by Sam Sisavath
*
Gillian and Rachel, along with Jordan and the others, were waiting outside the house when Keo arrived. Norris was already there, having been closer when Gillian called.
The ex-cop looked over and shook his head. “She’s not here. We looked everywhere.”
“She wasn’t here when we woke up this morning,” Jordan said. “She was with us all last night, talking about school. She wanted to be a nurse and was asking me about college courses.” She looked pained. “I’m sorry, Keo. I thought she’d just gone back into her and Gillian’s room when I didn’t see her this morning.”
“What about her crutch?”
“It’s gone, too,” Gillian said. “I found her radio inside our room.”
“And no one saw her leave?”
He looked from face to face and they all shook their heads.
“What about Levy?” Keo asked.
“Levy?” Gillian said.
“He didn’t answer the radio.”
She frowned. “Why would Levy know where Lotte is?”
“I don’t know,” Keo said. “But he should have answered the radio. You don’t ignore something like that.” He unclipped his radio and pressed the transmit lever. “Levy, are you there? Come in.”
He waited, and so did the others. Norris shifted his feet anxiously, as did Gillian.
“Levy,” Keo said into the radio again. “Come in if you can hear me.”
Then, just when Keo didn’t think he would ever answer, Levy said through the radio, “What’s up?”
“What time did you leave the house this morning?” Keo asked.
“Early. Why?”
“Did you see Lotte?”
There was a slight pause, then, “No,” Levy said. “Is something wrong? She okay?”
“We don’t know. We can’t find her anywhere. You sure you didn’t see her leave the house this morning?”
“I’m sure, yeah. Sorry.”
“Okay, let me know if you see her.”
“I will,” Levy said.
Keo put the radio away and looked back at the others.
Norris was staring at him. “He’s lying,” he said. There was no trace of doubt in his voice.
“You don’t know that,” Gillian said.
“I do know,” Norris said. “I’ve been listening to people lying to me half my life, Gillian. He’s lying.”
“It doesn’t make any sense. Why would he take Lotte?”
“Only one way to find out,” Keo said.
*
“He’s lost it,” Norris said. “You know that, right?”
“We don’t know anything for sure,” Keo said. “You’re jumping to conclusions.”
“I’m pretty good at jumping, kid. But I also know when something isn’t right. And that kid isn’t right.”
“You can jump all you want, just don’t pull the trigger until we know for sure.”
They walked through the woods in silence for a moment, the only sound the crunch of soft ground and twigs under their shoes. The others were staying behind at the house, even though most of them wanted to come, including Gillian. He had managed to talk them out of it, though. Keo didn’t want Levy to see everyone converging on him at once.
“I’m right,” Norris insisted after a while.
“We’ll see,” Keo said. Then, “What would Riggs do in this situation?”
Norris chuckled. “I don’t know. Probably run in blind with guns blazing.”
“He do that a lot?”
“Yeah, he was a lethal weapon, see. Thus the title of the movie.”
“Maybe we can look for the Blu-ray when we hit that Wallbys near Corden later next week.”
“Why stop at one Blu-ray? Grab the whole boxed set. All four parts. They’re all pretty good.”
“Did they die at the end of part four?”
“Nope. Last I heard, they were still hoping to make a part five.”
“Wouldn’t they be pretty old by now?”
“Have you looked around you, kid? Old age is the least of their problems these days.”
Norris didn’t say much after that. Keo guessed he was trying to think about what was waiting for them up ahead. Keo was doing the same thing. He spent the long walk back to the burnt-out two-story house trying to come up with a scenario where Norris was both wrong and right.
What the hell was he going to do if Norris was right? Keo didn’t have a clue. If he thought the idea of taking charge was foreign and uncomfortable, having to decide what to do with a stray member of the flock was borderline nauseating.
“What do you think he’s doing with her in there?” Norris said.
“We don’t know she’s there.”
“She’s there,” he said, with that same absolute certainty.
He’s probably right, Keo thought, but said instead, “Maybe.”
Norris was holding his M4 tightly in front of him, and every now and then he adjusted the Glock holstered at his hip. The ex-cop looked a little nervous as they approached the familiar clearing. They had both slowed down without a word, as if they were trying to prolong the walk to the garage, to where Levy was at the moment. But eventually they had to finally reach the edge of the woods, where they stopped and looked out.
The fire-gutted house was still on the left side, with the partially burnt garage next to it. Keo noticed right away that there was something different with the garage door, which was partially open. He saw what may or may not have been movement from inside through the small opening, but it was impossible to tell for certain from his angle.
“If we find what we think we’re going to find in there, let’s keep calm so things don’t escalate,” Keo said.
“If he has Lotte in there…” Norris said, but didn’t finish his thought.
“All of this could be one big misunderstanding. She could be there because she wants to. If she’s there at all. For all we know, she went exploring in the woods and got lost and couldn’t find her way back.”
“She’s moving on crutches,” Norris said. “Hard to get too far into the woods with one good leg, kid.”
“It’s just something to consider.”
Norris shook his head. “I’m telling you, I can tell when someone’s lying to me.”
“Even through the radio?”
