The Bones of Valhalla (Purge of Babylon, Book 9) (21 page)

Outside the door, somewhere close by, the
pop-pop-pop
of automatic gunfire continued, and this time he was definitely certain it had crept closer toward his position.

Here we go again…

“
P
eters
, what do you see?”

“I got targets,” Peter answered through the radio. “Too many targets.”

“Don’t shoot unless you’re sure.”

“That’s the problem. I don’t think I can be sure.”

“Explain.”

“It’s the uniforms. They’re all wearing identical uniforms. I can’t be absolutely sure, but some of them might be wearing camo on their faces, too.”

Lara exchanged a look with Maddie even as the
Trident
moved closer toward Black Tide Island. There was something inherently very wrong with what they were doing at the moment—moving
toward
the sound of gunfire instead of
away
from it. And yet she hadn’t been nearly as hesitant about giving the order as she should have been, a realization that made her more than a little worried.

“What did Keo call them, Mercerians?” Maddie said.

Lara nodded
(Who else could it be?)
before keying the radio again. “We’re treading dangerous territory here. Don’t take a shot unless you can be absolutely sure they’re targeting the
Trident
. Otherwise, let Rhett deal with it.”

“Roger that,” Peters said through the radio.

“We’re close enough, Maddie,” Lara said. “Let’s not make ourselves too tempting a target in case they decide to turn their guns on us.”

Maddie manipulated the controls and the boat slowed. “You think they’re still on the island? The ones that caused the explosion?”

“I don’t think they’re going anywhere. If they were, they wouldn’t have blown up the docks.”

“Good point. Kinda hard to swim all the way back to Texas from here. Of course, Keo probably could.”

“Probably,” Lara said, and managed a small smile.

The engine might have cut off, but the ocean currents continued to push them forward. Black Tide loomed in front of them—500 yards or so. They were close enough that she could see the gray smoke billowing into the sky on the other side of the island. That would be where the docks were, the source of the explosion they had heard earlier. It was also the reason Rhett, Riley, Hart, and a few others were on the two speeding boats headed back now.

“You think this is a good idea?” Maddie asked. Like Lara, she was looking after the boats as they carved their way toward the island. “Letting Riley and Hart go back now?”

“It wasn’t my call. They wanted to go.” Lara keyed the radio again. “Peters.”

“Yeah,” Peters answered.

“Can you hear anything?”

“Like what?”

“Anything at all that tells us what’s happening over there, who’s doing all the shooting. Anything.”

Peters didn’t answer for a few seconds. Then, “The gunshots have stopped. Or I can’t hear them anymore.”

If anyone could hear shooting it would be Peters, who was still somewhere on top of the
Trident
right now with his sniper rifle. Inside the bridge, they could see almost everything out there, especially with binoculars, but hearing what was happening was an entirely different story.

Lara said into the radio, “Danny.”

“Yeah!” Danny shouted back, his reply almost completely lost in the loud roar of wind and boat motors.

“The shooting seems to have stopped.”

“I’ll take your word for it! I can’t hear shit down here.”

“Be careful.”

“Careful’s my middle name!”

“That guy has more middle names than a porn star,” Maddie said.

She couldn’t see Danny on one of the two boats speeding back toward land, but he would be on the same vessel as Hart and Riley. Without Danny onboard, she should have felt a little uncomfortable putting the
Trident
’s security in the hands of Peters and Jolly, two men who had been a part of Mercer’s army only a few days ago, except she wasn’t. It was easy to trust Peters—she had looked into the man’s eyes, knew what he had done and could do, and believed with every ounce of her being that he didn’t do anything he didn’t want to, including following her orders. And he wanted to, which was the amazing part.

“That’s going to help, you know,”
Rhett had said about Peters.
“People respect him. Hell, having Peters on your side’s going to do more good than having Riley.”

As for Jolly, who was standing outside the bridge in the hallway right now, Danny was vouching for him, and Danny was better at reading other men than she would ever be. Besides, she was pretty sure the young man had an almost teacher’s pet-like crush on her, which made her feel old.

That’s because you are old, and getting older every day.

Her radio squawked loudly, and Danny shouted through it, “Beaching now!”

Good luck
, she thought, but didn’t bother to shout it back over the radio. Danny wouldn’t have heard her anyway because he—along with Hart, Riley, and Rhett—had already driven their boats up onto Black Tide and were jumping over the sides and onto the sand.

The first thing the four men would see would be the bodies. There were three that Lara could make out through binoculars—or she thought they looked like bodies, anyway. The truth was, given the distance and (lack of) clarity, she could have been staring at three deformed logs that had washed ashore.

Except she knew better. Those were bodies, victims of the prolonged gunfire that had erupted after the explosion. She was at least comforted that this time it wasn’t happening onboard the yacht, though the fact that Keo was still out there tempered that quickly, and what were the chances that this didn’t have anything to do with him?

Almost as likely as Keo not being able to handle himself in all that mess.

Danny and the other three black silhouettes were racing up the beach now. They were moving at a steady pace when one of them paused for a moment next to one of the bodies, maybe to check it for vital signs. But the man was back on his feet a few seconds later and running to catch up with the other three.

