Black (Road To Babylon, Book 5)

by Sam Sisavath

  Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

  The ground was still slightly wet from last night’s rain, which explained why her palms were both wet. Her knees, too, had water dripping from them from when she fell down in the aftermath of the explosion.

  Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

  Slowly, the events of the last few seconds—Minutes? No, it couldn’t possibly have been minutes. Could it?—came into focus:

  Goldman, walking into a grenade.

  A grenade.

  A grenade!

  Then explosions.

  No, just one explosion.

  One was enough to send shrapnel everywhere, and it doused the back alley they had been moving through in smoke.

  And that infernal noise, like a hospital machine registering a flatline, making even the simplest thoughts difficult.

  Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

  Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

  The only reason she was still alive was because Goldman had put too much of a distance between himself and them. She had been on the verge of telling the man to pull back when the grenade landed in front of him. Goldman had been turning when that happened, which explained why he was lying on the floor in front of her now with only one side of his face still visible. The rest was covered in a thick film of black-red wetness.

  Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

  She was picking herself up, trying to shake off the shock as the noise continued to squeal inside her head. Louder and louder and louder. Her eyes were fixed on Goldman, his body having been thrown slightly back after the explosion. His body, but not most of his right leg. There was a stump where his right arm used to be, and his vest had been shredded, pieces of spare magazines and first-aid bandages dangling out of gutted pouches.

  Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

  Flashes, coming from her left.

  Gaby turned her head and was surprised to see Becker sitting on one knee, his rifle in front of him, firing. She knew he was shooting, even though she couldn’t hear the gunfire, because of the flashes coming from his muzzle as he pulled the trigger. His gloved forefinger was moving so fast that if she didn’t know better, she would think he wasn’t moving it at all and was keeping the trigger depressed and firing on full-auto.

  Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

  She had managed to rise up to one knee when she glanced forward, past Goldman’s unmoving form. There were two bodies crumpled on the ground farther up the alley, resting in awkward poses where they had fallen. They were both wearing dark uniforms and had something over their faces that she couldn’t quite make out in the semidarkness of the back alleyway.

  Where did those guys come from?

  The bodies were less than a meter from a turn up ahead. She could make out exactly where the corner was because chunks of brick and mortar at its edge were coming loose under Becker’s assault. There was someone behind the corner that Becker was keeping back with his gunfire.

  Who was it? How many were there?

  Eeeeeeee…

  Slowly, very slowly, she began to make out noises other than the buzzing in her ears. It was coming from Becker next to her—his gunshots, the continuous pop-pop-pop of his M4 rifle on semiauto—and something else.

  What was that something—

  “Changing!” Becker was shouting.

  What? What did he just—

  Becker stopped shooting, and the magazine dropped out from underneath his rifle and he was reloading.

  Changing. He’s letting me know that he’s changing magazines.

  Why…?

  Because he’s out of bullets.

  Because he’s out of bullets!

  The rifle. Springer’s rifle. It was suddenly in her hands. She had no idea where it had come from. She hadn’t seen it while she was picking herself up from the floor, but there it was—in her hands, as if by magic.

  I guess I found it…somehow.

  Something pekked! on the ground in front of her, and Gaby looked up, lifting the M4 rifle instinctively at the same time. A piece of brick along the corner, loosened by Becker’s shooting, had broken off and shattered against the floor—

  A figure peeked out around the corner, moonlight glinting off glass lens.

  A gas mask. He’s wearing a gas mask.

  Why the hell is he wearing a gas mask?

  But the questions disappeared almost as soon as she saw the barrel of the man’s rifle as he began moving out from behind cover to take advantage of Becker’s in-progress magazine swap.

  One second.

  One second and a half…

  The rifle in Gaby’s hands bucked as she snapped off a shot. It was too fast, and she hadn’t aimed using the red dot scope, so the round blew apart a chunk of brick underneath the attacker’s exposed head.

