The Gates of Byzantium (Purge of Babylon, Book 2) (77 page)

Oh, Danny…

She heard screaming from her floor and turned, saw Elise looking at her, large eyes focused on Lara’s right arm. The girl had a horrified look on her face, and it was all Lara could do to smile at her and fumble her way over to the eight-year-old, kneel in front of her, and take her head in her hands. Elise’s eyes darted to the blood trickling to the floor from Lara’s arm.

“I’m all right,” Lara said, as gently and forcefully as she could manage. “I’m all right. It’s just a scratch. See? I’m fine, sweetheart.”

Her head snapped up when she heard gunfire outside, very close to the Tower. Almost right
next
to the Tower. She knew immediately someone was shooting at the door on the first floor.

Will. Where the hell are you?

“Sarah!” Lara screamed.

Lara waited for an answer from Sarah, but didn’t get one.

She looked back at Elise one last time, smiled, kissed the girl on the forehead, then hurried over to the open door. She looked down and saw Sarah standing in front of the thick double door, the Remington shotgun in her hands.

“Sarah,” Lara called down.

Sarah glanced up, wide-eyed. “Is everyone okay up there? Jenny…?”

“Everyone’s fine, Jenny’s fine.”

“You’re bleeding!”

“It’s just a flesh wound.”
I hope.

They had stopped shooting at the door, probably after realizing it wasn’t going to buckle. She heard gunfire from farther away instead. Not as far as the beach, but maybe between the beach and the Tower.

Will.
Please let it be Will.

Lara unclipped the radio and pressed the transmit lever: “Will. Anyone. Are you out there? They’re attacking the Tower. Will?”

She didn’t get a response. Lara pressed the transmit lever again and was about to repeat herself when she realized it hadn’t made any sounds. Usually there was a squawk, a signal for her to start talking. Lara turned the radio over in her hand and saw two big holes in the back. Buckshot. It had cracked the radio’s shell and damaged whatever was inside.

“Lara,” Sarah said from below the door.

Lara looked back down at her. “What?”

“Listen.”

“Listen to what?”

“
That
.”

Lara stopped moving and listened.

Silence.

She didn’t hear another gunshot. Or voices. Or any sounds at all. It was perfectly quiet inside and outside the Tower.

It was suddenly silent all across the island.

“I think it’s over,” Sarah said.

God, please let it be over.

Lara looked up at the wooden floor above her. She thought she could almost smell the smoke and destruction drifting down from the top floor.

Danny…Gaby…

She rushed up the stairs, doing the best she could to pretend she wasn’t dripping blood with every step. She told herself they were minor cuts, remembering how badly Carly had been bleeding earlier today. Compared to that, this was a flesh wound.

She grabbed the door and pushed it open. Or tried to. It budged, but it didn’t fling open the way it was supposed to. She knew the door was unlocked, because it opened an inch for her, but that was it.

Lara braced herself against the metal step below, then put her entire body into the door. It finally moved, though grudgingly, and with a great effort she was able to throw the door open.

Her senses were immediately overwhelmed by thick, acrid smoke that stung her eyes and made her nostrils flare. She squeezed her mouth shut so she wouldn’t suck in the smoke and powdered concrete floating everywhere on the third floor.

The open night sky above her instantly came into view.

She had thought it looked bad from the second-floor window, but that hadn’t revealed the whole truth. She could see that a great big chunk of the ceiling was missing, along with most of the north side, where the explosion had originated. The floor was covered in debris, big stacks of concrete blocks and brick. The computer setup was buried, and tiny blocks with letters from the keyboard were scattered everywhere.

Gaby sat on the floor with her back against the wall. She looked dazed but alive, blood flowing down the side of her face from a big gash on her left temple. Her right cheek was pockmarked with superficial cuts, and Lara noticed, oddly, that the teenager wasn’t wearing her shirt, just her bra.

She looked down at Gaby’s lap, which was cradling Danny’s head. One entire side of Danny’s face was covered in blood, and his right arm was wrapped in some kind of sling made from a shirt. Gaby’s shirt.

