by Sam Sisavath
“The big ones are getting closer,” Claire said.
“Big ones?” Keo said.
“They’ve been lobbing grenade rounds and rockets into the compound, but that was something else. Something bigger.”
“What kind of rockets are they using?”
“What?”
“The rocket launchers. What kind are they using out there?”
“How should I know? Do I look like Danny?”
“Fortunately, no.” He paused for a moment. “Did you see them? The attackers?”
“I saw some of them while I was hiding, looking for a way in. They were getting into positions to attack, but I didn’t recognize any of them.”
“How were they dressed?”
“They weren’t wearing uniforms. A lot of black fatigues and black faces.”
“Camo?”
“Yeah. They’re not in any hurry, but there’s a lot of them.”
“How many is a lot?”
“Enough to give Buck’s people a fight, and without the force that left earlier…” She shook her head. “I don’t care how many Buckies are here and how many guns they have in their armories; they’re going to lose sooner or later, Keo.”
More men with circled M’s on their assault vests ran past them even as the pop-pop-pop of rifles firing nearby pounded the air. In the distance, smaller explosions occurred, like a series of trucks backfiring.
“How did you know where to find me, anyway?” Keo asked.
“I didn’t,” Claire said. “I was nearby looking for you when one of those rockets hit the side of your building. I took a chance and peeked in, and there you were.”
“Wait. A rocket hit my wall?”
“What did you think it was?”
“I guess I didn’t really know.”
“They’re firing everything they have into the compound. Something that looked like a cruise missile almost took my head off.”
“That explains all the buildings on fire,” Keo said, when another technical flashed by outside the hole. This one also kept going, along with the figures running alongside it—
But not all of them.
One of the black-clad men slowed down, then stopped completely before turning toward the opening.
Mr. Curious Part 2. Swell.
Keo had a good view of the man from his position, standing in the shadows, but he didn’t think the Bucky could see him. The man had, though, easily spotted the metal chair and ropes that Keo had recently escaped from lying unattended in the middle of the room.
Claire had seen the Bucky, too, and tensed a few inches to Keo’s left, while her right hand tightened around the pistol grip underneath her AR’s barrel. Keo looked over at her and shook his head. She narrowed her eyes back questioningly, but before he could attempt to answer, the Bucky stepped through the opening to Keo’s right.
Keo turned, switched up his grip on the UMP, and smashed the unfolded buttstock into the side of the man’s head. The Bucky staggered sideways but didn’t go down. Keo didn’t expect him to, either, given how light the buttstock was, so he was fully prepared to follow the swaying form and hit the man again, this time getting him square in the forehead.
The Bucky dropped to his knees, still clinging to his AK-47, and he was looking up to see who had struck him when Keo gave up on using the submachine gun as a blunting instrument and just used his fist instead. He punched the young man twice, both times in the face—breaking his nose with the second strike—and the man collapsed to the dirt floor and lay still.
Keo grabbed the Bucky by the arms and pulled him away from the opening and out of view of anyone else passing by. The fighting continued to rage outside, and a few more buildings had gone up in flames while Keo was sliding back into the shadows.
He crouched next to the unconscious man and removed his vest while Claire stood guard.
“If Buck’s attacking Darby Bay, we have to get to our friends,” Claire said. “We have to get out of here, Keo.”
“I know,” Keo said. “Trust me, kid, I know.”
Another series of explosions, followed by the sounds of falling buildings, rocked the night. One of those booms landed close enough to their position that chunks of the ceiling loosened and pelted the floor around their boots.
“What did you see out there?” Keo asked.
“There are guys with guns everywhere. I was lucky to get this far unnoticed, even luckier to stumble across you. I don’t think we can leave the same way I got in. Not unless we want to fight our way through two armies.”
Keo stood up and nodded. “All right. If we can’t go out the front, we’ll leave through the back.”
“What about those guys with guns I mentioned?”
“If we have to, we’ll kill everyone that gets in our way,” Keo said. “One way or another, we’re getting back to Darby Bay.”
Twenty-Three
If it sounded like World War III was raging across the compound from the comforts of his little prison, with only a hole in the wall to witness the events from, it was much worse and even more frenetic once he was outside.
Which was exactly how Keo liked it.
Especially since he and Claire were going to use the chaos to escape. The only way out was running from the front lines. That, though, came with its own problems, since it wouldn’t have looked natural for two “Buckies” to be fleeing the fight while everyone else was running toward it.
To make sure they didn’t completely stand out, Keo and Claire stuck to the shadows as much as they could, and when they couldn’t, they went with the flow until they didn’t have to anymore. It was easy enough; all they had to do was run a little slower toward the front lines than everyone else, and once they were in the rear of the pack, detach themselves and slip back into the night.
Each time they pulled the move, no one noticed; everyone was simply too busy, too frantic to get to the fight, either because they wanted to or they didn’t have any choice. Keo recognized the whirlwind of confusion in the eyes of the ones he saw. War did that to you; the sounds and adrenaline overwhelmed your senses and got your heart beating overtime, and you weren’t sure whether to run or hide.
