The Ashes of Pompeii (Purge of Babylon, Book 5) (25 page)

“Him” was Boris. Or a man she assumed was Boris, though she couldn’t be sure without bringing Gage over to the boat to ID him.

The man was large, almost as big as Blaine, with a bushy red beard and a very pale complexion, which was amazing given that he probably spent most of the last year on a boat, basking in the sun. Or maybe he spent most of his time in the engine room, which would explain how he could have hidden from Blaine and Roy earlier in the day.

Whoever he was, he was lying on his stomach a few feet inside the bridge. Blood pooled under him and his head was turned to one side, black eyes staring almost accusingly across the room at Blaine.

A pump-action shotgun leaned against a nearby wall where Blaine had put it. That shotgun had blasted a hole in the bridge door where the lock and doorknob used to be. Having stumbled inside, Boris (unless, of course, there was a second man running around on the
Trident
) had taken a shot at Blaine only to miss, sending buckshot into another part of the wraparound windshield and adding to the existing damage.

Lara looked at Blaine. “You okay?”

He nodded. “He surprised me, that’s all.”

“Man, we need to stop people from firing guns on the bridge,” Maddie said. “We’re lucky no one’s shot out the control panels so far.”

“I guess he was waiting for just one of us to be on the boat,” Blaine said. “Lucky me.”

“Or maybe he was using the shooting across the lake as a diversion,” Lara said. “Maybe he thought it was his best chance to take back the bridge.”

“Well, the poor bastard figured wrong.”

“Looks like it,” Maddie said. “So, who’s gonna clean up this mess?”

“Don’t look at me.”

“You shot him.”

Blaine pretended he didn’t hear her and said to Lara, “You guys figured out what all the shooting before was?”

“We don’t know, but it was coming from the southern part of the lake,” Lara said.

“It has to be Keo. He went in that direction, and the timing’s right. Maybe we should go see if he needs help.”

Lara didn’t answer right away.

“Lara,” Blaine said. “He could be hurt.”

“No,” she said finally. “Keo’s on his own.” She glanced at her watch. “Besides, we have other work to do now that Boris isn’t a problem anymore. It’s past noon, which means it’ll be dark in less than seven hours.”

Maddie and Blaine exchanged a worried look. Maybe they were hoping she’d change her mind about Keo.

“Head back to the island and bring Gage over,” Lara said to Maddie. “I need to find out what this boat’s fully capable of.”

“So we’re definitely using it,” Blaine said.

Lara nodded. “I don’t know how yet—not exactly—but yeah, I think we’re going to use it.”

KEO

It was eight
kilometers from Song Island to the mouth of the channel that connected Beaufont Lake and the Gulf of Mexico. After thirty minutes of traveling at full speed across the wide-open lake, seeing the narrow corridor coming up made Keo slow down to half speed. He instinctively loosened the MP5SD and laid it on top of the console behind the steering wheel.

Better safe than sorry.

Like the rest of the shoreline, the channel was flanked by swaying sunbaked grass on both sides and buildings rose in the distance farther inland. He guessed the channel was about 300 meters wide, which was big enough for most vessels, including the
Trident
that had come through last night.

He cruised the sixteen-footer toward the familiar bridge that arced over the water and connected the two sides of the channel. The metal structure looked as dangerously old now as it did when he had driven over it yesterday with Blaine and Bonnie. After making sure there was no one on top of it, he glided the boat underneath and onto the other side, passing floating red and green buoys marking the edges of the channel.

More flat and uninteresting fields of grass greeted him. It was peaceful out here, but instead of putting Keo at ease, it only made him more alert. He belatedly noticed that the windshield in front of him only went up slightly higher than his waist, which made it useless in terms of protection. Not that he expected a thin piece of clear plastic was going to deflect a bullet, but, well, something was better than nothing.

A kilometer and a half into the channel, the buildings started to become clearer in the distance. He spotted eerily empty marinas and abandoned shrimp barges, and warehouses dotted both sides of the landscape. Cranes and towering equipment, part of whatever industry had once thrived here, crisscrossed the skyline like ancient sentries. He wondered how long they would remain like that before the elements pulled them back down to earth.

