She hobbled next to Keo, using an old crutch he had found inside the main house on one of his earlier searches of the place, then went back to retrieve for her. Her legs sent up red flags with every step, and she worried she might fall behind, but Keo kept his pace slow on purpose so she wouldn’t.
Gaby understood Keo’s doubts. Jet airplanes were not supposed to land on highways, even one with wide lanes and generous amounts of shoulder on both sides. But then, there were a lot of things Warthogs weren’t supposed to do these days. She would have shared Keo’s doubts if she hadn’t seen Mayfield and other pilots logging hours on the aircraft on and off Black Tide.
As they watched, the Warthog touched down smoothly on its two rear tires. The smell of burning rubber filled the crisp morning as the Thunderbolt glided past them, large twin engines dragging waves of air across their faces. The A-10 began slowing down before coming to a complete stop fifty meters away.
They walked over to the aircraft, Keo occasionally turning to keep an eye on the long stretch of road behind them. Just in case, as Lara would say. She shared his paranoia; they were still too close to Fenton for her liking. Twenty miles might have sounded like a lot, but not if you had an unlimited supply of fuel, which Buck’s people seemed to do. By now, Fenton would have heard about what had happened out here through the radio.
She glanced back at the technical Redman had attempted to flee in before Mayfield caught it halfway to the town of Sandy-whatever. The truck was just a black dot in the distance and didn’t even look like it had once been a vehicle. She didn’t want to imagine how the passengers fared. She’d tried to kill Redman, yes, but there were way worse ways to go than at the wrong end of a Warthog’s cannon.
“Nice shooting,” Keo was calling over to Mayfield as she climbed out of her cockpit and down the ladder before hopping the last few rungs to the road.
“Like shooting fish in a barrel,” Mayfield said. She ran a gloved hand through her short blond hair. “I almost feel sorry for them.”
“Trust me, you have nothing to feel sorry for. Those guys have probably done things these last few months that would be war crimes a dozen times over six years ago. I’ve seen their handiwork up close and personal. They deserved everything they got.”
Mayfield nodded but didn’t look completely convinced. She was five-ten, taller than most guys on Black Tide, and Gaby knew for a fact she had a pretty impressive physique underneath her flight suit, because Gaby often jogged and worked out with the pilots in the mornings. The inguz patch on her shoulders blinked in the sunlight.
The pilot looked across the road. “The rest scurried into the woods on the other side. I buzzed them just to make sure they didn’t come back, but it’s probably not a good idea for me or you guys to stay here for too long. You know, just in case they’re the stubborn type.”
“You should have wasted them, too,” Keo said. “It would have saved us the headache later.”
“I’m not a murderer.”
“It’s not murder if it’s justified.”
“I guess we have different definitions of justice.”
“Really? Mine is ‘Get them before they get you.’ What’s yours?”
“It’s a lot more complicated than that.” Mayfield had climbed down from her cockpit with a heavy pack slung over her back, and she took it off now and handed it to Gaby. “Thought you might need this. Black Tide’s anxious to talk to you. They think you’re dead.”
“They thought I was dead?” Gaby asked as she took the bag. It was heavy, and she sat it on the road, then unzipped the top and began pulling out the antennas connected to the bulky radio inside.
“Can’t blame them, after what we saw at Kohl’s Port, then later what happened with Lightning Two.”
“Did anyone survive?”
Mayfield shook her head somberly.
Gaby nodded. She didn’t know why she had asked and felt stupid for having done so. “It’s my fault. They wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for me.”
“It’s Fenton’s fault,” Keo said. “You wouldn’t have been out there running for your life if it wasn’t for them. And I wouldn’t be here, either. A lot of people wouldn’t be dead if it wasn’t for Fenton.”
Gaby nodded, but as with Mayfield earlier, she wasn’t completely convinced. Everything Keo had said was true, but it didn’t take away the guilt of watching Lightning Two exploding in the sky, because it wouldn’t have been there if it hadn’t been rerouted to come searching for her.
“How many of you guys are out here?” Keo was asking Mayfield.
“We got one buzzing the southern coastline and one up north,” Mayfield said. “I was doing some aerial recon when I caught Gaby’s radio earlier. Unfortunately the message was too garbled for me to reply, but I took a shot that she couldn’t have been too far away. I was about to give up when I spotted the first technical on the road. Hard to miss all that metal in the middle of nowhere.”
“Good thing you didn’t give up.”
“For you, yeah.”
“That’s what I meant.”
“You’re Keo, right?”
“Have we met?”
Mayfield shook her head. “You left before I joined up. But I heard about you. Hard not to.”
Keo grinned. “So my legend lives on.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to call it legend…”
“No?”
“More like infamy.”
“Hey, as long as you’re remembered.”
They kept going, but Gaby tuned them out to finish preparing the radio. When that was done, she clicked the transmit lever while holding the microphone up to her lips. “Black Tide, come in. This is G-Squad One. Come in, Black Tide.”
She didn’t have to wait long before a female voice answered through the receiver. “We’re receiving you loud and clear, G-Squad One. Glad to hear your voice. We had a pool going. I just won some nice chunk of change.”
