by Sam Sisavath
Four more Buckies were racing out of the darkness along the shoreline to Keo’s right. They were still too far away—over sixty meters—when they began shooting, firing in three-round bursts that chipped away at the dock and pinged! off some of the boats moored in place.
Keo returned fire, knowing the chances of hitting them weren’t very good. He was running and so were they, and he wasn’t that good of a shot. But firing in bursts made the guards stop their forward momentum and turn and flee back in the other direction.
Or two of them did, while the other two dived for cover behind a wooden shack. Keo stitched the side of the building with a series of shots but never unloaded everything he had. As soon as he stopped providing covering fire for Claire, the guards would immediately resume shooting at her, and he couldn’t allow that.
Claire, thank God, was already back on her feet and pulling at the rope. By the time she tossed the line into the boat, Keo was almost at the dock himself while still firing toward the shack.
“Fire it up!” Keo shouted, while thinking, And let’s hope there’s some gas in the tank, or this is going to be a pretty short escape!
He was waiting to hear the sound of the two motors roaring to life even as he kept squeezing off shot after shot at the guards. He glimpsed a head or two peeking out from behind cover, waiting for him to stop shooting so they could return fire. Whoever they were, they weren’t willing to risk their lives being heroes.
That’s it, boys. Play it safe. Just like that!
But he couldn’t hear the motors.
Not after five seconds.
Not after ten…
Come on, kid. Fire up those motors! Let’s hear them!
Instead, he heard Claire shouting, “Keo!”
What now?
He glanced back while still shooting down the shoreline. He wasn’t really aiming for any specific target now, just listening to the satisfying echoes of the rounds hitting the side of the building.
“There’s no key!” Claire shouted.
He stared at her for a second.
There’s no…
Two seconds.
…key?
The words rang inside his head.
“There’s no key!”
What does she mean, there’s no key?
Where is the key?
“There’s no key!” Claire shouted again.
There’s no key.
There’s no key!
He wanted to laugh his ass off. They had been worried about having gas for the boat’s engines, but neither one of them had considered the possibility that the Buckies wouldn’t leave the keys in the ignition when the crafts weren’t in use. After all, why would they? The keys would instead be in one of the buildings behind them, or maybe even in that shack the two guards—four now, that the two that had fled earlier had found enough courage to run back to rejoin their comrades—were hiding behind.
He glanced up and down the dock, looking for a box that could potentially hold keys. It wasn’t uncommon for marinas to have locked boxes with the keys inside, especially in places where there were few security issues.
Except he didn’t see anything that even remotely looked like a key box.
Well, fuck me!
“Keo!” Claire shouted.
He was pretty sure he actually laughed out loud that time, but if he did, it was instantly lost in the suddenly ferocious pop-pop-pop of rifles as the Buckies unloaded on the dock. The teenager ducked behind the fifteen-footer’s console, but there was no place for Keo to hide.
He wasn’t sure when he got the bright idea, but it was already in his head when he tossed the empty AR instead of reloading it, spun around, and jumped into the boat behind Claire.
The teenager glanced frantically back at him even as bullets slammed into the hull of the craft and even more chipped at the wooden walkway in front of them. She opened her mouth wide to shout something when he grabbed her shoulders—
—and threw her overboard.
Twenty-Four
There was blood in the water. Literally. Claire was bleeding from a graze along her right thigh, but it wasn’t bad enough that he had to worry about it. At least it wasn’t nearly as bad as his wounds, but thankfully Buck’s medic knew what he was doing, and whatever the man had injected Keo with, it was still running through his system and keeping him wide awake. Not that fighting to keep from drowning in the very cold Lake Mansfield water wasn’t already helping with that.
The thin tendrils of blood highlighted by the generous splash of moonlight, like mirages circling him and Claire, were distracting, but the bullets zip-zip-zipping into the water around them were worse. The rounds looked as if they were moving in slow motion, but they were still going to hurt (a lot) if they hit either him or the teenager. The school of white bass that had scattered when they plunged into the water were swimming away as fast as possible, but one of them didn’t move fast enough, and a bullet skewered it through the head. The poor fish turned sideways before beginning to float up to the surface.
As soon as he went under, Keo immediately grabbed Claire’s struggling form and began pulling her away from the boat. The bright white hull of the fifteen-footer gave him a perfect target to swim away from. He moved his legs with practiced ease, years of swimming on, under, and above the oftentimes antagonistic waves up and down the coastline of San Diego coming to the forefront instinctively.
Keo didn’t panic. He was beyond that. Too many days and nights alone in the cold and warm and every other temperature in-between helped him to rise above any notions of panic. It wasn’t the same for Claire, but Keo was ready for that, too, and he held onto her as she fought against him, both legs kicking frantically as bullet after bullet sank into the water in front of her, like living creatures chasing her.
