by Sam Sisavath
CHAPTER 9
Keo gave Fiona space to work on Rupert, standing nearby while they talked in soft voices. Or Fiona talked, because Rupert mostly just looked confused, caught somewhere between wanting to run away, fighting Keo, and lying down and going back to sleep. Keo wasn’t entirely sure if she was getting through to the kid or if she was even close.
Joe, you little punk. I should have killed you when I had the chance.
After ten minutes, Keo said, “Are we good?”
Fiona shook her head. “Give me a few more minutes.”
“No,” Keo said, and walked over.
Fiona glared at him, but he ignored her. Rupert looked suddenly frightened and attempted to get up, but he moved too fast and stumbled before falling back down on his butt.
“Jesus, Keo, you’re scaring him,” Fiona said.
Keo kept his eyes on Rupert. He really was young. In another time, another place, the kid would be in high school devoting his time to girls, sports, and picking colleges. Right now, he was wearing a grown man’s assault vest, with pouches stuffed with ammo and an empty hip holster. Right now, he looked very much like Joe.
I should have shot you dead, Joe, you little prick.
Keo crouched in front of Rupert, whose eyes went immediately to the MP5SD leaning across Keo’s right knee. Then those same blue eyes flickered up to Keo’s face. Rupert had shaggy light brown hair and his face was dirt and mud-free, which, up close, only made him look younger than his seventeen years.
“Rupert, right?” Keo said.
The kid nodded.
“My name is Keo. Your friends have my friend. His name is Norris. Black guy. Fifties. You saw him?”
Rupert nodded again, hesitantly this time. His eyes went back to the submachine gun. Keo was close enough that he could hear Rupert’s labored breathing. Next to them, Fiona stood quietly. Keo hoped she didn’t try something. He would have hated to shoot her earlier, and he still would now. Not that he wouldn’t do it, but he would prefer not to.
“I’m going to get him back,” Keo said. “But right now, you’re a nuisance. That means I have two options: Kill you now—”
Keo fired into the ground a few inches next to Rupert. The suppressed gunshot echoed slightly among the trees, but not enough to travel across the woods and alert anyone nearby or far away. That was the point of a suppressor, after all—and what Keo wanted to get across to the kid: “I can kill you anytime, and your friends won’t come running to help. Got it?”
“—or make sure you don’t run off to alert your buddies the first chance you get. So, which option would you prefer?”
Rupert continued staring at Keo, as if he was attempting to summon some non-existent courage. But he was betrayed by his hands, which trembled noticeably at his sides.
“When I shoot you, no one’s going to hear it,” Keo continued. “Understand?”
The kid nodded.
“You don’t do what I tell you, I’m going to shoot you. You make a noise that I interpret, rightly or wrongly, as an attempt to screw me over, and I will shoot you. You even look at me cross-eyed, and I will shoot you. I don’t know you from Adam. I don’t give a shit that you have a sister. You even think about screwing me, and I will shoot you. Do you understand, Rupert?”
Another nod, this one coming faster—and with more emphasis—than the last few times.
“Now, get up,” Keo said.
Rupert tried to get up but seemed to be having trouble getting his feet to obey. Fiona took one of his arms and helped him the rest of the way. He gave her a grateful (and nervous) half-smile that she returned.
Keo walked back and picked up Rupert’s radio, then clipped it to his hip. He stuffed the boy’s rifle into the gym bag before slinging it. The added weight was obvious, which was why he had decided to let Rupert lug the extra magazines around for him.
“Let’s go,” Keo said. “You take the lead, Fiona. We’re burning daylight.”
He glanced down at his watch: 1:16 p.m.
Still plenty of time…
*
He should have shot them. Or, at least, the boy.
But then he would have also had to shoot Fiona, because regardless of her intentions to escape Pollard’s tyrannical rule with him, she wasn’t going to stand by and let him kill Rupert. He could tell that much by the way she talked to the kid.