  Instead of retreating, the man rushed around the corner.

  But Gaby hadn’t expected to hit anything with the first shot anyway. She was still too dazed, her senses still too frayed, and it would have taken too much time—One second? Two? But even one was too many at this point—to aim before firing.

  Now, she quickly moved Springer’s M4 slightly to the left, then jerked it up using the first point of impact as a frame of reference, and pulled the trigger again.

  The right lens of the man’s gas mask exploded, pieces of glass flicking the air as his head snapped back and he crumpled to the floor.

  The dead man hadn’t completely fallen when a second figure jumped over his body and into the alley. Gaby glimpsed jeans and a black sweater with an urban assault vest on top of it and something that looked like a white letter glowing in the middle.

  No…

  The letter and the circle was an emblem. She recognized it. She had seen it before when she was out there only two weeks ago.

  It was a circled M.

  Mercerians. Buck’s Mercerians.

  Buckies…

  Her brain took too long to process what she was seeing and the consequences of it here, in Darby Bay. A second—maybe a second and a half—but it was more than enough for the man to lift his rifle and take aim at her, one of his eyes squinting behind the crystal clear lens of his gas mask.

  No, she thought, only now beginning to turn her rifle toward the attacker but knowing full well she wasn’t going to make it—

  A pop! and the man’s body jerked.

  Another pop!, followed very quickly by a third, and the attacker collapsed to the ground.

  Gaby looked over at Becker, but he wasn’t there. He was already on his feet and rushing up the alley, his rifle in front of him the entire time. He paused briefly next to Goldman’s body to glance down at it (A second. Maybe not even that) before he continued toward the turn.

  The sound of Gaby’s racing heartbeat had finally reached her ears. At the same time there were voices coming from behind her, but they were hushed and not the kind warning of danger, so she didn’t turn around.

  Instead, she focused on Becker as he pressed his back against the wall and leaned around the corner. A quick peek, before he pulled his head back and glanced back at her. He shook his head before hurrying over to where Goldman lay and knelt down.

  It’s over, and I should be dead.

  I should be dead…

  But she wasn’t. Not yet.

  Gaby finally allowed herself to turn around.

  Springer was on the ground with Angie kneeling over him, her hands pushing against his chest. Gaby didn’t understand what the older woman was doing—her mind was still stuck in quicksand and moving at half of its usual speed—until she saw the blood. Springer had been shot—more than once. The gun she had given him—the SIG Sauer—was still in his right palm, but he was not holding onto it.

  Angie was saying something to Springer as she pressed down on his chest. She was giving him CPR. Gaby didn’t know why. It was pretty easy to see, even to her still half-speed mind, that Springer was dead. Long strings of brunette hair fell over Angie’s face as she worked on the Black Tider.

  “Angie,” Gaby said.

  The other woman eit
her didn’t hear her or she didn’t want to stop working on Springer. Given how barely audible her voice was to her own ears, it could very well have been the former, but Gaby didn’t think so.

  “Angie,” she said again, louder this time.

  Angie finally stopped pressing on Springer’s chest and sat back on her heels. Her hands, still resting on the dead man, were covered in blood, not that she seemed to notice.

  “Are you okay?” Gaby asked. “Are you shot?”

  Angie looked up and over at her. “He’s dead.”

  “I know,” Gaby said and held out her hand. Angie took it and let Gaby pull her up to her feet. “How about you? Are you hit?”

  “I’m fine,” Angie said, before noticing the shrapnel sticking out of Gaby’s left arm, a shaft of moonlight glinting off the metal piece. “But you’re not.”

  Gaby glanced down at her arm. She had forgotten all about it. “It’s nothing.”

  “Like hell.” Angie started reaching for the wound when she saw her own blood-covered hands and pulled them back instead. “I need to clean this…”

  “Later,” Gaby said. “Grab the laptop.”

  “Laptop?” Angie said. Then, realizing, “Right. The laptop.”

