The Purge of Babylon Series Box Set, Vol. 3 | Books 7-9

by Sisavath, Sam

  “Kind of you, but I’m going to have to insist you come up with us. Don’t worry; they have a brig where we’ll stow you while we go about our business.”

  “Okay, but when we run out of food, remember I offered.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Erin said.

  They had to free his legs so he could move on his own power up the stairs, his footsteps, along with Erin in front of him and Troy behind him, clanging with every step. A variety of birds perched along the railings of the structure watched them pass by, seemingly oblivious to human presence. For every one that was awake, he saw two or three that were asleep.

  “Who’s up for bird soup tonight?” Keo asked.

  “Do you ever shut up?” Erin, walking a few steps in front of him, asked.

  “Can’t help it. I tend to talk a lot when I’m being led to an interrogation and possibly death.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

  “No?”

  “You could always join us.”

  “I would if you told me who or what you people are.”

  “Because you don’t already know,” she said, and though he couldn’t see her face, he imagined her smirking when she said it.

  “I get the feeling you don’t believe me, Erin.”

  “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “Man’s intuition.”

  “I’ve never heard of that one before.”

  “It’s like woman’s intuition, except manlier.”

  “Ah,” she said, and turned a corner and kept ascending.

  “What are the chances I’m going to survive The Ranch?” Keo asked, following her around the bend in the stairs.

  He was surprised Troy hadn’t intruded on his back-and-forth with Erin yet. As far as he could tell, the man was still back there, close enough that Keo considered spinning around and going for his gun. Worst-case scenario, they’d both go over the railing and into the water, which would undoubtedly spell death for him with his hands still tied. Then again, what did he have to lose?

  “That depends on what you say,” Erin was saying in front of him.

  “I don’t know anything,” Keo said.

  “I didn’t say you did. I said it’s going to depend on what you say when you’re presented with the questions.”

  “Well, at least the truth is on my side.”

  “Right,” Erin said. “You just keep clinging to that, Keo.”

  A man appeared above them—forties, broad-shouldered, with grays in his hair. He wore the same black uniform and tactical vest as the two that had helped them dock below the rig. Keo looked for a name tag but didn’t see one on the newcomer, either.

  “Welcome back,” the man said, extending a hand to Erin.

  She shook it. “Thanks, Hart. Where’s Riley?”

  “He came down with a cold,” the man named Hart said. “Stuck in bed, so I’m running the show until he gets back up on his feet.”

  “He okay?”

  “It’s a cold. He’ll get over it.”

  “You guys have a doctor onboard, right?”

  “George. He’s a vet.”

  “Same difference,” Troy said, piping up for the first time.

  Hart gave a slightly weird smile. “Yeah. George’s come in real handy lately.”

  The older man stepped aside to let them up onto the highest deck of the oil rig. The wind picked up noticeably, and the first thing Keo observed as soon as he climbed up was just how bright it was up here, with nothing but open skies above him.

  He expected to see people around, but there were only a couple of men with slung rifles standing guard along the edge of the platform to his left. One of them was leaning against a chipped railing and the other one was absently chewing something. They wore the same attire as Hart, which weren’t uniforms exactly, but close enough. Both guards looked oblivious to their arrival.

  Machinery outnumbered people on the top deck, with the derrick sticking out from the center in front of them and the even taller crane lording over everything. Keo stared at the towering structure for a moment, trying to spy the lookouts he knew had to be up there. After all, you didn’t take over a place like this and not make use of its best assets.

  “You returning to The Ranch?” Hart was asking Erin as he led them across the platform.

  “For now,” Erin said. “All the teams will be returning one by one, so you’re going to be pretty busy for a while. Richards and José are downstairs refueling; when they’re done, they’ll be heading back to shore to pick up more people. That means I’m going to need one of your boats to continue on.”

  “Sure, no problem. How are you for supplies?”

  “We’ll fill up what we need, but it shouldn’t be too much. What about you?”

  “The pantry’s fully stocked, so no worries. How’s the war going out there?”

  “It’s…going.”

  “Is that good or bad?” Hart asked.

  “I guess it depends on your perspective,” Erin said.

  Hart glanced back at her, apparently not quite sure how to take her response. Keo shared his confusion.

  “I guess it depends on your perspective”? Keo thought.

  “Casualties?” Hart asked.

  “Maybe more than we’d like,” Erin said, and looked over her shoulder at Keo. “You wanna add something?”

  “I’m just a tourist,” Keo said. “I don’t know anything.”

  “Who is he, anyway?” Hart asked. “Why is he tied up?”

  Erin turned back to Hart. “The better question is, where is everyone?”

  “Huh?” Hart said.

  “The last time I was here, there were kids running around. Where are all the civilian workers, Hart? Don’t tell me they all caught a cold, too.”

  She stopped suddenly, and Keo had to do the same or he would have bumped into her. Erin’s right hand drifted uncomfortably close to her holstered sidearm while behind Keo, he heard Troy shuffling his feet and the sound of a safety being clicked off.

  Uh oh.

  Hart, realizing that the party had stopped, did too, and turned around.

  “Well?” Erin said. “Where are all the civilians, Hart?”