Gaby somehow managed to smile across the smoke at Lara. “I don’t hear any more shooting. Does that mean we won?”

“I think so,” Lara said.

She climbed all the way up and stumbled over the pile in the middle of the room. She crouched next to Gaby and Danny.

“Your arm’s bleeding,” Gaby said, almost casually.

“I know. It’s just a scratch.”

“Lots of scratches.”

“Where else are you hurt?”

“What you see is what you get, doc.”

“Third-year medical student,” she smiled.

“Good enough for me. Check if Danny’s still alive. I can’t tell.”

Lara felt his pulse. It was weak, but it was still there. “He’s alive.”

“Good. He promised to teach me how to shoot, and I’m not letting him off this easy.”

Lara wiped as much of the blood from Danny’s face as she could before finding the source of his bleeding—a couple of gashes along his temple. Not life-threatening, though the amount of blood made it look much worse. He would scar, as they all would, but he wasn’t going anywhere just yet.

“You did this?” Lara asked, looking at the sling.

“Sucks, huh?”

“I’ve seen worse.”

“Yeah, where?”

“I dunno, let me think about it for a moment.”

Gaby chuckled, prompting Lara to smile.

She pulled aside Gaby’s shirt and peered at the wound underneath. There was a big piece of shrapnel buried near Danny’s shoulder blade. She would have to remove that as soon as she could, or Danny might lose the use of his arm completely by morning.

“What happened?” Lara asked. “I heard an explosion.”

“Some kind of grenade launcher,” Gaby said. “Blew up the ceiling. Well, blew up everything else, too, I guess. Danny must have seen the guy. He grabbed me and pushed me down to the floor and covered me with his body. Saved my life. It’s almost enough to make me forgive him for all the crappy jokes I’ve had to listen to for the last two days.”

“Sounds like Danny,” a voice said behind them.

Lara looked over at Will, climbing up through the door in the floor. He had his Remington slung over his back, and his left arm hung loosely at his side, a field tourniquet tied around it. There was blood on his arm and shirt.

“You’ve been shot,” she said.

She remembered how he had teased her about getting shot in Lancing. He had been through wars. He and Danny. And neither one of them had ever gotten shot. For a while, she had thought of them as invincible. That night in the Cleveland bank, the siege on Harold Campbell’s facility… They were always untouchable. Until tonight.

“It’s fine,” he said. “Take care of Danny and Gaby.”

She gave him a long look to see if he was lying to her. He wasn’t. “How are the others?”

“We stopped them at the beach. Bobby’s dead.” He sat down on the floor and leaned back against the wall across from them. “Maddie was shot.”

“Come here and let me take a look at that arm.”

“Only if you let me take a look at yours first,” he said.

“Get a room,” Gaby said, rolling her eyes.

WILL

A shot rang
out from behind them. Danny, firing from the Tower.

Will saw one of the spotlights on the incoming boats blink out of existence. Then another shot, and another light went out.

A third shot took out the final light.

The boats were close enough now that when Will looked through his night-vision binoculars, he could see four figures scrambling around on the darkened boat. He couldn’t tell if they were panicking or getting ready to land. They were heavily armed, he saw that much. Weapons swung around with their bodies.

He moved the binoculars over to his right and picked up four more men in another boat. The spotlights of the second boat were still shining, too bright, and made watching them difficult with the lights directly in his eyes.

Will heard another shot and looked back at the first boat just in time to see a man pitching off the side. The remaining three men were in full panic mode now, and suddenly he saw the man behind the steering wheel shove the throttle forward. The boat began pushing across the calm water at full speed. Will lost track of it for a moment before picking it up again, just in time to see a second man stumbled over the side of the boat, almost as if the wind had caught him by the shirt and jerked him free. He fell into the water and disappeared into the blackness.

Then they were suddenly there and Will dropped the binoculars, picked up the M4A1, and opened fire. His first shot hit the driver of the second boat in the chest, the bullet smashing through the clear screen guard. The man’s body jerked violently and he fell forward, his hand hitting the throttle. The boat took off, leaving the others behind.

