The Horns of Avalon (Purge of Babylon, Book 8)

by Sam Sisavath

  Finally, Faith said, “He regrets that. I don’t think he got any sleep at all last night.”

  That makes two of us.

  The girl slowed down the vessel as the Ocean Star loomed in front of them before finally killing the motor completely. She expertly used the boat’s forward momentum to ease it underneath the structure until they were alongside one of the docks. Riley may not have needed to order Faith to come get her, but it was pretty obvious the young woman knew her way around a boat.

  Two men, both unarmed (at least as far as she could see without telling them to strip off their thick coats), were waiting for them underneath the platform.

  “Riley’s orders,” Faith said, finally looking back at her for the first time since they started away from the Trident.

  “What’s that?” Lara said.

  “No one you meet on your way up to see him will be armed, but you’re free to keep your weapons on you at all times.”

  “That’s awfully considerate of him.”

  “He’s trying to make up for last night. Please let him, Lara.”

  The plea caught her by surprise, and Lara didn’t answer right away.

  Finally, she nodded. “Lead the way.”

  Faith took her up along the winding stairs while the two men worked to secure the boat behind them. There were a dozen vessels of various models already in the water when they arrived, including a couple of fast boats. She didn’t see anything bigger than a fifteen-footer tied to any of the docks and had to wonder if that was the reason they were so desperate to get their hands on the Trident—it was easily many times bigger than all the vehicles they had combined.

  “Can I ask?” Faith said hesitantly.

  “Depends on what you’re going to ask,” Lara said.

  “Our guys. Are they okay?”

  “They’re all alive, if that’s what you mean.”

  “No, I meant…” She paused, then, “I meant, was there any shooting last night? During the siege?”

  “There was no siege. We took them prisoner before they even climbed aboard.”

  “Oh.”

  “What did Riley tell you?”

  “Not a lot, but I thought something bad might have happened—” She stopped short and shook her head, then glanced over her shoulder with an almost apologetic look. “So there was no shooting? No violence?”

  Depends on what you mean by “violence,” Lara thought, but said, “No. We took them prisoner and put them in a room all night.” She saw the relieved look on the girl’s face and said, “Who are you worried about?”

  “What do you mean? I’m worried about all of them.”

  “But there’s one in particular, right?”

  Faith might have blushed. “My boyfriend. James. Do you know if he’s okay?”

  “I don’t remember talking to anyone named James, but if he’s part of the crew, then he’s fine. Like I said, we didn’t hurt anyone. They were smart and surrendered when we caught them trying to sneak onboard.”

  “Oh, thank God.”

  God had nothing to do with it, Lara thought, remembering how close she had come to giving the order to open fire. If Hart hadn’t seen how badly out-positioned he had been and told his men to stand down, things might have gotten bad. The six-men-dead-in-the-water kind of bad.

  “I guess everyone here knows what happened,” Lara said.

  Faith nodded. “It’s not a very big place and Riley doesn’t hide many things from us, especially something this big.”

  Lara was startled by a flock of birds that appeared out of nowhere and glided in for a landing along the railing next to her. They were small and purple, and she got the feeling she was more wary of them than they were of her. That is, if they noticed her presence at all.

  “Oil rigs are magnets for birds,” Faith said, smiling back at her. “We get every kind.”

  Faith wasn’t lying. Lara had seen flocks in the air as they were coming in. At first she thought they were going to swerve around the human-made monstrosity squatting in the middle of the ocean, but instead they honed in on it, landing all along the multiple levels.

  “Where do they come from?” Lara asked.

  “Everywhere,” Faith said. “By the time they reach us out here, they’ve been flying for so long they just crash. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Then, with a look that Lara wasn’t sure was a joke, Faith added, “Bird stew used to be on the menu until we realized how awful it tasted.”

  They went up another set of stairs before finally reaching the top platform. As they climbed up, she took the opportunity to sneak a look at the ocean behind her before settling on the familiar white shape of the Trident about a mile away. From out here, the luxury yacht looked absolutely lonely surrounded by vast open ocean, which was exactly what she was hoping to see. It was going to take a lot (a miracle) to sneak up on the yacht’s crew. Anything other than a submarine was going to get shredded by gunfire before they even got close.

  Seeing the solitary boat in the distance eased her mind tremendously. Even if everything went bad and Riley turned out to be the snake in the grass that a part of her expected him to be, at least she could say everyone onboard would be safe. Most of all, she could count on Blaine to put the Trident in gear and get out of there at the first sign of trouble. He wouldn’t want to do it and there would be all kinds of internal and external conflict, but Blaine would do the right thing. She had made damn sure of that before she left.

  “That clearheaded rush you just got?” Faith said in front of her. “That’s the altitude. It’ll clear up any sinus problems you have. That’s the good news. The bad news is it’s friggin’ cold up here, so keep your jacket on at all times or you’ll end up in sickbay.”