He was glad for the motor running behind him. Keo thought he would become used to the silence of an empty world by now, almost a year in, but that was always proven false whenever he went through an area that was, once upon a time, a nest of activity. The marina back at Lake Dulcet was one of those places. The desolation always got to him, a reminder that no matter what he did, how many promises he kept, or bad
(badder)
men he killed, the world as he knew it was gone. And in its place was…this.

Whatever “this” was.

He was too far away from land to make out a group of businesses, but they looked like stores or possibly offices. He hadn’t really gotten the chance to explore the area yesterday, and Lara and the others had no reasons to. He did think the two Army Rangers would have at least taken some time to scout their immediate AO for potential dangers, though, and was surprised to learn that they, in fact, hadn’t—

Crack!

The windshield in front of him shattered and Keo instinctively grabbed the submachine gun with one hand, pulled back on the control lever with the other, and hit the plywood floor a split second later.

He waited to hear a follow-up shot, but there wasn’t one. Instead, there was just the boat continuing to move, its forward momentum keeping it going up the channel even though he had put the shift into neutral. Thank God this part of the lake was wide enough that it would take a miracle for him to run aground—

Crack!

The hull in front of him splintered, and a round
zipped!
to the right of his head and exited the other side before
plopping!
into the water.

A sniper.

Jesus Christ. There was a sniper out there. A pretty good one, too, since the guy was probably shooting at him from 150 meters or more from land.

He’s a better shot than me, that’s for damned sure.

The boat’s momentum had lessened by quite a bit now, but it hadn’t stopped completely. How much farther was the channel entrance? If he could reach the Gulf of Mexico, he had an entire ocean to escape into. Even the world’s best sniper couldn’t hit him out there.

Of course, Keo hadn’t lifted his head to make sure of his current position. That would have been a fool move that, quite possibly, also ended his life. Judging by the angle of the first two shots, he guessed he was getting closer to the shooter. The first round had hit from in front of him, and the second had penetrated the boat at an almost 120 degree angle at the port side. Pretty soon, he’d be sidling right alongside the bastard. That, unfortunately, was also going to make it much easier for the guy.

He thought about reaching up and pushing the throttle forward to hasten his trip to the channel’s entrance. That might work, as long as he kept going straight like an arrow. Of course, if the boat started to drift to either the left or right side, he might very well run right into one of those barges or hit the shoreline. It was kind of hard to steer when he couldn’t even see over the sides at the moment.

He kept waiting to hear a follow-up torrent of gunfire and was again surprised there wasn’t any. What was the man waiting for? Maybe the guy couldn’t see him. Keo was flat against the floor of the boat, and if he couldn’t see above the portside gunwale, chances were very good the guy (or guys, if his luck was really that bad) couldn’t see him, either. The fact that the man hadn’t fired again was unsettling. A man who didn’t shoot randomly was a lot more dangerous than one who just fired blindly at a target.

So how did that help him?

It didn’t, really.

He was stuck, and the boat had slowed down to a crawl now even though the engine was still coughing behind him, threatening to shut down at any second. His only available line of sight was up at the open skies, because looking left, right, front, or back only offered up the same ugly navy color.

He realized now how stupid pulling back on the gear had been. The smarter move would have been to pour on the power, because his best chance to survive was to blast right up the channel and stay low. Even a great shooter was going to have difficulty hitting a moving target, and that was what he would have been.

Live and learn, pal.

How good was this guy, anyway? That was the million dollar question. How long would the shooter need to acquire a target and pull the trigger? A second? Half a second? Two? Because that was how long Keo guessed he would need to lift himself up from the floor and expose himself (or, at least, his nice, big juicy head) while he reached for the lever, made sure of his direction, and pointed the boat at the Gulf of Mexico.

Two seconds.

Okay, maybe three…or four.

That was a long time. He had killed men in less time than that, and he was a lousy shot. This guy, on the other hand…

Four seconds.