So it was either kill them both or keep them around until he could let the boy go later. Maybe, just maybe, Fiona was right and she could convince him to keep quiet even when they reached their destination. That was a hell of a big if, though.
They had been walking silently through the woods for about twenty minutes now, moving north toward the park visitors’ building the entire time. Fiona was up front, setting the pace, with Rupert walking silently behind her.
Keo kept a safe distance from the boy—at least two meters—just in case. He didn’t think Rupert would try anything, but you could never be sure with kids. Youth made you do stupid things. Combine that with loyalty to Pollard, and it was likely he might end up having to kill the kid anyway. Keo didn’t want to do that. He wasn’t going to not do it, but he’d like to avoid it if possible. Joe’s song-and-dance, and the resulting chaos, was still fresh in his mind, but he wasn’t far gone enough to think that Rupert was Joe.
Suddenly Fiona stopped in front of him and dropped to one knee, her thin frame almost disappearing completely into the overgrown blades of grass around her.
Keo did likewise, but Rupert remained standing. He knew the kid wasn’t doing it on purpose. He was caught off guard, his brain freezing up with indecision. So Keo leaped forward, grabbed him by the back of his vest, and dragged him down to the ground before pushing him onto his stomach. The boy wisely stayed down, his breath quickening noticeably under Keo’s grip.
Fiona glanced back and locked eyes with him.
This is where she betrays me. Like Joe…
Instead, she nodded, and he returned it. She looked forward again and positioned her rifle to fire. He did the same with the MP5SD.
Or not.
The crunch-crunch of heavy boots on brittle leaves preceded the appearance of a two-man patrol. Black assault vests and assault rifles moved past trees, the two men talking quietly to one another. They were forty meters away but seemed to have no clue Keo, Fiona, and Rupert were there. Both men were in their twenties, and one of them was chewing loudly on a stick of beef jerky.
Keo looked down at Rupert, who had lifted his head. The kid saw the patrol, and for a moment Keo thought he might let out a scream to alert them and mentally prepared himself to blow a hole in the back of Rupert’s head.
But Rupert didn’t make a sound. He actually seemed to be regaining control of his breathing, too, before lowering his head back to the slightly cool earth.
Smart kid. You might actually live through this after all.
They watched in silence as the patrol walked across them, oblivious to their presence. They were moving so leisurely, in absolutely no hurry, that it seemed to take them minutes instead of the ten—possibly twenty—seconds it actually did.
When the patrol was finally out of sight, Fiona stood back up.
Keo followed, pulling Rupert off the ground by the back of his vest along with him.
“That was a close one,” Fiona said, when the loud crack! of a rifle exploded across the woods, scattering birds and other furry animals racing across the branches above them.
Fiona jerked her head sideways even as the gunshot echoed, bouncing off the trees around them. Her body collapsed, her legs seeming to give out underneath her as if they could no longer support her weight. She was swallowed back up by the same patch of grass that had kept her hidden and saved her life only seconds ago.
Keo spun to his left as the two men who had walked past them emerged back out of the trees, rifles firing at them. Bullets zip-zip-zipped past his head and one slammed into the bag behind him, spinning his body slightly with the impact. One of the men had switched to full-auto and the gr
ound came unglued around Keo, the smell of scorched foliage filling his nostrils. He dived behind the closest tree for cover, the bark exploding on the other side in a hail of bullets.
Rupert hadn’t moved from his spot and was holding his hands up, shouting, “Wait, it’s me, don’t shoot—” just before he doubled over, grabbing at his stomach and letting out a loud, painful wail.
Keo sent a short burst at the two men. They were smartly keeping close to the trees even while they were moving forward, and they easily slipped behind cover at his return fire. Keo didn’t waste more bullets on them. He turned and ran in the other direction.
Behind him, Rupert was screaming, the sound coming out of him at a surprisingly high pitch. The shooting had also stopped. Keo guessed the patrol had run out of bullets and was reloading, which would explain why no one was shooting at him as he fled.
