by Sam Sisavath
“What the hell was that?” the first guard asked, echoing Keo’s thoughts.
“Sounded like an explosion,” the second one said.
“Where’d it come from?”
“I think the front gate—”
Another boom! tore through the night, and this time the brap-brap-brap of a machine gun responding crackled.
“That’s definitely coming from the front gate,” the second guard said. He had disappeared out of the open door’s view again, and Keo could only hear his voice. “What should we do?”
The first guard remained in sight the entire time. If he was panicking—even a little bit—he was hiding it well. “We’re not going anywhere. We have a job to do; that goes for every single one of you.”
“We’re under attack,” a third voice said. A few seconds later, the owner appeared in silhouette outside the door.
Then a fourth joined them. “You hear that? We’re under attack.”
“I can hear just fine,” the first guard said. “We’re not going anywhere. Our job is to stay here.”
I guess we know who’s in charge, Keo thought as the machine gun firing stopped…for about five seconds before it picked right back up again. Except this time there was clearly more than one firing simultaneously.
“Sounds like a party,” Keo said.
The leader glanced back into the building at him. “What do you know about it?”
“I know seriously bad news when I hear it. Listen. You hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Bad news. That’s what bad news sounds like. Are you even paying attention to me?”
“You’d be the expert on bad news, wouldn’t you?”
“Is that an accusation?”
“Just a statement of fact, from what I hear.”
Keo shrugged. Or as much as he could, with his arms bound behind him. “Don’t believe everything you hear, son.”
“I’m not your son.”
“Sorry. I can’t see your face, so I don’t know what you look like. If you’d step inside a little bit so I can get a closer look…”
A third explosion—followed quickly by a fourth—ripped across the compound, and the ground under Keo’s boots shook again, this time for much longer.
“Oh yeah, it’s definitely bad news,” Keo said.
One of the new arrivals peeked into the room. “What should we do?” the man asked. “We’re under attack. We can’t just stand around here doing nothing.”
“Stay the fuck put,” the first guard said. “No one’s going anywhere. Do your jobs.”
“We’re under attack,” another voice said. It was the second one, who remained out of view. “That changes everything.”
“It doesn’t change shit,” the leader said. “Buck gave us an order. Whatever’s happening over there isn’t our problem.” He pointed into the building at Keo. “Our job is him. Let the others take care of the rest.”
“Sounds like your friends are going to need all the help they can get,” Keo said.
“Shut the fuck up,” the leader said before he slammed the door shut and Keo found himself alone inside a dark building again.
He no longer had a view of the outside world, but he could still hear it.
The brap-brap-brap of machine guns firing nonstop now, while the pop-pop-pop of small arms answered. They went back and forth, a constant stream of gunfire and the occasional explosions, as if someone were lobbing grenades into the compound.
Someone? It was more like a lot of someones, considering how much chaos he was listening to at the moment.
The question was: Who was attacking the compound, and was he going to have to kill them to get the hell out of this place and back to Lara, too?
Twenty-Two
His right arm, where he was shot, was starting to tingle. His left thigh, where he had also been shot, was starting to join in on the fun. He continued telling himself that both wounds could have been much worse if either bullet had gone an inch or two in the wrong direction. He wished he could ignore them, but whatever Buck’s medics had given him wouldn’t allow him to. But at least the pain was of the tingling variety and not the “Oh my fucking God, I’ve been shot and I’m about to die” type.
Thank God for that—and the World War III that was raging outside the building at the moment, because they allowed his mind to stop obsessing about what Lara was going through right this second in Darby Bay.
Gotta get out of here. Gotta get to Lara.
Gotta get to Lara…
It was the beginning of the end everywhere it seemed, and he was stuck in a lousy building waiting to die.
“You saw them, didn’t you? At Axton? Cordine City? That was only a small part of what he has at his disposal. Lara’s been building an army from the ashes of Black Tide, but so have I, and so has he.”
How many Black Tiders did Lara have with her to fight against that? A few hundred, most of them support personnel. Fighter pilots for the Warthogs, but no tank crews because those guys were busy elsewhere. She had a hundred soldiers at the most—men and women who could be counted on to actually fight—and a lot of civilians. The townspeople wouldn’t be of much help. Five years of relative normalcy since The Walk Out had made a lot of people lower their guards. Even he had fallen victim to complacency until that mess at Winding Creek.
There was Gaby. Lara would have Gaby. The kid was tough, and still limping or not, when the attack began, she would become invaluable.
But who else?
Who else?
Jesus. He had to get to Darby Bay. He had to get to Lara. He couldn’t warn her anymore—that ship had sailed—but he could stand by her side while Merrick attacked.
Goddammit!
He looked over at the door as a ferocious round of pop-pop-pop crackled outside. The shooting hadn’t stopped for longer than a few seconds since it began over ten minutes ago. (Fifteen minutes? Thirty? Was he losing track of time again?) The back and forth raged on along with the occasional booms of things exploding.
Grenades. Those are grenades.
