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

by Sam Sisavath

  “I didn’t give him a choice.”

  “That’s my girl,” Maddie said.

  The small Texan was planted behind the helm where Blaine usually was and looked just as comfortable, even if she didn’t quite fill out the room the way Blaine did. If it were anyone else but Maddie guiding them across the endless expanse of the Gulf of Mexico right now, Lara might have been worried, but next to Blaine, there was no one else who knew more about the Trident.

  “Any word from them yet?” Lara asked after a while.

  Maddie glanced at the dashboard. “Nothing yet, but we’re not expecting them so soon, right?”

  “No…”

  “You worried?”

  “I’m always worried.”

  “I mean, more worried than usual?”

  “No. They know better than to do something stupid while it’s still dark out there.” She leaned toward the wraparound front windshield, as if she could see her friends out there, hiding among the thick blackness that covered the ocean. “They should be hanging out in the water right now, far from land, waiting for sunup to go ashore.”

  “Still feels weird with everyone separated like this.”

  “You want me to ask someone to keep you company?”

  “No, I’m good,” Maddie said. “I’ve been spelling Blaine all this time, so I’m used to being all by my lonesome up here. Anyway, I like it; gives me time to reflect.”

  “On what?”

  “Life and other stuff.”

  “Sounds deep.”

  “Oh yeah, it gives me headaches, too.”

  “Did you ever come up with something insightful? I could use a little good advice right about now.”

  “Just keep doing what you’re doing, boss lady.”

  That’s what I was afraid you’d say.

  “That’s it?” Lara said.

  “You’re doing all right in my book. Anyone who says differently doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

  “I guess I’ll take that. Thanks.”

  “No prob.”

  “Any complaints so far about Riley’s people crowding the boat?”

  “No one’s said anything to me yet. Besides, it’s nice to have more people around. Was starting to get tired of staring at Blaine’s ugly mug all the time. There’s a couple of cute guys in the bunch, too.”

  “I’m sure Blaine will appreciate hearing that.”

  “Eh, he knows he’s ugly. God knows why Sarah doesn’t think so.”

  Her radio—and Maddie’s, perched on the dashboard—squawked, and they both heard Benny’s voice. He sounded noticeably anxious as he said, “Lara, come in, please.”

  Lara keyed her two-way. “What’s up, Benny?”

  “I’m at the back of the upper deck right now and saw something that… Well, I’m not sure. I could use a second pair of eyes.”

  “I’m on my way.” Lara glanced at Maddie. “You sure you don’t want some company up here? How about one of those cute guys?”

  “Maybe you can ask Hart to come up here.”

  “Hart’s old enough to be your father.”

  “What can I say, I like ’em gray,” Maddie smiled. “They know how to appreciate a woman.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  She hurried out of the bridge and through the hallway, then across the upper deck. She could already hear the din of people moving around and talking in nervous but excited voices from the entertainment area beyond the narrow corridor. She walked through the group of people, exchanging nods with a few of the men, though she didn’t spot Hart anywhere.

  To keep any one area of the yacht from becoming too congested with bodies, they had spread out Riley’s people across all three decks, with the majority in the lower and main floors. The Trident wasn’t the Ocean Star and it didn’t have the space to accommodate all forty-something of Riley’s people comfortably, but everyone seemed to be making the best of the situation as far as she could tell.

  But she had to keep reminding herself they were just a few hours into their arrangement. It was going to take time—maybe a few days—before restlessness set in and people began to notice the lack of freedom to move around. When that happened, she was going to need Riley and Hart to help her deal with it. The good news was that she was sure she could rely on both of them.

  Lara maneuvered her way to the back of the floor and pushed out of the door and found Benny bracing against the railing, peering up at the sky with binoculars. There wasn’t a whole lot of moonlight tonight, and all she could see with the naked eye was a darkened sea of nothing, which was appropriate since it correctly mirrored the ocean around them at the moment.