  The older man looked past Erin and at Keo. No, not at him, but at Troy standing over Keo’s left shoulder. Unlike Erin, whose rifle was slung over her back, Keo knew for a fact that Troy had his cradled in front of him the entire time they’d walked up the stairs.

  “They’re inside,” Hart said, shifting his eyes back to Erin. “There’s no work to be done out here right now.”

  “You sound a little nervous, Hart,” Erin said. “Why are you so nervous?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Bullshit,” Troy said behind Keo. “You’re definitely nervous.”

  Hart shook his head and attempted a smile, but it came out so badly that Keo thought, And things were going so well, too.

  “You’re being paranoid,” Hart said. “Relax. There’s nothing going on. Just calm down.”

  Hart was still talking when Keo glimpsed black-clad figures moving in the corner of his left eye. It was the same two guards that had greeted them when they first stepped onto the platform. Keo hadn’t noticed before, but the men had been shadowing them this entire time while keeping their distance. They were now moving toward them, and one of them had begun to unsling his rifle.

  Oh man, here we go!

  Before Keo could do or say anything, things went from bad to absolutely fucked when two shots exploded behind him (Goddammit, Troy, you fucker) and the guard reaching for his rifle stumbled and fell as his partner scrambled to get his own rifle free. The guy was simultaneously too slow and in too much of a hurry, and it was like watching a bad comedy routine as he fumbled with the deadly weapon.

  Keo waited for Troy to finish the poor sap off when something slammed into him from the front and knocked him backward. He grunted when his back crashed into the hard steel floor and pain stabbed through him, but it was nothing compared to the heavy
weight of another person landing, then moving frantically on top of him.

  Who the hell? he thought when a third shot rang out and a body collapsed in a pile next to him.

  It was Troy, his rifle somehow still clutched in his hands. Blood gushed out of a hole in his chest where the bullet had exited after it had punched through the back of his throat. The chances were pretty good poor Troy was dead before he even hit the deck.

  Keo didn’t have a lot of time to think about Troy’s last seconds of life because the weight on top of him suddenly lifted and he could breathe (and move) again. It was Erin (?), and she had rolled off him and scrambled to her knees as two more men in tactical vests appeared out from behind the machines and surrounded her, their rifles pointing at her head.

  “Don’t shoot!” someone shouted.

  It was Hart, who for some reason was on the floor too, and was slowly picking himself up. What was Hart doing off his feet in the first place?

  It took about two seconds for Keo to gather the evidence and play the scenario out in his head: The body that had knocked him down was Erin’s, and someone had to have done the same to her. That someone was Hart, who had barreled into Erin and drove her into him.

  “Don’t fucking shoot!” Hart shouted. He lifted one open palm toward the sky—no, not the sky, but at the towering crane.

  I knew there was a sniper up there.

  But sniper or not, it didn’t stop Erin from wrapping her fingers around her holstered sidearm. Keo thought about rolling away and getting out of the line of fire, but that might just end up drawing attention to himself. And right now, he didn’t want to make any sudden moves, especially since the two newcomers and the third remaining guard had their rifles pointed at Erin, and all three looked a little nervous.

  Oh, who was he kidding? They looked a lot nervous.

  Keo sat very still on one knee and barely breathed. He had never felt so vulnerable in his life—unarmed and with his hands bound in front of him, and Troy’s blood, bright under the sun, oozing along the ridges in the floor around him.

  What to do, what to do?

  “Erin, don’t,” Hart was saying. He was clearly trying his very best to stay calm but was only partially (if Keo was being generous) successful. “Take your hand away from your gun, Erin. Don’t draw that sidearm!”

  It was bad enough Keo was helpless and trapped in the midst of a situation that was borderline FUBAR. He also didn’t have a clue what was happening, and that might have been the more aggravating part.

  Wasn’t the Ocean Star a part of Mercer’s group? Didn’t Erin say they were coming here to refuel and resupply before continuing on to The Ranch, wherever the hell that place turned out to be? Both she and Troy hadn’t looked nervous at all as they approached the rig, clear signs that they didn’t see this coming, either.

  Man, I’m so confused right now.

  “Erin!” Hart said—he was almost shouting now for some reason. “Don’t do it! Riley wouldn’t want you to do this!”

  “Riley?” Erin said, and though Keo couldn’t see her face because he was behind her, he could hear the confusion in her voice. “Is he dead?”

  “No,” Hart said. “But he’s been shot.”

  “Shot? By who?”

  “It’s a long story,” Hart began to say, when Keo thought, Fuck me, because he could see Erin’s fingers tightening around the gun and saw the slight hitch in her elbow as she began to draw the weapon.

  He slammed into her from behind, catching her almost in the small of her back with his shoulder, and knocked her off her knees and threw her back onto the deck. Her hands had abandoned the gun in order to stop her fall and Keo spilled on top of her, hearing her scream as his weight drove her chest-first into the steel floor.

  He felt like laughing—wasn’t this what had just happened to him?

  One good turn deserves another, pal!

