The Spears of Laconia (Purge of Babylon, Book 7) (47 page)

As she unfurled, she found herself with a perfect vantage point to see Nate as he was hopping over another part of the counter in some kind of parkour move she had only seen in the movies. She wasn’t prepared for that. She always knew Nate was athletic and in excellent shape, but she didn’t know he could do
that.

Nate landed facefirst, somehow managing to stick out his hands in time before impact, but his rifle wasn’t so lucky, and it clattered loudly as it struck the floor and skidded away. He scrambled to get as far under the countertop as he could manage as glass shards and nails slammed into the wall and fell around them. She thought he had the right idea and scooted forward to be next to him.

He glanced over as the last few items inside the hardware store settled around them, and grinned. She returned it, but their moment was short-lived because gunshots were still ringing out from the street as well as above them, where Danny was still perched—which meant the truck crashing into the building hadn’t brought down the roof.

Thank you, Jesus.

She scrambled up to her knees and looked over the debris-strewn counter. The red technical was buried halfway into the building, tossing shelves and all the abandoned tools on them everywhere. The driver had finally taken his foot off the gas and was nowhere to be found.

“Danny?” Nate said.

She craned her neck as two shots
boomed
above them, as if on cue.

“Still kicking,” she said, and got up and ran back through the store, skirting around the vehicle that had claimed a large piece of the interior. The
crunch-crunch
of objects under her boots and from behind her sounded as Nate followed on her heels.

There wasn’t anything left of the storefront, a fact that occurred to her just as she slid to a stop, about the same time a bullet
buzzed!
past her head and
pinged!
off the tailgate of the truck behind her. She was standing out in the open with absolutely nothing to hide behind, like an idiot, and Gaby would have dived to the floor for cover if it weren’t covered with sharp chunks of brick and mortar and an ungodly amount of broken glass.

Instead, she turned around as—
ping!—
another bullet nearly took her head off, but hit and ricocheted off the truck a second time instead.

Pop-pop!
from the other side of the truck as Nate opened fire into the street.

She smiled to herself
(He’s covering my retreat. God, I think I love this man.)
as she ran back to the driver-side door and opened it. A body fell through and slumped on the floor at her feet, but she ignored it and moved behind the broken window. On the other side, Nate had slowed his shots now that she was safe.

She spied a figure moving behind the blue technical still parked in the middle of the street. There were bullet holes in the front windshield, either Danny’s or Nate’s doing, but no signs of the driver. The figure stuck its head out from the back bumper. It was the woman Gaby had seen earlier, and she was lining up a shot at Nate.

Gaby fired twice in the woman’s direction, both rounds hitting the side of the truck, one smashing the back lights. It was enough to drive the woman behind cover before she could pull her own trigger.

The
crunk!
of a car door opening as Nate followed her example on the other side of the useless vehicle. She looked across the bloody front seats as he slapped a fresh magazine into his M4.

“You okay?” she asked.

He glanced over. “Yeah. You?”

“One piece, thanks to you.”

“Just don’t let it happen again.”

She smiled. “I’ll do what I can.”

When she looked back, the street outside had grown eerily quiet, though she might have heard faded scratching from above her. Danny, maybe moving around for a better shot. He had the high ground because Danny was smart and this was what he did. She couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to have to face him
and
Will at the same time.

She focused out the smashed front wall of the hardware store and concentrated on the two bodies next to the blue truck—one was on the sidewalk; the other lay almost perfectly in the middle of the two-lane road. Two bodies that she could see, but more that she couldn’t. She knew for a fact there was one body in the back of the red truck she was hiding behind at the moment, and another one at her feet.

Two plus two made four collaborators accounted for.

Then there was the blue truck’s driver and the dead machine gunner in the back.

Two plus four made six.

“Take out the machine gunners first,”
Danny had said this morning.
“Those bad boys are going to chew us up and spit us out in little vomit chunks if we let them get going.”

So she had waited for Danny to take out his man before she targeted hers while Nate sprayed the street to sow confusion. One of those bodies on the streets might have been his—not that any of them were going to be taking a tally after this.

