by Sam Sisavath
Not that he had much of a choice. It was either focus on the positive or wallow in the pain. Because there was a lot of pain.
His face was on fire, and moving even just a little bit sent jolts of electricity coursing through his body. But it wasn’t the type of pain that signaled a broken rib (or two), so that was the good news. The bad was that his captors hadn’t bothered to clean up his face, which explained the feeling of sandpaper scraping at his eyeballs. He still had a mouthful of blood, most of it coming from his broken nose. His forehead might have been slightly cut, though that was currently taking a backseat to the pounding originating from between his eyes.
The pain should have been worse with the helicopter pulsing continuously through him as it traveled over the state of Texas, the whup-whup-whup of its rotors like sledgehammers pounding nails into his skull. He had no idea where they were or where they were going, only that they were already in the air and moving when he opened his eyes and (discreetly) took stock of his situation.
He was surrounded by the same people he had seen back at the barn—three of them sat across from him while two more flanked him. A sixth, sporting aviator shades, was perched behind a machine gun mounted along the open starboard-side hatch. The weapon looked like an older model M240 with a box magazine; the man behind it pointed the weapon playfully at a flock of birds outside and mimed shooting them. The port-side door was closed and the only thing Keo could see out the windows were empty skies.
Six men and one woman, and two in the cockpit. It wasn’t even close to being manageable numbers; not that he had any ideas about escaping anyway, especially with his wrists and ankles duct taped together. Never mind the fact that he had never learned to fly, because going out one of the open doors was probably his only real option at the moment. They had removed everything he had on him, leaving just his clothes and the blood on his face.
He wasn’t sure how long the woman had known he was awake; she was watching him with a curious expression on her face. She looked tall even sitting down—maybe just a shade under five-ten, and like most women he had encountered since The Purge, carried very few if any excess pounds on her. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and that made the bags under her eyes more apparent.
Someone hasn’t been getting their beauty sleep lately.
She looked tired but was trying to power through the fatigue. He’d seen plenty of guys do that on jobs either with caffeine or pill-sized stimulants. She had short black hair, but he could imagine her with a long, flowing mane just a year ago. The obvious Parisian genes were easy to spot and she reminded him a little of Bonnie, the ex-model with whom he had spent a lot of time with back on the Trident. Like the men around her, the woman wasn’t wearing anything that looked like a uniform or a name tag, which made perfect sense if they were indeed Mercer’s men and were out here launching guerilla-style hit-and-run attacks on collaborator positions.
His ruse exposed, Keo gave up pretending to still be asleep and straightened up, or as much as he could manage while restrained. His nose felt as if there were cotton balls jammed into both nostrils, and the hard floor was sticky with fresh mud and dirt and (no doubt his contribution to the mess) blood.
“Where we going?” Keo asked, directing his question at the woman. He had to shout to be heard over the turbine engine that made every inch of the helicopter thrum as if it were going to come unglued at any second.
She didn’t answer him, but she didn’t take her eyes off him, either. The guy behind the machine gun glanced over at the sound of Keo’s voice before returning his gaze out the hatch as the helicopter caught up to another flock of birds.
“Can I get some water?” he asked the woman.
She stared but still didn’t say anything.
“Towel?”
Nothing.
“I smell jerky in the air. I wouldn’t mind some of that. I’m famished. Haven’t eaten all day and most of yesterday.”
“Shut up,” the man sitting to his left said.
Keo ignored him and said to the woman, “Ever heard the idiom ‘You catch more flies with honey?’”
“If I give you some jerky, will you shut up?” the man sitting to the woman’s left said.
“Absolutely,” Keo said.
“Too bad. I finished it off this morning. Chased it down with some coffee and an oatmeal cookie.”
“Sounds like fine dining.”
“It ain’t the Hilton, but it’ll do.”
He turned back to the woman. “Maybe you can tell one of these gentlemen to give me some water.”
“What makes you think she’s in charge?” Beef Jerky Guy asked.
“Oh, come on. It’s obvious she wears the pants around here.”
Something that looked almost like a smile flickered across the woman’s face, but it only lasted for a blink of an eye before vanishing.
“Right?” he said to her.
She ignored him, said instead, “What happened here?” and traced one side of her face with her forefinger. “Looks like it must have hurt.”
“It did,” Keo said, remembering the cold steel of Pollard’s knife as it sliced its way into his flesh. “You should see the other guy.”
“Prettier than you?” Beef Jerky Guy said.
“Not even a contest.”
“Considering how you look, that’s saying something.”
“I still have nightmares about it.”
“I bet.”
“Where we going?” he asked the woman again.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said.
“Give a guy a hint.”
She didn’t answer.
“Then can I at least get some water?” Keo asked.
“You already asked that,” she said.
“Figured I didn’t have anything to lose by asking a second time.”
She nodded at the man sitting next to Keo. The guy produced a canteen and leaned over. Keo opened his mouth gratefully and took as much water as he could, then swished it around to wash away the blood clinging to the walls of his mouth before swallowing the whole thing down.