Gaby smiled. “Glad to help out, Jane. Is Danny there?”
“I just paged him. Can you wait?”
“I got nothing else better to do today.”
Gaby sat down on the pavement to ease the pressure on her legs. The pills were kicking in, but the long walk from the ranch hadn’t done her any favors. She thanked God Keo had found the crutch, otherwise she might not even be able to move after that dumb stunt back at the barn. God, what was she thinking, jumping down like that?
Don’t tell Danny, or you’ll never hear the end of it. He’d probably give you some dumbass nickname.
“You okay?” Mayfield asked her.
Gaby gave the other woman a pursed smile. “No, but I can’t do anything about it now.”
“I’d take you back with me in the Warthog, but you know, it’s a tight squeeze up there.”
“Thanks, I appreciate the thought.”
“So Black Tide knows about Fenton?” Keo asked Mayfield.
The pilot nodded. “You’ll have to talk to them about specifics, but yeah, we know. There’s supposed to be a ground team around here gathering intel on the city as we speak.”
“We didn’t run into them,” Gaby said.
Mayfield shrugged. “I don’t know the particulars, sorry.”
“But you think they’re still out there?” Keo asked.
“As far as I know.”
Keo looked over at Gaby. “The least they could have done was come over and help out while we were surrounded by bad guys.”
“They might not be close enough to hear the shooting. If their primary mission is Fenton, that’s twenty miles north.”
“Excuses, excuses.”
Gaby turned back to the radio when a familiar male voice said through the receiver, “I told Lara it’d take more than some ex-Mercerian jackoffs to keep you down, kid.”
Gaby couldn’t help but smile at the sound of Danny’s voice. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. I can always count on you to talk me up.”
“Anytime. I hear you’re not alone over there?”
“I ran into Keo. Or, well, he ran into me, actually.”
“As I live and breathe,” Danny said. “I knew Keystone couldn’t stay away forever. Tell him I said hola.”
Gaby looked over at Keo. “Danny says hi.”
“Whatever,” Keo said.
“Keo says he misses you, too,” Gaby said into the mic.
Keo grunted.
“I’m sure he did,” Danny said. “How are you, kid?”
“Shot, hurt, and tired,” Gaby said. “Other than that, I’m just peachy.” Then, “You called them Mercerians.”
“Saw the circled M on those assault vests of theirs back at Kohl’s Port. They left a few bodies behind. Your handiwork?”
“Me and the team…”
“Well, at least you guys gave as good as you got.”
Maybe, but it wasn’t good enough, Gaby thought, as memories of Geoff lying half on and half off the sidewalk in Kohl’s Port flashed across her mind’s eye.
“Wasn’t hard to figure out who’s running the show in Fenton after we picked through what was left of the place,” Danny was saying. “Mercerians. Shit. We always knew they’d come back to bite us in the ass. I told Lara we should have drowned the whole lot of them after Houston instead of letting them walk off into the sunset.”
“It was the right thing to do at the time.”
“Yeah, well, ‘the right thing’ has a bad habit of biting me in the ass.”
“Does Lara know?”
“She knows. We’ll come up with a plan, all brilliant-like, when she gets back to the island.”
“She’s not back yet?”
“Not yet. She just wrapped up that whole mess in Florida yesterday. It was a lot trickier than she thought, but you know her, hell hath no fury like Lara on the march. She’ll be back by tonight. What about you?”
“Unfortunately, Mayfield’s ride is a one-seater, so if you can send something over…”
“Can you walk?”
“I can walk if I have to.”
“All right. I got a team in your neck of the woods right now. They inserted this morning for some quiet work. Give them around afternoon-ish to finish up, then tag along with their exfil plan. You sound like you could use a good night’s sleep.”
“Try a week.” Then, “How did you find out about Fenton?”
“I got teams running around all over that area after Lightning Two went down. They found survivors from other towns that were victims of Fenton. A lot of question and answer sessions, some guesswork, and generally just following the trail of bodies. A led to B and ended up at F for Fenton.”
“Have you ever heard of them until now?”
“Not a clue. Better late than sorry, as my pa used to say. Anyway, what about Keester? What’s his sitch?”
She looked over at Keo, who stood next to her looking around them at the flat surroundings, as if he expected Buck’s people to show up at any second. He hadn’t heard Danny’s question, or anything Danny had said, because she had the only receiver against her ear.
“Undecided on that front,” she said into the mic.
“He’ll do what he’ll do,” Danny said. “He always does. You got a pen to jot down the deets?”
“Unless it’s a ten-page essay, I’ll remember it.”
Danny told her, and Gaby committed the information to memory.
When he was done, she signed off and zipped the radio back up and handed it to Keo. “You’ll have to carry it.”
Keo took it. “What am I, your pack mule?”
“Until the two holes in my leg heal, yeah.”
“You know, I was shot very recently, too. You don’t see me whining about it.”
“You look all right.”
“I’m faking it.”
“So keep faking it.”