Will pulled his eye back from the rifle’s sight to watch the boats coming. They were almost on top of them.

Thirty meters…

Twenty-five meters…

Blaine and Maddie took his cue and opened fire on the incoming boats. They were close enough now that Will could see bullets smashing into the sides and chopping off chunks of wood and fiberglass. The collaborators were firing back, but they were firing blind, trying in vain to gauge where the bullets were coming from.

Amateurs
.

Then the first boat hit the beach and kept coming.

For a moment, Will thought it would continue to rake its way across the beach and right into the woods, but it stopped five meters up the sand and its occupants (three left) jumped out. Will shot the first one just as he landed—a tall man with a mustache and a Dallas Cowboys cap. The man fell face-first into the sand.

The other two opened fire in Will’s direction. He calmly lowered himself to the ground as tree bark above him cracked and snapped loose. The AK-47 fire continued for a while, joining the other gunfire erupting all over the beach. Will saw one of the men clutch at his chest and go down.

Nice shot, Danny.

Will, still on his stomach, shot the third man in the side. The man stumbled but didn’t go down. Another shot from the Tower and the man collapsed.

Then the second boat hit the beach and this time it really did keep going. Will was about to pick up the Remington and run for his life when the boat finally stopped halfway up the beach and the three men inside scrambled out. Will heard a hellacious torrent of fire from his left (
Blaine)
firing on full-auto. He watched chunks of the boat’s side splinter and one of the men fall, try to get back up, then fall again. The remaining two returned fire into the woods in Blaine’s direction.

Will took the momentary distraction to sit up and shoot the closest man in the chest. The man fell, and as the third and last man turned toward him, Will shot him in the chest, too.

He heard intense gunfire from the right side of the beach and looked over, saw that the other two boats had made landfall and men were spilling out, kicking up sand as they scrambled forward, desperately trying to escape the beach. There were four in one boat and five in the other, and Will watched one of them stagger and fall as Maddie razed them from her hiding spot. In response, nearly all of the men turned in her direction and fired back.

Shit.

Will quickly switched the M4A1 to full-auto and unleashed a volley into the group of men. He caught one of them square in the chest, hit another one in the thigh, and dropped a third man with a lucky shot to the head.

They turned away from Maddie and toward him and sent their own fusillade his way, forcing him to snatch up the Remington and dart farther back into the woods. Behind him, the trees where he had been crouched were torn and reduced to green mist in the black night.

He was still moving through the woods, picking his way toward the cobblestone pathways to his left with the Remington in his hand, the M4A1 slung over his back, when he heard Lara’s voice, screaming into his right ear: “They’re here! They’re at the Tower!”

The Tower!

He reached for his PTT, but Blaine beat him to it: “Where?”

Will looked back toward the beach when a new round of gunfire drew his attention. He stopped, went back down into a crouch, and listened. He heard M4 rifle fire coming from his left, then responding AK-47 fire from his right, very close to him.

Blaine. Or Maddie. Engaging on the beach.

Will jumped the last few meters out of the woods and onto the cobblestone pathway. He didn’t expect them to be there, but they were.
Right in front of him.

There were three of them, two looking back toward the beach at the sudden massive exchange of fire. They were big men in boots and camouflaged hunting clothes. The man directly in front of Will, who had a look of total surprise on his face when he saw Will leaping out of the woods, was wearing an assault vest with a radio in one pouch.

The man’s eyes widened as far as Will had ever seen in his life and the guy lifted his AR-15. Will shot him first from almost point-blank range with the Remington. The distance between them was nonexistent, and Will didn’t even have to lift the shotgun to aim. The man’s body seemed to sink right into the stones under his boots, exposing his two comrades standing behind him.

The two men were turning, lifting their weapons, when Will racked the Remington and shot one, then the other.

He didn’t even have time to ponder the bloody mess smeared across the cobblestones before he heard a thunderous
boom!
from behind him.

Will knew instantly what that meant. He spun around just in time to see thick white smoke sprouting up from the Tower’s third floor like chaotic smoke signals, while brick and concrete tumbled down all around the building like hail.