It was easy for Keo to think that he wasn’t looking at Buck’s main force. These had to be the Fenton people who joined up, or new recruits. Keo didn’t see a Greengrass among them leading them. It made him wonder if Buck had abandoned Fenton hours ago with his real force, the real Mercerians.
Keo and Claire pulled the same stunt—running with the Buckies until they could sneak off—five times before they finally made it to the back of the compound and were close enough to the lake to see its calm, glistening surface, with the battle taking place at their backs.
And there, to their right, was the warehouse.
It looked smaller in person than it had seemed in the pictures, but the moonlight and heavy shadows probably had a little something to do with that. The guard towers that surrounded its four points stood out along with the men watching from behind their walls and the few that he could see walking the grounds. Unlike the guards outside Keo’s prison, these hadn’t abandoned their posts yet.
“It’s a good thing your men are good at following orders,” he had said to Buck.
“Not all of them, but the ones that matter,” the man had replied.
Keo guessed these guys mattered, along with whatever was inside the warehouse they were guarding.
What the hell is in that warehouse? What are you hiding, Buck?
But that wasn’t something he could solve tonight. Besides, the warehouse had gone down his list of priorities. At the very top was Get back to Darby Bay as soon as you can or die trying, and below that was…everything else.
Gotta get back to Darby Bay. Gotta get back to Lara…
Keo looked back at the rest of the compound. Instead of slowing down, the gunfire seemed to be getting even more intense as the battle dragged on. He had a feeling it hadn’t even reached its peak yet; that was still to come.
&n
bsp; The flames that had engulfed some of the buildings were flaring up high enough into the sky—while constantly being fed by all the fresh, wooden constructions around them—that Keo thought it could be seen for miles. Buck’s people were simultaneously trying to fight back the attack, defend their positions, and contain the fires from spreading. They were, as far as Keo could tell, coming up horribly lacking at all three jobs.
All in all, it was a perfect recipe for a late-night escape.
He refocused on the lake in front of them. It was called Lake Mansfield, and it separated the rear of the compound from the woods on the other side. According to the reports he’d read, the lake circled nearly half of Fenton—almost all of its west side and half of its southern tip. There were nothing but walls of black trees on the other end, which looked deceptively closer in the darkness, but Keo knew from the recons that it was about two football fields of open water between here and there.
“Is your leg okay?” Claire asked.
The question surprised him, mostly because he had been concentrating so hard on how to get across Lakes Mansfield that he had momentarily forgotten she was even standing next to him in the darkness, the two of them squeezed in between a pair of equipment sheds.
Keo nodded. “I don’t know what they gave me, but I can barely feel it.”
That wasn’t entirely true; there was still tingling, but the pain had mostly numbed over. He had noticed it while they were “going with the flow” earlier as they made their way to the shoreline.
Keo looked back at Claire. “You can swim, right?”
“Of course I can swim,” Claire said.
“I mean, you can really swim,” he said, nodding over at the lake.
She stared at the water and didn’t answer right away. If he had to guess, she was trying to measure the distance between the shoreline and the woods.
“Two hundred meters, give or take,” Keo said.
“Two hundred…”
“Meters.”
“That’s pretty…long.”
“Yeah, it is. Can you swim it?”
“I’m not sure,” Claire said, shaking her head. “I mean, I can swim. We all had to learn back at the island during basic, but two hundred meters…” She sighed. “I don’t think I can swim that far, Keo. Not in this kind of weather, anyway,” she added, shivering slightly. “Can you do it?”
“Two hundred meters is no cakewalk. Even for me.” He looked toward the marina on their left. “We’ll find another way across.”
“Boats?” Claire said.
He nodded, eyeing the crafts moored to a series of docks. They were easily visible with the lampposts nearby. Motor-powered boats, about two dozen or so of them, and any one would work to get them where they needed to be, which was as far away from the compound as possible. The problem was the five men Keo had counted walking back and forth along the bank of the lake.
“How many?” he asked.
“I count six,” Claire said.
“Six?”
“Yeah. How many did you see?”
“Five.”
“I saw six. There’s probably more.”
“I’m pretty sure there’s more.”
Keo looked down at the UMP in his hands. He didn’t like the weight of it. That told him he didn’t have a full magazine already loaded. The spare in his back pocket put his mind slightly at ease—as long as he didn’t go around spraying the submachine gun on full-auto, anyway.
Just in case, he made sure the fire selector was on semiauto before asking Claire, “How are you for ammo?”
“I haven’t had to shoot anyone, so I still have a full mag. Plus two spares in my vest.”
“So ninety rounds?”
“Yeah, I think so.” Then, “You wanna trade?”
Keo grinned. “I think that’s probably for the best.”
He took her AR and immediately liked the heavier weight. The ACOG scope mounted on top with the illuminated reticle didn’t hurt either. If he had his choice, he wouldn’t sacrifice the maneuverability of a submachine gun for a longer weapon, but then again he was used to making his living up close and personal. This wasn’t going to be one of those times, though.
