what it was.”

“And your ranch was attacked? Is your family all right?”

“Yes, thank God. We had property loss, but no one was badly hurt.”

“Was that the cartel too?”

“It was. They have threatened me and my family. They kidnapped my grandson. We got him back too. Thank God.”

“And then they tried to blow up the Baytown refinery. What are you doing to stop this, Tom?” one of Tom’s oldest friends in the CAF, Chuck McDaniel, asked.

“Well, we stopped them from blowing up the refinery, but that’s why I’m here, Chuck. I can’t, as part of the Rangers or as the leader of Bob Benson’s drug taskforce, do what I think needs to be done. But we can. If you’re as tired of watching the news and feeling helpless as I am, of feeling like there’s nothing we can do, like our time has passed and our country is slipping away, if you’re as tired of that as I am, help me, and we can teach those bastards a lesson they won’t ever forget. It’s time for us to be Texans again.”

The truck engine stopped, and men’s voices moved toward the back of the tent and where Ray hid. They laughed and gave one of the men in their group a hard time about a girl at a bar who couldn’t say no and a wife who wouldn’t say yes. Unwelcome and unhelpful advice was freely offered but was not appreciated. Comments were rebuffed with insults that made even a SEAL like Ray realize he’d not, after all, really heard it all.

Ray rolled out from under the tent wall and lay still, watching. Five men in work clothes carrying AK47s entered through a slit in the backwall canvas. They went to wooden lockers behind a rough-hewn table and chairs and put lunch bags inside them. One went to the larger generator and started it. Bright lights came on, and two large air compressors rumbled to life. On a skid, wooden frames awaited fiberglass panels to be screwed in place that would be sealed with a second glass skin, providing a hull strong enough to withstand depths of twenty meters or more. Ray watched as the workers began the process of creating another two-million-dollar narco-sub.

It was fully daylight now, hours past their planned egress. Though the beach appeared unguarded, getting back to the scooters and scuba gear presented more of a challenge in broad daylight.

And then they heard the Jeep.

An open Jeep Wrangler with big knobby tires, a roll bar with lighting, and a machine gun mounted on the hood came casually down the beach. Inside were a driver driving and one gunner scanning the beach and jungle for uninvited guests. Gabe’s team flattened into the jungle floor and watched the Jeep pass.

“If they find our gear, we’re toast,” Gabe said quietly.

Master Chief Kurczewski nodded, pointed two fingers to his eyes and then pointed back into the jungle. A squadron of wild javelina, fifteen or more, rooted its way toward the men’s hiding place. Smaller than domestic pigs, javelina were named by the Spanish for their straight, sharp tusks used for feeding and fighting. Not known as overtly aggressive, they were most capable of defending themselves when startled or attacked.

As they came closer, Gabe noticed a strong musk odor, as pungent as skunks or bear in close proximity. Gabe held his breath and waited. Then, one animal caught human scent and stomped the ground with both front feet as a deer would do. The others stopped and then bolted away from the men, toward the tent, toward the tripwires, toward Ray and total chaos.

The first charge set off others, and like falling dominos, the jungle turned orange with flame and crashing trees. Wood splinters filled the air like flights of arrows, shredding vegetation and wounding or killing the screaming hogs. The explosions came closer to the big tent. Wood splinters sliced through the canvas, some puncturing the fiberglass hulls. Huge trees fell, crashing into each other, collapsing the canopy, collapsing the tent. Adding to the cacophony, terrified black howler monkeys bellowed loudly enough to be heard for miles, and macaws of a dozen different species and brilliant colors shrieked and took to the air in terror.

Inside the tent, workers hunkered down between the subs while huge limbs and massive trees fell above them. The tent and camo-net folded above them, and outside they could hear the devastation of their security system gone wrong, the snapping and crashing of hundred-year-old trees, the screams of wounded animals.

A mile beyond the chaos, the men in the Jeep abruptly turned around. As they raced back down the beach, it looked as if the jungle had fallen into a sinkhole. The disaster covered two or three football fields, and their sub base was barely visible beneath the tangle of trees, vines, and broken limbs. They parked and walked, unaware, directly toward Gabe’s team, who were bruised, battered, and bleeding.

Master Chief Kurczewski had a splintered branch protruding from his left shoulder, and Gabe had smaller, dart-like wooden daggers in both legs. Will, the other SEAL, was lying face down, not moving, bleeding profusely from a scalp wound. The men from the Jeep came closer. Gabe clutched his MP5 and waited. When the two from the Jeep were nearly atop them and still unaware, Gabe stood and smashed the first in the face with the butt of the submachine gun. He spun quickly, catching the other in the side of the head in the