The Ashes of Pompeii (Purge of Babylon, Book 5) (2 page)

Have bullets, will make mess.

In some ways, his life now wasn’t all that different than it was a year ago. These days, though, people weren’t paying him a lot of money to risk his hide. These days, he was voluntarily risking his precious limbs for…what again? A bunch of people he didn’t really know? Sure, he respected them, but was that really worth dying for?

Then again, maybe he had just finally developed something approaching a conscience.

Say it ain’t so.

The big guy with the melon for a head was lying half-on and half-off the floor of the upper deck. Or what was left of the head, anyway. The shotgun in Keo’s hands had removed most of the top portion, leaving behind something that looked suspiciously like a badly carved jack-o’-lantern. Clumps of blood and brains were spilled across the floorboards on the other side of the spiral stairwell that connected the upper and the main deck directly below.

There had been footsteps pounding up those same stairs a few seconds ago, but they quickly stopped after Melon Head took the buckshot to the side of the face. The hard chargers decided to retreat after that, then went very quiet soon after. They were tiptoeing around down there, most likely getting ready for an assault on his position. So they weren’t complete idiots, after all. Too bad. He liked dealing with amateurs.

Keo was crouched in the semidarkness of the
Trident
, the boat continuing to move even with the anchor lowered. He had turned off the whisper quiet engine at the same time, allowing him to hear everything around and underneath him, including his own slightly racing heartbeat.

Jesus, calm down. What is this, your first time in a firefight?

He leaned back from the turn in the hallway that connected the bulk of the deck’s floor with the bridge behind him. Keo spent a few seconds slowing down his breathing while keeping one ear open for noises.

Come on, boys, let’s not keep daddy waiting. He’s getting antsy.

Song Island was directly behind him, but Keo hadn’t had the opportunity to check how far he still was from the beach before he dropped the anchor to keep the boat from running aground by accident. They were close, he could tell that from the halo of lights visible on the other side of the bridge’s curving windshield, the swath of intense brightness reaching all the way across the room and into the hallway.

There was no doubt Lara and the others would have heard the shooting by now. Even muffled by the walls around him, there was no mistaking a shotgun blast against the quiet night. Just to make sure, though, Keo leaned out from the corner and fired another shot at the wall across the deck, squinting involuntarily at the thunderous
boom!

There. They’d have to be deaf not to hear that.

He recalled his last conversation with Lara (a.k.a. kid leader), just before he went for a swim (again) in the cold lake water:

“Don’t shoot unless you have to,”
she had said.

“Trust me,”
he had replied,
“if you hear shooting on the boat, there’s a very damn good reason for it.”

He didn’t know why, but Keo trusted her. She had proven to be a tough customer with some big brass ones. That was hard to find in a woman, but especially the civilian variety. He didn’t even mind that she had manipulated him into helping with the island’s defense the last few days. Now that was smooth. Keo was a shoot-first-and-what-was-the-question type of guy, but he’d always had a lot of grudging respect for people who could think two, three steps ahead and give orders with lives at stake (usually his).

He pressed his back against the wall and tried to pick up any slight vibrations that could signal an incoming attack.

Nothing. A big fat zero. Nada. Zilch.

That should have comforted him, but instead it just made him more paranoid.

Come on, boys, what are you waiting for? An engraved invitation?

To keep his mind off what may or may not be happening out there right now, Keo spent a few seconds taking inventory.

He counted four victims, but only three bodies. There were the two in the bridge—the captain (or the guy wearing a captain’s hat, anyway), his first mate, and a third man who had come up the stairs. And Melon Head made three stiffs. The captain was kneecapped and whimpering softly in one of the bridge’s corners. Alive, but whipped. Just the way Keo liked them.

That was four down and an unknown number still to go. The vanishing footsteps he had heard earlier were proof of that. There was also someone named Rod, a sniper who had been watching the island when the boat was on approach earlier tonight. He was likely on a high perch—possibly on top of Keo right this moment, or maybe somewhere along the side rails. Someplace high to shoot from.

