by Sam Sisavath
Cameron clenched her teeth, a clear sign she’d rather not say what was coming next but apparently had no choice. Watching her discomfort was almost enough to make Keo do a little chuckling, but he somehow refrained himself.
“I need you to help me find the missing men, and if necessary, kill them,” Cameron said.
Keo would have let out a laugh if he hadn’t already guessed what Cameron wanted from him minutes ago. Instead, his only thought was, The more things change, blah blah blah.
“Well?” Cameron said, still watching his face.
“Well, what?”
“Will you do it?”
“Are you saying I have a choice?”
“You didn’t twenty-four hours ago. But as of this morning you do, per Rhett’s orders.”
“You should still call Rhett,” Keo said.
Cameron looked down at the two-way radio sitting on the edge of the table between them. “Not until I have something concrete to tell him.”
“You just asked me to murder some of your people. You don’t think that’s concrete enough?”
“I didn’t tell you to murder anyone,” Cameron said, and he could almost picture cartoony steam venting from her ears as she glared at him. “I just need your help to find—”
The room shook as a massive BOOM! washed across the island. Keo spun in the direction of the explosion (Outside the building!) even as the floor under him trembled and the toy soldiers on the table toppled.
When he turned back around, Cameron already had the radio in her hand and was almost shouting into it: “What’s happening? Someone tell me what’s happening out there!”
“An explosion!” someone shouted back through the radio. Male, the man’s voice labored; he was clearly running and talking at the same time. “It’s the fuel station! Someone just blew up the fuel station!”
“Jesus Christ,” Cameron whispered.
“Jet fuel?” Keo asked.
“No. Those are stored separately from the gas we use for the boats. They’re at the hangar on the opposite side of the island.”
“The docks!” the same man shouted through the radio. “The fire’s spreading to the docks!”
“The boats!” someone else shouted. A woman this time. “Cameron, the boats are still tied to the docks!”
“Put out the fire!” Cameron shouted into the radio. “This is Cameron, to everyone listening right now: Get to the docks and put out that fire! Save as many boats as you can! Now, goddammit; everyone get down there now!”
The docks, Keo thought. Why the hell would someone blow up the docks?
The boats, of course, were moored there, but what was the point of setting them on fire? To sink them? Why would Mercerians want to sink the boats? They were eventually going to need them to get off the island. That is, if they wanted off the island.
Did they want off the island?
Voices were shouting through the radio, too many for Keo to even begin to decipher what they were saying. Cameron had put the two-way back down between a couple of fallen soldiers and was staring at it, maybe just as confused about what everyone was shouting. After a while it all started to sound like gibberish, and except for repeated words like fire and docks, he had no clue what was happening out there.
Why the hell would the Mercerians want to destroy the docks? Why—
“It’s a trick,” Keo said.
“What?” Cameron said, looking up at him.
“The explosion. It’s a trick.”
“I don’t understand…”
“They set the docks on fire because they knew it was important to the island. To everyone. So what happens? Everyone runs straight there to fight the fire. It’s a trick, Cameron. Do you see?”
Cameron stared at him as if she didn’t quite understand what he was saying. Or maybe she did, but she just found it too difficult to believe.
“Cameron,” a voice said. Keo looked over at Henry, standing in the open doorway. “Should we go too?”
“No, stay where you are,” Keo said.
“What?” Henry turned to Keo, as if surprised to hear his voice. It didn’t take him long to ignore Keo and turn back to Cameron. “Cameron, what are your orders—” he started to say, when there was a second explosion—except this one was closer and much louder because it was right outside the room.
Keo was looking at Henry when the other man vanished in a torrent of shrapnel, just as a third BOOM rang out about half a heartbeat after the second explosion, the force of the nearby blast knocking Keo off balance and into the table. Cameron grabbed onto the edges on the other side as toy soldiers spilled to the floor; the radio joined them a second later, chaotic voices still shouting through its speakers.
Grenades. Those were goddamn grenades in the hallway!
He pushed off the table and was running to the door even before Cameron had righted herself. He unslung the MP5SD just as he reached the opening, doing his very best to pretend he couldn’t see the frag damage all along the frame or the bloody red chunks of Henry that had been left behind.
He slid the last few feet, stopping just before the toes of his boots touched a pink fleshy lump that might have been a hand sticking to the floor. Smoke and explosive powder stung his nostrils even before he leaned out and looked left, glimpsing bodies (no, not bodies, body parts) everywhere.
Kelly had been out there when he last saw her. The same Kelly who had saved his life last night, and who this morning looked much prettier than he remembered.
But Keo didn’t get a chance to look for Kelly or anyone else, because as soon as he stuck his head out, he spotted them: Four figures moving down the hallway, picking their way through the remains of bodies that had been left in the wake of the two exploding grenades. Keo’s head was still ringing from being so close to the explosions, but there was nothing wrong with his eyes. All four men were wearing green and black camo paint over their faces, looking for all intents and purposes like killers on the warpath.
They spotted him a split-second later and one of them stopped and lifted his AR, and as he did so Keo glimpsed a black band wrapped tightly around his right arm between the elbow and the shoulder.
