The Fields of Lemuria (16 page)

Keo darted right, leaping through the trees and back into the woods.

He spent a precious second cursing his bad luck, then put the rest of his energies into running. The problem was, it wasn’t just two guys he had to outrun. There were going to be more. Those two back at the pier, too. And how many other patrols were around the area?

Too many. Always too damn many…

He gripped the submachine gun as he ran, prepared for the inevitable firefight that was coming. He didn’t know when, he just knew it would be soon. Pollard was right about one thing: Sooner or later he was going to run out of room. Eventually, there would be no more places to hide, no more places to run, and no more places to retreat—

The guy came out from behind the big tree in front of him. He was wearing the same identical black tactical vest as all the others, and the barrel of a rifle poked out from behind one shoulder. But those weren’t the things that drew Keo’s attention. It was the man’s face. Or the white skull, roughly drawn over his face and highlighted with black and green camo paint around the edges.

The hell you supposed to be?
ran through Keo’s mind just before he saw sunlight glinting off the sharp edge of a knife in the man’s hand.

In the split-second that Keo saw the white skull and picked up the flashing knife, he knew it was too late to veer out of the blade’s path. He was moving too fast. So Keo threw himself forward and tucked and rolled instead.

Swoosh!
as the knife—a Ka-Bar, almost identical to the one he had along his left hip—sliced through the air over his head.

Then he was behind the guy and snapping back up to his feet.

Skull Face was faster, and he was on Keo before he could turn fully around. The MP5SD had managed to come loose from Keo’s hands when he did his tuck and roll, and it was now hanging uselessly from his body by the strap. Thank God he hadn’t lost it. Without the submachine gun, he only had the .45 Glock—

Stop thinking and move move move!

Keo didn’t have time to reach for either weapon because the smiling skull was coming right at him in a blur of steel and black clothes and pearly white teeth. He shoved his hands up and forward on instinct and managed to grab the man’s knife hand around the wrist, freezing it in the air. The ambusher looked stunned, as if this was the last thing he had expected, and the smile plastered to his face vanished in the blink of an eye.

Keo lunged forward and drove his right knee into the man’s side where the vest didn’t protect him and knew he got a part of the ribcage underneath when the guy let out a loud grunt. Keo hooked his leg around the man’s and literally swept him off his feet a second later.

Wham!

Skull Face slammed into the ground with another heavy grunt. Keo wrestled the knife out of his hand, then spun it until he had the sharp blade pointing down. The man’s eyes widened, the whites merging with the color of the skull. He might have opened his mouth to say something, but Keo didn’t give him the chance. He rammed the knife down and into the largest target area—the chest—just an inch over the vest’s zipper. The man gagged and groped at Keo’s hands, still fighting for possession of the knife with his last breaths.

Keo let him have his knife back and stumbled up to his feet.

He hadn’t taken more than two steps when a freight train hit him in the back of the head. His eyes blurred as he lost sight of the woods. But that was the least of his problems. He was falling to his knees without knowing why, the inability to understand filling him with a sense of helplessness that drove him insane. Warm liquid trickled down to the back of his neck and Keo shivered slightly from the contact.

Then he was toppling sideways but somehow managed to twist around so that he slammed into the ground on his back instead of on his stomach. His vision started focusing in on something looming above him.

Aw, Jesus, another one? What is this, Halloween?

Another white skull was hovering over him. This skull looked more orderly, with just black paint along the edges to accentuate the white. Gleaming black eyes, full of mischief, stared down at him. The man was holding an AK-47, and Keo swore he could see his blood (it was surprisingly dark, and were those strings of hair?) on the weapon’s buttstock.

Then, the sound of footsteps as someone approached.

“You got him, Jacks?” someone asked.

“Call it in,” the man standing over Keo said. For a guy with a white skull painted on his face, Jacks’s voice sounded mildly comforting. “Ask the boss what he wants us to do with him.”

Then Jacks’s face, along with his absurd white skull, started to fade a bit. That may or may not have something to do with why Keo felt as if he were drowning all of a sudden. He found it difficult to concentrate on any one thing because the world kept moving, flickering around like mirages around him.

