Keo faced the side door again and took a breath.
Eight men that he knew of for sure, maybe (probably) more he couldn’t see. It wasn’t exactly the ideal situation, and God knew the prospect of shooting it out with eight men was intimidating enough that it made all of this seem like one big suicide run. Only an idiot would barge in there in hopes of getting to someone who wasn’t even present. Only a damn fool would do exactly what he was about to do against such overwhelming odds.
He almost laughed out loud trying to recall the last time someone had mistaken him for anything other than a damn fool.
Suck it up, pal, and get it done. Mercer’s not going to end himself, you know.
He reached for the rusted-over lever a second time, steeling himself for the charge. He’d have to take out the two inside first, then move toward the open front doors and waste the ones pushing the helicopter. Most of them, anyway. He’d need to keep at least one of them alive for interrogation, preferably the pilot. But he wouldn’t necessarily know who the pilot was unless the guy was wearing some kind of flight suit, which would be a dead giveaway, but unlikely.
Oh, fuck it. Now you’re just stalling.
He sighed, thought, This one’s for you, Jordan, and pushed his thumb down on the lever a split second before a big chunk of the already rotted wooden door in front of him cratered. Splinters exploded and filled the air (Gunshot!), every single piece seemingly gunning for his face.
Keo’s mind screamed, Gunshot! Where the hell did that gunshot come from? even as he spun and started dropping to the ground
It was a man, and he was wearing some kind of ghillie suit that would have made him blend effortlessly into his surroundings just beyond the tree line if not for the rifle in his hands. The muzzle was pointed in Keo’s direction, and the reason Keo hadn’t heard anything resembling a gunshot meant the weapon had a suppressor—
Keo dived left at the last second even as the man fired again, the second round smashing into the wall an inch from his head, so close that the sound of the weapon drilling through the vulnerable wood (Thwack!) and disappearing into the barn was the only noise the shot made. He had thrown himself down to avoid the bullet without thinking and had to stick out his hands—with the AR-15 clutched in them—or else he would have smashed face first into the ground.
There was a loud boom! from behind him, and Keo didn’t have to look back to know someone had just kicked the barn’s side door open. Not that he could have looked to be sure, because he was still falling—
He hit the ground, spun onto his back, and grimaced as the second rifle slung over his back dug into his flesh (Should have left it behind, dammit!), but the pain vanished quickly and was replaced by blinding fury when a steel-toed boot slammed into his side. He was pretty sure one of his ribs cracked. If he was really lucky, it would just be one.
He glimpsed figures flashing across his line of vision, blotting out the sun above him, just before the stock of a rifle cracked over his face.
There goes the nose again.
He tasted blood in his mouth and felt his rifle being yanked out of his hands as if he were some old man incapable of holding onto anything, then another boot (or was it the same one?) landing a second kick, but thankfully this time it only glanced off his thigh. It still hurt like a sonofabitch, and it was all he could do to grit his teeth to keep from crying out.
He waited for more, but his punisher had apparently decided that two (Or was that three? Four?) was enough and backed away, leaving Keo to lie on his back staring up at a glowing orange ball. At least it was warm and sunny this morning. He could think of worse ways to go—somewhere cold, for instance.
God bless freaky ass Texas weather, he thought with a wry grin.
“What are you smiling at?” a voice said. Female. Partially amused, but mostly confused. “I don’t think you should be smiling right now.”
“You sure that’s a smile?” a second voice asked. This one was a man and wasn’t nearly as pleasant-sounding.
“Looks like a smile.”
“Hard to tell with all the blood…”
Keo shifted his sight from the sun to the first silhouetted figure looming over him. For a moment he thought it might have been Marcy again, but it couldn’t have been because she was a collaborator and these were Mercer’s men. Or had he stumbled across the wrong group of people? Had Davis lied to him after all and sent him to his death?
Clever, Davis. Real clever, you jackass.
“You missed,” the man said. It didn’t sound as if he was directing the accusation at Keo. “Twice.”
“It’s the suppressor,” a second male voice said. “Threw off my aim.”
“Riiiight.”
“I’m serious, man.”
A third silhouette flanked the first two, except this one seemed to have the outline of a…bush? No, not a bush. He was looking at a ghillie suit…the guy with the rifle who had taken the shots at him.
“He’s seen better days, that’s for sure,” Ghillie Suit said. “Damn, look at that face.”
“That’s my bad,” the other man said.
“You did that?”
“Had to make sure he stayed down.”
“I think you made sure.”
“Damn straight.” Then, “Is that what I think it is?” The man crouched briefly before straightening back up, this time with a familiar white wire dangling from between his fingers. “Aw, shit, it’s Davis’s iPod, isn’t it? What the fuck’s he doing with Davis’s iPod?”
“I guess now we know what happened to him and Butch,” Ghillie Suit said.
“You think they’re dead?”
“I don’t think they gave it to him out of the goodness of their hearts.”
“Is he alone?” the woman asked.
“As far as I know,” Ghillie Suit said. “Could be more hiding in the woods.”