“Even through the damn radio. Even through the damn phone.” The older man gritted his teeth. “She’s in there.”
Keo sighed. “I’ll go first. You follow—”
Crack!
The gunshot split the air and Keo twisted his entire body as the bullet chopped into his side.
He thought, Aw, hell, this is gonna be bad, even as his legs buckled under him and he sank to the ground, just as a loud explosion of continuous gunfire shattered the woods around him.
CHAPTER 28
“Shit shit shit!” Norris shouted as he dived for cover behind a tree. As he slipped behind the large trunk, the bark on the other side came undone against a torrent of bullets.
Keo didn’t have time to see if Norris had survived his little leap. He was too busy trying to get his bearings as the ground around him seemed to turn to mush and dirt kicked so high into the air that all the brown and black temporarily blurred his field of vision. He was on his knees and twisting until his survival instincts kicked in and he managed to engage his legs to lunge out of the open and behind his own tree for cover.
The pak-pak-pak of rounds hitting the trunk on the other side, over and over again, sounded like someone playing a tune. More bullets dug lengthy trenches in the earth to the left and right of him.
“You all right, kid?” Norris shouted over the roar of gunfire.
Keo didn’t answer right away. He looked down his left side and saw blood. Not a lot, and it probably looked worse than it really was. After the initial impact, Keo didn’t really feel like he had been shot—or at least, it didn’t hurt nearly as much as the last few times. This almost felt like a bee sting. A really, really painful bee sting.
&n
bsp; He pulled his T-shirt up and saw blood pooling around a sharp line, almost like a scalpel’s incision, along his side. A bullet graze.
Daebak.
He was lucky. Goddamn lucky.
“I’m good, I’m good,” Keo said.
“You sure?” Norris said.
“Pretty sure, yeah.”
“You must have nine lives, kid.”
Six lives now, but maybe I’m being overly generous.
Keo got up and turned around. The gunshots had lessened; their ambushers had realized they had lost the advantage and were conserving ammo. Either that, or they were reloading. What mattered was that dirt wasn’t flying at his eyes and the giant trees in front of him and Norris had stopped falling to pieces.
“Was that Levy?” Norris said.
“I don’t think so,” Keo said. “That was more than one gun. At least three.”
“Three? Where the hell did three guns come from?”
“Let’s ask them when we introduce ourselves.”
“Sounds like a plan—” Norris said, but didn’t finish because the garage door in front of them banged open and Levy came out with his AR-15 at the ready.
Levy spotted them right away, and he must have also seen the state of the trees they were hiding behind, or maybe Keo’s blood-soaked shirt did it, because he spun around to face the shooters somewhere on the other side of the clearing. He was moving toward the edge of the building when someone snapped off a shot and Keo saw the muzzle flash, along with a chunk of the unattached garage tearing off in front of Levy’s face.
That sent Levy scurrying away from the corner as the gunfire picked up again, this time directed at Levy. Pieces of the garage began snapping loose under the assault, but luckily for him, Levy was still well hidden. He threw himself to the ground in front of the door and folded his arms over his head, waiting out the fusillade.
Keo took the opportunity to lean out from behind the tree and picked up the muzzle flashes aimed at Levy. He was right; there were three shooters, all on the other side of the estate. They were well-spaced, about five meters apart, and they were firing assault rifles—one AK-47 mixed in with a couple of carbines. Probably M4 or AR-15. He knew one thing for sure: they all had full-auto firing capability. The trees in front of him and Norris could attest to that. The first shot, the one that had drilled through his shirt, was fired from fifty meters away. It wasn’t a bad shot, just slightly off target. Thank God.
He glanced across the narrow space at Norris, who, like Keo, hadn’t returned fire yet. The ex-cop was biding his time, looking for his opportunity. He seemed calm, almost serene, while watching Levy trying to brave the rain of gunfire.
Their radios squawked and they heard Gillian’s voice, loud and anxious. “Keo, Norris, what’s happening over there? Are you guys all right?”
Keo unclipped his radio. “We’re fine. But I need you and everyone to lock down the doors and windows at the house.”
“Is it Levy?” Gillian asked. “Is he okay?”
“It’s not Levy. There are other people in the woods. Get everyone inside and don’t open for anyone but Norris and me, okay?”
“Okay,” Gillian said. Then, “Be careful.”
“We’ll see you soon.” He glanced across at Norris again. “Hey.”
The older man looked over. “What?”
“I’m going to try to outflank them.”
Norris’s eyes shifted down to Keo’s bloody shirt. “Can you even run with that?”
“It’s just a scratch.”
“Your funeral.”
Keo held up his radio. “When I squawk it three times, open fire.”
“That your plan? It sucks.”
“It’s gonna happen whether you want it to or not. But I need you to be good with it.”
Norris grunted. “Hey, you wanna get yourself killed, be my guest. I’m not the one with the pretty girl waiting back at the house.”
Keo grinned, then jogged back further into the woods, moving in a straight line so he couldn’t be shot at. Hopefully they hadn’t seen him moving, but even if they did, he might look as if he were just retreating.
That wasn’t what he was doing, of course, but they didn’t need to know that.