Counting Rod, there were at least two more still running around out there. His one big advantage was that they were going to have to come to him if they wanted to get the
Trident
moving again. That meant retaking the controls on the bridge.

Keo waited for ten more seconds.

Then ten became twenty…

…and still no attack.

At thirty, he got up and moved, slightly bent over at the waist just in case (you could never be too careful when there were assholes running around with loaded guns), making a beeline back to the bridge. The assault rifle and submachine gun
thumping
against his back made more noise than he would have liked; the eerie quiet made them sound like firecrackers, and he wished he had tightened their straps before moving.

Live and learn, pal. Live and learn.

He slipped back inside the bridge and closed the door, then locked it. Not that he expected to keep out a half dozen determined assaulters, but it would give him time to prepare a proper defense. Which, in this case, meant waiting with the shotgun for the first target to appear so he could pull the trigger. Keo was a simple guy that way.

The “captain” was still in the corner, where Keo had left him earlier. The man had taken off his shirt (it turned out he had an undershirt beneath, though it, too, was now stained with blood) and wrapped it over his right kneecap, trying desperately to stop the bleeding. Keo couldn’t tell if the man was more freaked out by his injury, the pain, or the inability to stop blood from dripping through his makeshift tourniquet.

Or it could have been the sight of his first mate’s body, sitting on the floor with his back against the long console that covered nearly the entire front half of the room. The man, like Melon Head outside, was missing most of his noggin, with pieces of it clinging to the curving glass windshield behind him. It was a hell of a mess, made more surreal against the wash of the island’s LED and multicolored lights from the boat’s computer screens and buttons. The fragments of a destroyed handheld radio were sprinkled around the body. Too bad, because Keo would have liked to use it to contact the island.

If wishes were assholes…

Bottom line, he was cut off. Or, at least, until either the remains of the boat’s crew got their act together and assaulted the bridge or Lara decided to do something from her end. Frankly, he hated the idea of waiting for one of them to do something already. Patience had never been his strongest trait.

The captain flinched even before Keo got close enough to do anything to him. “Don’t kill me!”

Keo put a finger to his lips, and the man clenched his mouth shut. He picked up the white captain’s hat from the floor and put it back on the man’s damp head, then gave him a slight tap on the cheek.

“That’s a good boy,” Keo said.

“Don’t kill me,”
the captain mouthed.

“Now why would I do a thing like that? You’ve been so cooperative.”

The captain glanced down at his bleeding leg.

“Oh sure, that,” Keo said. “You’re not the type to hold a grudge, are you?”

The captain looked uncertain about answering, so he didn’t.

“Let’s put that behind us and move on,” Keo said. “Start with this: How many of you are on the boat?”

The man stared back at him, sweat dripping down his forehead despite the cooling mid-October weather. It was still hot in the day, but at night Louisiana dipped to fifty and sometimes hit the forties. Right now Keo felt a slight chill; then again, he had been submerged in the lake not all that long ago, so that probably factored into it.

“Numbers,” Keo said when the man didn’t answer fast enough. “I need numbers,
el capitan
. How many are on the boat with you?”

The captain seemed to be seriously brooding over the question. It wouldn’t have surprised Keo if the man thought his life might be at stake, depending on his answer. He was a man in his late thirties and wore a beard that was flecked with white strays, and he actually did look like a ship’s captain. The only thing missing was a pressed white uniform like the one worn by that guy from
The Love Boat.

“Come on, spit it out,” Keo said. “You don’t know, or you don’t want to tell me?”

“Sev—eight,” the captain finally said.

“Sev-eight? I must have been absent from Mrs. Krapthorpe’s math class that day. How many is sev-eight again?”

The captain swallowed. “Seven.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“I think you’re lying.”

Keo pushed the barrel of the shotgun against the man’s wounded leg. The captain let out what sounded like a low-pitched squeal. Keo didn’t know what to make of that noise, but it seemed to be working so he added more pressure.