He wasted five seconds reaching behind him and pulling out the spare magazine in his back pocket, then did the same to the UMP spare Claire had put into her pouch. He also pulled the Glock out of her hip holster and let it sink into the bottom of the lake. Keo would have lightened their load even further but just didn’t have the precious seconds that would have taken.
He didn’t blame the teenager for being freaked out by the combination of being shot while she was sinking. Even though he wished she would calm down just a little bit, he understood why she wasn’t—or couldn’t. Most people weren’t accustomed to being underwater, which was why most people couldn’t swim to—literally, in some cases—save their lives. So in that respect, Claire wasn’t unique.
Even so, her constantly twitching form made his job multiple times harder than it should have been, and it was becoming a chore to keep his mind tuned to his internal clock. The last thing he wanted was for Claire to black out before drowning. That meant he had to maintain his steady progress moving them away from the boat while counting down the seconds before he had to take her back up.
From experience, Keo knew he could hold his breath for up to three minutes, sometimes longer under optimal conditions. The key word there, of course, was “optimal.” Swimming while dragging a one hundred and twenty-something pound woman fighting him every inch of the way wasn’t ideal, but he figured he could probably manage two minutes and change. Of course, he wasn’t going to be able to prove that theory, because there was no way Claire was going to last that long.
Or even half that.
One minute. One minute, tops. Can’t risk more than that, or she’ll drown.
And Gaby would kick my ass if I let that happen.
They were under for ten seconds when he began moving them away from the dock and away from the bullets.
Twenty seconds after that, Claire’s resistance lessened noticeably, but he couldn’t be sure if that was because she was dead or—
No, not dead, he thought when she turned her head to look over her shoulder at him. She was holding her breath, and her eyes were wide. Her cheeks were already ballooning…
Shit. She’s going to black out.
He began moving up
toward the surface and—
They broke through, the sound of Claire gasping desperately for fresh breath the signal he needed that he’d gotten her up in time. He held onto her while using the brief respite to get a better grip and slid both hands farther underneath her armpits.
“Keo!” Claire gasped, but if she had more to say, it was interrupted by the pop-pop-pop! of gunfire and bullets splack-spack-spacking! into the lake’s surface around them. Keo was less worried about the ones falling short and hitting the water and more concerned with the rounds zipping! past his and Claire’s head.
It didn’t take a lot of looking around to see the Buckies. They were charging up the shoreline, racing toward the dock where he and Claire had just jumped from. There were more than four of them now—six in all—and they were running full speed. The only reason they hadn’t hit their targets yet was precisely because they were running full speed and shooting at the same time. That was the good news.
The bad news was that he hadn’t managed to drag Claire very far from the fifteen-footer, still moored in place. They’d put barely fifteen meters between them and the dock.
I’m slowing down in my old age!
“Take a deep breath!” he shouted.
Claire nodded and did, just before he pulled them both back down under the surface.
Once they were surrounded by cold (freezing!) water again, the cracks of rifles faded into the background. Unfortunately, he couldn’t ignore the bullets punching into the swirling space around them like knives cutting through jelly. The sight was almost surreal, if they weren’t getting so damn close.
Keo immediately began swimming again, but without his arms to work with, it was slow going. He took them down deeper than before so they wouldn’t be too visible from the surface. The morning was coming up on them fast, but there was still plenty of darkness that it wouldn’t be easy to spot them from land with enough murky water between him and the shooters.
Or he hoped, anyway.
Captain Optimism. Amirite?
Claire had stopped struggling in his arms, so that helped tremendously. She did appear to be slightly alarmed when they began sinking, but she must have realized what he was doing and stopped after a while.
Smart kid.
Slowly, the whiteness of the fifteen-footer’s hull was swallowed up by the blackness, which was exactly what Keo was hoping to see. The bullets were coming at them from more random locations now, sure signs that the shooters couldn’t see them—or were having trouble—and were just firing into the lake with no clear targets.
Ten seconds…
Twenty…
Around the thirty-second mark post-reentry, Claire began moving in front of him again.
At around forty seconds, her legs began kicking.
Shit. She needs more air!
Keo looked up, locked on the flickering shape of the moon in the sky, and took them back up.
Claire sucking in air and the constant streams of small arms and machine-gun fire from the raging war crashed against Keo’s ears the second they broke through the surface for the second time.
Keo glanced around, trying to relocate the Buckies—
Almost fifty meters away, spread out on the same dock with the white boat. A couple had flashlights, one with a flashlight underneath his rifle’s barrel, and they were scouring the lake.
But the Buckies hadn’t seen them yet, so he didn’t take Claire back down so quickly.
As he watched, one of the black-clad figures ran back up the dock and jumped into one of the moored boats—a big red twenty-footer. A few seconds later, the craft’s twin motors roared to life.
I guess he found where they kept the keys!
Claire glanced back at him, her body shaking badly against his. She didn’t look ready at all, but Keo asked anyway, “Ready?”
“No!” she said back, barely able to get the word out with her teeth chattering so badly.
“Take a breath.”
“God, Keo…”
“One, two, three.”