That left them with three live bodies to account for, including the woman. Unless the passenger of the blue technical was already dead and somewhere on the floor of the vehicle. Then that would leave two. Two or three.

She had to admit, she liked those odds.

Gaby watched and waited. What were the remaining two (or three) going to do now? If they were smart, they’d stay right where they were and radio for backup. Which meant…

She looked into the truck and saw the two-way, covered in blood, on the front passenger seat. She waited for it to squawk, for the soldiers outside to radio for help, because there
had
to be other collaborators outside Starch at this moment, right? These nine couldn’t possibly be all there were. Maybe—

A flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye, and she turned around in time to see a figure—a man—leaping up the back of the blue truck. He was going for the machine gun. That was the plan, anyway, but the man hadn’t finished throwing his other leg over the tailgate before a shot rang out and he stopped his forward momentum. A second later, he collapsed and disappeared over the back.

“So much for that idea,” Nate said. “One left?”

“Maybe two.”

“You saw two?”

“No, there might be two, but definitely one more. The woman.”

“What’s she going to do now?”

“The smart thing would be to call for help.” Gaby glanced back at the silent radio again.

“You’re assuming they’re sm—” Nate started to say, but he ended up shouting “Shit!” instead as two figures made a run for it on the street.

She stepped sideways, away from the door, and tracked them. She ended up filling her optic with the back of the woman, and fired—and
missed again!
Her bullet went high, and the woman ducked and turned left—toward the mouth of an alley.

Gaby took her time and fired a second bullet and saw the woman spin in mid-stride.

Gotcha!

Next to her, Nate was shooting, his bullets raking the wall behind the woman, who was still moving despite her wound. A second later the figure disappeared from the sidewalk.

Or not,
she thought when there was a single
crack!
from above them, and the man who had taken off at the same time as the woman stumbled and dropped to the opposite sidewalk, about eighty yards up the street.

“Gaby!” Danny shouted from above them. “Secure Speed Racer!”

Gaby raced out of the building. Nate, as always, was right behind her.

She jogged up the street, waiting for the man to make a move, but he never did. He must have known he wouldn’t have gotten far even if he managed to pick himself up. Gaby peeked at the alleyway where the woman had disappeared just as she ran past it. Splashes of blood on the sidewalk, but no signs of the collaborator.

Pieces of paper, the objects she had seen falling out of the plane earlier, reflected back the sunlight around her, littering the streets, but she didn’t have time to stop and pick one up.

“I got the alley!” Nate shouted behind her.

She continued on toward the wounded soldier alone.

He was lying on the pavement on his back, clutching his right leg. Danny’s shot had gone through his thigh and the collaborator was grimacing in pain. His teeth were clenched, and Gaby wasn’t sure if he was going to curse her or scream for help when she finally reached him. A pool of blood gleamed under him.

“Fancy meeting you here, beautiful,” the man said. “I should have known it’d be you and your little friends running around out here causing trouble again.”

Mason.

Of course he was still alive. The man really was like a cockroach, showing up whenever they least expected him.

“You’re looking well,” he said as she picked up his rifle lying a few feet away. He held his hands up in surrender as she pulled his handgun out of its holster and stepped back.

“Clear!” she shouted.

She took a moment to scan the streets. There was no way someone within miles of them hadn’t heard those back-and-forth volleys. If there were more collaborators around, they would be here within minutes. The fact that they hadn’t shown up yet put her slightly at ease. Maybe Mercer’s attacks had spread them out thinner than she had imagined.

Footsteps behind her, followed by Nate’s voice. “The woman’s gone. You got her good, though. She bled all the way to the back of the alley where she went over a fence.”

“I guess I should have gone left instead of right, huh?” Mason said.

“Guess so,” Nate said. Then, recognizing the man, “Sonofabitch. You again.”

“I’m like Steven Seagal. Hard to kill, even though I’ve been marked for death, under sieged, and have stood on deadly ground many a times before. Get it?”

