by Sam Sisavath
“Kid?” Young Guy said. He sounded incredulous, which was a little amusing. Then again, Keo might have just thought it was amusing because he was trying very hard not to accept just how up a creek he was at the moment.
“What are you, fifteen?” Keo asked.
“Old enough to shoot you dead,” the kid said.
“A lot of people thought they were old enough to shoot me dead. I’m still here, and they’re not. What does that tell you?”
“That you’re stubborn?” the woman asked.
“That’s one way to look at it.”
“What’s another?”
“Persistent.”
“Not quite the word I’d use, but sure, if it makes you feel better.”
“You know what would really make me feel better?”
“I’m all ears.”
“Not being shot.”
She might have smirked. “You’ve been shot before?”
“Yes. And it’s not fun, let me tell you. So I’m very anxious to avoid it happening again. Maybe you can tell your little brother here to calm down before that happens.”
“I’m not her little brother,” the young man said.
“Little cousin?” Keo said.
“Dammit, enough,” Deep Voice said. He sounded annoyed now.
What do you gotta be so annoyed about? I’m the one about to get murdered out here in this friggin’ field of nightmares.
“Put down your weapon, and we’ll take you alive,” Deep Voice said.
“And then what?” Keo asked.
“Then you’ll come with us.”
“Where to?”
The man made a backward nodding motion—just barely, since he did it while keeping his eyes (and weapon) on Keo the entire time.
“What, the ocean?” Keo said. “No thanks. I didn’t bring my swimming trunks.”
“You’re a real piece of work,” the woman said. Keo couldn’t tell if she was amused or irritated. “You’re this close to getting shot to hell, and you’re making jokes. I don’t know whether to be impressed or feel bad about your total lack of awareness for the current situation.”
“I won’t tell you again,” Deep Voice said. “Lower your weapon.”
“I can’t,” Keo said, and thought, Because if I do you’ll kill me, and there’s still a mother and daughter out there I have to find.
“You don’t have a choice.”
“I thought we already went over this. I have plenty of choices. Okay, maybe ‘plenty’ isn’t the right word. I have some choices. I can lower my weapon like you want, or I can not lower my weapon.”
“You wanna die, is that it?” Young Guy asked. Keo didn’t have to wonder what he was feeling—it was all irritation. “You must have some kind of death wish, man.”
“Not at all.”
“Sure feels like it to me.”
“Hey, you’re the ones who ambushed me. I was just going for a walk with my horse, the two of us minding our own business. The way I see it, you three should be apologizing to me.”
“Say what?” Young Guy said.
“But I’ll overlook that part.” Before they could say anything, he quickly added, “In fact, here’s my proposal: We all lower our weapons, say ‘Nice to see ya,’ and go our separate ways. How about that?”
“Can’t,” Deep Voice said, shaking his head.
“Why not?”
“You already saw us.”
“Saw you? I can barely tell what you look like. Those are some excellent paint jobs, by the way.”
“Doesn’t change the fact you know what you know.”
“I know what I know? What does that even mean?”
“You know what he means,” Young Guy said.
“I truly don’t,” Keo said.
“We don’t have any choice, either,” the man in the middle said. He sounded almost…regretful?
Not as regretful as I’m going to be when we all start shooting.
“These are dangerous times,” the man continued. “Even if you’re not who we think you are, you need to be vetted.”
“I don’t have rabies or anything,” Keo said.
“Rabies?”
“Yeah. No rabies. So I don’t need a vet.”
The woman smirked. “I’ve decided: I’m mostly impressed with you.”
“Glad to hear it,” Keo said. “Who do you think I am, anyway?”
“We know who you are,” Young Guy said.
“So enlighten me.”
“That vest gave you away.”
“That vest?” Keo thought.
Then, Shit. The vest. The same vest I took off the dead Bucky and have been wearing since Princeville.
That vest, you idiot. They think I’m one of Buck’s men. One of the guys from Fenton. No wonder they’re not going to let me go. I wouldn’t, either, after what those assholes did to Winding Creek.
So what did that make these three?
“The enemy of my enemy is someone I don’t want to shoot me in the face.” Or something like that.
“I found this vest,” Keo said. “It’s not mine.”
“Bullshit,” Young Guy said, and fidgeted slightly.
“Swear to God.”
“How did that happen?” Deep Voice asked.
“Lots of things are just lying around these days. It’s not that hard and definitely isn’t a reason for the three of you to shoot me for it.”
“Nice story, bro,” the woman said. She might have been grinning, but it was hard to tell with all that goop on her face. “Got another one?”
“I knew a guy in Afghanistan who got kicked to death by a donkey,” Keo said.
“Just shoot him, Carl,” the kid said. He took one hand off his rifle and swiped at a bead of sweat. “We’re wasting our time. Let’s just shoot him and get this over with. There could be more of them out there.”
“There isn’t,” Keo said.
“Bullshit again. You could just be stalling us.”
“I’m not.”
“And I say bullshit.”
The kid’s going to shoot me. He’s going to lose it and shoot me. Crap.
“Easy, Floyd, easy,” the man named Carl, a.k.a Deep Voice, said.