Keo already had his weapon up, and he shot the man in the chest, the suppressed gunshot absurdly gentle against the death and destruction around him. It was an easy shot from less than thirty meters, and the man should have gone down, but instead he stumbled backward. Another man, behind him, reached out to catch his comrade.
Body armor?
Keo didn’t get a chance to squeeze off a second shot because two of the four men stepped forward and opened up, the clatter of automatic rifles firing in the narrow hallway like a cascade of thunderclaps. Bullets pek-pek-peked! off the concrete walls and ping-ping-pinged! against the metal doorframe, and Keo jerked his head back into the room as erupting pieces of the building flicked at his face and pelted his clothing.
“Keo!” Cameron, shouting from behind him.
“Mercerians!” he shouted back over the rain of gunfire.
He took five steps away from the exploding opening before darting to his left where he flattened his back against the wall next to the door. Even though he had the hallway on the other side, he felt safe enough with the thick slab of concrete between him and them. They weren’t going to get through the wall unless they had a rocket on them, and frankly if they were carrying that to this party, they deserved his scalp for being so goddamn well prepared.
He glanced over at Cameron, who had a pistol in one hand and was crouched behind the table. He hadn’t noticed it before, but the table was almost in the very center of the room (by design, he guessed), which also lined Cameron up directly with the damaged door and gave her a perfect view when the first Mercerian stepped into the doorway, his tan uniform and painted face flashing across the thin slit where the door hung on its hinges for Keo to see.
Keo hadn’t even gotten the chance to react when there were two shots—pop-pop!—from Cameron. Keo opened his mouth to scream out
“They’re wearing body armor, aim for the head!” when there was a hellacious burst of return gunfire and the map table splintered, and large pieces of it buzzed across the room.
The Mercerian kept firing in Cameron’s direction, his rifle bucking in his hands as he stepped through the door—
Keo shot him in the head with the MP5SD, the pfft! of his single shot comical against the loud racket of the man’s AR. But barely audible or not, the suppressed shot did its job and the 9mm round blew the man’s brains out the other side of his temple. This time Keo’s target went down.
Even as the shooter was falling, Keo had spun out from behind the door, at the same time switching the fire selector on the submachine gun to full-auto. He hated to do it because he only had the one magazine (Should have brought the other one too, dammit!), but there was no other choice, not with three more armed assholes out there—
No, not out there, but in the doorway.
Two of them at least, watching as their friend collapsed in a heap in front of them. By the time they looked up, Keo had squeezed his trigger and stitched the opening from left to right, firing diagonally from bottom to top.
The first couple of shots ping-ping! off the metal doorframe but the rest found their marks, shattering a leg, a kneecap, then slamming into body armor before continuing up and up. One of the Mercerians’ faces turned mushy red even as he somehow squeezed his own trigger and his rifle raked the floor to Keo’s right, sending small chunks of concrete into the air before dotting the wall across the room.
One of the men fell, only to scream when his blown knee slammed into the hard floor, but even that scream was cut short when he toppled face-first. The second one simply fell, a bloody red lump where his face used to be. Keo ignored the horrific sight and kept moving until he was on the opposite side of the doorway and was pushing against the wall. He quickly slung the now-empty submachine gun and drew the Glock.
He waited for the fourth man to try his luck, but the guy either figured out that all of this was a lost cause and ran for it, or he was biding his time. Either way, no one else poked their head through the opening.
Keo leaned toward the door to listen for footsteps, for the telltale squeak of boots against the hallway floor, but all he could hear was his own racing heartbeat and a series of gunshots. The latter wasn’t coming from immediately outside, but rather from other parts of the facility. There was a hell of a gun battle going on somewhere out there.
He pulled away from the door and slowed down his breathing. His nose twitched at the stench of blood and smoke and gunpowder in the air.
A groan came from behind him and Keo looked over. The man who had screamed when he slammed his shattered kneecap into the floor was trying to raise himself back up. He dripped blood with every labored breath, and Keo didn’t think the man had enough strength left to fully—No, the guy was stronger than he looked, and somehow managed to crawl back to his knees.
Keo shot him in the back of the head.
Then he spent the next few seconds listening to the gunfire in the other parts of the building. Keo’s position also allowed him to get a better look at what was left of the map table and Cameron lying behind it. She wasn’t moving, which was no surprise since there was enough blood pumping out of her neck and chest to make a small kiddie pool. He wished he could have said he felt something, but the truth was he barely knew her, and people dying around him was starting to become a regular occurrence.
It was different with Henry and Kelly, though. Especially Kelly. She had saved his life last night, goddammit. Maybe she was still alive in the hallway. He hadn’t exactly spent a lot of time looking—the bodies and blood and body parts had gone by in a blur—so there was a chance she might have survived. Henry definitely hadn’t, but Kelly, maybe…
Say it one more time and you might actually believe it, pal. They tossed two grenades out there. Two grenades. Nothing’s going to survive that. Nothing.
He sighed and waited, but if the fourth guy was still out there he was being very, very quiet, which allowed Keo to hear the ongoing gunfight on the other parts of the island. Was it his imagination or was the whole thing coming toward him? It sure as hell sounded like it.