*
There were three shooters, one for each of the three muzzle flashes he had seen earlier. Spacing themselves out to see all of the clearing, and the garage in the middle of it, was a smart move on their part. It gave them coverage and made their numbers seem larger.
But there was a fault in their tactics. They couldn’t see Keo now as he retreated, then maneuvered sideways and started moving forward again. Obviously they hadn’t expected him and Norris to pop out of the other side of the clearing. Bad luck for them, good for him.
Keo crouched now, grimacing a bit at the sudden stab of pain. He looked down at his blood-soaked shirt. It had stopped bleeding a few minutes ago after the cotton fabric became sticky, and the inside of the T-shirt stuck to the wound. He would have liked the time to clean and dress it, but he guessed this worked too in a pinch.
He looked across the woods at the closest ambusher about thirty meters away, the man’s left side visible to Keo. A man in his thirties, give or take, wearing green and brown camo hunting gear that covered him from the dirt-stained boots all the way up to his tightly fitted cap. He wore a sidearm in a hip holster and had pouches bulging with spare magazines. The man was leaning behind a tree, peering through a red dot sight mounted on top of an M4. His finger kept tugging on the trigger, coming dangerously close to pulling it, but somehow always not going far enough to finish the pull. A man who clearly put value on each shot. Keo wondered if this was the one that had almost ended his life if he had shot just a few inches higher.
Keo couldn’t see enough of the man’s partners from his vantage point to know for sure if they were male or female. He saw enough to know that all three had found nice cover, which explained why they hadn’t bothered to switch up after the initial burst of shooting. At the moment, they seemed to be biding their time. Maybe they had friends coming, or maybe they just weren’t in a hurry.
He glanced down at his watch: 1:16 p.m.
Plenty of time.
Keo unclipped his radio and squeezed the transmit lever three times, then quickly clipped it back to his hip.
Norris began firing from somewhere on the other side of the clearing. Branches snapped and a tree or two lost chunks of bark, but as expected, Norris didn’t come close to hitting any of the three ambushers. It did spook them enough to drive the man in front of Keo to move further behind the tree, just before he and his two pals started returning fire at Norris’s position.
Keo stood up halfway behind the bush he had been watching from and shot the ambusher in the thigh. The man looked more surprised than hurt, and he lowered his rifle and started looking around, eyes darting under the brim of his cap. When the man turned, he presented his chest to Keo, who shot him dead center. The man leaned back against the tree, as if he were sitting down to rest. Before he could slide all the way to the ground, though, Keo shot him a third time just to be sure.
Then he was up and running forward, keeping low as much as possible while still swallowing up the distance between him and the dead man at a fast clip.
By now Norris had stopped shooting, probably to reload, though the other two ambushers were still firing back at him. He wasn’t surprised both men were clueless as to what had happened to their friend. The suppressor attached to the MP5SD rendered Keo’s three shots with the decibel level of a slight cough. Barely audible against the loud pop-pop-pop of assault rifles filling the woods at full blast.
He reached the tree and gave the dead man a quick look to make sure he hadn’t somehow clung on to life. Or maybe he was wearing a bulletproof vest. The man looked younger up close—maybe early thirties—and he had surprisingly bright blue eyes.
Keo leaned around the tree and picked out the next man.
Like the first, this one was also clad in cam
o from head to toe. Except instead of a cap, he had black hair with streaks of gray. The older man was crouched behind his hiding spot and was busy reloading an AK-47. The assault rifle, like the man’s wardrobe, sported a camouflage paint scheme.
The ambusher must have sensed Keo, because he looked up after loading his rifle and instantly squeezed the trigger without a moment’s hesitation. Keo ducked behind the tree as bullets chopped into it at a relentless pace from the other side.
“James, are you okay?” the older man shouted while still firing. Then, “Sonofabitch! You’re going to pay for that!”
Keo pressed his back against the tree trunk and waited out the gunfire. The man would have to reload sooner or later. Probably.
Then there was a new round of shots, this time coming from Keo’s left. He looked over into the clearing and saw Levy running up, pouring rounds from his AR-15 into the woods, in the direction of the second ambusher. He looked wild, but there was a strange grin on his face, as if he were having the time of his life.
Keo sneaked a peek around the other side of the tree trunk and saw the second man staggering away from his spot, blood pouring out of his hip and right leg. Bullets were zipping relentlessly around him, until one of them found their mark and the man stumbled and dropped, disappearing behind a thick bush.
Then Levy ran up and shot the man two more times in the back.
Aw, Jesus, kid.
Levy looked over, and Keo saw a wild man staring back at him. Levy’s face was flushed red and he seemed to be breathing way too hard, using more effort than was necessary. Despite all of that, he was still grinning, bloodlust dancing across his eyes.
Keo looked past Levy, expecting to see the third ambusher either taking off or attacking in a last-ditch effort to salvage the day.
But there was no fleeing form or a last charge.
His radio squawked, then Norris’s voice: “All clear. I got the third one. All clear.”
“Roger that,” Keo said into the radio.
He came out from behind the tree and walked over to Levy, who remained standing over the camouflaged form lying still on the ground. The blades of grass around the man were covered in blood, as was the damp earth under him.
