The Isles of Elysium

CHAPTER 9

They stopped shooting only after he had made it behind cover. Through the fading echoes of ricocheting bullets, Keo picked up the loud squeaking of shoes from the front of the warehouse. That told him there was definitely more than one shooter, but he had already figured that part out when they unloaded on him.

It couldn’t have been the sniper. There was no way that guy could have gotten down from the Archers and crossed the parking lot so fast. Which left him with what? Maybe those reinforcements he was sure the man must have had waiting in the wings, finally arriving. A sniper left behind to watch the road and lie in wait for Steve’s people would be armed with a two-way radio so he could relay information about enemy movements.

He’d waited too long, giving the shooter the time to call in his friends. It had to be Tobias’s people. Of course, Jack hadn’t said anything about an ambush at the first hint of civilization, but then again, that was Jack. Lying Jack. Or, in this case, information-hiding Jack.

Dickhead Jack.

“Spread out!” someone shouted.

A male voice. Deep. Keo wondered what the chances were that he was hearing Steve’s best friend Tobias giving orders.

Right. Like your luck’s that good, pal.

Hard metal poked into his back. Part of some kind of manufacturing equipment. He’d never spent a day of his life inside a warehouse working an assembly line, so the shape pressing into him was just another mystery he didn’t have any interest in exploring. It was cold and heavy and easily stopped bullets, and that was all he really cared about.

“Hey!” the same voice shouted. “You still alive back there?”

The man was still near the very front of the warehouse, which was of course part of an elaborate trick to divert his attention. The man’s “friends,” the ones ordered to spread out earlier, were moving slowly in his direction right now. Keo could hear their shoes squeaking against the grease and oil and God-knew-what-else covered floors as they did their best to move silently.

Not quite silent enough, boys.

Keo leaned out the right side of the bulky object behind him and saw two men moving steadily up in his direction, almost hugging the wall. They were half-crouched, half-walking, and were still a good forty meters away when he spotted them. They were both wearing sneakers and civilian clothes, and he swore one of them had on a Houston Rockets cap, though they were in a dark patch of the warehouse and he didn’t get a clear look at them.

When they saw him peeking out, their reaction was priceless. It was like looking at two deer caught in a car’s headlights.

That lasted for about half a second before one of them snapped off a shot while the other darted behind something shiny for cover. The round pinged! off whatever it was Keo was leaning out from behind, forcing him back behind cover. He stuck his MP5SD out and squeezed off a short burst up the warehouse, heard the satisfying ping! ping! as his rounds bounced off something solid.

Hopefully that would send them scurrying back. Or, at least, halt their advance.

“Make this easy on yourself!” the same man shouted, his words booming off the steel walls and high ceiling. Despite the distance between them, the ensuing echo meant Keo didn’t have to strain to hear him. “There’s no way out of here! I got people on the other side of that door, too. You’re trapped!”

Keo sighed. And here he had been hoping to eventually make a run for the back door and slip out into the woods the first chance he got. Then again, people tended to lie a lot these days. Jack was proof of that. So what was to keep this other guy-

The lever on the back door moved up and down, but it was locked and whoever was on the other side gave up on opening it a few seconds later.

Or not.

“Come on now!” the man shouted. “You gotta know you’re trapped. Don’t prolong the inevitable!”

“What do you want?” Keo shouted back.

He figured he didn’t have anything to lose. Maybe, if he was lucky (Yeah, right) one of them was Tobias. If so, that would make his job a lot easier. Well, maybe not easier, easier. But definitely cut down on all that time he was going to have to spend looking for his target, something he thought might take a while. Like a day or two…or a week.

“He’s out there, somewhere,” was all Jack had been able to tell him about Tobias’s whereabouts.

Yeah, thanks for that, Jack, you lying piece of shit.

“I want you to come out!” the man shouted.

He sounded much closer than before, but Keo was trying to keep tabs on the squeaking shoes instead of concentrating on the voice. That was a diversion, and had been from the very beginning. The shoes, on the other hand, didn’t lie, and they were definitely getting closer. They were also coming along the walls to both the right and left of him, but of course he could hear the ones to his right much clearer because of proximity. His spray-and-pray earlier might have forced them behind cover, but it hadn’t lasted.

How long did he have? Not long enough.

Running out of time again. So what else is new?

“And then what?” Keo shouted back.

“We can talk!” the man said.

“You wanna talk?”

“Yes!”

“So why’d you start shooting?”

“That was a mistake!”

“No shit! The sniper out there, he one of yours?”

“Maybe!”

Keo grinned. “I’m not from Texas, but is everyone in this state a fucking liar?”

The man actually chuckled that time.

Keo listened past it for the familiar squeaking of footsteps, but failed to find one. That was disturbing, because there was no reason for them to stop their advance. They had him cornered like a rat inside the warehouse.

And time was running out. Sooner or later, it’d be dark. That was the other problem. The always-over-his-shoulder problem.

Sooner or later, it was always going to be dark.

“Depends on who you talk to!” the man was shouting back.

“What do you want?” Keo shouted.

“You already asked that!”

“Try telling the truth this time!”