“I swore the nightcrawlers found us last night,” the other man said. “They might have sent their human lackeys to check. You think he’s a collaborator scumbag?”
“Maybe,” woman said. “Spread out; make sure he doesn’t have any friends hiding out there.”
The man who wasn’t Ghillie Suit left and Keo heard a radio squawking, but that was quickly drowned out by the sound of a machine roaring to life. First slowly, then gradually gaining speed and power until it was all he could hear and the ground under him began trembling, pebbles dancing near his right eye.
The helicopter. Wait for me, boys!
He must have grinned a second time, because the woman said, “There it is again. What’s so funny?”
He thought of a joke Danny had once told him about a priest, a rabbit, and a horse walking into a bar, but when he opened his mouth to tell it, the only sound that came out was a slightly labored wheeze.
“I guess not!” Ghillie Suit said. With the noise continuing to grow in the background, the man had to shout to be heard. “What’re we gonna do with him?”
“I don’t know yet!” the woman shouted back. She crouched next to Keo and her face slowly came into focus.
Not completely, but enough for him to know she wasn’t entirely bad looking.
“What’s he doing sneaking around out here by himself?” the woman asked, though Keo wasn’t sure if she was asking him or Ghillie Suit, or just talking mostly to herself.
Maybe I should ask her out for drinks. Get to know one another…
“He looks like he’s going to be way more trouble than he’s worth,” Ghillie Suit said.
“Maybe,” the woman said, standing back up. “We can always just throw him out of the hatch later if he becomes a pain in the ass.”
Or not.
5
Gaby
“Ready, kid?”
“No.”
“On the count of five…”
“Danny, I’m not ready!”
“One…”
“Not yet!”
“Two…”
“Danny!”
“…four…”
“What happened to three?”
“Go!”
She would have cursed him if she had the chance, but by the time his Go! echoed in her ears, the pickup’s tires were screaming and the smell of burning rubber filled her nostrils as the vehicle slammed to a stop in the middle of the road. She threw her body into the door, one hand jerking at the lever, praying she had timed it just right, because otherwise she was going to go splat on the pavement—
The door snapped open, rusted hinges working overtime, but was soon lost against the overwhelming squeal of tires under her and the quickly approaching engines of the two vehicles behind them. Her feet didn’t so much as touch the road as they grazed it, and she was racing forward. A sheet of abandoned newspaper crumpled under her boots, the sound like gunshots despite all the other noises swirling around her at the moment.
The road out of Gallant, Texas, was a two-lane street separated by fading yellow lines, and their vehicle had turned slightly left as it skidded to a stop and she lunged out. That pointed her right toward the shoulder and the row of cars on the other side. They hadn’t made it very far out of town before Danny came up with his (not so) brilliant plan. She would have argued to keep going and hopefully lose their pursuers among the side streets, but Danny hadn’t given her any choice.
Her heartbeat thundered against her chest as she ran for all she was worth, the M4 clutched in her right hand, her left swinging back and forth as if that would somehow make her go faster. She couldn’t help herself and tossed a quick look to her right and down the street just as she crossed the shoulder.
They were still coming—both of them. The Jeep that she had seen on the I-10, which may or may not have been tracking them since Port Arthur, and the big black truck with the dark uniformed man perched behind the towering cab. It wasn’t the size of the second vehicle that made the pit of her stomach drop. No, it was the mounted machine gun. Gaby had seen what one of those things could do, and the thought of being on the wrong side of it made her run faster and faster.
She forced herself to turn forward and focus on the long white metal pole separating the car lot from the street. She reached out with her left hand and leapt over it, her momentum almost sending her right into the grill of a used Ford truck.
She stuck out both hands to protect herself, rifle clanging against the parked vehicle, and twisted her body until she slid against the dirt-caked side. She didn’t waste any time and leaned against it—ignoring the surprisingly cold contact! She raised the M4 and laid it across the hood and took just a second—maybe even a half-second, just long enough to see the Jeep filling up her ACOG—to aim before she pulled the trigger.
The rifle bucked and empty shell casings clink-clink-clinked against the truck and slid down like raindrops to scatter at her feet, but she never released the trigger. Gaby oscillated her fire left and right, sweeping the street as the Jeep swerved about fifty meters away (Jesus, how did they get so close so fast?) until it somehow ended up on the northbound lane. That left the southbound wide open and the big truck—a GMC, from the logo up front—taking up the entire lane as it continued barreling in her direction.
She was sending everything she had downrange because it was her job to slow them down (or stop them, but she didn’t think that was possible) in order to give Danny and Nate just enough time to—
The pop-pop-pop of automatic weapons coming from her right told her she had done her job and given her friends the time they needed. Danny and Nate were pouring it on, and the ping-ping-ping! of bullets punching through the truck’s body were some of the best sounds she’d ever heard in her life.
She kept shooting, waiting for the GMC to stop under the prolonged assault, but the damn thing kept coming. It wouldn’t stop or slow down even as bullets raked its front windshield and grill and hood. The pavement around it exploded, chunks of asphalt flickering into the air like missiles.