  When she turned around again, the first thing she saw—because it was simply impossible to miss—was the giant derrick in the center. It was red and white and looked like a shrunken version of the Eiffel Tower. The only thing taller than the drill was the massive crane to her right. She spent a few seconds looking it up and down but like all the other times, she couldn’t make out any figures perched along its many sections. Even so, she didn’t believe it was empty for a second. It was simply too perfect a location to not have someone up there, and if her civilian mind knew that, someone like Hart and Riley would, too.

  Come out, come out, wherever you are.

  “To answer your question, no; we haven’t turned the drill back on,” a voice said.

  She looked over as a tall man walked toward her. He was wearing green cargo pants and, like Faith, wasn’t armed in any way that she could see. His jacket’s collar stood up against the sides of his neck to protect him from the cold.

  “I’m Riley,” the man said, sticking out his hand.

  “Lara.”

  “I know,” he smiled.

  She didn’t return it. “Nice place you got here.”

  “It’s got a great view and the rent’s cheap,” he said before nodding at Faith. “I’ll take her from here, Faith; thanks.”

  “I’ll go wait with the boat,” Faith said. To Lara: “Please listen to what he has to say.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Lara said. She couldn’t decide if she was annoyed or genuinely touched by the girl’s earnestness.

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m not promising anything.”

  “I know,” the younger woman said before heading back down the stairs.

  Lara turned back to Riley and caught him looking her over.

  He recovered quickly and said, “Come on; let’s go inside. I should have worn my thermal socks.”

  “I can’t stay long.”

  “One hour?”

  She nodded. “One hour.”

  “That’s more than enough time.”

  He turned around and started off and she followed, leaving just enough space between them that she could still see every inch of him and the spaces around them at the same time. She had done it unconsciously, and recognizing it, thought, Is this what it’s l
ike to be you all the time, Will? Always on 24/7?

  “I’ll be perfectly frank with you, Lara. I’m surprised you came,” Riley was saying.

  So you agree this is a stupid idea, too?

  “But I’m glad you did,” he continued. “I know it took a lot of guts after everything that happened. But I wouldn’t have expected anything else from the Lara.”

  He had glanced over his shoulder when he said that last part, and she gave him a wry look back.

  “When did you figure it out?” she asked.

  “That you’re the same Lara who sent out those messages over the radio? Not right away. I had to listen to our conversation a few times before it clicked.”

  “You recorded our conversation?”

  “The rig has a pretty impressive comm system. I had our talk recorded just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. A lot’s riding on this—six lives, for one—and I didn’t want to fuck it up the way I did last night.”

  She smiled to herself because she knew he couldn’t see. “It takes a big man to admit when he fucks something up.”

  “Thank you for not harming Hart and the others.”

  “How can you be so sure that I didn’t?”

  “You said you hadn’t.”

  “I might have been lying.”

  “Are you?”

  She didn’t answer him.

  He looked over his shoulder again. “Are you?”

  “No,” she said finally.

  “So my thank you stands.”

  “People have gotten killed running around out here believing everything a stranger tells them.”

  “But you’re not just any stranger, Lara. You’re Lara.”

  She wasn’t entirely sure how to take that. The radio messages were therapy as much as they were an attempt to reach out to other survivors. She had only added her name to it with the second broadcast because, deep down, she still expected Will to be listening. It was stupid and desperate, but at the time she didn’t have anything to lose.

  Riley led her through the platform and around the large drilling devices that occupied a good portion of the rig. They stepped over pipes of various shapes and sizes, a hard hat that someone had left behind, and passed a bright orange vessel hanging off the side. She guessed it was some kind of emergency raft. They entered a maze of pumps and tanks circling the derrick like army ants, each with their own command unit. She wasn’t paying attention to where she was going and almost stumbled into a group of heavy machinery but managed to swerve around them at the last second.

  The remnants of spilled liquids—chemicals, additives, and fuel used to keep this place churning night and day back when it was still in operation—filled her nostrils. She could only imagine how loud it would be up here when everything was up and running. Right now she might as well be zigzagging through a museum, a showcase of how mankind once bled the earth for resources.

  Riley didn’t seem to have the same kind of trouble, but then, he had probably gone through this maze so many times he didn’t even have to think about where he was going.

  “How do you get around this place?” she asked.

  “You get used to it,” he said. “We were running into everything the first few weeks. A lot of accidents, bumps, and bruises. But we’ve cleared up everything that isn’t nailed down and even took apart some of those that were. You should have seen it when we first got here. About fifty percent of all this open space didn’t exist.”

  They passed a helicopter landing port to their right resting on its own raised platform. It was empty at the moment, but she could smell recently spilled fuel and was going to ask Riley where the aircraft was when there was a clink. She looked down just in time to catch a shiny lug nut skidding across the floor before disappearing underneath a machine painted blue and about the size of a car.

