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

by Sam Sisavath

  Keo listened to Mercer’s heartbeat—not hard to do with the man pressed up tightly against him, their bodies touching back to front—and waited to hear the slight increase. Except there was none. It was perfectly flatlined. If Mercer was even a little bit anxious or scared, Keo couldn’t detect it, which was a hell of a feat because he was almost certain he could hear one of the soldiers in front of him actually hyperventilating.

  “Sir,” Cole said through the speakers, sounding slightly concerned by the lack of response, “do I proceed with the initial orders?”

  “The man is getting anxious, Keo,” Mercer said. “What should I tell him?”

  “Tell him to turn back,” Keo said.

  “Give me one good reason why I should.”

  Lara, Keo thought as he let the gun swivel against his trigger finger until the muzzle was pointed away from Mercer. He released his grip on the older man and Mercer stepped forward, then calmly turned around and took the Sig Sauer before removing the M4 slung over Keo’s back.

  The soldiers in the room with them relaxed and lowered their weapons slightly, but not entirely.

  “The pilot,” Keo said. “Turn him around.”

  Mercer put Keo’s handgun into his front waistband and handed the carbine over to Jasper, then keyed the microphone. “Cole, turn around and come back to the island.”

  “Sir?” Cole said, confused.

  “Mission’s over. Come home.”

  “Roger that, sir.”

  “So I was right,” Mercer said, this time to Keo. “You’re part of the Trident’s crew.”

  “Would you have let him do it?” Keo asked.

  Mercer didn’t answer him right away. Instead, he walked over to the row of communications gear and put the microphone back down in its reserved slot, then calmly swiped at a small film of dust on one of the screens.

  Finally, he looked back at Keo and said, “It’s hard to make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.”

  “Collateral damage,” Keo said.

  “Collateral damage,” Mercer nodded.

  “And now?”

  “And now, nothing. If Riley wants to take his people and leave, then good riddance. I need men and women who are dedicated to the cause. Bringing them back would just infect the others.”

  “You’re going to let them go. Just like that.”

  “I’ll keep my word. I’m not going to pursue them. But if they should cross my path again, then that goes beyond the perimeters of our agreement, do you agree?”

  Keo nodded. “I do.”

  “Good.” Mercer looked over at his soldiers. “It’s been a long night, and we’re all tired. Take Keo to the beach and shoot him in the head and give him to the ocean.” He focused on Jasper when he added, “I want it to be fast and painless.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jasper nodded back.

  Olsen and Travis grabbed Keo from behind while Jasper drew his sidearm and held it at his side.

  “A bullet to the head, huh?” Keo said to Mercer.

  “You surrendered your mission to save your friends,” Mercer said. “I respect a man with that kind of conviction.”

  “That makes one of us.”

  Mercer ignored the insult and nodded at his men then turned around, effectively dismissing all four of them.

  “You can’t win,” Keo said. “You’ll just end up killing a lot of people, but you’ll never be able to win. Not this way.”

  “We’ll see,” Mercer said without bothering to turn around.

  Olsen and Travis tightened their hold around Keo’s arms, and one of them (maybe Olsen) grunted, “Come on, man, make it easy. It’s over.”

  “Who’s fighting?” Keo said, and relaxed his arms against their grips.

  He caught the two of them exchanging a surprised, then suspicious glance when he didn’t fight back. He could have told them he had no intentions of resisting, that he had already decided there was no point. It wasn’t like he had any places to escape to even if he could get out of the Comm Room in one piece. There were two more waiting outside (and the unarmed woman), and as soon as someone fired a shot, the entire island would be on high alert. Not just the ones already awake, but everyone.

  Besides, Mercer had, against all odds (because Keo was ninety percent sure the man was lying through his teeth) kept his word and let the Trident go. And if he was to be believed, he would continue doing so unless some bad stroke of luck had Lara and the others crossing his path again.

  In many ways (maybe in all the ways that mattered), the night hadn’t ended so badly after all. Sure, he’d come here to kill Mercer and avenge Jordan and failed at both, but he had ended up saving Lara and the others onboard the Trident instead. They were his friends. He’d spent a lot of time with them, long enough to know that he liked them. So, in terms of accomplishments, he had to admit he was definitely coming out ahead.

  He must have been smiling as they led him to the door, because Olsen, to his right, said, “You look pleased with yourself.”

  “Going for a swim, boys. I’ve always loved the water,” Keo said, and smiled even wider.

  “Guy’s crazy,” Travis said from his left.

  “Keep him moving,” Jasper said, his footsteps heavy behind them—

  Bang! Bang!

  Gunshots. Two of them, coming one after another, and less than a second apart.

  Then someone screamed. A woman. Followed by footsteps fading fast.

  Keo couldn’t see how Jasper reacted behind him, but he saw Olsen releasing his arm as the man scrambled for his rifle while Travis was less decisive and continued clinging to Keo. Even as Keo tried to figure out what was happening, the words Drop! Drop! Drop! flashed across his mind.

  He did exactly that, letting both legs turn to jelly and dropping like a sinking rock. In the process, he dragged Travis down with him. His knees had just slammed into the floor, sending stabs of pain through him, when a familiar figure appeared in the open doorway in front of him.