  Gaby turned back to Becker, who was opening up pouches along Goldman’s body and pulling out whatever he could salvage that was still in one piece. He found an extra magazine and tossed it to her, and Gaby barely caught it with her left hand. Now that she had control of her senses again, it was impossible to ignore the pain coming from her entire left arm.

  “You’re hurt,” Becker said. He was shoving Goldman’s pistol behind his back as he stood up. Becker hadn’t gotten through the ambush completely unscathed himself. A section of his vest was torn, ripped by shrapnel, and she could see the corners of two spare magazines through the holes. Other than that, he looked okay.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said.

  “You sure about that?”

  “It’s not my first time getting hit.”

  “I heard.”

  You heard? What does that mean? she was going to ask him, but he nodded past her and at Springer’s body first.

  “He saved our lives,” Becker said. “I was down—we both were—but he was the only one still on his feet. He shot them.” Becker glanced over at the two dead attackers crumpled next to one another. “Got one, wounded the other. Gave me enough time to get my shit together.”

  Gaby looked back at Springer, lying on the floor with the sling dangling off his left arm. She didn’t really know him but had read his report about Fenton. He had seemed like a decent enough guy in the short time she had known him.

  She stood still for a moment and listened to the continuing sounds of small arms fire going on around them. Still going on, and had been despite their own gunfight. Which made perfect sense since Darby Bay was big enough that there would be dozens, if not hundreds, of isolated skirmishes going on everywhere between attackers and Black Tiders. Then there were the civilians protecting their homes. The ambush was just one of so many going on simultaneously tonight, and Gaby wasn’t surprised the dead men hadn’t received reinforcements.

  The dead men.

  She stared at them again. Longer, this time.

  They were Mercerians. Or Buckies. One in the same.

  Buck’s people.

  Buck.

  She walked past Goldman’s body and crouched next to the two dead men Springer had shot. She turned the nearest one over onto his back. Like the Bucky she’d shot and the one Becker had dispatched, the dead man was also wearing a gas mask. And like his companion next to him, they both had circled Ms drawn into the middle of their vests, the emblems almost glowing in the darkness of the alleyway.

  “Circled M,” Becker said, standing next to her. “They’re Mercerians.”

  “Yeah,” Gaby said.

  “Why are they wearing gas masks?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He sniffed the air. “I don’t smell anything that’s not supposed to be here. So why were they wearing gas masks?”

  “I don’t know, Becker.”

  She checked the two dead men’s fallen weapons. One was an AK-47, and the other was a FAL battle rifle. That meant any spares they had on them wouldn’t be compatible for her own M4 or Becker’s. But their handguns would work just fine, and Gaby took out the nearest man’s Glock and shoved it into her empty holster. She bypassed the second dead man’s pistol and checked on the other two farther up the alley.

  “I guess that means we know who’s attacking,” Becker was saying behind her.

  “Yeah, I guess now we know,” Gaby said.

  “What about him? You think he’s here, too?”

  She didn’t have to ask him to elaborate on who he was. She already knew, and said, “I don’t know.”

  The man she’d shot was carrying another AK-47, but the one Becker had taken down was armed with an AR-15. Gaby went through his vests and took out two spares, but checked the exposed round at the top to make sure it was a 5.56 before pocketing them. She found a bundled first-aid kit in a side pouch and took that, too. She thought about grabbing the gas mask and the vest to disguise their identities but remembered there were probably just as many friendlies still running around the city as there were attackers, and the last thing she wanted was to get shot by one of their own.

  “Who?” Angie was saying behind her. “Who is here? Who are you guys talking about?”

  Gaby didn’t answer. She didn’t want to say the man’s name out loud—

  “Buck,” Becker said. “The man who brought us here in the first place. The Mercerians are his crew.”

  “Mercerians,” Angie said. “Those are the same ones attacking the towns?”

  “That’s them.”