“Yeah, Floyd, easy now,” Keo said. “No one has to die. Least of all me.”
“Shut the hell up,” Floyd snapped.
Keo grinned. “I’m just trying to be friendly.”
“This is your idea of friendly?” the woman asked.
“Again, I wasn’t the one lying around on the ground waiting to ambush someone. I’m just an innocent traveler.”
“An innocent traveler with a horse named Horse.”
“That’s it exactly. You’ve got it.”
“Your horse is awfully well-behaved. It hasn’t even tried to take off.”
“What’s it doing back there, anyway?”
“Huh?”
“Horse. What’s it doing back there? I can’t actually see, since I’m afraid you guys might shoot me if I turn my head even just a little bit. Especially Mr. Nervous over here.”
“It’s…” The woman’s eyes darted away from Keo for a second before coming back to him. “It’s grazing. I guess it’s hungry.”
“It’s always hungry. That horse eats like a horse.”
“Carl,” Floyd said, “this is taking forever. Let’s just shoot him.”
“Whoa, whoa, let’s not, Carl,” Keo said. Then, focusing on Carl, “I get the feeling you think I’m someone I’m not. Why don’t you tell me who that is, and I’ll do my very best to convince you that you’re wrong.”
Carl chuckled. “You’d just lie to get out of this.”
“Not true. People say I have a very honest face.”
“Not with that scar,” Floyd snickered.
“Ouch.”
The woman chuckled. “First time someone told you that?”
“Yes, actually,” Keo said. “I’m a very big people person—”
The pop! of a gunshot interrupted the rest of
Keo’s speech, and he was already dropping to the ground when Carl’s head snapped back as a spray of blood flicked into the air.
Someone shouted Carl’s name—it could have been the woman to Keo’s right or the young man to his left, but at that very second Keo couldn’t distinguish their two voices and didn’t care to try—just before the field around him was filled with bullets and the pop-pop-pop of automatic rifle fire filled the world like cascading thunder.
His nostrils were instantly swamped with the smell of burning foliage as rounds sliced through the stalks of grass around him and dirt flicked at his face and eyes and just for good measure, the rest of his body. Keo was only aware of moving, rolling away from the spot where he had dropped because that was where the shooters had last seen him and where they would be pouring their lead. It was the smartest thing he could have done, because mere seconds after the first volley, even more bullets began digging into the patch of ground where he had been not more than a few seconds earlier.
Roll, baby, roll!
Somewhere behind him, he thought he heard Horse letting out a loud (and almost angry?) squeal.
Run, you stupid horse, run!
He had no time to look up and back to make sure the animal did the sensible thing because he had rolled onto his stomach and was now too busy crawling forward and angling to his right.
The gunfire kept coming, the pop-pop-pop seemingly louder now than before, which either meant the shooters (and there was definitely more than one, he was 100% certain of that) were moving in for the kill or—
Silence, as the last gunshot faded, before disappearing completely.
Keo rolled onto his back and lifted his head just high enough (Not too high, you idiot!) to look past the swaying edges of grass in front of him.
A group of men walked out of the tree line, reloading their rifles as they did so. There were at least five of them that he could see, wearing civilian clothes with black assault vests over their shirts. The sun blinked off a white circle with the letter M on the closest shooter’s ammo pouch.
Buckies.
EIGHTEEN
BUCKIES.
The same guys that Carl, Floyd, and the young woman thought he was one of. Maybe that was also the reason why whoever had taken the first shot had gone for Carl instead of him, even though Keo was standing right in front of the other man. Did the Buckies think he was one of them? There was a very good chance of that. After all, he was wearing one of their vests. What were the chances the Buckies thought they were even saving him?
Sorry, Carl, but better you than me, pal.
Keo remained where he was, on his back, with his head only partially lifted off the sunbaked ground under him. Thank God for the tall stalks of grass camouflaging his position. He spent a few seconds trying to gauge how far he had rolled, then crawled in the time between when the shooting began and stopped.
But he had to have put enough distance between him and his three ambushers because the Buckies were now about twenty meters away. There were five of them, three with balaclavas pulled over their faces while the other two sported ball caps. They were moving in formation—or a pretty good facsimile of one, anyway—as they approached the spot where Carl and the others had fallen.
Or, at least, Keo assumed that was their destination: the last known location of Carl, Floyd, and whatever the girl’s name was. Not that any of their names meant a lick, because chances were they were all dead. The Buckies must have unloaded two magazines apiece downrange. At least. Keo knew for a fact Carl was a goner. The way his head had snapped back after the first gunshot, even before he saw the flicker of blood, was all the evidence Keo needed.
That left two possible survivors—his new buddy Floyd and the girl. But even that was a stretch. There had been enough bullets buzzing in the air that Keo was shocked he had gotten away unscathed.
It had to be the assault vest he was wearing that had saved his life. The same vest that had almost gotten him killed by Carl and company. He was sure of it now. (Probably.) The circled M was visible in the front and, more importantly, in the back where the shooters would have spotted it all the way from the tree line through any kind of optics. He wouldn’t be surprised if whoever had taken out Carl was using a high-powered scope. Something like that would easily have identified the M on the back of the vest Keo was wearing.