Mayfield cleared her throat. “As much as I would love to keep standing here listening to you two banter, I don’t like the idea of staying on the ground any longer than necessary. It feels…icky.”
“Now you know how the rest of the world feels,” Keo said.
“But unlike the rest of the world, I don’t have to stay down here.” She turned and began climbing back up the ladder to her cockpit. “You guys going to link up with the ground team?”
Gaby nodded. “That’s the plan. What about you?”
“I wish I could stay and give you air cover, but I’m already running low on fuel. That means you’re on your own from here on out, unless Black Tide reroutes another hog in your direction.”
Keo smiled up at Mayfield as the pilot settled into her cockpit. “Thanks for the assist. Let me know if I can ever return the favor.”
Mayfield smiled back down at him as she slipped on her helmet. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Keo.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Ask anyone—I always keep my promises.”
“That’s not what Mary from the infirmary says.”
“Oh,” Keo said.
Mayfield grinned, then grabbed something from her cockpit and tossed it down to Gaby. “For the leg.”
Gaby caught it—a first-aid kit. “Thanks.”
The pilot nodded before winking at Keo. “See you next time, lover boy.”
“Adios,” Keo said.
They stepped off the road as Mayfield fired up the Warthog, then watched her taxi the aircraft before disappearing back into the skies. When the A-10 was little more than a gray dot less than a minute later, they began walking back to the ranch.
“She handled killing a bunch of guys pretty well,” Keo said. “Was that her first time?”
Gaby shook her head. “Mayfield’s been in combat before.”
“You guys really have been busy since I left.”
“There’s a lot to do out there, Keo. We haven’t exactly been getting tanned on the beach all these years.”
“I guess not. So what’s the word on the recon team?”
“They’re supposed to make their way down to a place called Axton about five miles north from here, then exfil out by chopper before nightfall.”
“Never heard of Axton.”
“It’s probably one of those hundred towns you passed on the way down here.” She looked over at him. “Can you…?”
“Take you to Axton to link up with the team?” He nodded. “Sure. What kind of Christian would I be if I let a gimp hobble five miles on her own.”
She grunted. “What a kind Christian you are, Keo.”
“Feel free to tell everyone about it.”
“I will.” She paused, then, “You’re still going back to Fenton by yourself, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “My friend’s in there.”
“You’re hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned. You’ll get yourself killed.”
“That’s certainly a possibility. Another is that I could win. I’m very good at winning.”
“Not against what I saw in Fenton, Keo.”
“I’ve also been known to buck the occasional impossible odds.”
She shook her head. “You’re crazy.”
“I’ve been told, too.”
“Come back to Black Tide with me, then come back here with us. Lara’s not going to let this sit. Not when I tell her everything I’ve seen. And she already knows about the other towns. We’ll come back, Keo, and we’ll get your friend.”
He didn’t say anything, and they walked in silence for a while. She couldn’t tell if he was considering what she’d said, or if he was just… Well, it was hard to read Keo’s face. Maybe it was that big scar or…
Oh, who are you kidding. It’s not like you could ever really read him. Nothing’s changed in five years.
“I promised I’d get her out,” Keo finally said. “Maybe Lara will do something, maybe she won’t. But I can’t take the chance she might decide to sit this one out.”
“She won’t. I promise you, she won’t.”
“I can’t take that chance, Gaby. Regardless of what kind of tales Mary from the infirmary’s b
een telling about me, I do try to keep my word.”
“We could really use you, Keo.”
“You guys have been doing all right without me. Better, even, from what I’m seeing today. How many fighter pilots do you have now?”
“Still not enough to cover every trouble spot.”
“How many are there?”
“More than you know.”
“That’s not saying much, since I don’t know a whole lot.”
“What exactly have you been doing out here for the last five years, Keo?”
“Living. Surviving. Eating. You know, the usual.”
“And that’s it?”
“Pretty much. I try to stay out of people’s business. Tried, being the operative word. Some things you just can’t dodge forever.”
“Like the Buckies.”
“Like the Buckies,” he nodded. “What else have you guys been up to since I left, besides trying to save the world?”
“It would take a year to tell you everything, but there was that big mess in Alabama about two years ago that you must have heard about.”
He shook his head. “I told you, my Wi-Fi’s been on the fritz lately, and I’ll be damned if the New York Times didn’t cancel my subscription out of the blue.”
“Well, there was almost a civil war. We got involved and Lara… It took a lot out of her to stop them from killing each other, but she did it. How far did you get out of Texas after Black Tide?”
“Oklahoma, Kansas, and a few other states, but I never really ventured eastward. Didn’t seem worth it.”
“We’ve been busy with the southeastern states. Louisiana, Mississippi, and an ongoing issue in Florida. Don’t get me started on that shit storm in Georgia three years ago.”
“Bad?”
“Worse. The point is, we could have really used you. We still can. Especially now, with Fenton.”
“I’d just get in your way. And I hate to say it, but Black Tide would just get in my way, too. It’s better this way. I’m better on my own.”
“What should I tell Lara?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he walked quietly next to her, eyes squinting at the sun.
Road To Babylon Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 51