“Get what?”

“Never mind,” Mason sighed.

More footsteps behind her, then Danny’s voice: “How was my shot?”

“True,” she said.

“That’s how I likes ’em. The other bird?”

“Flew the coop,” Nate said.

“Well, that’s disappointing. I guess it’s true what they say: You want someone dead, you gotta shoot them yourself.”

“What do we do with him?” Gaby asked.

“Good question,” Mason said.

“Shut up.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Blue truck’s still good,” Danny said. “We’ll grab Doogie Howser, M.D. here and boogie before more of his friends show up. Nate, salvage what you can.”

Gaby hadn’t looked away from Mason. A part of her thought he might vanish if she turned away for even a second. He had struggled to sit up and was still clutching his leg.

“Why?” Gaby asked.

“Why what?” Mason said.

“I wasn’t talking to you.” She looked back at Danny. “Why are we wasting our time dragging this piece of trash along with us?”

“Hey, come on now, no need for that kind of language,” Mason said.

“Shut the hell up,” she said, and pointed her rifle at him.

He stared defiantly back at her. She could almost believe he wasn’t frightened, but she knew better. He was putting on a good front, but men like Mason didn’t want to die.

“Because he’s still got friends out there,” Danny said. “What are the chances we’re going to get around all of them? Unlikely, and you know how optimistic I can be. But I bet our new friend here’s willing to point out all the ambush spots so we can go around them.”

“And why would I do that?” Mason asked.

“Because if we get caught, you’re going to be the first to go. And I ain’t talkin’ about the bathroom, short stuff. You
comprehende
my bad
Spanishe?
”

Mason grinned widely. “Well, you do make a persuasive argument.”

“See? We’re practically BFFs. That’s how I am. I live and let live. There’s even a word for that.”

“Magnanimous?” Mason said.

“No thanks, I just ate.”

Gaby sighed. She didn’t like it. The thought of having to spend another minute around Mason made her queasy, but Danny was right. They needed to get home, which meant making their way back to Port Arthur. There was a lot of highway between them, and with Mercer out there, more dangerous than when they had first traveled the same miles.

Her eyes drifted to the road around them, at the white pieces of paper strewn about, as if someone had dumped their office trash out of a second-floor window. “Danny. The plane. They were dropping paper.”

Danny snatched one up. “You guys littering now?” he asked Mason.

“Not us,” Mason said.

There were large, blocky capital letters on the paper in Danny’s hand, but she couldn’t make out the words over his shoulder.

“What’s it say?” she asked.

He skimmed it, then handed it to her. It looked like some kind of advertising flyer, about half the size of the paper she was used to back in school. The letters were clearly generated by a printer, and they read:

JOIN THE FIGHT TO TAKE BACK TEXAS

WAR IS HERE PICK A SIDE

THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING

She returned her gaze to Mason, still sitting on the pavement, either too hurt to try to get up or too afraid of being shot.

“Mercer,” she said.

“Would be my guess,” the man nodded.

“Looks like we got ourselves a regular Hatfields and McCoys situation,” Danny said. “Hide the relatives and pass the ammo. Me personally, I like to stay out of other people’s civil wars.” He looked back at Mason. “So the question of the moment is, how many more of your pals are out there beyond the town limits?”

“This is it,” Mason said.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Believe what you want.” He nodded at the flyer in Gaby’s hand. “We got bigger problems right now. They sent us back here just to see what happened to their friends.”

“Sent you?” Gaby said. “You used to be in charge of a whole town.”

Mason sighed almost wistfully. “Things change, blondie. We’re not in Louisiana anymore. New job, new position. That whole Song Island fiasco messed up my cred with the bosses. I guess you could say I’m back in the mail room.”

“So we won’t run into more of you out there?” Danny asked.

“I didn’t say that. The towns may be on lockdown, but the guys in charge aren’t just going to sit back and wait. It’s the Wild West out there—multiple kill teams running around shooting each other. Theirs and ours. Lucky for you, I know where our guys will be. I know their movements.”