“Seven or eight?” Keo said. “Think carefully.”

“Eight,” the captain said, almost shouting the word out.

Keo lessened the pressure slightly. “Rod the sniper is one.”

“Yes…”

“Where is he?”

The captain’s eyes shifted up to the ceiling.

“Still?” Keo said.

A shrug and a look of uncertainty.

“And the others?” Keo asked.

“Below.”

“Doing what?”

“Guard—”

Keo heard a soft
tap!
and glanced up, reaching forward and clamping one hand over the captain’s mouth at the same time.

Tap…tap…

It was coming from the roof.

Rod, the sniper.

Keo pulled his hand away from the captain and took two, then three quick steps toward the middle of the bridge. He leaned the shotgun against the nearest wall and unslung the MP5SD. He traced the sound as it moved from the back of the roof toward the front. Slowly, carefully, because Rod the sniper was that kind of a guy.

A second later, an elongated shadow draped over the windshield. It was in the shape of
a human head.

Keo fired into the ceiling, stitching it from west to east, then north to south until he had emptied half of the magazine. The only noise was the cyclical whine of the German weapon’s parts as it unleashed a series of 9mm rounds. The
clink-clink-clink
of bullet casings flicking and bouncing off the floor was louder than the actual gunshots themselves, thanks to the built-in suppressor at the end of the barrel.

There was a soft
thud
, followed by a pair of arms dangling out the windshield where the glass met the roof of the bridge. Blood dripped from the fingers and ran in thin rivulets along the smooth surface all the way to the bottom.

Five down, three to go.

Keo moved quickly to the door and pressed up against it. He stopped breathing entirely and listened, flattening his hands against the wall to search for any hints of vibrations that would signal the impending attack he had been waiting for.

To his surprise, he continued to hear nothing and felt nothing. Either these guys were incredibly patient, or they weren’t willing to risk their necks to regain control of the bridge. Frankly, Keo didn’t know whether to be impressed by their sense of self-preservation or irritated by it.

He looked over at the captain, who was staring back across the room at him. The man’s face was slicked with a new coat of sweat. That was either all fear, or the man was just a perspiration machine.

“Three to go,” Keo said.

The captain’s lips trembled slightly, as if he wanted to say something but was too afraid to.

“Catfish got your tongue?”

He got a confused reaction that time.

Keo nodded at the largest chunk of the destroyed two-way radio on the floor next to the first mate’s body. “Got another one of those?”

The captain followed Keo’s glance, then looked back at him. The man gave Keo a look that convinced him the guy wasn’t sure if he should cooperate. Or maybe he was wondering what was in it for him.

Keo decided to help him out and drew the revolver from his waistband, cocking the hammer back. The loud
click!
seemed to echo through the large room.

The captain’s entire body went rigid.

“I think that’s a yes,” Keo said. “But you don’t want to tell me where I can find it. Now, normally I’d make you show me how to use the boat’s radio, but that console looks awfully complicated, and I’m just not a very techie sort of guy. So…where’s the backup radio?”

“Under the console,” the captain said.

“See? That wasn’t so hard.”

Keo moved back across the room, maneuvering around the still-wet glistening pools of the first mate’s blood and brass casings that were now everywhere, and slid back a compartment under the large console that controlled every facet of the yacht. Inside, he found a first aid kit, supplies, and, near the back, another two-way portable radio. He fished it out and spent a few seconds trying to recall the frequency the islanders were using.

Keo turned the dial and pressed the transmit lever. “Lara, come in.”

Five seconds of silence went by.

Then ten…

Had he tuned into the right channel? The island was well within the radio’s reach, so that couldn’t have been it. Of course, if they didn’t recognize his voice, they might not respond. Maybe they were wondering who the hell had just broken into their lines of communication—

“Keo,” a voice finally said through the radio.
Lara.
“You’re still alive.”

“Surprised?” Keo said.

“Just worried. What’s going on over there? What’s your situation? We heard shooting. Was that you?”