But if that explained why he had gotten out of there without catching a bullet, it didn’t really excuse the huge number of rounds that had been flying in his general vicinity earlier. All it would have taken was one stray round and it was officially a case of friendly fire. That was, of course, assuming the Buckies were purposefully trying to avoid hitting him.
Either/or, he thought, because he was still alive and right now nothing else mattered in the slightest. It was a little selfish (A little?), but a little selfishness went a long way these days when it came to staying alive.
He watched the Buckies continue pushing forward, all five men slightly bent at the waist to lower their profile. They were taking their time, opting for caution over speed. Keo had to admit, he was impressed with their patience, and it really did look as if they had some real training in their back pockets. That, more than anything, convinced him he was looking at a group of people who had, once upon a time, been in an army. If not Uncle Sam’s, then a very good version of one.
Gee, I wonder what that M stands for?
Or should I say, who.
A gust of wind swept across the land, lowering Keo’s cover just slightly enough to make him nervous. He quickly lowered himself back down to compensate, but soon the grass was back to regular heights and he could lift his head and reacquire the approaching men.
They had been spreading out to cover more ground ever since they left their tree line cover. The closest one was about ten meters in front of Keo and getting closer, though the man didn’t know it. They were sweeping the fields around them, a couple even occasionally glancing back at the woods behind them just in case.
“You see them?” one of them said. He was wearing a red handkerchief around his right elbow and was exactly in the middle of the five-men team. Red Handkerchief carried a dull green M40 rifle that Keo had seen plenty of Marines favoring. There was no doubt in Keo’s mind this was the guy who had taken out Carl. It would have been child’s play, given how wide open and still Carl had been while he went back and forth with Keo.
I guess it’s kinda my fault, when you get right down to it. Sorry, Carl.
“Saw them go down,” the one next to Red Handkerchief said. He was one of the three sporting a balaclava, and his voice sounded slightly muffled as a result. He gripped an AR-15 tightly with two fingerless gloves.
“All of them?” Red Handkerchief asked.
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“Shit. That’s not good.”
“So what?”
“The fourth guy. The one with his back to us.”
“You sure he was one of us?”
“Yeah, yeah, I saw the M.”
“Could have been anything. Maybe his name starts with an M.”
“It wasn’t anything. It was an M in a white circle.”
“So he was one of ours.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“What’s he doing out here ahead of us, then?”
“Hell if I know. But if anyone asks, we never saw him.”
“Hey, I’m good with that.” Then, to the other three, “You guys hear that? No one tell Buck what happened. There was never a fourth guy out here.”
The other three nodded, and a couple of them chuckled, and Keo thought, Now that’s no way to treat friendly fire, boys. For shame.
Red Handkerchief suddenly stopped, then pointed with his rifle. “There. I see a body. Go check it out.”
“Why me?” Fingerless Gloves, who like the other four had also stopped, asked.
“You’re closer.”
“Not by much.”
“Still closer.”
Fingerless Gloves smir
ked. “Shoot it if it even twitches.”
“I got ya back,” Red Handkerchief said.
Fingerless Gloves moved toward the spot, and he had taken exactly two steps when there was a bang! and the man’s head snapped back almost identical to the way Carl’s had done just minutes ago.
Even as Fingerless Gloves was collapsing, a figure in a ghillie suit (Floyd? Unnamed lady?) popped out of the ground in front of the remaining four men, about five meters from the spot where Fingerless Gloves had been headed. The sudden reappearance startled Red Handkerchief (Don’t you just hate it when they pop out of the ground like that?) and the remaining three. The Buckies were still recovering when Ghillie Suit fired a second time from the handgun it was gripping in both hands, and a second Bucky dropped.
But that was all the victims Ghillie Suit was going to get, because the remaining three were already aiming—
Two out of five ain’t bad, Keo thought even as he sat up and lifted his weapon and shot the closest Bucky, who had wandered so close to Keo’s position that Keo didn’t even have to aim to hit the man once in the thigh, then again in the chest when the man spun in his direction, giving Keo a much better second shot.
Red Handkerchief had fired about the same time Keo did, and Keo saw the ghillie-suited figure falling out of the corner of his right eye even as he was scrambling up to his knees to get a better look at the remaining two.
The Buckies hadn’t heard Keo killing their comrade, because the H&K barely made any noise thanks to its built-in suppressor. By the time they did notice something was happening to their right side, Keo was already on his knees.
He shot Red Handkerchief almost exactly in the middle of the man’s turning face, and as the Bucky went down, exposing the last remaining vested man, Keo flicked his MP5SD to full-auto to compensate for the longer distance and squeezed the trigger. He didn’t let go until the man had disappeared, as if the ground had swallowed him up.
Keo hopped to his feet and swept the area, looking for someone to shoot. None of the Buckies got back up, and Ghillie Suit was nowhere to be found. Keo had seen the elaborate costume go down when Red Handkerchief fired, so he or she was either dead or wounded. The former was for the best because it meant one less threat for Keo to worry about, just in case they hadn’t figured out that Keo had just saved their life.