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 behind 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 glass curtain 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 place 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 shoulde
r, 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.”
She wasn’t sure if he was trying to goad her into answering or if he really was just reminiscing. And he had to know that the longer he toyed with her, the more time he was giving Danny and Nate to reach her. Or was that the point, she wondered, even as the pop-pop-pop continued unabated outside, getting closer…
Is that it? Is he using me as bait to lure Danny and Nate here?
That, more than anything, pissed her off. Gaby had stopped thinking of herself as a damsel-in-distress a long time ago, and to be used as one now…
She leaned against the counter and rested for a moment. The crawling from one side to the other had tired her out more than she wanted to admit. Her shoulder continued to throb underneath the bandage, as if the entire arm was going to fall off at any moment.
Maybe that would have been best; maybe the pain wouldn’t be so unbearable if the arm just plopped right off…
No!
She opened her eyes.
When had she closed them?
She blinked against the sweat and wiped dirt from her face, then painfully picked herself up from the floor and searched frantically for—there, her rifle. She grabbed it with her good hand.
How long had she been out? Worse, she had laid her head down on the floor just beyond the edge of the counter’s protection, and it was a miracle Mason or whoever was out there with him hadn’t spotted her and ended everything right then.
Stupid. Don’t ever do something stupid like that again!
She pulled farther back from the edge and sat up, using the wall as support, and tried to calm down her breathing. Her left shoulder pulsed with every breath she took, and the pain was still as awful as anything she had experienced. What she wouldn’t do for some painkillers, or maybe just a little bit of morphine. They still had some from when they treated Nate—
Wait, something’s wrong.
She didn’t know what it was—what grabbed her and refused to let go—for the first couple of seconds, but then it came to her.
It was quiet around her.
The shooting had stopped!
Glancing down at her watch did her no good because she had no frame of reference. They had climbed out of the rubble around the bank as soon as the sun washed over the town, and it had taken her maybe an hour to walk the length of the street, maneuvering around the destruction, all the while looking for danger. No one had wanted to separate, but they had no choice. They weren’t going to get anywhere on foot with their cargo.
They needed a vehicle. A working vehicle. And that meant spreading out to cover as much ground as possible. It was a calculated risk, especially with Nate still hobbling around moving almost entirely on pain meds.
“Gaby?” Mason’s voice again, coming from the other side of the counter. She looked over at the radio, still sitting where she had left it. “I feel like I’m talking to myself here. Won’t you say something?”
He doesn’t know.
She could hear it in his voice: Mason had no idea she had lost consciousness for…however long it had been. Maybe it was just a few seconds, after all, because he sounded more bored than anything.
“It’s not too late, you know,” Mason said. “With Mercer’s people out there, we can always use more volunteers. You’d fit right in, and you can count on me to keep quiet about what you’ve been up to out here. We’ll just pretend it never happened. Clean slate and all that. What do you say?” When she didn’t respond, “I bet all the boys would go crazy trying to get into your—Uh, I mean, be all friendly like with you.”
This time she didn’t stop herself from crawling back down the length of the counter and snatching up the radio and keying it. “That ship sailed when you tried to kill me, you piece of shit.”
“She lives!” Mason laughed. “Sorry about that. I thought you were someone else.”
“Fuck you.”
“Okay, okay, I admit it, I knew it was you. Can you blame me? These last few days have been a real pain for both of us.”
“Go to hell,” she said, and lowered the radio back to the floor. Just holding it to her lips was tiring, and with her useless left arm it meant she had to rely on her right, and she preferred to be holding the M4 instead.
“That’s not very ladylike, is it?”
She lifted the radio back up with some effort. “Fuck off.”
“You kiss Nate with that mouth?”
“I do more than that.”
Mason laughed again. It was loud and booming, and she tilted her head to see if she could hear it outside the diner, but she couldn’t. Wherever he was, he was well hidden enough that his voice didn’t travel. At least she had the satisfaction of knowing that with everything reduced to rubble around her, he couldn’t have been all that comfortable out there.
“By the way, you hear that?” Mason asked. When she didn’t respond, he said, “Shooting’s stopped. You know what that means, don’t you? The rescue has, alas, been canceled. You’re all by yourself, Gaby. There’s just you and me now. Somehow, I always knew it’d end up this way.”
She glanced to her left, where all the shooting had come from before the silence. What were the chances Mason was telling the truth, that Danny and Nate had been stopped on their way to her?
No. He’s lying. That’s what he does. He lies.
She looked back at the radio. Mason was in a mood to talk, so who was she to keep him from flapping his gums? The more attention he paid to her, the less he was looking for Danny and Nate, because she didn’t believe for a second they were both dead, and death was the only thing that was going to
keep them from coming to her.
She picked the radio up. “Last night…”
“What about it?” Mason said.
“You attacked us.”
“So?”
“You weren’t supposed to do that. But you did.”
“That’s what’s on your mind? Now? With Danny and Nate dead, and you in that diner all by your little lonesome, surrounded by my guys?”
She ignored him and said, “Why did you attack last night?”
“Because I could,” Mason said. “Because the person our mutual friends were luring to Gallant had arrived, and they gave me the go-ahead to finish you off. I know, I could have sat back and let the little beasts finish the job without ever having to get my hands dirty, but I really wanted the satisfaction of shooting Danny in the face. It must be the Army Ranger thing. I don’t have a lot of ambitions in life—survival’s always been the number-one goal—but to take out a Ranger… Well, I couldn’t resist.”
Danny’s going to love hearing that…because he’s not dead.
God, please, don’t be dead, Danny. Don’t be dead.
“I met your friend, you know,” Mason said.
Friend?
“Will,” Mason said. “The other Ranger. Back in Louisiana, outside of Dunbar. That was me. I put that together. Well, most of it. See, we’ve been connected for a while now, only you never knew it.” He chuckled, clearly satisfied with himself. “You don’t know how many times I wanted to let that slip while you were dragging me around Texas.”
“You were there…”
“Not just there. I was the one who handed him over to them. To her.”
Her?
Gaby stared at the radio, not quite sure what she was feeling. Anger? Hatred? Guilt?
There had always been a large hole in her knowledge about what had happened to Will that day and the days after. The not knowing had affected Lara the most as she waited for him, but it hadn’t been easy on her and Danny either because they were the last two to see him alive, and it weighed heavily on them that they had left him out there, alone.
The Purge of Babylon Series Box Set, Vol. 3 | Books 7-9 Page 73