Damn. Stuck between the Gulf of Mexico and a wet grave. What a way to go.

Keo put the MP5SD down and pushed both palms against the floor and readied to spring himself up. The first motion would get his feet back under him and the second would send him straight up, just far enough to reach the steering wheel and control lever. It wasn’t exactly brain surgery, and all he’d have to do was keep from getting his head blown off in the four seconds he probably had.
Probably.
Once he made sure the boat was pointed in the right direction and the motor was at full throttle, he could jump back down and only expose his hand. If the sniper managed to shoot off his arm while he was moving at full speed, then more power to him.

Who needs two arms, anyway?

Keo sucked in a deep breath. It was slightly stale and smelled of dead sea life, not to mention whatever chemical they had been pumping out of those industrial buildings from the nearby areas.

Two breaths…three…

On
five
, he jumped—got both feet under him, pushed up, twisted to his right, grabbed the rubber-covered steering wheel with one hand and the metal lever with the other and—

Oh, crap.

It was a Jeep. About a hundred meters farther up the channel. The vehicle was bright yellow against the brown and green fields, and men were jumping out of the back. He didn’t need binoculars to know they were probably all armed, and from the way they were running toward the shoreline, they knew exactly where he was and what they were going to do when they reached it, and he reached them.

And then there was the sniper—

The loud
crack!
of another gunshot split the air, just before something hit him in the right shoulder and spun him slightly. He fought through the pain, ignoring it (or at least telling himself to) and shoved the throttle all the way back up. The motor roared and instead of holding the steering wheel straight, Keo spun it right until the boat turned away from the swarm of men and he was arcing in a wide U-turn.

Water churned under him and he ducked just as another shot
zipped
over his head, right where he had been standing a brief half-second ago. The boat was swinging around in a wide circle—too wide—and he was holding on for dear life. There was a solid
thunk!
as he broadsided one of the buoys, warning him that he was getting too close to the shallower parts of the channel.

He waited for the sniper to shoot again, but the man either didn’t have a bead on him or—

Crack!
Another round
buzzed
past his head just as the boat completed its U-turn, coming dangerously close to ramming into the other side of the channel. He righted the vessel, spinning the wheel back left as the sixteen-footer fought against the surface while tearing up the lake, back in the direction he had come moments ago.

He expected to hear the
pop-pop-pop
of automatic gunfire as the men from the Jeep opened up on him, but to his surprise, they didn’t. Not that he spent more than a few seconds thinking about it. He remained kneeling, steering with one hand, hoping something didn’t pop up in front of him and take him out in a collision.

Five seconds…ten seconds…

He had put enough distance between him and the shooter that Keo felt safe enough to stand up. A good thing, too, because he had swerved dangerously too close to the left shore in the last few seconds and had to quickly right the boat again. He slashed underneath the bridge a second time and finally burst back into the wider section of Beaufont Lake.

Then, and only then, did he let himself glance over his shoulder back into the channel.

Silhouetted figures, like twigs in the distance, were scrambling around on land. If the sniper was among them, Keo couldn’t tell. Not that he had seen the man during the whole ordeal. But he had to be somewhere in the weeds, close enough to the water that he could see everything in the channel. He knew for a fact the gunshots had all come from ground level. If the guy had been higher up—positioned on one of those cranes, for instance—Keo would have been a dead man.

The
drip-drip
of blood on the console reminded him he hadn’t made it out of the channel completely unscathed. The bullet had clipped his right shoulder, taking a quarter inch of flesh for its trouble. He was bleeding, but it looked worse than it really was. A dripping wound was better than a pouring one.

He didn’t stop the boat until he had gone for a few more minutes. Keo opened the compartment under the console and fished out the first aid kit. It was a dirty white box, but the contents were clean the last time he checked. He rolled up the sleeve and disinfected the wound, then wrapped it up with gauze and taped it into place. The pain was slight and nothing he couldn’t handle. After surviving all those months in the woods with a pair of holes in him, this was more of an inconvenience.