Lara focused her binoculars on the stacks of smoke rising lazily into the cloudless sky from the other side of the island. The fire had either been contained or had stopped its spread because the rest of Black Tide looked untouched by the explosion and resulting blaze.

She thought about telling Maddie to go around Black Tide to get a better look, but decided against it. There were still no guarantees that the same people who had torched the docks weren’t still around. The last thing she wanted was to risk the
Trident
against something more than just small arms fire. What if they had used a grenade launcher on the docks? Or maybe even an RPG? According to Rhett, the island had its own armory built up from an entire year of constant stocking.

“Peters,” Lara said into the radio. “Anything?”

“They’re in the weeds,” Peters said.

He was referring to Danny and the others. She had lost sight of them once they left the beach behind. She could just make out rows of gleaming metal in the background—the military facilities that stretched across the length of the island.

“They must have taken the fighting indoors,” Peters continued.

“Can you hear gunfire?”

“No. But if they’re inside the facilities, I wouldn’t. The walls are concrete and metal.”

“All right. Keep your eyes open.”

“Roger that,” Peters said.

Maddie glanced over. “Anxious?”

Lara gritted her teeth. “I hate standing here helpless.”

With nothing to do, they stood on the bridge in silence and looked out the wraparound front windshield and waited.

It was an agonizing full minute, which later became two…then five.

Five minutes became ten…

“You want me to move closer?” Maddie finally asked. Lara could hear it in the other woman’s voice—Maddie was hoping for the go ahead.

“No,” Lara said, despite wanting desperately to give the small Texan her
yes
.

* * *

I
t was almost
an agonizing half hour later when they finally heard from Danny again: “Sorry to keep you waiting, ladies. And Peters.”

“Danny,” Lara said. “What’s the situation?”

“It’s under control. They were trying to retake the facilities. Fortunately they had the decency to concentrate their bad guy planning to the command area, left the civvies section mostly untouched.”

“Who were they?”

“One guess.”

“Mercer loyalists?”

“Bingo-schmingo,” Danny said. “Or Mercerians, as Keystone calls them.”

“Speaking of which, did you find Keo?”

“Yeah, he was in the middle of it, but you probably already figured that one out.”

Lara exchanged a quick
of course
look with Maddie.

“He’s uglier than I remembered, but still relatively in one piece,” Danny said.

“Relatively?” Lara said.

“Like I said, way uglier, so who knows what’s going on with that dude that isn’t immediately obvious to the human eye.”

“What about Rhett and the others?”

“All good. We caught those Mercerian troublemakers while they were retreating through the hallway. It wasn’t pretty. I guess you could say not all of them’s going to get an open casket funeral.”

“And the docks?”

“Rhett says his people secured it. Or, well, what’s left of it.”

“How bad was it?”

“No official body count yet. You probably can’t hear it, but Rhett’s giving a speech over the intercom right now. Pretty rousing little sucker too, from the reactions I’m seeing on the faces of some of the civvies.”

“What’s he saying?”

“He’s telling them what happened, who’s responsible, and how many people are dead as a result. Don’t tell anyone, but I think he’s playing a little fast and loose with that last number. Anyway, I think this could be it, kiddo.”

“‘It?’”

“The last grasp of Mercer’s ghost,” Danny said. “After this, I don’t think anyone’s going to want to be caught dead calling themselves Mercerians. When the crowd turns on you, that’s when you know your Amateur Night at the Apollo’s
finito
.”

* * *

T
here was
no one waiting for her on the beach when she arrived alone on the tender. Not that she expected anyone to be, since she hadn’t told Danny or Rhett that she was even coming. But she had to see it in person, if just to familiarize herself with Black Tide and its inhabitants. These were the people she was going to have to win over in order to give Will’s plan every possible chance of success.

When she climbed out of her small boat, people in civilian clothes were removing the three bodies she had seen from the bridge of the
Trident
. They had draped sheets over the dead men and were carrying them away while soldiers in tan uniforms stood watch along the beach. No one tried to stop her, or even seemed to notice her.

She walked through the group of civilians and soldiers, stepping around the blood in the sand where she could and over them when she couldn’t. Lara recognized the looks on the faces of the people closest to her—they were still shell-shocked by what had happened and seemed to almost be moving on automatic pilot. The soldiers looked more alert, though not by very much.

She took her time traveling up the beach, the mushy sand sinking under her boots with every step. Finally, she reached the grass and got her first real good look at the connecting metal structures that made up Black Tide’s facilities. A stripped down version of an airfield separated her and the buildings, but at the moment there were no planes in sight. She guessed they were probably housed in hangars at the other end of the island.

There were spent shell casings on the ground, along the path that was used to walk between the beach and buildings, and scattered in the untended fields. Some were old, but most were unmistakably very new and still glinting against the morning sunlight. Fresh splashes of blood clung to the taller stalks of grass.

Black Tide was eerily serene in the aftermath of the gun battle, with only a few scattered whispered conversations on the beach. Some of the people she passed by gave her a slight acknowledging nod, but no one stopped to question her presence.

She was halfway to the buildings when a familiar voice said, “As I live and breathe,
the
Lara walks amongst us.”