Claire took the UMP from him along with the spare. She took out the two magazines from her vest’s pouch, and he slipped them behind his back instead of in his vest for easier reach.
“How are we gonna do this?” Claire asked.
“See that white fifteen-footer?” Keo asked, pointing at one of the boats. It barely moved on the surface of the calm Lake Mansfield water and was the first one in line. Fifty meters, give or take, from their position.
“Yes,” Claire said.
“That’s the one we’ll go for. You know how to drive a boat?”
“Is it like driving a car?”
“Closer to a motorcycle. You crank the lever next to the steering wheel to throttle forward, and back to reverse.”
“Where’s the brake?”
“The reverse is the brake.”
“Oh.” Then, “What if there isn’t any gas in those engines?”
Hunh. Didn’t think of that.
“Keo?” Claire said when he didn’t answer quickly enough.
Maybe we’ll get lucky, he thought but didn’t think that would go over well with the teenager, so he said instead, “It should have gas. They probably use those boats pretty often to patrol the area during the day. We wouldn’t need a lot to get across.”
He thought he sounded pretty convincing, but Claire didn’t completely buy it.
“Should, huh?” the kid said.
Keo grinned. “Yeah. Should. Think positive.”
“You Captain Optimism all of a sudden?” she said, smiling back.
“That’s me. Now, are you ready?”
“No, but let’s do it anyway.”
“That’s my girl.”
He glanced over his shoulder to listen to the back-and-forth clatter of gunfire and explosions from the active side of the compound. There were a couple of booms! that made the sheds to both sides of them tremble slightly, and Keo thought, Someone’s having a blast with those rocket launchers. Or grenades. Or maybe both.
“The white boat,” Keo said, turning back around. “Go straight for the white boat.”
“Got it,” Claire said. “The white boat.”
“Go,” he said, and he was already moving before the word was completely out of his mouth.
Keo lifted the carbine as he jogged out of the shadows and forward, angling toward the fifteen-footer. He pointed the weapon at the closest Bucky as the man stood underneath a lamppost, his own rifle clutched in front of him as he stared off toward the fighting. It didn’t take long for the man to glimpse Keo and Claire out of the corner of his eye, and he began turning, raising his rifle as he did so.
The red, glowing reticle lined up against the guard’s chest, and Keo squeezed the trigger—once, twice—and the body was falling even as he felt a blast of wind as Claire raced past him on his left.
Faster, kid, faster! he wanted to shout, but held off. Claire was probably unnerved enough that she didn’t need him shouting something stupid like that after her. She was probably running as fast as she could already.
Keo swiveled the AR slightly while still moving, maintaining his pace toward the docks as best he could even as he searched for the other two patrols he’d seen earlier.
There, running toward the fallen man. Two figures.
Keo fired, knocking the man up front off his feet. Keo had only managed one shot before the man fell, so he didn’t know if the Bucky was going to stay down or not. Not that he had the second or two it would have taken to pull a double tap and make sure, because the second guard slid to a stop and looked over in his direction. Keo shot him, too, and this time he was able to pull the trigger twice, hitting the man each time in the chest and watching him slump lifelessly to the ground, the shadows swallowing him up like some living beast.
He turned to his left even as his fourth
shot echoed and became lost in the continuous pop-pop-pop of other rifle fire coming from the other side of the compound. While he was pretty sure his own gunshots wouldn’t pull any extra attention from those fighting at the perimeter, it would be a different story with Buckies in the immediate area. Especially the ones along the shoreline.
And he was right, as three figures appeared in the lights to his left and began firing—at Claire.
The teenager was halfway to the boats when she threw herself down to the ground. Keo hadn’t realized she had gotten so far ahead. The only reason the guards were shooting at her and not him was because he was still moving in the shadows while she was running in the light and giving them a perfect target to shoot at.
Then Claire was back up on her hands and knees and crawling. Fast crawling. She was clearly wounded, though he wasn’t close enough to see how badly or where she’d been shot. But she wasn’t down and out, and that was all that mattered.
Keep moving, kid. Keep moving!
Keo flicked the fire selector on his AR to full-auto and unloaded on the three guards. He used up the remains of the magazine in one pull, which was a hell of a waste, but seeing two of the Buckies go down while the third turned in his direction made it worth it.
He was still in the shadows, which made it difficult for the guard to locate him. That, though, didn’t stop the man from firing in his direction anyway. A couple of rounds came close—the zip! of the 5.56 an inch from his forehead, making Keo go down on one knee even as he reloaded, worked the charging handle, and fired a quick burst that dropped the third guard.
Keo was on his feet and running again a second later.
So was Claire, who had scrambled up from the ground and was running—no, hobbling—toward the dock. She looked hurt, but he couldn’t see where. The fact that she was moving awkwardly probably meant a leg wound.
But she was still moving.
Keo ran after her, shouting, “The white boat, kid! The white boat!”
Claire didn’t bother looking back at him or answering as she hopped onto the dock and ran straight for the rope that tied the white fifteen-footer in place. She was still working on it when gunshots rang out, and Claire either fell or lunged to the wooden floor to dodge them.