  “But those towns were small. Barely defensible. Why are they attacking here? Attacking us?”

  “That’s a good question,” Becker said. “What’s it mean that they’re here and not in Fenton where they’re supposed to be? I thought they were all in there, circling the wagons.”

  Unless we were wrong, Gaby thought. Unless the men in Fenton weren’t everything Buck had.

  Unless all of this was just five years of planning finally brought to fruition.

  But she kept those thoughts to herself. There would be time for speculation later. Right now, she needed to get to Lara. That was all that mattered.

  Get to Lara. Keep her safe.

  Get to Lara…

  Gaby stood up and turned around, and saw Becker and Angie staring in her direction. They were clearly expecting some kind of answer from her.

  “I don’t know,” Gaby said. “And right now, we don’t have time to go over it.” She took out her radio before nodding at Becker. “Keep an eye out. There might be more of them in our area.”

  She expected hesitation, but instead he hurried past her to stand guard at the corner. Angie crouched back down next to Springer and closed his eyes with her hand. She was still clinging to the heavy-duty laptop that probably weighed half as much as her. For the first time, Gaby noticed that Angie wasn’t armed. She wasn’t even wearing a belt or holster.

  “Angie,” Gaby said. “Take Springer’s weapon. He has spares in his back pocket.”

  Angie nodded, but Gaby could see the visible discomfort on her face as the older woman followed orders.

  Gaby focused on the radio as she pressed the radio’s transmit lever. “Lara, come in. This is Gaby.”

  She waited for a response, but there was none.

  She tried again: “Lara, this is Gaby. Can you hear me?”

  Another five seconds of silence.

  Becker, farther up the alley, sneaked a glance back at her.

  Finally, the radio squawked in her hand, and she heard Lara’s familiar voice. “Where are you?”

  There were faint echoes of gunfire through the radio from Lara’s end. Thankfully, they didn’t sound too close. The ones going off around her area, that were much louder, were more concerni
ng.

  “We’re two blocks from the halfway point,” Gaby said. “We ran into an ambush.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “We lost Goldman and Springer.”

  “Dammit.” Lara went silent for a moment. Then, “They’re everywhere. You need to be more careful.”

  “Lara, we killed some of the attackers. They’re—”

  “I know,” Lara said before she could finish. “They’re Mercerians. There are bodies all over the city. Ours, theirs… Locals. This entire night’s turned into a nightmare.”

  And it’s not over yet, Gaby thought, but said into the radio, “You’re okay?”

  “I’m trying to organize everyone through the general comm, but it’s…difficult. The radios are acting up. There’s a lot of interference coming in from the Gulf of Mexico. Some kind of storm. It doesn’t help that everyone’s spread out and probably scared.” Lara paused before continuing. “We’ve lost too many people already tonight, Gaby.”

  “I know,” Gaby said, images of fire washing across the lobby of the apartment barracks flashing through her mind’s eye.

  She closed her eyes and forced them away.

  Concentrate on the moment. On the mission.

  Concentrate!

  She opened her eyes back up and pressed the transmit lever. “Lara, don’t wait for us. We’ll rendezvous at OP2.”

  “Gaby…” Lara said.

  “You’ll need the equipment at OP2 to organize the counterattack. You know that. It’s the smart move.”

  Lara didn’t answer.

  “Lara,” Gaby said. “You know I’m right.”

  She couldn’t hear it, but Gaby pictured her friend sighing before she said through the radio, “Get to backup command as fast as you can.”

  “I’ll see you soon.”

  “Good luck,” Lara said, and the radio went silent.

  “She’s still waiting for us?” Angie asked from behind her.

  “Not anymore,” Gaby said, when an explosion from across the city broke through the familiar rattle of gunfire.

  It had come from behind them and was quickly followed by a second one.

  “What was that?” Angie asked.

  Becker glanced back at them. “Rockets.”

  “Rockets?” Angie said.