The Ashes of Pompeii (Purge of Babylon, Book 5) (44 page)

The shooter had the right height for the kid Dwayne, but it was stretching it to think a twelve-year-old had the tactical ability he was witnessing now. No, that was a full-grown man out there who had just moved behind cover as the invaders returned fire on him.

Keo would have preferred to stay out of it, let the whole group pass him by before he made his way to his own exit point. That, unfortunately, was on the other side of the open clearing. The only other way to get to the yacht was to go around the power station using the western cliff, then circle over to the north side.

He would have liked to use the more direct approach because it was much, much faster, but as he observed the men in black starting to diverge toward the north and at the lone defender, his choices became very limited.

Remember when you were on your way to Gillian at Santa Marie Island?

Yeah. Live and learn, pal.

Keo ripped the NVD off and let it hang around his neck, then lifted the submachine gun and flicked the fire selector to full auto. He was more than a hundred meters from the closest assaulter when he stood up and unleashed all thirty rounds across the open field.

To his surprise, one of the men actually stumbled and fell to the ground, even though Keo had just fired randomly into the jagged line of attackers hoping to draw their attention away from the islander. They didn’t hear his gunshots with the attached suppressor, but they either saw one of their own going down or they recognized someone was shooting at them from behind. Half of them turned around, night-vision goggles seeking him out in the darkness.

Keo spun and ran back into the tree line as they opened up on him, the loud clatter of a dozen or so assault rifles firing at the same time crackling across the air. They were armed with M4s and firing on three-round bursts. Unlike the carbines the islanders were using, the soldiers’ weapons hadn’t been converted to full-auto, it seemed. The difference between having a pair of Rangers on hand who knew their guns…and not, he guessed.

The problem was that those M4s, fully auto or not, still had the long-distance shooting ability that his MP5SD didn’t. Fortunately for him, he was moving before they started shooting, though that didn’t stop bullets from slamming into trees and snapping branches and kicking at the ground around him as he dived the last few meters into the sanctuary of the woods.

Daebak!

He scrambled to his feet, turned right, and ran as hard as he could. The air was filled with
buzzing
and gunfire, branches being reduced to splints all around him. Either they knew the direction he was taking or they were shooting at everything. Not that it mattered. He was still in one piece with no extra holes in him, which was good enough.

He didn’t slow down until he could hear the lapping of the lake against the rocks at the bottom of the western cliff. Cool air floated through the trees and he stopped to catch his breath, then slipped the night-vision goggles back on. Running through a sea of trees with something blocking your vision, even if it gave you artificial night vision, wasn’t a good idea. He had learned that the hard way outside of Caracas a few years back—

BOOM!

Keo turned back around. He knew instinctively the explosion had come from the hotel even before he glimpsed the gray-white plume of smoke rising lazily into the air. It sounded like a grenade.

This night just keeps getting better and better. Now aren’t you glad you stayed?

So the bad guys had grenades, too. He guessed he shouldn’t have been surprised. They had blown up the brick wall around the shack with something pretty strong. Maybe C4 or Semtex. Probably C4, since he was on American soil. Uncle Sam’s boys in uniform hoarded those things in bunches.

The rattle of gunfire had picked up again, but this time not directed at him, thank God. He listened and judged their distance.

The hotel.

That was a bad sign, because Lara and the others were at the hotel. Or would have to go through it in order to reach their exit point as fast as possible. So he was right. More soldiers had come out of the shack before he even got there. He knew the sound of a ferocious firefight when he heard one, and he was listening to that right now.

He turned around and pushed north, even as the fight back at the hotel continued, the gunfire crashing like rolling thunder from one side of the island to the other. It was much louder than it really should have been, given the distance.

Beaufont Lake grew in volume to his left, but it wasn’t enough to replace the clatter of another running gunfight ahead of him along the northern side. That would be where the
Trident
was waiting. How long before Blaine decided to take off? That would probably depend on how much fire he was taking. With his luck—

His right ear
clicked
and he heard someone screaming through the comm, “We’re pinned!”
Lara.
“Blaine, take off now!”

Oh, hell no.

“What?” Blaine shouted back. “We’re not leaving without you! Get over here!”

Good call. Just wait a little longer until I get there, Blaine ol’ buddy.

“We’re not going to make it!” Lara said.

“Then we’ll come back to you!” Blaine said.

“Don’t be stupid!”

No, Blaine. Be stupid. Be really stupid.

He picked up his pace just in case tonight was the night Blaine decided to start being smart.

“Lara!” Blaine shouted.

“That’s an order, Blaine!” Lara said, most of her words drowned out by gunfire on her end. “Move your ass now, or I’m sending Danny over there to kick it!”

“Yeah, what she said!” Danny chimed in.

Then Carly said something before another
BOOM!
cut her off.

Keo stopped moving and glanced back toward the hotel. Another plume of smoke was rising into the air, wisps of it like a dragon’s breath.

Well, that’s not good.

He gripped the MP5SD and looked north, then east. The
Trident
was north. If he didn’t get there soon, Blaine was going to obey Lara’s orders and take off without him onboard. But Lara and Danny were pinned in the hotel. The bad guys also had grenades. They had made use of it twice now. What kind of chance did they have against that kind of firepower? What kind of chance did
he
have?

He looked north again.

I’m the dumbest man alive.