  They had been walking for a while and didn’t look to be any closer to reaching their destination, and she was growing frustrated. That, and her legs were starting to tire, reminding her of just how good she had it back on the Trident

  God, how did I get so out of shape?

  “You brought me here to talk,” she said. “So let’s talk.”

  “We’re almost there…”

  “No, Riley.”

  She stopped in the middle of two machines with dials and conduits sticking out of them to both sides of her. One was red and the other was white, and she couldn’t even begin to guess what either one did.

  Riley stopped five feet in front of her and turned around. “This is the kind of discussion that we should take inside, Lara. Besides, it’s cold out here.”

  “I’ve never felt more clearheaded.”

  “It’s warmer inside.”

  “It’s warm enough out here,” she said, fighting back a grimace as a particularly cold wind whipped through the valley of machinery around them. “Tell me what I’m doing here, Riley. Tell me now.”

  Riley nodded, his blue eyes focusing on her as if he was afraid of missing every reaction on her face in the next few minutes. “I need your boat, Lara.”

  “I have six of your men on my boat right now that already told me that. So what else do you want from me, Riley?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. Just the boat.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “Don’t what?”

  His eyes had left her face and gone to her hip because her right hand had slid closer to her holstered sidearm. A year ago the notion that she would reach first for her gun when threatened—or even when she just felt threatened—would have terrified her. Now, she did it without even thinking.

  “Don’t,” Riley said again.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Please don’t draw your gun.”

  She didn’t know why, but Riley asking her not to do it made her want to do it. Again, without her realizing it, her fingers brushed against the grip of her sidearm.

  “Lara,” Riley said, his eyes returning to hers, “I have a man on the crane, and he’s watching us right now.”

  The crane…

  “He can’t hear what we’re saying, but he can see everything,” Riley continued. “If you draw your weapon, he’ll shoot.”

  It’s a trick! her mind screamed, but she had to exert every ounce of willpower to keep from turning around and zeroing in on the crane.

  “There is no man on the crane,” she said. “I looked.”

  “His name is Peters,” Riley said. “Trust me, he’s up there. I had to keep him up there, just in case things went sideways. He’s my insurance. My only insurance. Everyone else is staying out of the way on purpose.” He held his hands steady at his sides, the palms facing her as if he wanted her to see he had nothing in them. “I’m not armed, Lara. I can’t stop you if you decide to shoot me right now. But Peters will respond if you do that, and he never misses. Never.”

  He’s lying. There is no man on the crane. You looked, remember?

  But how easy would it have been to hide someone up there? Very easily, because there were so many metal parts and angles it would be impossible to see every single section of the crane. All a sniper would need was to find a perfect spot, and depending on how long Riley and his people had been here, they could easily have figured that part out a long time ago.

  Then again, even if there were someone up there, the distance was too great and the man would be shooting from a high angle. Not to mention all the machinery around her, including the two flanking her right now. There were a lot of reasons why a shooter wouldn’t be able to make the shot, even if he “never misses.” The odds were all in her favor.

  Right?

  Maybe…

  Lara exhaled a slow breath, but she didn’t take her hand away from her hip, though there was now an extra inch of space between her fingers and the Glock. She sneaked a quick look to her left, then her right in case Riley’s men were trying to outflank her. She tried to pick up sounds of footsteps behind her, but there was just her slightly racing heartbeat p
ounding in her ear.

  “So talk,” she said finally.

  “We should do this inside,” Riley said.

  “No. Out here. Tell me why you need my boat and why in God’s name you think I’m going to give it to you.”

  He nodded reluctantly. “I have people on the Ocean Star. Civilians.”

  “Faith told me you were all civilians.”

  “Some people are more civilian than others.”

  “Is that supposed to make sense to me?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. This place, this platform, it was an FOB until just a few days ago.”

  “FO what?”

  “FOB. Forward Operating Base. It was used to launch an attack on the mainland very recently. You probably don’t know anything about it since you’ve been out here the entire time.”

  Is he talking about…Mercer?

  Something must have registered on her face, because Riley tilted his head slightly to one side. “Or do you?”

  “No,” she said.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you believe.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Get to the point.”

  “I’m trying to.”

  “Try harder.”

  He sighed, took a breath, then continued. “I have people I need to transport off the Ocean Star and to safety.” He looked out toward the ocean in the direction where the Trident would have been if not for the wall of metal and tubes in his way. “Your boat showing up out of the blue was a godsend.”

  “You have boats here. A lot of them.”

  “I don’t have enough, and the ones I do have aren’t nearly big enough. If there were still bigger vessels at the ports, I might have risked launching a raid on them, but they’re gone. The collaborators sank them a long time ago.”

  “So you risked boarding the Trident with six armed men.”

  “I had no choice. It was the best and fastest option. I need your boat, Lara.”

  She shook her head. “You can’t have it.”

  “You don’t understand—”

  “No, I understand perfectly. You want something I have, and I’m not willing to give it to you. What I do have are six of your men. And they’re the only things you’re going to get out of this.”