A muffled (but familiar) voice said, “Bring him back to the base. He’s not going to die that easily.”

Pollard.

Hands grabbed him and pulled him up from the ground. Someone yanked the MP5SD off him, then someone else ripped the pack and the Glock free. Then they were dragging him through the woods, with Jacks leading the way.

They hadn’t been walking for very long when two more figures appeared in front of them like ghosts. One of them also had a white skull painted over his face, but the other one just looked like a normal forty-something who could have been a teacher or a salesman in a previous life.

Skull Face #3 ran past Keo as if he didn’t exist. That was fine with Keo. The last thing he needed was another asshole focusing in on him. Everyone else seemed to have just one thing on their minds: Killing him.

A moment later, someone began screaming. It sounded as if he were in pain. Or that could have just been Keo’s mind trying to interpret the strange wailing noise. At the moment, he found it difficult to hear much of anything with the ringing in his ears and the warm feel of blood dripping down the back of his neck.

Jacks stopped and turned around, then grinned at Keo. “Man, you just can’t stop making friends, can you?”

Keo didn’t know how to answer that. He didn’t think he could, anyway.

The two guys holding him upright started moving again, passing Jacks, who had stayed behind to watch the show with something that looked like an amused grin on his face.

Keo decided to stop trying to make sense of what was happening around him and let his body go completely slack. If they were going to take him back to Pollard to be killed, he would let them do all the work of carrying him there.

“Who was that?” one of guys dragging him asked.

“Where?” the second one said. “Jacks?”

“No. The other one. The dead guy.”

“That’s Chris.”

“Who’s the guy crying over him?”

“Lou. This guy just shanked his brother.” The guy went quiet for a moment before adding, “We better tell Pollard. There’s no telling what Lou’s gonna do to this guy. I’ve seen him do things…”

“What kind of things?” the other one wanted to know.

“I don’t wanna talk about it. Just remember to tell Pollard about what this asshole did to Lou’s brother when we get back.”

“Jesus,” the first guy said. “Was it that bad?”

The second guy didn’t answer, though Keo was pretty sure the man had shivered slightly at the question. Unless, of course, he was just imagining it.

“What was that
word?
Daebook?
”

Keo smiled. Or tried to. He couldn’t quite focus on the room no matter how hard he tried, much less Norris sitting across from him. “Close enough.”

“Didn’t your mom ever teach you any other Korean words?”

“Here and there, but Mom embraced being an American wholeheartedly. She liked to say either commit to something, or don’t even try.
Daebak
was one of her few exceptions.”

“Interesting.”

“Is it?”

“Not really,” Norris said. “I don’t think this is that, huh? There doesn’t seem to be anything remotely awesome about this.”

“Nope.”

“How’s the head?”

“Am I still bleeding?”

“Not anymore.”

“Then pretty good.”

“You look like shit, though.”

“Yeah, well, I feel worse.”

“I don’t see how that’s possible.”

Keo smirked and sat up on the cold tiled floor. “Thanks for the optimism, old-timer.”

They were inside a small back room with an equally small window at the top providing just enough light for Keo to make out Norris’s bruised face staring back at him. The room was about five feet wide and ten feet long but felt much more claustrophobic. Norris looked to be in one piece sitting on the floor with his back against the other wall. He wasn’t moving, though. Keo couldn’t tell if that was because he couldn’t, or if he didn’t want to.

The former. Definitely the former.

It took him a moment to pick up the empty shelves squeezed into the already small room with them. An old faded yellow mop bucket with a side press wringer was jammed into the corner nearby. There wasn’t a lot of room to move without his shoulder hitting something.

The janitorial closet.

From the last time he and Norris had stayed here, Keo knew the room was almost at the end of the main L-shaped administrative building. The front doors would be to his right, with a window facing the side yard to his left. Unless, of course, his memory was fuzzy due to the blow to the head. That was entirely possible, too.

“Glad to see you’re still alive,” Keo said.