“God’s honest truth! We just want to ask you some questions!”

“Oh yeah? Is that all?”

“Yup!”

He leaned out the side of the machine, ready to fire, but there wasn’t anyone in the open. He pulled back, then looked across the warehouse to the other side. Nobody there, either. Maybe they really were going to wait him out. Hell, that’s what he would have done, too.

“What’s got you so curious, my friend?” he shouted.

“You came from T18, didn’t you?” the man asked.

The voice didn’t sound any closer than before, which was another hint they might be content to wait him out instead of the more risky approach of bum-rushing him. So maybe they really were curious about him. Could he really stake his life on that, though?

“I get the feeling you already know the answer to that one!” Keo said. “Let me guess: You have lookouts?”

“Maybe!” the man said. “What are you doing out here by yourself, my friend?”

“So we’re friends now?”

“Why not?”

“Friends don’t shoot at friends!”

The man laughed. “Come on, how many times I gotta apologize for that?”

“How about one more time?”

“All right! Sorry about trying to kill you! Now, what are you doing out here all by yourself, buddy?”

“That’s better! And the answer is, I was sightseeing!”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yup! Figured, what the hell? Maybe I could pick up some flowers for the old lady, too!”

“She waiting for you in T18?”

“That’s right! You don’t wanna stop me from coming back home with flowers, do you?”

“As a matter of fact, yes!”

“Well, shit, that’s darn rude of you!”

The man laughed again.

Keo flicked the fire selector on the MP5SD to full-auto and took a breath.

The squeaking noises had picked back up again from his right. He could hear it coming from his left, too. They were getting closer, but not rushing it. They didn’t have to, and they knew it.

Dammit. If it wasn’t for shitty luck…

He’d found Gillian again, after so long of not being sure if she was even still alive. But there she was, on the riverbank, looking back at him. Beautiful. He couldn’t see the green of her eyes over the distance, but he imagined them sparkling at the sight of him. Hopefully he didn’t still look like he had just been tear gassed the night before. He wondered how he was going to explain all the other scars to her. The one along the left side of his face, in particular, was going to be a doozy.

“Remember those assholes from the cabin? Well, they had a leader, and he was determined to slice my face open.”

Yeah, that should work.

He sighed again and slid up the length of the cold machine behind him and counted down to five. But this time, he would go the full five. No more surprising himself by going at three. Nossirree Bob-

Pop-pop-pop!

Automatic rifle fire, and it wasn’t coming from inside the warehouse, either.

What the hell?

More than one firing at the same time, too, he was sure of it.

Pop-pop-pop! Pop-pop-pop!

A dozen. Maybe even more than that. There was a full-fledged gun battle going on outside the warehouse at this very moment.

Then, suddenly, the brap-brap-brap! of a machine gun raining death, the loud roar of the weapon drowning out everything else.

Jesus fucking Christ.

That was the M60. Which meant…

“It’s a trap!” the same voice that had been trying to cajole him out of hiding shouted. “Everyone get the fuck out of here! It’s a trap!”

The man hadn’t finished screaming “trap” when the shriek of bullets punching through the warehouse’s metal walls flooded the cavernous room. The ping-ping-ping! of bullets ricocheting off machinery around him, followed by screaming, then the very clear squawking of handheld radios blasting away with panicked voices.

Keo blocked out all the sounds-hard to do, with the M60 drowning the air in an unending tide-and focused on the back door in front of him. What were the chances there were still people on the other side? Now, with the hellacious gunfire pummeling everything in its path out in front of the warehouse? Would the ones out back rush to assist or flee? Or stand their ground? That would depend on how well-trained these guys were.

Whatever was out back-if anything-it was definitely better than being stuck in here among the flying bullets and the shrieks of people dying behind him.

“Ambush!” someone else was shouting. “It’s an ambush!”

Screw it.

Keo didn’t bother counting. He pushed off his hiding spot and ran forward and fired at the door. It took half of his magazine to demolish the door lever. That was way too many bullets, but it couldn’t be helped because he had to make sure-

He kicked the door and it swung wide open, harsh sunlight blinding him momentarily.

Keo waited for gunfire as he exposed himself, but either the men who had tracked him into the warehouse were already dead or too busy fighting for their lives against the machine gun at the front, or they weren’t paying him any attention.

He lunged out, thankful to be outside and breathing fresh air again. Hell, to be breathing at all. He was surrounded by grass that went up almost to his waist, and Keo began swimming through it and toward the wall of trees on the other end. He wasted a half second to consider taking a peek at the battle out front but decided he’d rather not be anywhere close to whoever was letting loose with the machine gun, or the poor saps on the wrong end of it.

The brap-brap-brap seemed unending, crushing everything else that might have made a sound, including the returning pop-pop-pop of assault rifle fire.

Give it up, boys, he wanted to tell them. That’s an M60. You’re not going to win against that monster.

Keo slipped into the woods, immediately feeling the drastic change in temperature as the high canopies blocked out most of the sun. That, more than anything, alarmed him, but he kept moving because the opposite direction was untenable at the moment.

Even safe beyond the tree lines, he could still hear the barrage of gunfire from behind him, until suddenly…it just stopped.