  “Benny,” she said, closing the door behind her.

  He lowered the binoculars and looked over his shoulder. “I don’t know for sure, but there was something up there.”

  “What was it?”

  “It looked like…”

  “What was it, Benny?”

  “I thought it might have been a plane, but…”

  “But what?”

  “It’s gone.”

  “When did you first see it?” she asked, taking the binoculars from him.

  “About five minutes ago,” Benny said. “Then it just disappeared. It looked like a black dot up there, but it’s so dark it’s hard to be sure.”

  She wanted to ask the teenager if he might have imagined it, but she didn’t want to undermine his already fragile confidence. Lara peered through the binoculars instead. It was equipped with night-vision and rendered the world in a sea of green. There were barely any clouds above them, but she spotted a few in the distance.

  She scanned left, then right, but there was nothing up there.

  “I don’t see anything,” she said, and turned around in case whatever the “something” Benny had seen (or thought he had seen) was now behind them.

  “False alarm, I guess,” Benny said. “Maybe I’m just a little paranoid?”

  “You okay?”

  “Maybe it’s all the new people on the boat. Feels weird having so many people suddenly around.”

  “I know how you feel.”

  “Yeah?”

  She looked back at him and nodded. “We’ve been out here by ourselves for so long. Suddenly adding a bunch of new faces can be disconcerting.”

  “That must be it.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said and handed the glasses back to him. “I’d rather you stay a little paranoid than sleep on the job. I need everyone as alert as possible until we’re in the clear, which won’t be for a while.”

  “We’re not leaving the others behind, are we?” he asked, though she knew what he really wanted to say was, “We’re not going to leave before we pick Gaby up, are we?”

  “We’re not leaving anyone behind,” she said, and thought, Not again. Never, ever again. She smiled at the young man and gave him a pat on the shoulder, feeling more than a little weird doing it since they weren’t that far apart in age. “I promise.”

  He looked relieved and went back to scanning the horizon. Lara watched him for a moment, feeling as sorry for Benny as she did for herself when she finally accepted that Will wasn’t coming back, that he was gone for good.

  At least Gaby’s still around to be seen, Benny. So there’s that.

  Lara didn’t have the urge to face the crowd inside the floor again so soon, so she walked over to the side railing. She hadn’t taken more than a couple of steps when a speck of something black and nearly indistinguishable against the darkened sky flickered across her vision. It might have been completely invisible if it hadn’t been moving across a stream of white clouds when she looked up.

  “Benny,” she said. “Binoculars!”

  He must have heard the urgency in her voice (she was pretty sure she might have screamed) and quickly shoved the glasses into her extended hand. Lara held them up and focused on the clouds, but the object was gone. Or was it?

  “What is it?” Benny asked. “Did you see something?”<
br />
  “Give me a second.”

  She tried to picture where the object had been when she last saw it, then attempted to track its trajectory from left to right—

  There!

  “Oh, dammit,” she whispered.

  “What is it?” Benny said behind her. “What do you see, Lara?”

  It wasn’t actually black, she realized now that she was able to focus on it for more than a few seconds—maybe more of a grayer color, possibly even white, against the dark sky backdrop.

  “Lara?” Benny said. “What is it? What do you see?”

  She kept moving along the deck in order to keep it in view, and when she saw what it was in the process of doing, her heart might have stopped beating entirely.

  It was a plane, and it was turning back toward them…

  27

  Keo

  Keo was used to having guns pointed at him. Two guns, three guns. Four? Why not. It could be fifty, for all he cared, because all it took was one guy and one shot to do the job.

  Of course, Mercer’s men didn’t see it that way, and there were already two of them in the hallway when he began marching their leader from his quarters to the Comm Room on the other side of the main building. Just his luck the men would turn the corner as soon as he stepped out of the room with Mercer.