  Erin.

  She had a gun in one hand, and if she saw him she didn’t give any indication of it. Instead, she fired again, the gunshot a thunderous boom! in the small communications room. She had fired high, which meant she wasn’t aiming at him, so it was either Olsen to his right or Jasper somewhere behind him. Keo hoped it was Jasper because he had a feeling the big man was going to be the hardest one to take down.

  Two shots responded from behind him and from such close proximity that they might as well be nukes going off, and Keo wondered if he might not have gone deaf as a result. In front of him, Erin seemed to take a staggering step back before collapsing, having made it only a couple of steps into the room, while her gun fell out of her numbed right hand and clattered to the floor.

  But it wasn’t Erin’s falling gun or Erin herself that Keo found himself staring at. No, it was the instantly recognizable oblong-shaped green object rolling out of her left palm when the back of her hand slapped the floor and the fingers unfurled and—

  Uh oh, Keo thought as he spun at the waist while a pair of hands tried desperately to keep his left arm in place. Travis, unwilling to let go despite everything happening around them. But Travis wasn’t fast or strong enough, and Keo twisted free and turned around and looked up at—

  Jasper, staring back at him, even as he started to lower the Smith & Wesson in his right hand to aim at Keo’s head, when someone shouted, “Grenade!”

  The shout froze Jasper in place—at least, for just a second—but it was enough time for Keo to launch himself and grab Jasper’s arm and jerk back down with everything he had. The loud crack! as Jasper’s arm snapped at the elbow was only drowned out by Jasper’s screams, but Keo was beyond caring. He wrested the gun out of the man’s suddenly pliant hand and spun back to the door.

  Travis was on the ground, staring wide-eyed at the grenade that had rolled out of Erin’s left hand. Except Travis didn’t see what Keo had spotted earlier—the pin was still intact. Erin might have come here with the intention of taking all of
them (Mercer) out with the grenade if she couldn’t do it with the pistol, but somewhere between shooting the two outside and stepping into the Comm Room, she had never armed the frag device.

  But Travis didn’t know that and kept trying to get up, draw his gun, and keep his balance at the same time, and failing at all three. Next to Travis, Olsen lay on his back on the floor with blood pumping out of his chest.

  Keo was still taking stock of the action behind him (a second? Half a second, if that?) when a fist landed against the back of his head. But the blow, while catching him by surprise, wasn’t nearly as strong as it could have been if it had been delivered by someone who didn’t have a broken arm and was relying on his weak hand. Still, it staggered Keo just enough while Jasper followed, useless right hand dangling at his side like a stump while his left cocked back for another strike—

  Keo shot the man in the stomach at almost point-blank range. At the exact same time, he glimpsed Mercer in the back of the room taking aim with the Sig Sauer he had taken from Keo earlier.

  “Keo!” Mercer shouted.

  Fuck you! Keo wanted to shout back, but he was too busy ducking as Mercer fired and Jasper’s body twitched against the impact above him.

  He grabbed the big man by the shirt collar and hid in front of him, using him as a shield the way he had done Mercer earlier. Except Jasper was much heavier (and dead?), and it took all of Keo’s strength to keep him propped up on his feet. Keo stuck his gun between Jasper’s side and left arm and squeezed off two rounds in Mercer’s direction.

  The first shot missed completely and hit a radio receiver, but the second struck Mercer in the left thigh and the man stumbled, his gun hand wavering for just a heartbeat before he raised it again and fired a second time, then a third—

  Keo shoved his shoulder into Jasper’s limp body and ran it forward, using the man as a moving battering ram. He only caught a blur of Mercer before he had crossed the remaining space between them and slammed the soldier into his superior and knocked all three of them down like stray bowling pins. It would have been comical if Keo weren’t so close to death that all he could think was move, move, move!

  Luckily for Keo, he ended up on top of Jasper, whose back had collided with Mercer and now pinned the man to the floor under them. Mercer glared up at him, but his gun was somewhere trapped underneath Jasper’s heavier body, along with his entire right arm. For the very first time since he met the man, Keo saw real concern flashing across Mercer’s face.

  So he is a real boy after all!

  Keo might have laughed out loud if he wasn’t too busy checking on Travis, who had finally managed to gather enough of his senses (and had realized the grenade wasn’t live) to stand up and turn around.

  He shot Travis in the hip—it was his best angle while still perched on top of the unmoving Jasper—as the soldier was turning, gun in his hand. Travis let out a startled grunt and dropped the pistol, then stumbled to the door and leaned against it while grabbing at his wound. He still had his rifle slung over his shoulder, but he might not have remembered as he hobbled outside into the hallway.

  He’s got the right idea, Keo thought as he looked back at Mercer, still struggling underneath Jasper. The only thing Keo cared about was that the older man’s right hand—and the gun in it—was still absent.

  He could already hear pounding footsteps behind him coming from outside the Comm Room. In a minute—maybe half that time, but even that was being overly generous—there would be enough guns here to keep him from doing what he needed to do, what he had come here to do in the first place.