He didn’t stop to find out for sure, though, and kept running. But he was still moving too slow. Why the hell wasn’t he going any faster?
Oh, right. The bag.
Keo shrugged off the thick strap and let the bag slip off his shoulder and onto the ground with a heavy crunch. No longer constrained by the extra weight, he picked up speed and the trees started to blur by. That was the good news. The bad news was that he no longer had two spare rifles. Then again, extra weapons weren’t going to do him a damn bit of good if he were dead anyway.
Eventually, Keo couldn’t hear Rupert’s screams anymore. That meant the kid was either dead or in too much pain to cry out. Either way, the boy was no longer his problem. Fiona, too, was no longer in play, not after the head shot she took back there. It was too bad, because he really did like her.
Keo slowed down and slipped behind a large tree to catch his breath for the first time since—how long? A minute? Two? Five?
He kept one eye behind him and the other on the rest of the teeming woods. That was the only good (and bad) thing about Robertson Park. It was so goddamn thick that it was hard to see anything or anyone until they were almost on top of you.
He was still sucking in air when the radio (Rupert’s) clipped to his hip squawked, and he heard a man’s voice, someone new. “Patrol Seven to Base. Come in, Base.”
A man answered the radio on the other end. “This is Base. We heard shooting nearby. Was that you, Seven?”
“That was us, Base,” the first man said.
“Give us a sitrep. Over.”
“Uh, we ran across one of our patrols, Base. Fiona and the boy from Patrol Two.”
“Who were you shooting at, Seven?”
The man from Patrol Seven hesitated for a moment.
“Seven?” the man at Base said. “Who were you shooting at? Over.”
“Patrol Two, Base.”
“Say again?”
“We accidentally shot Patrol Two.”
There was a brief pause from Base, before a second—and this time, very familiar—voice said through the radio. “Was he with them?”
Pollard.
It was the same voice from last night. Keo didn’t know how he knew that he was listening to the man named Pollard, but he just knew. Maybe it was the absolute authority in the man’s voice even through the radio’s tiny speakers that gave it away.
“Yes, sir,” Seven said.
“Did you get him?” Pollard asked.
“No, sir. He took off back south.”
“And Patrol Two?”
“We, uh, accidentally shot Patrol Two, sir.”
“How long ago?”
“About five minutes ago.”
Five minutes? Damn. He must have been faster than he remembered. Of course, it could have just been the fear and adrenaline, too.
“What should we do, sir?” the man asked.
Pollard didn’t answer right away.
“Sir?” Seven said. “What are your orders?”
“Check Patrol Two closely and tell me if they still have their radios,” Pollard said.
Oh, come on, you’ve got to be kidding me.
“Yes, sir,” Seven said.
There was a brief pause.
Five seconds. Ten…fifteen…
Then Seven came back on the radio. “One radio’s missing, sir. Do you think he took it?”
Pollard didn’t answer the question. Instead, he said, “I want everyone who isn’t already established along the shoreline to return to Base immediately. Everyone else, hold your positions, and someone will be by later to give you the new radio frequency. Until then, I want complete radio silence.”
Sonofabitch. Can I catch one fucking break?
Then Pollard said through the radio, “Keo. I know you’re listening.”
He couldn’t help himself. He felt the smile coming and didn’t try to stop it. A guy like Pollard would have gone far in his old organization. Smart, ruthless, and most of all, completely single-minded when he set his sights on a goal.
Too bad that goal is to kill me, otherwise we could have been best pals.
“I know you’re there,” Pollard continued through the radio. “I want you to know that I’m going to find you. It might take a day. Or two. Maybe even a week. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. I’m a patient man. But you know who doesn’t have two days or a week? Your friend Norris.” The radio went silent for about ten seconds before Pollard finally returned, except this time he wasn’t addressing Keo when he said, “Don’t be shy.”
Keo braced himself, knowing full well whose voice he was going to hear next even before he actually heard it.
