The Stones of Angkor (Purge of Babylon, Book 3) (18 page)

She saw a man in a dull white tactical hazmat suit and gas mask moving away from her, stepping over a body lying prone on the floor. The suit was thin, one of those Level B hazmat suits. The man was wearing boots, and as he stepped over the dead man, she could see blood on his soles. She recognized an M4, identical to her own, in the man’s hands. As soon as the shooter heard the sound of the inventory room door opening behind him, he stopped and turned around.

Gaby glimpsed dark black eyes behind the gas mask’s single face covering, a stunted one-piece air purifier jutting out from underneath.

The man started to lift his rifle, but he hadn’t gotten it halfway up before Gaby shot him in the chest. She fired without thinking—
“muscle memory
” Will would have said—and was momentarily stunned by the sight of the man collapsing in front of her. The bullet had drilled into the thin fabric of his suit, and it didn’t look as if there were any blood at all. But of course, she knew better. The suit kept the blood inside, leaving behind a small hole in its wake.

Just like that man in Beaumont, Texas…

Jen and Amy stumbled out of the room behind her. It didn’t occur to Gaby how vulnerable the two women were. They were both unarmed, and they gasped at the sight of the dead man in the hazmat suit lying near one of their own.

“Oh my God, Dan!” Amy said, rushing forward.

She hadn’t gotten more than a few yards when gunfire ripped over her head and shredded a large painting hanging on the wall beside her. Amy instinctively fell to the floor headfirst, sliding comically along the smooth tiles with her hands thrown over her head, as if that would somehow protect her from bullets.

Gaby turned to her right, looking down the hall as another man in a hazmat suit moved toward them, also armed with an M4. The man was taking aim at Amy’s scrambling form when Gaby fired at him. Her first shot missed, but her second shot hit the man in the leg and he stumbled, then turned and hobbled desperately behind a corner.

She heard gunfire from other parts of the hospital, and Gaby desperately longed for a radio. Will insisted everyone on the island carried one, but Mike didn’t have that kind of system in place.

God, they’re so unprepared. How did they survive for so long?

She stopped thinking when the same gas-masked face peered out from behind the corner down the hallway. She snapped a quick shot in his direction, and the man jerked his head back behind the wall as her bullet tore a big chunk off the corner.

Gaby kept her rifle on semi-automatic. She wasn’t worried about ammo. She had two magazines for the rifle around her waist and two more for the Glock in her pouches. She had even more in her pack…
back in her room.

She risked a quick look behind her, and saw Jen helping Amy up from the floor, shouting, “Come on, we can’t do anything for him now!” Then she looked back at Gaby. “We have to go!”

“Go where?” Gaby shouted back. “They’re all over the floor! Listen!”

The two women stopped their frantic movements and listened. Gaby saw their faces go from pale and confused to horrified.

The screaming, the gunshots—it was coming from all around them, as if they had just stumbled into the middle of a war zone.

And this day started off so well, too…

LARA

She didn’t know
how Will wore his communications rig all day. It was cumbersome and unwieldy, and she thought the plastic mic around her throat was going to choke the life out of her with every step she took. The thing was supposed to work on bone vibrations, or something like that. The earbud didn’t look like it would stay in her ear, though when she purposefully moved around like a spastic, it refused to dislodge.

She was wearing the assault vest Will had designed specifically for her a month ago. She remembered almost swooning. How many girls got custom-made assault vests? It was a slimmed-down version of the kind he and Danny wore, with pouches for equipment, such as the radio connected to the throat mic and earbud. It was a lot more convenient than holding the radio with one hand, especially when she was moving.

An hour after kneeling on the wet ground inside the woods in the western half of the island, the Benelli shotgun had begun to feel almost weightless leaning against her knee. The first signs of sunup appeared in the distance, casting the kind of glow across the sky that still took her breath away many mornings later.

Danny was somewhere to her left, hidden among the foliage. The woods were brightening around her, slivers of the clear sky coming through where it was pitch dark moments before. Every now and then she heard movement that prompted her to tighten up, get ready to spring into action. The paranoia was justified, because he was out here somewhere.

West.

He and Brody had done exactly what Bonnie had predicted they would do. She chastised herself for not seeing it sooner. Thank God they had padlocked the Tower basement, where all the weapons were stored. She didn’t want to think about what would have happened had both West and Brody gotten to their rifles while the rest of them slept, with only Blaine on the third floor to stand in their way.

This wouldn’t have happened if Will was here.

The thought popped into her head every few minutes, twisting her into knots, and confirming what she already knew: She wasn’t ready for this. Not even close. So why did the others think she was? Whatever possessed them to put so much faith in her judgment? She wasn’t ready—

She was startled by a
clicking
sound in her right ear, before Danny’s voice came through a second later to soothe her nerves: “Look how pretty the sky is. Makes you appreciate all the finer things in life, doesn’t it?”

“Like what?” she whispered.

She had learned a few hours ago that even when she barely whispered, Danny could hear her just fine.

No wonder Will loves these things.

“Girls,” Danny said. “Fresh air. Girls. Walking around the woods at night. Girls.”

“You forgot girls.”

“Oh, right, girls.”

She smiled despite herself. “Where are you now? I can’t see you.”

“Your eleven o’clock.”

“I don’t know what that is, Danny.”

“Imagine the hands on a clock.”

“Okay…”

“Now imagine where eleven o’clock is.”

“So, to my left?”

“Close. Northwest of you.”

“Couldn’t you have just said that in the first place?”

“Sure, but it’s cooler this way.”

Snap!