And him without a fully-loaded submachine gun.
Keo holstered his Glock and grabbed one of the dead Mercerian’s AR. It was way too light, but luckily the dead men came with waists full of ammo pouches. Keo grabbed one, loaded the rifle, then stuffed two spares into his back pocket.
Outside the door, somewhere close by, the pop-pop-pop of automatic gunfire continued, and this time he was definitely certain it had crept closer toward his position.
Here we go again…
19
LARA
“PETERS, what do you see?”
“I got targets,” Peter answered through the radio. “Too many targets.”
“Don’t shoot unless you’re sure.”
“That’s the problem. I don’t think I can be sure.”
“Explain.”
“It’s the uniforms. They’re all wearing identical uniforms. I can’t be absolutely sure, but some of them might be wearing camo on their faces, too.”
Lara exchanged a look with Maddie even as the Trident moved closer toward Black Tide Island. There was something inherently very wrong with what they were doing at the moment—moving toward the sound of gunfire instead of away from it. And yet she hadn’t been nearly as hesitant about giving the order as she should have been, a realization that made her more than a little worried.
“What did Keo call them, Mercerians?” Maddie said.
Lara nodded (Who else could it be?) before keying the radio again. “We’re treading dangerous territory here. Don’t take a shot unless you can be absolutely sure they’re targeting the Trident. Otherwise, let Rhett deal with it.”
“Roger that,” Peters said through the radio.
“We’re close enough, Maddie,” Lara said. “Let’s not make ourselves too tempting a target in case they decide to turn their guns on us.”
Maddie manipulated the controls and the boat slowed. “You think they’re still on the island? The ones that caused the explosion?”
“I don’t think they’re going anywhere. If they were, they wouldn’t have blown up the docks.”
“Good point. Kinda hard to swim all the way back to Texas from here. Of course, Keo probably could.”
“Probably,” Lara said, and managed a small smile.
The engine might have cut off, but the ocean currents continued to push them forward. Black Tide loomed in front of them—500 yards or so. They were close enough that she could see the gray smoke billowing into the sky on the other side of the island. That would be where the docks were, the source of the explosion they had heard earlier. It was also the reason Rhett, Riley, Hart, and a few others were on the two speeding boats headed back now.
“You think this is a good idea?” Maddie asked. Like Lara, she was looking after the boats as they carved their way toward the island. “Letting Riley and Hart go back now?”
“It wasn’t my call. They wanted to go.” Lara keyed the radio again. “Peters.”
“Yeah,” Peters answered.
“Can you hear anything?”
“Like what?”
“Anything at all that tells us what’s happening over there, who’s doing all the shooting. Anything.”
Peters didn’t answer for a few seconds. Then, “The gunshots have stopped. Or I can’t hear them anymore.”
If anyone could hear shooting it would be Peters, who was still somewhere on top of the Trident right now with his sniper rifle. Inside the bridge, they could see almost everything out there, especially with binoculars, but hearing what was happening was an entirely different story.
Lara said into the radio, “Danny.”
“Yeah!” Danny shouted back, his reply almost completely lost in the loud roar of wind and boat motors.
“The shooting seems to have stopped.”
“I’l
l take your word for it! I can’t hear shit down here.”
“Be careful.”
“Careful’s my middle name!”
“That guy has more middle names than a porn star,” Maddie said.
She couldn’t see Danny on one of the two boats speeding back toward land, but he would be on the same vessel as Hart and Riley. Without Danny onboard, she should have felt a little uncomfortable putting the Trident’s security in the hands of Peters and Jolly, two men who had been a part of Mercer’s army only a few days ago, except she wasn’t. It was easy to trust Peters—she had looked into the man’s eyes, knew what he had done and could do, and believed with every ounce of her being that he didn’t do anything he didn’t want to, including following her orders. And he wanted to, which was the amazing part.
“That’s going to help, you know,” Rhett had said about Peters. “People respect him. Hell, having Peters on your side’s going to do more good than having Riley.”
As for Jolly, who was standing outside the bridge in the hallway right now, Danny was vouching for him, and Danny was better at reading other men than she would ever be. Besides, she was pretty sure the young man had an almost teacher’s pet-like crush on her, which made her feel old.
That’s because you are old, and getting older every day.
Her radio squawked loudly, and Danny shouted through it, “Beaching now!”
Good luck, she thought, but didn’t bother to shout it back over the radio. Danny wouldn’t have heard her anyway because he—along with Hart, Riley, and Rhett—had already driven their boats up onto Black Tide and were jumping over the sides and onto the sand.
The first thing the four men would see would be the bodies. There were three that Lara could make out through binoculars—or she thought they looked like bodies, anyway. The truth was, given the distance and (lack of) clarity, she could have been staring at three deformed logs that had washed ashore.
Except she knew better. Those were bodies, victims of the prolonged gunfire that had erupted after the explosion. She was at least comforted that this time it wasn’t happening onboard the yacht, though the fact that Keo was still out there tempered that quickly, and what were the chances that this didn’t have anything to do with him?