  It took a lot of effort to make sure the men never got behind him, and each time one of them drifted too far back, Keo had to stop and pull Mercer against him, with his back against the wall, and order them back in front of him. He thought about using the M4 he still had slung, but while the firepower was a major plus, the weapon’s length made it untenable for quick close-quarter action. Even so, he was tempted to lob a grenade round or two to wake the whole place up, maybe give Erin a heads up that the shit had, indeed, hit the fan.

  Two guns became four when they rounded the second corner, because the first two had radioed for reinforcements. Keo recalled the two new arrivals (Two more makes four, unless my math is off) as being the same two from the front doors when he first entered the facility with Erin. Four later became five when they took the final turn, because there was another man standing outside the Comm Room.

  There would probably have been more if the island wasn’t already pressed for bodies and if Mercer hadn’t ordered the rest to stay at their positions.

  “Send them away,” Keo said as they approached the Comm Room.

  “No,” Mercer said.

  “You do remember that I have a gun pointed at your head, right?”

  “And the answer’s still no.”

  “You’re pushing your luck, pal.”

  “So are you.”

  So what else is new, Keo thought as he backed his way to the door, reached over and found the lever, then pushed it down. With Mercer between him and the soldiers as a shield, he bent slightly at the knees and turned his head and peeked into the room, noticing a lone figure sitting on the far side, oblivious to what was happening outside in the hallway.

  Keo tightened his grip around Mercer’s arm and backtracked into the Comm Room, then moved quickly over to the wall where he once again put Mercer between him and the soldiers as they rushed inside after him. It took a while, but the woman sitting in front of the row of communications gear finally sensed that someone else—a lot of someone elses—were in the room with her and turned around. Keo saw why she was so clueless when she did—she was wearing a headset with thick earpieces.

  The woman shot up from her chair and stared wide-eyed at Keo and Mercer, then (hands shaking) removed her headset and said, “Sir, what’s going on?”

  “It’s fine, Jane,” Mercer said in that impossibly calm voice of his. “Please sit back down.”

  But Jane remained a statue, seemingly incapable of moving.

  “It’s all right,” Mercer said, and nodded.

  His calmness had an effect on Jane and she finally sat back down, then oddly rested her hands in her lap like she was back in school. Unlike Mercer and the men pointing their weapons at Keo, her uniform collar was white.

  The room wasn’t particularly large, and with all the electronics equipment hugging the back wall, it didn’t leave a lot of space for Keo and Mercer and all five soldiers to breathe. It was suddenly so quiet that Keo thought he could hear all eight heartbeats beating at the same time, but that might have just been his and Mercer’s. Or his, anyway, because he swore Mercer was as relaxed as any man could be with a gun jammed up his chin.

  Guy’s got the emotions of a robot.

  “Send them out,” Keo said.

  He kept his head hidden behind Mercer’s, leaning out only far enough to see just in case one of the soldiers decided to risk a shot from close-range.

  “We already went over this,” Mercer said. “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Look around you, pal. You really think six people with guns drawn in a room this small is a good idea? All it takes is one Nervous Nelly and we’re all dead.”

  Mercer didn’t take long to think about it, and maybe the sight of his men fidgeting nervously in front of him sealed the deal. “Not all of them,” he said.

  “Three,” Keo said.

  “Two.”

  “Deal.”

  Mercer nodded at two of the men—the first two that had intercepted them on the way over here. “You and you. Wait outside.”

  The men pulled up their rifles and backed away without a word before slipping outside the open door. They weren’t even trying to hide their relief as they left.

  “Sir,” Jane said, her voice trembling slightly. “What’s happening?”

  “Everything’s fine, Jane,” Mercer said. “Has Cole radioed in yet?”

  “Ten minutes ago, sir.”

  “Contact him for me, please.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jane said and swiveled around in her chair, though she glanced back at Keo and Mercer one more time before getting to work. “Cole, this is Black Tide Island. Please come in. Cole, this is Black Tide Island. Please come in.”

  “Relax,” Keo said to the three men in front of him.