And what else?
The brap-brap-brap of machine-gun fire was easy to pick out from the constant torrent of what sounded like firecrackers popping endlessly. Then there were the screams. Keo was pretty sure he could hear screams, along with voices shouting commands. People were dying out there, and he wasn’t sure if that was something that was good for him.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?
Unless the enemy of his enemy also wanted him dead, then not so much. What were the chances of that? Given his luck tonight, pretty damn good.
Keo had tried to get his guards’ attention again, but they were either ignoring him or they were gone. How possible was the latter? Unlikely, given how adamant the leader had been about everyone holding their ground. Four men, as far as Keo knew, possibly more that hadn’t spoken up when the fighting began.
Not that four or more (or less) did him any good in his current situation. The ropes only seemed to get tighter the more he struggled against them, and he couldn’t even move his legs even a little bit. There was nothing left for him to do but sit and wait, and listen.
“Fuck,” he whispered out loud to the empty room.
Then, louder: “Fuck.”
Then, even louder: “FUCK—”
Except the “-ck” half of the word was lost in an ear-splitting BOOM! from his left side and Keo instinctively dove forward, taking the chair with him, and hit the dirt floor on his face and chest—grunting as he ate some damp earth—as one side of the wall exploded inward.
Raindrops fell around him, except these raindrops were made of brick and mortar and chunks of splintered wood. He braced himself against the assault as debris pelted his arms and legs and back, but the ones that landed on the back of his skull and exposed neck weren’t quite so easy to just shake off.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Keo rolled over onto his side when the pummeling finally stopped. His arms strained against
the backrest of the chair, and he let out a series of coughs as smoke and soot filled up the room. His chest heaved, but at least all the new rounds of pain helped him to momentarily ignore the bumps he was sure had just appeared across the back of his skull.
Slowly, very slowly, the clouds began to thin out, and he was able to see the remains of the wall—a gaping jagged opening that revealed a battlefield on the other side.
Now it’s a party!
Buildings were on fire, white plumes of smoke shooting out of windows and raging flames lighting up the night sky. Figures raced back and forth across the opening, but if any of them noticed Keo staring out at them, no one bothered to stop and make sure he didn’t try to get out. If they even knew who he was to begin with. If they even noticed the makeshift hole in the wall in the first place.
That’s right, move along! Nothing to see here!
It was chaos outside, the constant clatters of gunfire easier to pinpoint now that he didn’t have a wall separating him from the battle. Most of the shooting was coming from where he knew the perimeter fence to be, which further convinced him that someone and their friends were attacking the compound head-on.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?
God, I hope so…
The sudden roar of engines as a technical zoomed past the building, the machine gunner in the back—his face hidden behind a balaclava—holding onto his weapon for dear life as the vehicle drove at dangerous speeds. The man in the back might have glanced in Keo’s direction for the split second he was visible, and Keo waited to hear brakes as the truck came back to check on him, but that never happened.
He turned to look at the door behind him. It was still closed. If his guards knew what had happened—and they surely would have, given how loud the explosion that had taken out the wall had been—they weren’t responding to it. The only explanation for why they hadn’t checked on him yet was because there was no one out there.
Was that possible? Had his guards actually taken off after all?
Captain Optimism, pal!
He lay on his side for a minute, trying to figure out what to do next. He had limited options, but at least no one had come in to check on him yet, and if the constant blur of black-clad Buckies racing across the open wall—and nary a single soul stopping to glance in his direction save for maybe—maybe—the machine gunner earlier—that wasn’t going to happen for a while. At least until someone finally got curious enough.
Right now, Keo was hoping not to meet Mr. Curious.
He concentrated on his binds, on how to get out of them. Could he even get out of them? He’d be damned if the ropes didn’t feel even tighter since his swan dive. Keo spat out some dirt, then worked saliva around his mouth to get rid of the taste. It was disgusting, but at least it wasn’t concrete. Now that would have really hurt.
His head continued to throb from however many chunks of the wall had bounced off his skull in the aftermath of the explosion. That was okay, because he didn’t feel any blood back there. The operative word being feel. But he would have if he were bleeding, right?
Maybe…
He concentrated instead on what he could control, which was very little. But there were a few, like—
A shadowed figure climbed through the hole in the wall, gloved hands grabbing the jagged opening—and loosening some bricks in the process—for stability as they stepped through and into the building.
Aw, hell.
The newcomer was wearing all black—cargo pants, boots, and a long-sleeved sweater with a black assault vest featuring the dreaded circled M over one of the ammo pouches. Mr. Curious was wearing a gun belt, and the long barrel of a rifle jutted out from behind his shoulder.
You had to get curious, didn’t you? Didn’t you?
Keo stared, because he didn’t know what else to do as the figure walked over, crunching debris under its boots. Mr. Curious stopped next to him and looked down. The face was covered by a balaclava, but there was something familiar about those blue eyes…
“If only I had a camera,” the figure said.
Keo grinned at the sound of the voice. “You’re alive.”
