The M203 had an effective range of 400 meters, which was more than enough to take out the house and maybe a few of the trucks. They were still moving supplies back and forth, so if he could knock out the vehicles and what they were carrying, all the better. Maybe they had ammo in there, or if he was really lucky, things that went boom. Some secondary fireworks might even result in collateral damage.
The house, though, was the main objective. Besides being the biggest and easiest target, he counted at least a dozen soldiers inside (and the one on top of it). If he could take it out, that would probably cut the invasion force in half, or close enough. Hell, if he was really lucky, he’d take out their command and control, too. That would really cripple them. Even weekend warriors needed someone to give the orders.
It wasn’t a bad plan. Best of all, it was a safe plan, with minimal risk to his scalp. He felt even a little bit like a coward shooting from a distance hidden behind the gutted house, but what the hell, these soldiers were about to invade an island full of women and children. Keo had done a lot of bad things in his life, but he wasn’t going to sit by and let that happen.
I’m an asshole, but I’m not a fucking asshole.
The M16 came with a second sight for the grenade launcher toward the front of the barrel, and Keo flicked it into position now. He remained crouched but scooted a bit further out from behind the building, then moved left toward the road until he could see (and shoot) around the wall. He spent a few seconds adjusting for wind and elevation.
It was going to be a hell of a shot, but firing a grenade launcher wasn’t quite the same as shooting a rifle. It was mostly about angles and adjustments and letting the round do all the work. Unlike shooting a rifle from long-distance, an explosion was easier to “miss” with and still be effective. He was also comforted by the fact that he had extra ammo in his pouch if the first shot went astray.
See, adjust, and fire again. So simple even a baby could do it.
Of course, he would have loved to get closer. Maybe another fifty meters. Oh, who was he kidding. A nice, round hundred meters would have been ideal.
He aimed for the roof, hoping to land a round somewhere in that vicinity so the resulting impact would take out the second floor and collapse it down onto the first. If not, a second shot into one of the walls would just about do it. The one thing Keo knew for sure was that if one grenade didn’t accomplish its goal, two—or hell, three—usually got the job done. Usually—
Clink!
The sharp sound of metal grinding against metal made Keo stand up and spin around, his finger sliding away from the grenade launcher to the main trigger. He was prepared to fire, to spray and pray (Thank God he had kept the fire selector on three-round burst), but instead Keo lost a second processing what he was seeing.
It was a kid.
A goddamn kid.
He was sitting on a shiny new bicycle in the middle of the road, wearing one of those plastic shell helmets that was supposed to protect him from cracking his head if he fell. He had on wrist and knee pads and brand new Nike sneakers. The kid couldn’t have been older than ten, sporting a white T-shirt that was stained in equal measure with sweat and what looked like chocolate.
He stared at Keo, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
Join the party, pal.
Then the brat reached down and unclipped a rectangle black object housed inside a holder along the bike’s down tube, where a water bottle was supposed to go. The kid pulled out a walkie talkie, and Keo remembered what Carrie had told him after the marina shootout back at Lake Dulcet. It was how the soldiers knew there was a boat at the marina in the first place.
“They’re spies. Lookouts. Their job is to go around the city looking for survivors. The guys in uniform come later. That’s how they found us. One of those stupid kids spotted us and the trucks swooped in.”
“No,” Keo said, taking his finger off the M16’s trigger, hoping that would have some kind of effect. “Don’t do that, kid. You don’t want to do that.”
The little bastard didn’t hear a word he said. Or if he did, it never registered, because he lifted the walkie talkie to his lips, pressed the transmit lever, and shouted into it, “There’s someone here! There’s someone down the road! And he’s got a machine gun!”
Aw, hell.
Keo turned back around and saw the two soldiers in the road looking in his direction. Because he was standing now, they saw him immediately and started pointing.
When Keo glanced back at the kid, the little tyke was bicycling away at full speed, the clink-clink-clink of his chains against heavy metal frame.
“Yeah, you better run, you little bastard!” Keo shouted after him, but he hadn’t gotten “bastard” completely out when gunfire split the air and bullets buzzed past his head.
He ducked instinctively and moved back behind the wall, which started coming apart piece by piece in front of his face. He slipped down to one knee and tried to wait out the pop-pop-pop of a carbine shooting, which meant the guy with the M249 hadn’t opened up yet. Of course, it was only a matter of time. Chances were the guy was waiting to get closer. Either that, or he wasn’t comfortable firing that heavy weapon standing up—
The wall behind him disintegrated before he could finish the thought, ripped apart by a barrage of brap-brap-brap gunfire that seemed to go on and on and on.
The M249 light machine gun had just joined the party.
“Keo!” Blaine shouted through the radio. “What’s going on? Keo!”
Keo could barely hear Blaine’s voice over the roar of the machine gun fire. He didn’t know how far the two soldiers were at the moment, but he guessed they would keep together, which meant slowly moving up the road toward him. At the moment, staying down and keeping his head from being detached from his shoulders by one of the SAW’s 5.56mm rounds seemed the more prudent move.