  The three didn’t respond. At least, not verbally. One of them shuffled his feet (Olsen was scribbled across his name tag) and another (Travis) wrinkled his nose like he had an annoying itch he couldn’t get to. The third man, the biggest of the bunch, didn’t move a muscle, and dark brown eyes remained laser focused on Keo. Jasper was stenciled across one side of his chest.

  “Tell your men to relax, Mercer,” Keo said.

  “Relax, men,” Mercer said. “Everything is under control.”

  Jane turned around and slipped off her headset again. “Sir, I have Cole on the radio.”

  “Put him on the speakers,” Keo said.

  Jane looked to Mercer for approval, and he nodded. She hit a switch and Keo heard a deep male voice coming through the walls around him: “Waiting for further instructions, Black Tide.”

  “The microphone, Jane,” Mercer said, holding out his hand.

  Jane picked up the mic and walked the short distance over.

  “She can go, too,” Keo said.

  “Agreed,” Mercer said, and nodded at Jane.

  Like the other two, Jane didn’t argue and hurried past them and out the door, moving as fast as her feet would carry her.

  Everyone’s getting out alive except me. Just my luck.

  “Just the five of us, boys,” Keo said, forcing his best devil-may-care smile at the three soldiers standing across from him. “You guys fans of the show Full House?”

  No response.

  “Guess not,” Keo said.

  Mercer had pressed the transmit button on the microphone and was saying into it, “Cole, this is Mercer. Come in.”

  “Yes sir, I read you loud and clear,” the pilot answered. “Didn’t think you’d still be awake, sir.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “This isn’t a fucking date,” Keo said. “Get to the fucking point.”

  “What’s your situation, Cole?” Mercer said into the micro
phone.

  “Spotted that white whale I was looking for,” Cole said.

  White whale? Keo thought, then, Right. The Trident. Clever, jackass.

  “Can’t tell how many people are onboard,” the pilot continued, his voice coming loud and clear through the speakers along the walls. “It’s currently heading southwest.”

  “Southwest?” Mercer said.

  “Looks like it might be angling back toward the Texas shore.”

  “Interesting,” Mercer said, but he hadn’t keyed the mic when he said that last part, so Keo assumed it was meant for him. “Why are they heading back to Texas?”

  Good question, Keo thought, but he said, “Tell him to back off and return to the island.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  Keo jammed the gun harder against Mercer’s chin, and the man grunted. Travis and Olsen reflexively took a single step forward, fingers tightening around their weapons’ triggers. Jasper, on the other hand, remained where he was.

  Mercer held up a hand. “It’s all right, men. Back up.”

  Travis and Olsen obeyed instantly, stepping back until they were standing side-by-side with Jasper again. The big man had never taken his eyes off Keo, and his rifle hadn’t wavered even an inch.

  Keo turned his focus back on Mercer, but not before slipping just a little bit farther behind his human shield. “Tell the pilot to back off now.”

  “And I told you, I can’t do that,” Mercer said. “You know how this has to work, Keo. Your life for the Trident. There is no other way this can end. I told you there was going to be a price to pay.”

  “What guarantees do I have that you’ll keep your word?”

  “You have just that. My word.”

  “I don’t trust the word of a madman.”

  “Says the man who snuck onto an island with the sole purpose of murdering someone he’s never met.”

  “You don’t have to have met someone to know they need killing.”

  “You’ve done it before, I take it.”

  “More times than you can count, pal.”

  “I don’t know, Keo; I can count pretty high.”

  “Sir?” Cole said through the speakers. “What are your orders?”

  “Good question,” Mercer said. “What are my orders, Keo? Or let’s put it this way: If Cole doesn’t get any response from me in the next few minutes, will he follow through with my initial orders or completely disregard them and return home? Before you answer, keep in mind that he doesn’t know who is onboard the Trident at this moment. As far as he’s concerned, it’s an enemy boat, and I’ve already given him authority to shoot it out of the water.”