“Thanks,” he said to the woman.
“Next thing you know Slaphappy Jerry here’ll want a change of clothes,” Beef Jerky Guy said.
“I’m Keo,” he said to the woman.
“Good for you,” she said.
He couldn’t help but smile back at her even though doing so made the entire lower half of his face hurt, as if someone were punching it repeatedly.
“Where we going?” he asked for the third time.
“Ask that again and I’m going to throw you out the hatch,” the woman said.
“I’d like to see that,” Beef Jerky Guy grinned.
“Only if you buy me dinner first,” Keo said.
“Smart guy, huh?”
“It’s my disguise. I’m actually very dumb. Hence my current situation.”
“Yeah, you really bungled that one, didn’t you?” He chortled. “Man, what were you doing showing up by yourself like that?”
Being the world’s biggest idiot, or something pretty goddamn close, Keo thought, but said, “You sure you’re out of those jerky?”
“Pretty sure,” the man said, and smacked his gums for effect.
“Too bad. There’s nothing better than two guys bonding over some meat.”
Beef Jerky Guy stared at him like he didn’t know how to respond to that. The woman next to him, Keo noticed, barely managed to suppress a snort.
* * *
A COMBINATION of pain and lack of sleep took its toll and he dozed off soon after, and didn’t wake up a second time until someone was nudging him on the shoulder. A gruff male voice half-shouted, “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty!”
Once the haze cleared, Keo opened his eyes to empty seats in front of him, just before Beef Jerky Guy and a second man yanked him out of his own seat and pushed him toward the open door. He stumbled, expecting to fall on his bound legs, until he noticed he was moving freely again, though he couldn’t say the
same about his still-bound wrists.
One out of two ain’t bad.
“Don’t fall, princess,” Beef Jerky Guy said. “No one’s picking you up. We’ll make you crawl the rest of the way.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Keo said.
“Don’t say I never gave you nothin’.”
“You’re too kind. I would have settled for the jerky breath.”
“Heh. Funny guy. You a professional comedian or something?”
“No, but I’ve been told I can be a pretty stand-up guy.”
“Oh, funny,” Beef Jerky Guy said. “Now move.”
A third man was waiting for him outside the open hatch as Keo hopped out of the helicopter. It was a mistake, and he grunted against a sudden surge of pain as he landed in a slight crouch. The still-spinning rotors swarmed the area with cold winds that made every inch of his exposed face sting.
They were in a field surrounded by grass that went up to his knees, but all he had to do was sniff the air to know they were next to the ocean. Keo breathed in the fresh breeze and tried not to think about the last time he was this close to the sea and who he had been with at the time.
One of his captors, maybe Beef Jerky Guy, pushed him in the back, and Keo stumbled forward. He ducked his head reflexively, the way people do without thinking when they exit a helicopter. Of course the rotors didn’t come close to slicing off his head, but it made him feel better anyway as he struggled across the hard ground, grass slapping at his legs.
He didn’t have to look far to see where the woman and the rest of his traveling companions had gone. They were up ahead, beyond the field and on a long stretch of beach. The men had spread out to stand guard while the woman had a radio to her lips, one hand shielding her eyes as she looked out into the ocean. He wasn’t sure what she was looking at because he couldn’t see anything out there except blue waters. Given that it was still midday, it didn’t take a genius to know he was staring at the Gulf of Mexico.
“Wanna go for a swim?” Beef Jerky Guy asked from behind him. “Wash all that crap off your face?”
“Sure. Maybe you can help me clean it off,” Keo said.
“Maybe if you had a pair of tits I might think about it.”
“You’re all heart, pal.”
“I’m not your pal, dude.”
“And I was saving up for that friendship bracelet, too.”
They were in a very isolated part of the coastline without anything that looked like civilization, much less houses, within sight on either sides of the beach. There were no hints of industry further inland and the beach was littered with seaweed and trash, along with fish carcasses. They were probably the only souls around for miles, which made it a pretty good spot for an extraction point.
The woman glanced over as Keo and his guards reached her. “Keep an eye on him. If he makes one wrong move, shoot him.”
Keo stopped next to her, the sunbaked sand sinking under his boots. “Now why would I do a stupid thing like that?”
“We should shoot him now, Erin,” Beef Jerky Guy said.
“Don’t say that,” Keo said. “What about that friendship bracelet we were going to get?”
“Shut up.”
“Is that a no?”
“Erin,” Beef Jerky Guy said, ignoring Keo. “This guy doesn’t know anything. Whoever he is, he probably killed Davis and Butch.”
“Not yet,” Erin said.
“Give me one reason.”
“I don’t have to give you a damn thing, Troy,” Erin said, and it was hard to miss the finality in her voice.
Troy grunted but didn’t press the issue.
Keo suppressed a smile, when the roar of a turbine engine revving up made him look back, just in time to see the helicopter rising slowly into the air. The man with the aviator shades sitting behind the machine gun waved at them, and Erin returned it.