He swapped the M16 for the MP5SD then glanced to his left, wondering if there were more pieces of the house still standing back there when the machine gun suddenly stopped firing.
Keo sucked in a breath, thought, The hell with it, you only live once, and stood up behind what was left of the wall. There wasn’t much remaining, just about four feet of brick and mortar reaching up from the ground.
The two soldiers were still on the road. One of them was slightly crouched over and moving cautiously forward, but he was a good fifty meters away still. His partner was farther back and struggling to feed the ammo belt into the M249. That was the problem with belt-fed weapons. You never know when the next round was going to jam and ruin your day.
The one with the M4 saw Keo stand up and snapped off a shot. Too quick and the round missed by a wide margin, not even hitting what was left of the house wall. Of course, in the guy’s defense, there really wasn’t much left to hit.
As the man adjusted his aim, Keo returned fire. The man staggered down to one knee, so Keo guessed he had hit something. He kept pulling the trigger because fifty meters was a hell of a distance for the MP5SD, and Keo wasn’t taking any chances. He only stopped shooting when the soldier collapsed to the road on his stomach and didn’t move.
The one with the light machine gun saw his partner go down in front of him and tossed his jammed weapon and took off running back down the road. Keo was taking aim at his fleeing form when he saw something else—two of the trucks parked in front of the red house had fired their engines and were starting to move, their tires peeling and tossing dirt into the air around them.
“Keo!” Blaine was still shouting through the radio. “What’s going on? Are you alive?”
He didn’t waste time responding. Instead, he slung the MP5SD and brought out the M16 again, then calmly stepped out from behind what was left of the house wall and carefully took aim with the rifle.
One hundred meters for a grenade launcher designed to blow the crap out of something from four times that distance was almost child’s play. It was such an easy shot even a baby could have pulled it off. And he was def
initely more skilled than a baby.
Nice, you almost believed it that time!
The trucks were burning rubber up the road, men in uniforms hanging on for dear life in the back, swarms of dust scattering in their wake. The soldier who had ditched the SAW had to dive out of the path of the oncoming vehicles when they were almost on top of him. He rolled comically sideways and landed somewhere in the ditch.
“Keo!” Blaine shouted through the radio. “Answer me, dammit!”
Blaine might have said something else, but his words were lost against the sound of the grenade launcher belching out a dull but incredibly satisfying ploompt!
The 40mm round landed near the closest truck as it was halfway to him. The driver, predictably, reacted badly to the sight of an explosion ripping a hole in the road directly in front of him and showering his windshield with chunks of asphalt. The man jerked on the wheel and the truck looked as if it had hit an invisible wall, turning sharply to the left and then rolling over onto its side before spinning forward once, twice, three times. It finally settled back down on its roof, sending showers of glass everywhere.
The second truck, seeing the first one spinning out of control in front of it—peppering the road with metal and plastic and aluminum, along with the two sad bastards who were in the back—came to a screeching stop, the smell of burning rubber filling the air.
Keo pulled back his right hand and found the main trigger on the M16 and fired, stitching the second vehicle’s front windshield with a series of three-round bursts. They were close enough now—less than fifty meters, he guessed—that it wasn’t too hard of a target. Of course, he was firing again and again just to be sure. God knew he had realized his shortcomings with long-range shooting recently.
Two men inside the front cab ducked as their windshield caved in on them. Men in the back dropped out of sight and one jumped down from the truck, lost his footing, and started crawling toward the back bumper for cover.
Keo backpedaled as he fired again and again, glimpsing more figures racing up the road behind the vehicles, weapons swinging wildly in front of them. There were simply too many of them. Way too many. So what else was new?
His eyes darted briefly to the two-story red house in the background. He thought about sending a 40mm grenade toward it, but that choice went out the window when he saw sunlight flashing off additional trucks blasting up the road.
Then he heard something—coming from behind him.
He glanced back, wondering how the hell they had outflanked him, and was shocked to see the Dodge Ram coming up on him fast. Blaine was behind the wheel, Bonnie in the front passenger’s seat holding onto the dashboard for dear life.
I guess they’re more useful than I thought.
Keo grinned at them—saw their terrified faces staring back—before he turned around and looked up the road. He grabbed a second 40mm grenade out of his pouch and reloaded the launcher. He did his best to ignore the sound of the Ram’s brakes squealing behind him as it came to a stop inches away. He was guessing it was inches away, because he actually felt the wind pushing against the back of his neck as Blaine nearly ran him over with the Dodge.
See, adjust, and fire again. So simple even a baby could do it.
The men from the house were about to reach the first two dead-in-the-road trucks while the driver and his passenger took the opportunity as Keo reloaded to scramble outside and run for cover behind the back bumper.
Wrong hiding spot, Keo thought, and fired and listened to the equally satisfying second ploompt! as the second round sailed.
This time the grenade hit its intended target, vanishing through the windshield of the second truck. The resulting explosion ripped across the vehicle and shredded the two men hiding behind it and tossed two more into the road, their clothes and hair and skin on fire. They might have been screaming, but it was hard to hear over the roar of flames and tires.