“I guess he thought he might still have some uses for me,” Norris said. “I’m not sure about that now that he’s got you. Way to go, kid. I thought you’d be smarter than this.”

“I guess I got caught up in the whole Murtaugh and Riggs thing.”

Norris grunted. “Now all you need is a faithful dog.”

“A dog?”

“Yeah. Riggs had a dog.”

“I’m not sure, but I’m reasonably certain dogs are even more endangered these days than us.”

“Good point.”

Norris was sitting next to a metal door. Through a security glass window near the top, Keo spotted the back of a man’s head standing guard outside in the hallway. Light from an LED lamp flooded inside the closet through the small slot under the door.

“How long?” Keo asked.

“About an hour,” Norris said. “You got any more bright ideas?”

“Not yet.”

“Did you ever have any bright ideas?”

“Nope.”

“I figured.”

Keo glanced back at the small window above him. The light outside had begun shifting from bright to gloomy.

Night is coming…

He glanced down at his watch, but it was gone. Everything he had was gone, including the black assault vest, gun belt, and of course, his weapons. He saw himself reflected off the metal door across the room. They had even wiped the black and green paint off his face for some reason. At least they hadn’t bothered to put him in restraints, so there was that.

Keo touched the back part of his head, where the occasional throbbing was coming from. The sensation was more tingling than full-blown pain. It was still wet back there, but someone had stitched the cut skin while he was unconscious. They had also applied ointment to keep the wound closed. Just feeling the cut made him wince.

“It was just a scratch, relax,” Norris said. “The girl that patched you up was also nice enough to clean your face, in case you were wondering.”

“Why didn’t they just let me bleed to death?”

“Pollard wouldn’t let them. He’s got plans for you, kid. I don’t wanna be you when the sun comes up tomorrow. I mean, it sucks being me now, but the look he gave you?”

“That bad, huh?”

Norris started to say something, but stopped himself.

That bad.

Keo leaned against the wall, careful to keep his head tilted slightly forward so he didn’t bump the wound against the hard concrete. There was a mild dizziness whenever he moved any part of his body too fast, but especially his head.

“What was with the camo and clothes, anyway?” Norris said. “I assumed there was a point to them?”

“I thought it would give me an advantage.”

“You didn’t really think this through, did you?”

Keo sighed. “I’ve always been more of a snatch-and-grab kinda guy. Not so much the careful planning. That was always someone else’s job.”

“I can see that.” Then, “You almost had him, though.”

“Who?”

“Pollard. That shot—you came close.”

“How close?”

“You pissed him off for a good thirty minutes afterward, that’s how close,” Norris smiled. “He calmed down after they caught up to you, though. He was a happy little lamb after that. I think he might have even smiled when he thought no one was looking. It was like watching the devil learn to grin for the very time in his life. Gave me the heebie-jeebies.”

Now that his eyes had time to adjust to his surroundings, he turned his attention to Norris. The fifty-six-year-old didn’t look nearly as bad as Keo had feared. He’d been hit. That was obvious. Keo could see evidence of bruising on his face, jaw, and forehead. But his eyes were in reasonably good shape.

Norris saw how Keo was looking at him and said, “They worked on the body. The face stuff was just to get my attention in the beginning.”

“Can you walk?”

“Barely. I think they broke a couple of ribs. I’m not sure. I can’t breathe without wishing I was dead.”

“Pollard has people with him that know how to get information
.
Your friend’s in bad shape, Keo.”

“Sorry, Norris,” he said.

“What are you sorry about, kid? I’m the one who got caught.”

“How did they catch you?”

“One of their patrols. That girl Fiona wasn’t lying. Pollard’s got himself a small army out there.”

Keo nodded, but didn’t know what to say. They stared across at each other for a moment.

“Kid, we’ve been at this for how long now? Nine, ten months?” Norris said, breaking the silence. “Let’s face it, neither one of us expected to survive this long. If it ends tonight, or tomorrow, I’m fine with it. And I’m not pulling that out of my ass. I really am fine with it.”