“Get the hell out of here, kid,” Norris said through the radio. He was out of breath and in obvious pain. “Go, and don’t look back. You hear me? Don’t—” Norris didn’t finish. He was interrupted by the sound of something solid hitting flesh, then something (someone) falling.
Pollard again. “He’s a tough old man. But he’s an old man, Keo. He’s not going to last for much longer.”
Keo unclipped the radio and raised it to his lips. “Pollard.”
“Keo,” Pollard said. “It’s good to hear your voice. I was starting to think I was wrong, that you weren’t smart enough to take one of the radios off my men.”
Keo pushed off the tree and continued walking through the woods. The radio made too much noise, but moving at least kept him from being pinpointed by another passing patrol.
“That’s a first,” Keo said.
“What’s that?”
“No one’s ever accused me of being smarter than the average bear before.”
“You don’t give yourself enough credit, Keo. A man of below-average intelligence wouldn’t have forced me to chase him all these months.”
“Aw, I’m touched.”
“What kind of name is Keo, anyway?”
“Dan was taken.”
“Hunh.”
“That’s what Dan said.”
Pollard went quiet for a moment, which made Keo’s alarms go off. He looked around him, expecting a black-clad figure (or two) to rush out of the trees at any moment. The only sound, though, came from his own footsteps.
“How is all of this going to go down, Keo?” Pollard said.
“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me? The way I hear it, you’re the man with the plan.”
“The way I see it, you’re going to make me chase you for another few days. But eventually I’m going to corner you, and when that happens, I’ll snuff you out. It’s inevitable. I have the manpower. The firepower. And the most crucial part of all this? You’re running out of real estate. There are only so many inches of this park you can hide in before I cover everything.”
“Yeah, but can you cover everything before nightfall? The way I see it, you can only search for me in the daylight. After all, we both know we don’t own the night anymore, don’t we?”
“No, we certainly don’t.” A slight pause, then, “There is another option. One that will put an end to this and make both of our lives easier. Mine more than yours, of course, but I think you can see the benefit in it too if you loo
k hard enough.”
“I’m listening…”
“I don’t want Norris. I want you.”
“How sweet.”
Pollard might have chuckled. “Let me finish.”
“Go on…”
“I’m willing to let Norris live if you walk over to me, at, say, five this afternoon.”
Keo stopped walking.
“It’s a good offer,” Pollard continued. “But obviously it would depend on how much you like your friend. I realize he’s an old man, so I wouldn’t blame you if you don’t think his life is quite as valuable as yours.”
Norris.
“What do you think about my offer, Keo?” Pollard asked.
“I don’t think very much of it,” Keo said.
“Yes, well, it’s the best you’re going to get these days. Why don’t you take a few hours to think about it. Just think fast, though. Time is not on your side. Or Norris’s.”
“Five?”
“Five,” Pollard repeated. “Do we have a deal?”
“I don’t know. You sure your boys won’t put a bullet in me as soon as I stick my head out there? I just saw two of them shoot a couple of their own in cold blood.”
He thought Pollard might have sighed. Maybe the ex-officer had even done it for Keo’s benefit. “They’re civilians, unfortunately. We’ve done our best to train them, but as you probably know from your own personal experiences, there are people meant to carry guns, and people who bitch about them loudly on TV. I think we both know which group we belong to, don’t we?”
“You don’t know anything about me, Pollard.”
“Oh, I know plenty. Maybe not all the details, of course, but I know you and I were built for this new world. What were you before the shit hit the fan, Keo? A soldier? A mercenary?”
“Close, but no cigar.”
“When I was in military intelligence, I heard stories about private organizations that hired out to the highest bidder. Even the government spooks tread lightly around them. A few of them don’t even have names. Some just go by numbers.”
“Old wives’ tales,” Keo said. “Don’t believe everything you hear.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter now. Not anymore. What you were then isn’t who you are now. Isn’t that right?”