“Keo!” Bonnie, shouting behind him. “Come on!”
He tossed the M16 onto the ground and turned and nearly ran into the scorching hot hood of the truck. It was inches behind him. Jesus Christ. Blaine really did almost run him over seconds ago. He stared across the hood at Blaine, who stared back at him wide-eyed.
“Keo!” Bonnie shouted again.
Keo snapped out of it and ran around the Ram.
Bonnie saw him coming and threw the passenger side door open and he jumped inside, landing in her lap. She grabbed him with one hand, her other arm reaching across him and slamming the door shut, shouting, “Go, Blaine, go!”
Blaine didn’t need any encouragement. He shoved his foot down on the gas pedal and the Ram began reversing up the road, the big man’s hands gripping the steering wheel with such intensity Keo wondered what it would take to pry them loose if he needed to.
Bonnie struggled out from under him and scooted over to the middle of the front seats. “Jesus, we thought you were dead.”
He was about to answer when bullets punched through the front windshield and zipped past his head and tore into the truck upholstery around them.
“Christ!” Blaine shouted.
The big man spun the steering wheel even as rounds slammed into the vehicle’s side and front hood, the constant ring of ping! ping! ping! filling the air. Then a second later they were facing the right direction—back down the road—and the truck was picking up speed again with every breath Keo took.
Bonnie screamed when the back windshield exploded under a hail of bullets and they were showered with glass. She threw her hands over her head and kept it down, unwilling to come up even after the last piece of glass fell away.
“We’re good, we’re good,” Keo said, looking back up. Then to Blaine, “Nice driving.”
“Thanks,” Blaine said, though he hadn’t looked away from the road or even relinquished an ounce of pressure on the steering wheel.
Keo glanced out the blown back window. He didn’t see any pursuing vehicles, just the two wasted ones blocking the road. The first was still resting on its roof, while the second one was engulfed in flames. Two trucks were trying to get around them, but one had run into a ditch and men were trying to push it out to no avail. The fourth truck didn’t even make the attempt.
“Are they following us?” Bonnie asked.
“No,” Keo said. He glanced at his watch. “Get to the island by six, right?”
“Yeah,” Blaine said, almost breathless.
Keo reached into the back and pulled his pack over. He unzipped it and took out a bottle of water. It was freezing cold a few hours ago and was just cold enough now. Hell, that was more than he’d had in almost a year.
He sat back in his seat and took a sip, flicking broken glass off his clothes and picking them from his hair. He hoped he hadn’t been cut by flying shards. God knew he already looked like a mess with the scar and a broken nose that hadn’t entirely healed properly yet. The last thing he needed was a piece of glass sticking out of the other cheek.
After a while, he realized Bonnie was staring at him. “What?” he said.
“Did that go as you planned it?” She wasn’t being sarcastic, either; he could see it in her eyes. She was hoping he would say yes, because that would mean it was mission accomplished. Or close enough.
“The idea was to stall them until the Army Rangers get back and you can put up a proper defense for the island, right?”
“Yes…”
He looked at the truck’s side mirror, back at the flaming wreckage behind them. “Then maybe. I guess we’ll find out tonight one way or another…”
27
Will
Two down, two to go.
So where were the other two blue-eyed ghouls?
The question nagged at him from the time they climbed into the Bronco to when they were halfway up Route 13, with I-10 still hidden somewhere in the distance.
According to the map, thirty minutes would take them to the interstate, and from there another hour on the highway before hopping off for the small roads at t
he town of Salvani. Song Island lay further south. Another hour, give or take, thanks to the nonexistent traffic. If they could locate Gaby somewhere along the way, there was no reason why they couldn’t be home by nightfall. He was looking forward to that. More than anything, he wanted to see Lara again. Imagining her in his mind’s eye had become harder with each passing day.
And yet…
Two down, two to go.
Where did the other two go? Why weren’t they in Dunbar last night? The only explanation he could think of was that they had split up. Which had benefited Danny and him. He wasn’t sure he could have fended off four at once, even knowing a bullet to the head (Silver bullets? Or would any ol’ bullet do?) could finish them off, whereas they simply shrugged off everything else.
That was good and bad news. The good news was that you could kill them with a bullet to the head. The bad news was that you had to shoot them in the head and destroy the brain. The average human melon had a circumference of fifty-six centimeters (give or take), with the brain residing in the top portion. So take fifty percent away from the initial size, leaving the shooter with, at best, a target circumference of twenty-eight centimeters.
Not a difficult shot in and of itself, but when the target was moving—and there was no way in hell those blue-eyed bastards were going to stand still and let him zero in on them—it was another matter entirely. He had gotten lucky with the two from last night. The first one by way of the cross-knife when it was standing still, gloating over its victory, and he had caught the second one at almost point-blank range with the creature coming right at him. Even an amateur could have made that shot.
Shoot them in the head. Right. Easy peasy.
“At the risk of sounding like Carly,” Danny said, “what are you thinking?”
“Where did the other two blue-eyed ghouls go?”
The Purge of Babylon Series Box Set, Vol. 2 | Books 4-6 Page 38