She stiffened as he stopped moving his legs and let them both sink back into the water.
Even as they dropped and dropped, Keo did the calculations in his head.
They were fifty meters (Give or take) from the dock, which meant they had managed a quarter of the distance to the other side of the lake. That wasn’t good. He’d hoped for better time, but having to drag Claire along for the ride had slowed him down. Of course, he could have easily made the trees if he dumped the teenager, but that was a nonstarter.
Besides, both Lara and Gaby would take turns killing me.
If they’re even still alive…
He pushed the negative thoughts away (Captain Optimist, pal! It’s Super Captain Optimism Time!), and resumed swimming, using the beams of light visible from above him as an indicator of which direction to move away from.
He could hear it—the boat’s motors as it began moving across the lake. It wasn’t anywhere close to being on top of them yet, which meant the Buckies still didn’t know their exact location. He could feel the waves moving against them as the twenty-footer splashed across the lake, but waves were better than bullets.
Claire remained calm in front of him and was even starting to help by kicking with her legs. Or she probably thought she was helping anyway, but the teenager had terrible form and wasn’t really doing much to assist him. He couldn’t tell her that, though, and used her activity instead to keep track of her status. As long as her legs were moving, she was doing fine; the sooner they slowed or stopped completely, he’d have to take them back up again.
And with the boat up there, skimming the water looking for them…
He wasn’t looking forward to that. Not one bit.
Claire was able to hold her breath for much longer this time. It still wasn’t the two minutes he would have been ecstatic with, but it was closer to the one minute he had already decided to settle for.
At around thirty seconds, her kicking started to slow.
At forty, they had all but stopped, and her body tightened noticeably in his arms.
Keo knew the signals and started moving back up to the surface, the constant refrain of, Please be far away, boat, please be far away! going round and round inside his head as he rose higher and higher.
They broke through Lake Mansfield for the third time.
Oh hell, Keo thought when he saw the big red boat less than thirty meters to the left of them.
The craft was pointed west toward the tree line on the other side of the lake, and there were four men in the back, all with flashlights, and they were skipping beams across the water’s surface when—
One struck Keo in the face and almost blinded him.
“There!” one of the Buckies screamed.
Keo tightened his grip around Claire’s body and was about to drop them like stones back into the water when there was the hellacious brap-brap-brap! of machine-gun fire. The thought, Wait. Where is that coming from? ran through his head, because he hadn’t seen an MG anywhere on the boat. As far as he knew, the Buckies were only carrying rifles.
So where were the gunshots coming from?
He was still wondering that when tracer rounds flashed over the boat and struck the water around them.
Someone was shooting at the boat!
Keo turned slightly, tracking the incoming bullets—like hundreds of individual white ropes being flung across the lake—back to the wall of trees on the other side of Lake Mansfield. That should have been enough to distract the men in the boat from Keo and Claire, and it did, except for one determined asshole who pointed his rifle in their direction and opened fire.
Keo pulled Claire under just as the water around them rippled against a fresh wave of bullets. He took them down and down, eyes focusing on the red belly of the boat the entire time as it began to turn, turn—until it stopped turning and began exploding.
No, not exploding. Its hull was coming undone as bullets punched into it, ripping it apart in front
of Keo’s eyes. The rifle fire that had been directed at him and Claire ceased at the same time a body broke through the surface and sank like a stone, along with the rifle the man had been clutching onto, in front of them.
Then a second body, this one dropping feet first into the lake, just before a ball of fire engulfed the remains of the boat.
The fuel tank. The incoming MG tracer rounds had enough of an incendiary effect that they could easily ignite a flammable source.
Like a boat’s gas tank…
Keo grinned and began swimming away from the burning boat and toward the other side of the lake.
Ten seconds…
Twenty…
They were making good time now, thanks to Claire helping out by no longer fighting him every inch of the way. Keo guessed seeing the Bucky boat go up in flames had a little something to do with how calm she had become. He was able to carry them for nearly fifty seconds straight until her body signaled that her air was running out again.
There was still plenty of moonlight in the nighttime sky to greet them when they broke through the surface for the fourth time. Keo was able to locate the burning twenty-foot boat in the distance, parts of it still on fire as it began to sink into the water, the lake dousing the flames as soon as it came into contact with the burning sections of the craft. He could barely make out the docks in the distance, which signaled they had made excellent progress across the lake. Which left them with…
He glanced toward the tree line and was surprised at how far they’d come. They were now closer to the other side than to the compound. He was catching his breath, trying to decide how to respond to this new development, when a flashlight blinked on between some of the trees.
Then it turned off, before coming back on.
Then off and on again…
It was a signal, one directed at them.
“You see that?” Claire asked, turning her head to look at him. Her hair was matted around her wet face, her lips and teeth trembling so badly that he was afraid she might accidentally bite her own tongue. With all the swimming he was doing and trying not to drown the both of them, he had forgotten just how freezing the lake was.