“Lucky for you,” the figure said as it pulled off the balaclava, revealing blonde hair and an oval-shaped face underneath.
Claire!
“Yeah, that’s me,” Keo said. “Lucky Keo. Good to see you, kid.”
“You too.”
The teenager glanced over her shoulder and out the hole in the wall, when a ferocious torrent of rifle fire rang out. This one sounded a lot closer than the others, and Claire must have realized that, too.
“I think they’re finally in the compound,” Claire said as she turned back to Keo and took a knife out from behind her back.
“Who is ‘they?’” Keo asked as Claire crouched and moved closer to cut him from the chair.
“I don’t know.” She sliced his legs free first, then started on his arms.
“Black Tide?”
“I don’t think so. I couldn’t reach anyone on the radio. If they were Black Tiders, they would have answered.”
“Did you radio Darby Bay?”
“I tried.”
“‘Tried?’”
“No one answered.”
“Shit.”
“What?” Claire said, standing up and putting the knife away. “You know something, don’t you?”
Keo stood up and rubbed his wrists. Both arms were stiff, and it took some doing to get his legs to stop weakening as he straightened them out. “They’re under attack. Have been for a few hours now, as far as I know.”
“Shit,” Claire said.
“What I said.”
Keo walked over to the hole in the wall just as another technical zoomed by. Like the last one, this one never bothered to slow down. Neither did the three black-clad figures running alongside it, as if they were using it as a shield against something.
“It’s been like that for almost an hour now,” Claire said.
“An hour?” Keo said, looking back at her.
“Yeah. Why?”
He shook his head. Damn it. What did Buck’s people give him? He was definitely having great difficulty keeping track of time.
“They gave me something,” Keo said as he moved away from the opening to hide himself in the shadows.
Claire hurried over to stand next to him. “What?”
“I don’t know. But it’s doing something to me.”
“I guess that explains your eyes.”
“What’s wrong with my eyes?”
“They’re huge, Keo.”
“Huge, how?”
“The size of marbles. You didn’t know?”
“It’s kind of hard to see my own eyeballs, kid.” He sighed. “You didn’t come here empty-handed, did you?”
“Merry Christmas,” Claire said as she handed him a weapon hanging behind her back. It was a Heckler & Koch UMP with a foldable buttstock, and it was too light in his hands. “I know it’s not an MP5SD, but hey, same family, right?”
“Close enough.”
Claire reached into her pocket and took out a spare magazine. “It’s all I could get from the dead guy I took it off.”
Keo put the spare into his back pocket. “Are you alone?”
“The Seven Dwarves are waiting for us outside. You can call me Snow White.”
Keo grunted. “Could have just said yes.”
Claire grinned. “Yes. I’m alone.”
“Any ideas who the other guys are?”
The teenager shook her head. “Not a clue. I thought it was prudent to avoid them, too. They didn’t seem to be taking any prisoners. I took advantage of the confusion they were creating to come back in here and get you out.”
“How’d you get inside?”
“Are you kidding me? The fence is gone.”
“Gone?”
“All those explosions you heard at the beginning? They took out most of the perimeter fencing. I just walked in. It helped that I was dressed
properly. When I was in the compound, anyway. I could have been shot before then, but the attack was just getting started at the time.”
Keo could barely make out her dark wardrobe in the shadows, but it was impossible to miss the white M on her vest. “Where’d you get that?”
“Jeremy,” Claire said, and frowned slightly. “I knew where he kept his things.”
“I’m sorry about the kid, Claire.”
“He was a good guy. He was just trying to do what was right.”
“I know,” Keo said. “You made it through the cornfields all right?”
“Better than you,” Claire said, staring at his bandaged thigh and arm. “You going to make it?”
“Yeah. They fixed me up and gave me that…whatever it was they gave me. It’s helping with the pain.”
“Why did they do that?”
“Buck’s orders. I got the impression he wanted me as wide awake as possible so he could crow about how much of a fuckup I am tonight. Then he left.”
“Are you sure he’s gone?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I saw a large force leave the compound earlier. About an hour before the fighting began.”
“Buck. He’s going to join the attack on Darby Bay. How large of a force did you see?”
“Dozens of technicals, even more men on horseback, and trucks. Those big trucks that can haul ten, twenty men in the back.” She paused, then, “They’re attacking Darby Bay? Right now?”
Keo nodded. “We have to get to Lara, kid. We have to get to our friends fast.”
“Maybe that’s why no one answered my radio calls. They’re…occupied right now.”
Claire’s face became somber, and Keo wondered if his looked the same, because he was pretty sure he was thinking the same thing she was.
Their friends, fighting for their lives, and they couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
Gotta get to Darby Bay. Gotta get to Darby Bay fast.
“What—” Claire began when a blast tore through some buildings at least fifty meters from their position, visible outside the hole in the wall. It was so much stronger than all the previous ones that both he and Claire could feel the aftershocks for seconds afterward.
“The big ones are getting closer,” Claire said.