  He rolled off Erin’s back and scrambled to his knees but didn’t get any farther because the muzzle of a rifle was pointing right in his face from just a foot away. Worse than that, the eye looking at him from behind the iron sight of the weapon was blinking so rapidly Keo was afraid it might explode at any second.

  Keo stared back at the man and said, stretching the words out as far as they would go, “Don’t…pull…that…trigger.”

  The man kept blinking and a bead of sweat dripped down his forehead despite the cold wind. But he didn’t shoot.

  “Jesus Christ,” Hart said from behind him. When Keo looked over his shoulder at the older man, he said, “You almost got yourself killed, you dumb bastard.”

  “Yeah, well, it was either that or let her draw,” Keo said.

  Hart turned to Erin as two of his men pulled her up from the deck. Her face was flushed red and she blew hair out of her face while they twisted her arms behind her back and zip-tied them.

  She looked away from Hart and at Keo and actually snarled at him. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”

  “Hey, I saved your life,” Keo said.

  “What?”

  “I saved your life.”

  “You were saving your own hide!”

  “You say tomato, I say potato. Same difference.”

  “I should have let Troy throw you overboard like he wanted to.”

  Keo glanced back at Troy’s lifeless corpse.

  Jesus, what a shot.

  He turned back to Erin. “Troy and I were best friends; he’d never do that. But let’s not get bogged down with the past, huh? We’re both alive, and that’s all that counts.”

  “Who the hell are you, anyway?” Hart said, staring at Keo.

  “Keo.”

  “Kay?”

  “Keo.”

  “What, like the car?”

  Keo grinned. “I’ve been called worse.”

  20

  Lara

  “Small world,” Keo said when he saw her walking through the door.

  “Getting smaller all the time,” she said. “What happened to your face?”

  “Ran into a tree.”

  “Why didn’t you go around it?”

  “It was a very big tree.”

  “I’d ask if you’ve ever been in a jail cell before, but I think I already know the answer.”

  He grinned at her from the back of the Ocean Star’s brig. Except for the still-fresh bruising around his nose and forehead, he didn’t look any worse than the last time she had seen him on the beach outside of Sunport. She was surprised, though, that the woman sitting on the bench next to him wasn’t Jordan. There were four other men inside the cell with Keo and the woman, but none of them looked familiar, either.

  She looked back at Keo. “Wanna tell me what you’re doing here? Besides causing trouble, I mean?”

  Keo got up and walked the short distance over, then leaned against the metal bars in front of her. “You know me. Always popping up where you least expect me.”

  “Where’s—”

  He shook his head before she could say Jordan’s name.

  “Bad?” she finished instead.

  The grim look on his face was the only answer she needed. Before she could ask any other stupid questions, he said, “I know what I’m doing here—well, sort of—but what are you doing here? I was told this was enemy territory, but here you are, not even in shackles.”

  “Long story,” she said.

  “Ah, one of those.”

  “When is it never one of those?” She glanced back at one of Riley’s men standing guard at the door behind her. “He’s a friend.”

  The man took out a key and walked over. “Back,” he said to Mercer’s men. When they had all retreated to the back, the guard opened the cell door with one hand, the other resting on his holstered sidearm.

  Keo stepped outside and the man quickly slammed the door shut, locking it again.

  “Free at last, free at last,” Keo said. He looked back into the cell at the woman. “Sorry about Troy.”

  The woman glared at him but didn’t reply. Not tha
t she had to. Those eyes pretty much said everything she was thinking.

  “Her name’s Erin, and she’s one of Mercer’s top guys,” Hart had said while briefing her on what had happened on the platform earlier. “She and Riley were there in the beginning with Mercer. Only Rhett and Benford have been with him longer.”

  “Is that why you were trying so hard to keep Peters from shooting her?” Lara had asked.

  “Riley and I know her from way back. There was a time when he actually considered bringing her with us, but she’d gone to Texas before he could make the offer.”

  Lara looked in at Erin now. Except for the glare she had shot in Keo’s direction, Lara couldn’t really read anything else of note on Erin’s face. She didn’t look angry, exactly, but she wasn’t fine with her current circumstance, either.

  “Riley knows her longer than anyone,” Hart had said. “He really thought she might have come with us if he’d gotten the chance to sell her on the idea.”

  Riley thought he knew Andy, too, and how did that turn out?

  The woman must have sensed her staring, because she looked away from Keo and over at her.

  They exchanged a long, silent look before Lara turned back to Keo. “Come on; let’s get you cleaned up.”

  “Are you saying I stink?” Keo asked.

  “Are you saying you don’t?”

  He sniffed himself, then shrugged. “Fair enough.”

  She led him to the door, then out into the corridor. Lights perched along the edges of the oil rig had turned on automatically at dusk and were now visible through the small windows along the walls.

  “How’s everyone on the tugboat doing?” Keo asked. He was rubbing his wrists as he walked beside her.

  “Complicated,” she said. “But we’re dealing with it. Wanna tell me what you were doing with Erin and the others?”

  “As soon as you tell me how you got so chummy with these guys. As far as I know, they’re both Mercer’s crew. Only…not, apparently.”

  She told him about Riley, about his attempt to hijack the Trident last night, then his plans to detach himself from Mercer’s war and, finally, their agreement.