  After all the struggling hadn’t done him any good, Mercer finally ceased all movement and seemed to lie back and stare up at Keo. “Don’t,” he said.

  “Don’t what?” Keo said.

  “The war,” Mercer said. “Someone has to do it. If not me, then who?”

  “Fuck your war,” Keo said, and shot Mercer between the eyes.

  He was rewarded with a fresh coat of red paint on the floor.

  28

  Gaby

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

  She hated the sound of his voice and the stupid cavalier attitude he was trying to project through the radio. She would have turned the two-way off if she could, but there was no upside to that and plenty of downside. As long as he was talking, he was giving her valuable information even if he didn’t know it. She couldn’t decide if he was stupid or if he just didn’t care.

  “We can play this game forever. I got all the time in the world, sweetheart. Don’t know about you, though.”

  I’m not your sweetheart, asshole.

  She would have said it out loud if she weren’t afraid he might hear the pain in her voice. At least this way he didn’t know if she was even still alive, and that, hopefully, would deter him from coming in because she wasn’t entirely certain she could take Mason and however many men he had out there with him if they did.

  She had to be satisfied with peering out from behind the corner of the large countertop because the last time she poked her head up over it, someone nearly took it off with a bullet that was still lodged somewhere in the wall behind her. She looked past the broken curtain glass wall that separated the diner and the empty street beyond. There were no signs of a shooter out there, not that they would have made it that easy for her to spot them, because they were definitely out there somewhere.

  The diner was a placed called “Tobey”-something; the rest of the name was buried with the debris that covered large sections of the streets outside. And this was one of the few parts of Gallant that was still (mostly) intact. The rest, particularly around the middle section, was almost complete rubble. She hadn’t realized the full extent of damage Mercer’s warplane had inflicted on the abandoned town until she, Danny, and Nate stepped out of what was left of the bank and into the morning sunlight.

  The carnage was everywhere they looked. Shards in big chunks and small pebble sizes had carpeted everything, and walking over them was like trying to tiptoe through one of those mailing foam bubble wraps where every step produced a sharp crunching noise. Despite all that, Tobey-whatever was strangely in one piece—or its interior, anyway, which was why she had stopped to search it for supplies, and maybe a forgotten bottle of water or two.

  “Now you’re just being rude, Gaby.” Mason again, his annoying voice still coming through the radio sitting on the floor behind her. He was either having the best time of his life or he wanted her to think so. “If you’re waiting for your boy toys to come to the rescue, you’re gonna have a long wait ahead of you, sweetheart. They got problems of their own right now.”

  As if on cue, a series of pop-pop-pop cracked across the Gallant morning skyline. They originated from her left, farther up the street…which was the direction where she had last seen Danny and Nate.

  “Speaking of the devils,” Mason said.

  She pulled her head back and scooted away from the counter until she was leaning against the back wall with the kitchen window above her. She was still facing the street, even though she couldn’t see very much of it. She laid her rifle across her knees and opened the pouch around her waist and pulled out the field first-aid kit.

  There was a hole in her left shoulder, the bullet that had caused it wedged somewhere just under the clavicle. The shot had come from across the street and sailed undeterred through the already-broken front windows. Sooner or later, she was going to have to dig the bullet out. Or have someone do it for her, more likely. Either way, it was going to hurt even more than it was hurting now, and it was hurting now plenty.

  She gritted her teeth and fought back a scream the entire time she treated the wound, the silence around her only broken by the pop-pop-pop of automatic rifle fire continuing to roll back and forth from up the street. Danny and Nate were out there, either together or separately, and making their way toward her. She could tell from the way the gunshots continued to get closer with each new volley. More importantly, she knew they wouldn’t
abandon her, just as she would never abandon either one of them.

  Gaby swallowed the pain and didn’t stop working until she was done. She breathed in a deep breath and blinked away the tears, then tossed the remains of the kit and picked her rifle back up and crawled to the other side of the counter, toward the blasted front doors. To get to the other end, she had to maneuver around the fresh trail of her own blood. There was surprisingly very little, which she guessed was a good thing.

  “Gaby, you still there?” Mason was saying through the radio behind her. For all she knew, he could have been talking this entire time, but she just hadn’t noticed because she was so focused on treating the wound. “I’m starting to think you don’t like me. After all we’ve been through. Remember Louisiana? Those were good times, huh?” Then, almost as an afterthought, “Remember Josh?”

  She ignored him (The past is the past. Concentrate on the now!) and kept going until she reached her destination and looked out from behind the counter. She scanned the street and the buildings on the other side.

  A thrift shop and a donut place were flanked by a couple of storefronts whose signs had come down last night, their windows blown out and contents scattered. Mason and whoever else was out there with him had to be in one of those places, she was sure of it. How else could they have seen her going into the diner earlier, and then later, taken that second shot at her?

  “That kid,” Mason was saying, undeterred by her silence, “I swear he had it bad for you. Even when he had you locked up in that town, he was convinced you’d see the light. You know teenagers in love, runaway hormones and all that good stuff.” Mason paused for a moment before continuing. “I guess he was wrong.”