“See you when we see you,” Erin said into her radio.
“Have a safe trip,” a male voice answered.
It didn’t take the helicopter long to turn into a small dot in the sky, and soon Keo could barely hear its whup-whup-whup.
“Where’s it going?” Keo asked.
Erin ignored him and said, “Looks like we’re early.”
“That’s a first,” the man standing next to Troy, whose name Keo had never caught, said.
“ETA twenty minutes. Until then, I want the area secured. The last thing we need is someone sneaking up on us again.”
“Definitely wouldn’t want that,” Troy said. “What about him?”
“He’s not going anywhere.”
Footsteps faded behind Keo, along with Troy and the second man’s presence.
In the next few seconds, Keo ran through all the possible escape scenarios, but each time he always came to the same conclusion: Mercer. Find Mercer. And the only way to do that was to let these people take him to the man.
Should be easy enough…as long as I don’t get killed on the way over.
“So who’s picking us up?” he asked.
“You’ll see,” Erin said.
“A boat?”
“Unless you can swim very, very far.”
“I happen to be a very good swimmer.”
She ignored him, said instead, “What were you doing back at the barn?”
“Hunting game.”
“With two semi-automatic rifles,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“I was hunting big game.”
“There is no big game. Not anymore.”
“I’m an eternal optimist.”
She smirked, though he couldn’t tell if that was amusement or annoyance. Maybe a little of both. “You had Davis’s iPod on you.”
“There’s a lot of iPods just sitting around out there. What makes you think the one I had belonged to this Davis guy?”
She fixed him with a long look, and he was mostly convinced she didn’t believe a single thing he was saying. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to tell me now. We have people who are very good at extracting information. You’ll be telling me everything anyway, including what you were doing back there.”
“I told you—”
“I know, hunting game.”
“I get the feeling you don’t believe me.”
“You know what I think?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“I think you killed Davis and Butch, just like Troy said. Maybe Luke and Bill, too, but that’s a bit of a stretch. What I can’t figure out is what you were doing out there at the barn. Alone. You had to have seen the others pushing the helicopter. That’s six people. And you still moved on us anyway.” She squinted her eyes at him. “You’re either the dumbest man alive, or you’re looking to get yourself killed. So which one is it?”
Can’t it be both? he thought, but said with as much conviction as he could muster, “Neither. I was just curious what you guys were doing out there. If I had known people were going to start shooting at me, I would have kept going.”
“You’re going to stick to that?”
“It’s the truth.”
“Uh huh,” she said before turning back to the endless blue waters in front of them. “Of course, I’m not discounting the possibility you’re one of those guys with more balls than brain cells.”
“Have you been talking to my old girlfriends?”
She ignored him again, said, “You know how I know you were looking for us?”
“Even though I wasn’t?”
“You never asked who we were. That tells me you already knew.”
Well, shit, Keo thought, and wondered how long he was going to be able to keep this up before Erin finally agreed with Troy that it wasn’t worth taking him with them.
* * *
ERIN HAD SAID the ETA was twenty minutes, but it was more like seventeen before the gray dot appeared in the horizon, followed by the slowly growing whine of twin outboard motors. Keo knew it was some kind of offshore fishing boat before it got big enough for him to make out its
V-shaped hull. As soon as the boat appeared, the others began converging back on his and Erin’s location.
“Are we all going to fit in there?” Keo asked.
“We’ll make do,” Erin said. “And if not…”
“I know, I go over the side, right?”
She smiled but didn’t confirm or deny.
As the boat neared, Keo counted two guys onboard—one behind the helm and the other squatting at the bow with a rifle. On cue, the radio in Erin’s hand squawked and a male voice, almost entirely drowned out by the motors on the other end, shouted, “Any trouble?”
“You’re clear,” Erin said into the radio.
“Roger that,” the man answered.
Erin clipped the radio back to her hip. “I’m surprised you haven’t tried anything yet.”
Keo held up his bound hands. “Hard to try anything like this.”
“Still, knowing what you did, where you’re going, and what’s going to happen when you get there…”
“Maybe you’re assuming too much. Maybe I didn’t do the things you think I did, and as a result I have nothing to fear.”
“Sure, whatever you say, Keo.”
A hand clamped down on Keo’s shoulder, and he smelled the familiar odor of beef jerky in the air as Troy said, “Cheer up, buddy. It’s a nice, long trip back to The Ranch. Plenty to see and do on the way.”
“Hey, as long as you’re around I’m sure it’ll be a great time, Troy,” Keo said.
“That’s the spirit.”
Keo looked over at Erin, but she was busy watching a couple of the men slinging their weapons and stepping into the lapping waters of the Gulf of Mexico to wait for the boat. Keo focused on the moment—the here and now.
And right now, he was alive.
Hurt, sore, and bleeding, but alive. And as long as he stayed that way, he could still finish the mission: Find Mercer, then kill him.
Who’s Captain Optimism now?
This guy…
7
LARA