The M60 had gone quiet.

Maybe he was wrong after all. Maybe Tobias’s men had managed to knock down the gunner-

Then it was back, louder and more ferocious than before, if that was even possible.

Or not.

It had to be Steve’s people attacking. Maybe even the same guys back on the bridge, or they could have had more than one machine gun. It wouldn’t surprise him, given the armaments the soldiers he’d met in Louisiana had been lugging around. The ones at Beaufont Lake had been armed with an M240, a more modern squad automatic weapon than the M60, but just as dangerous in the right hands. They also had what seemed like an unlimited number of military-grade M4s and the ammo to endlessly feed them.

The shooting continued nonstop behind him, but it had lessened in volume the further he waded into the woods. Keo might have felt sorry for the poor saps back at the warehouse if they hadn’t been trying to kill him.

Sucks to be you, boys.

He kept moving, not really sure where he was going, just knowing that he didn’t want to be anywhere close to the gun battle when the winners started spreading out and looking for survivors. Even if that was Steve’s people back there, the fact that they had laid down a hellacious amount of lead meant they weren’t very concerned about his safety. For all he knew, Steve might have sent him out here for the express purpose of drawing Tobias out.

Shit. Had Steve just dangled him out there as bait? So he could then charge in with his men and waste Tobias’s people? If those were Tobias’s men back there. For all Keo knew, they could have been more of the “stragglers” that annoyed Steve and just happened to have picked on the wrong victim.

There was no denying that those other shooters had shown up pretty fast, right about the time Keo found himself besieged inside the warehouse. So they were around the area, waiting for a sign, because they likely hadn’t heard the sniper shooting earlier. Keo hadn’t heard the gunshots, and he was the one being shot at. Anyone at the bridge, or the wooded area around it (or wherever the hell Steve’s men had been hiding) wouldn’t have heard a whimper. But those gunshots in the warehouse, on the other hand…

He stopped in his tracks.

The shooting behind him had ceased entirely, leaving a quiet lull that, even more than the sound of the M60 firing away, gave him goose bumps.

It was over, and Keo didn’t have to think very hard about who had won.

What now? Carry on or go back to T18?

Did he even have much of a choice? Whatever Steve’s game, walking back after that carnage was probably not going to end very favorably for him. No. The smart move here was to keep going, then decide what to do later when he had more intel.

He pushed on, even though he didn’t have a clue where he was going and there wasn’t anything resembling a trail for him to latch onto. It didn’t take long for him to get flashbacks to another time and another place when he had spent way too many days inside a wooded area much like this one. Back then, he was being chased by a madman with a small army.

The more things changed…

He was thinking about Pollard, about Norris and Allie, when he stepped on a twig and it snapped! under one of his boots.

Keo paused and looked down just a split second before the wire sprung out from the ground, scattering dried leaves that had been camouflaging it, and slipped around his right leg. The razor-thin steel line dug into his ankle as it tightened and he was shot into the air like a rocket. The sky above him flipped until he was staring at the ground and Keo found himself hanging upside down from a tree.

He’d stepped right into a snare trap!

He scrambled for the MP5SD, but it was on the ground below him. He still had the Glock, and Keo was reaching for it when something hard and metallic pressed into the back of his neck, the rifle barrel cold against his exposed skin.

“Draw it, and you’re a dead man,” a voice said behind him.

Keo took his hand away from the Glock.

The figure scrambled around him in a wide circle, giving him plenty of space in case Keo had any ideas about grabbing for his weapon. He was a short man (or maybe he was actually tall, since it was a little difficult to tell proper height while hanging upside down) wearing green and brown hunting clothes, boots, and green and black camo paint on his face. Brown eyes peered out at Keo.

“This must be a Texas thing,” Keo said.

“Shut up,” the man said. He took out a radio with one hand and keyed it. “I got him. The guy from the warehouse.”

“Bring him in,” a woman answered through the radio. “He’s got a lot to answer for.”

“Maybe I should just shoot him.”

The man was holding a large rifle with one hand. Like his face, the weapon was covered in a camo pattern. He cocked his head slightly to one side, one eye focused on Keo from behind his rifle’s scope despite the short distance. At this range, the bullet would probably take off half of Keo’s head. If one didn’t do the job, and given the magazine under the weapon, the man would easily be able to try again with a second trigger pull.

“Whoa, whoa,” Keo said. “Let’s talk this over.”

“Shut the fuck up,” the man said.

“No, bring him in,” the woman said through the radio. “Tobias’s orders.”

The man hesitated.

“Did you hear me?” the woman asked.

“Whatever you say,” the man said, and put the radio away. He took a step back before slinging his rifle and producing a knife from a sheath along his hip. “This must be your lucky day, Chinaman.”

Not quite, but hey, the day’s still young.

Because Keo had heard it clearly. The woman on the radio had definitely said the name “Tobias.”

Keo didn’t need to look at his watch swinging underneath him to know what time it was. Despite the thick canopies on the other side of his boots, there was still at least five hours of sunlight left.

Five hours to kill Tobias and return to T18.

He’d done more with less time.