And then the thing she had been dreading: The ferocious roar of the machine gun finally coming alive, the brap-brap-brap of the MG drowning out her shots and Danny’s and Nate’s—
She ducked as bullets smashed into the other side of the Ford, the ping! ping! ping! like bombs going off next to her. It was all she could do to reload the M4, concentrating on getting a solid grip on a fresh magazine from one of her pouches even though her hands were covered in sweat. Every inch of her trembled every time a round slammed into the vehicles and road around her. The damn machine gun never seemed to run out of bullets and continued to rain long after she had finished loading her rifle and pulled back the charging handle.
And then, just like that, nothing.
The suddenness of it froze her in place, still crouched behind the bullet-riddled truck, her breath hammering out of her. It took her three full seconds before she allowed herself to finally believe what her ears were telling her.
It was quiet. Unbelievably quiet.
It took her another five full seconds to will herself to stand up—her legs were wobbly for some reason, and her hands trembling slightly—and look over the hood of the vehicle up the street.
The GMC had come to a stop (Thank God) at an odd angle in the middle of the road about twenty meters from the red pickup, its hood facing her end of the street, which allowed her to see the (at least) two dozen or so holes spread out from one side of the windshield to the other. Spilled gasoline tickled at her nostrils, and the painfully gradual drip-drip-drip sound of leaking fuel from somewhere at the back of the vehicle was the only thing she could hear other than her own labored breathing.
The enemy truck was so close that she didn’t have to look through her weapon’s optic to see the smoke coming out of holes along the grill and hood or the driver slouched over the steering wheel, unmoving. The machine gun on the cab was resting on its stock, the muzzle pointed up at the cloudless sky. Sunlight beat down on the shiny black coat of paint as if it had just come off the lot.
She was so focused on the dead-in-the-street truck that it took her a while to recognize the sound of an engine roaring to life. She scanned past the GMC and spotted the Jeep still fifty meters up the road. It was attempting to make a wide U-turn and almost crashed into a stop sign in the process. The driving was erratic, to put it mildly, which made her wonder if the driver was hurt.
Pop! as someone fired at it, the round hitting the back of the Jeep as it completed its desperate U-turn before speeding away. She thought about shooting after it, but it was already too far away and hitting a moving target—even one as big as a car—was never an easy shot, even if her hands weren’t shaking.
“Gaby!” a voice shouted. Danny.
“Yeah!” she shouted back. She didn’t take her eyes off the unmoving technical; a part of her expected it to come back to life as soon as she relaxed, the man in the back rising behind the machine gun like some unkillable monster.
“You good?” Danny asked.
“Yeah! You?”
“Right as rain.”
“Now what?”
“Clear the technical!”
She stepped away from the Ford and climbed over the metal pole barrier—keeping her eyes on the target the entire time—before finally moving up the street. The smell of spilled gasoline became more evident as she drew closer, and broken glass crunched under her shoes. Her heartbeat had slowed down, her breathing returning to (mostly) normal, and she picked up her pace to cover the remaining distance.
Gaby glimpsed the fading Jeep in the distance just before it vanished completely, taking the sound of its engines with it. With that threat gone, she turned her attention to the technical, her finger testing the M4’s trigger, ready to shoot anything that moved. Any goddamn thing at all.
But nothing moved in or around the truck. At least, nothing living.
She kicked empty brass casings around the vehicle before finding the soldier in the truck bed. His hands were clutched around his throat where he’d been shot. By the amount of blood pooled under him, she guessed he had bled out soon after he fell.
There were two more bodies in the truck—the driver and his passenger. They were both wearing black uniforms, and the passenger was crumpled on the floor in an impossible ball shape. For a moment Gaby thought the man was hiding, but no; he was just dead. She made sure by opening the door and nudging him in the shoulder with her rifle’s barrel until he toppled sideways in the other direction and didn’t move.
“Clear!” she shouted.
She gave the street one last look, listening for the Jeep’s engines, and when she didn’t see or hear any signs of it, she turned and jogged back to Danny and Nate.
She hadn’t seen the pickup earlier because she was so focused on the enemy, but if Danny thought it was a jalopy before, she wondered what he was going to call it now. The side facing her was covered in holes, and like the GMC’s, its tank was leaking gasoline. Sheets of glass covered the road and one of the back tires had been shot out, though she didn’t remember hearing anything that sounded like a tire blowing. Then again, given how fast she was emptying her rifle, she probably wouldn’t have heard a bomb going off next to her at the time.
The truck was there (mostly, anyway), but there were no signs of Danny or Nate. Or Mason, for that matter.
“Danny!” she called.
“Here,” Danny said, his voice coming from the other side of the truck.
She jogged the rest of the way and went around the pickup. Danny had his back to her, but she could see that he was crouched next to Nate, who sat with his back against the driver-side door. Their weapons were on the pavement.
“Nate,” she said.
He looked past Danny and smiled at her, but it was overly forced and that realization only made her run faster to him. She went around Danny and kneeled on the other side of Nate, her stomach dropping at the sight of blood gathered around his waist.
The Purge of Babylon Series Box Set, Vol. 3 | Books 7-9 Page 44