She shot up to her feet and spun around, the shotgun rising, her forefinger slipping into the trigger guard—

“Don’t shoot!” Roy shouted.

He stood twenty yards behind her, hands trembling in the air.

“What are you doing here?” she hissed.

He hesitated, as if trying to decide if he should turn back around or proceed forward. She took pity on him and motioned for him to join her. He rushed over, making so much noise that she now understood what it was like for Will and Danny whenever they had to deal with her and the others.

You have the patience of a saint, Will.

Roy crouched next to her and looked forward. She glanced over and was surprised how young he looked. Maybe it was the water and shower, wiping the grime from his face; she’d had him pegged as being in his late twenties when they first met, but that couldn’t have been right.

“How old are you, Roy?” she whispered.

“What?” he said, straining to hear her.

“How old are you?” she said, raising her voice just a little bit.

“Twenty-eight. Why?”

“Are you sure?”

He gave her an amused look. “Pretty sure, yeah.”

“You look younger.”

“I have one of those faces. My friends used to make fun of me. When I was an infant, I looked like an egg, they said.”

She smiled.

He saw it and looked pleased. “You’re pretty when you smile.”

Uh oh.

“I’m taken, Roy.”

“I know. I just had to say it.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Of course, it didn’t last, just as she knew it wouldn’t.

“So, this Will guy…” he started.

“What are you doing here, Roy?” she said, cutting him off. “You should be back at the hotel with the others.”

“I didn’t feel right letting you chase West out here alone.”

“Danny’s doing most of the chasing. I’m just backing him up.”

“I know, but what happened to Blaine was our fault. I keep wondering if I could have warned you sooner that Brody and West were dangerous. I should have told you about the watch…”

“The gold watch that West wore?”

“You know about that?”

“Bonnie told me. She said she wasn’t sure, but she thought that maybe West killed the guy who owned it.”

“He did,” Roy said.

She looked over at him. “What are you saying, Roy?”

“I wasn’t there when they did it or anything, but they told me about it afterward. Brody was gloating about how they got the drop on them. Jesus, one of them was just a kid…”

“It’s okay, Roy. Bonnie warned us. She warned
me.
It’s my fault for not acting on it earlier. I should have—”

“Ahem,” Danny said in her right ear. “I don’t mean to cut in on your little chat with Geek Wonder over there, but I can hear you all the way across the island.”

“Sorry,” she whispered.

“For what?” Roy said.

She started to answer, but shook her head and put a forefinger to her lips instead. He nodded, understanding.

Another
click,
and Danny said, “Lara and Roy, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.”

She sighed. This was going to be a long morning.

*

Roy was getting
antsy next to her, shifting back and forth, going from one knee to both knees, then back again. The last two times she had ordered him back to the hotel, he’d insisted on staying with her. His version of gallantry, she supposed. Not that she needed him. He was more of a burden at the moment, but she couldn’t help but feel slightly impressed with his stick-to-itiveness.

Salvation finally came in the form of a
click
in her right ear, and Danny’s voice: “He’s moving. Push ahead and cut him off. Fire three shots into the air.”

“Stay here!” Lara said sharply to Roy, lunging up to her feet and racing away before he could respond.

She fired one shot into the air, heard the echo, then fired a second and a third time.

She was still moving when she heard gunshots in front of her. Not too far away, but far enough that she didn’t have to dive for cover. She heard footsteps, threw a quick look over her shoulder, and saw Roy giving chase. He was surprisingly fast for a former tech geek.

She heard two more shots in front of her, then nothing.

Lara slid to a stop, and Roy almost crashed into her. He was breathing hard, out of breath. She had to wonder how Roy had managed to survive so long when he was so clearly out of shape.

Click.
“Forty meters,” Danny said. “Your twelve o’clock.”

“Danny,” she said.

“Sorry. Directly ahead.”

She looked over at Roy and nodded, and they both climbed back to their feet and began jogging forward through the brush. Roy was already huffing and puffing again by the time they reached a clearing.

Danny was sitting on a boulder, facing West, who sat slumped against a tree trunk. There were bullet holes in the tree over West’s head, though at the moment those were the least of his worries. West was holding on to his right side, where he had been shot. His right thigh, where he had caught some of Blaine’s buckshot from last night, was covered in mud and pieces of his shirt that he had been using as a tourniquet. The stolen M4 with the ACOG scope lay a few yards beyond his reach.

Danny was chewing on a twig. “West decided he’d like to give up.”

“Is he armed?” she asked.

“Not anymore.”

Lara turned to Roy and handed him her shotgun. He took it hesitantly. She also drew her Glock and handed it to him as well.

“I need to take a look at that wound,” she said, walking toward West and crouching in front of him.

He looked tired, his face a mess of mud and blood and dirt. He had been running around the woods all night, trying to stay one step ahead of Danny. It showed in his hollowed eyes and all over his slackened, beaten body. He was barely breathing; whether from his tired condition or a lack of desire, she didn’t know and didn’t particularly care at the moment.

Lara took a handkerchief out of her pocket. “I’m going to remove your hand. Don’t fight me.”

He didn’t say anything. Instead, he continued to watch her curiously.

She ignored his stare and pulled his hand away from his side. Blood oozed out, and she quickly pushed the handkerchief against it. The orange fabric turned dark red and West flinched a bit, though he was clearly trying not to show it.

Tough guy, huh? Not tough enough.

“I need to get you back to the hotel and sew this up, or you’re going to die,” she said.

West’s eyebrows furrowed. “I thought that was the plan. Letting me die.”