He sighed and took a step back toward the hotel, but he hadn’t completely stepped out of the tree lines when a new round of gunfire ripped across the air nearby. He dropped to the ground reflexively, expecting the trees around him to be sliced in half by the rapid
brap-brap-brap
of a machine gun blasting away.

The
Trident.

Danny had brought the M240 with him and it was now perched along the rails of the yacht, with either Blaine or one of the islanders behind it firing away. He was trying to pinpoint the location of the machine-gun fire when it started to get louder.

Oh, for the love of God.

Keo remained pressed against the cold ground, stretching out the MP5SD in front of him, when he heard the heavy
crunching
of combat boots tramping grass with wild abandon as they came toward him. They were shooting as they ran, the
zing-zing-zing!
of bullets stripping away leaves and branches as they attempted to hit—

The yacht, its stark white color like a metallic beast swinging around the curvature of the island. He glimpsed the staccato effect of the M240 firing away from the upper deck railing, the light show blinking in and out as the boat moved across the row of trees between him and the cliff. Keo imagined the stream of empty brass casings falling into the ocean as the MG razed the column of woods as it passed.

Two men, both clad in black, burst through a pair of trees in front of him. They were somehow moving while crouched and trying to get a shot on the
Trident
’s machine gunner through the trees. They were ten meters away and closing in when Keo dropped both of them with a squeeze of the trigger. Rifles clattered to the ground just before a third man, out of breath, slid to a stop at the sight of his dead comrades.

Keo shot him twice in the chest, then scanned the woods, waiting for more pursuers.

The yacht had continued on behind him, its weapon still firing nonstop into a section of the woods in front of Keo. He stayed low against the ground as 7.62mm rounds, coming at 700 to 900 rounds per minute (give or take), sheared the trees around him like axes chopping down branches and reducing bark into clouds that stung his eyes.

Keo didn’t move his head for fear of getting it shot off. He didn’t breathe or move at all until the
brap-brap-brap
finally faded and a large branch
plopped
down in front of him. The smell of burnt wood filled his nostrils, and he had to switch to breathing through his mouth.

Only then did he allow himself to hop back up to his feet.

He glanced back and saw the white of the
Trident
fading through the trees. Keo ran after it, moving closer toward the edge as he went, but not so close that he’d run right off the cliff with one false move. He could already feel the cool swirls from the lake brushing against his face as he neared the end of the woods.

There. The yacht, like a white missile, gliding across the calm lake water and getting smaller as it went. The damn thing was picking up speed and it wasn’t going to stop for him. Nosirree. He thought about shouting after it, maybe tell it to
Get the hell back here,
but decided that probably wasn’t going to work. The boat was too far away and besides, shouting might bring more men in black uniforms after him.

Not daebak. This is definitely not daebak.

He headed back to where he had left the three bodies. He slung his MP5SD and snatched up one of the M4s, knowing the magazine was almost empty by how light the rifle was. He searched the bodies and found two spares, pocketing what he could. You could never have too many bullets, especially on a night like this. He was about to swap in a full mag when—

“Hey!” a voice shouted from behind him.

A man. It didn’t sound familiar, but it was close.

Keo stiffened, kept his back to the man, and didn’t move. Unfortunately for him, he was still holding the rifle at hip level.

“Terry?” the man asked.

The
crunch crunch
of boots on grass as the man neared. The name was clearly accompanied by a question, so the guy wasn’t certain who Keo was. Then again, he was surrounded by shadows and trees. In here, the moonlight picked and chose what it wanted to reveal, and at this very moment he was standing in one of those patches of darkness and wearing black.

“Yeah, what?” Keo said, keeping his voice as level as possible. He just hoped “Terry” didn’t have a deep voice. Or a feminine one. Hell, for all he knew, “Terry” could have been a girl.

But apparently not, because the guy said, “Where is everyone?” and the
crunch crunch
of grass got louder as the man got closer.

“I don’t know,” Keo said, spinning around.

He fired the carbine without lifting it first, just in case the guy had a rifle pointed at him. The first three-round burst knocked a man in a black uniform to the ground…and revealed
four more
standing about twenty meters behind him.

Keo pulled the trigger again but only got a
click!

He turned and ran as all four opened fire at the same time.

*

He wasn’t sure
how long he’d been running, but sometime between either the third or fourth time he bent down to keep his head from getting blown off, he collided with a large tree that popped out of nowhere. Well, that wasn’t true. The tree was always there, but he hadn’t seen it because he was essentially running blind through the woods, too afraid to put on the night-vision goggles for fear of limiting what little vision he had.

Southeast.

That was all he knew; he was heading back toward the beach.

Then the tree said “Hi” and Keo bounced off it, but the impact knocked the radio loose from his hip and it went flying. He thought about trying to find it—for a brief nanosecond, anyway—but when the
crack!
of rifles sounded behind him, he decided he didn’t really need it and kept running instead.

With the radio now lying in some bushes behind him, Keo ripped out the earbud and throat mic and tossed them. He had also dropped the M4 to further lighten his load, because he needed the extra speed more than he needed firepower at the moment.

The four chasing him were fast and relentless, and they apparently had plenty of ammo, because they kept shooting. A couple of rounds came dangerously close to detaching his head from his shoulders, but he credited that more to dumb luck than skill. It was hard enough hitting a running man, but it was next to impossible to hit him while you were running, too.

He did manage to lengthen his lead by turning suddenly left, which threw them off a bit. About half a minute later, he righted his direction until he was running toward the beach again.