The Bones of Valhalla (Purge of Babylon, Book 9) Read online

  “Want me to pull back some more?” Maddie asked.

  “No,” Lara said. “I don’t want them to think we’re scared.”

  “Even though we are?”

  “They don’t have to know that. Besides, it doesn’t matter if we put five or ten or fifty more miles between us. They know we’re out here and they found us once before—and that time was in the dead of night. They’re not going to have any difficulty locating us in broad daylight.”

  “Doesn’t help we’re the only rich man’s toy floating out here for miles and miles,” Danny said.

  “Yeah, that too.”

  “By the way, while you were having your chat with Scarlett’s boyfriend, Expedition 2.0 radioed in on schedule. They’re on course into the…Heart of Darkness.”

  “‘Heart of Darkness?’” Maddie said.

  “What? Too ominous or not ominous enough?”

  “As long as there isn’t a fat Marlon Brando waiting on the other end.”

  “Well, there is something waiting on the other end, but I wouldn’t call it fat, exactly.”

  “Did they run into any problems?” Lara asked.

  “Apparently, it’s smooth sailing so far,” Danny said.

  “Apparently?” she said, looking over at him.

  He shrugged. “They didn’t mention any complications.”

  “You didn’t either when you and Gaby were trapped in Gallant with no way out. Why was that?”

  “Because if you knew what kind of creek we were up at the time, you might have rushed over like a bunch of idiots and tried to rescue us. Then I’d have to save even more people, and even Super Danny has his limitations.”

  “Did you get the sense Gaby was doing the same thing when she radioed in?”

  Danny thought about it. “I think she would have told me if they’d hit a snag. But she didn’t, which means they’re still good to go. Probably.”

  “I don’t like probably, Danny.”

  “I’m sure the kid would have told us if they couldn’t finish the mission. You worry too much.”

  “When I stop worrying, that’s when you should start.”

  Danny smirked. “Where’d you get that from, an old T-shirt?”

  “Maybe.” She unclipped her radio and keyed it. “You see anything up there, Peters?”

  “Ocean,” Peters said through the radio. “Just a lot of ocean.”

  “Just a lot of ocean’s good,” Maddie said. “Oceans don’t drop bombs on you, the last time I checked.”

  Lara glanced up at the ceiling, not that she could see Peters somewhere up there. The man had apparently found a good enough perch that even Rhett and his driver hadn’t spotted him when they were approaching the Trident earlier.

  “That guy’s like a gargoyle, always perching high above you,” Rhett had said about Peters earlier.

  Thank God he’s our gargoyle now.

  Danny was looking at her. “You spent a lot of one-on-one time with Rhett Butler. Anything we should be worried about?”

  “You mean, does he have squirrelly eyes?” Lara smiled.

  “Something like that.”

  “I never got the sense that he was being dishonest. If he’s lying—playing some kind of game—then he’s very good at hiding it. Besides, he came here and he didn’t have to do that.”

  “Riley also vouched for him,” Maddie said.

  “And we all know what a great judge of character Riley is,” Danny said.

  “Riley’s word matters, but Keo’s matters more,” Lara said. “He wouldn’t have okayed Rhett if he didn’t think we could trust him. But just in case, keep us ready to move at a moment’s notice, Maddie.”

  Maddie nodded. “I got one foot on the gas pedal, boss lady—”

  A brilliant white flash from the horizon cut Maddie short. Lara didn’t have to turn her head to get an eyeful because she was already staring at the spot where the light had come from—it was directly in front of her.

  Black Tide Island.

  She was still trying to process the sight when a loud BOOM! washed across the ocean and over the boat.

  “That was an explosion,” Danny said, walking toward the windshield. “Something just went off on Black Tide. Something big.”

  18

  Keo

  If he hadn’t almost died twice (three times?) in just the last few days alone, Keo would have been able to appreciate the quiet of Black Tide Island a little more. But he was intimately aware of the situation—Rhett was on the Trident and he was, essentially, left by himself in sickbay, with God only knew how many men waiting for the opportunity to take their shots at him.

  Well, he wasn’t really alone. There were two guards in the hallway immediately outside his door and two more nearby. But Keo was not the kind of guy who relied on other people—in his experience, strangers tended to let you down more than they helped—and if not for the presence of the MP5SD leaning against the wall to his right, within easy reach, he might have been on his feet pacing instead of lying in bed.

  The second submachine gun lay on the next bed over, along with the gun belt and Glock he had taken from Pollack. It felt good to be armed again. Hell, overly armed, if you really wanted to get technical about it, but Keo wasn’t about to moan about having too many weapons after having gone without for so long.

  Rhett had orders for him to stay inside where it was (supposedly) safe, which meant no more wandering out onto the beach for some fresh air. Keo would think Rhett was being overly paranoid if there hadn’t already been two attempts on his life. Rhett might not have come right out and said it, but he clearly seemed to think a third attempt was just waiting in the wings. Keo wasn’t about to disagree, even if being stuck inside the medicinal-smelling sickbay was getting old pretty fast.

  Keo busied himself by taking inventory of his bullets for the fifth time in the last hour. It wasn’t like he had anything else to do. Both MP5SDs yielded fully loaded thirty-round magazines since neither one of his would-be killers had managed to get a single shot off last night. The bad news was that he didn’t have any spares. He had thought about asking Rhett for some but hadn’t felt like pushing his luck. Being able to keep the guns was already more than he could have hoped for; keeping the belt and sidearm too was a bonus.

  Besides, thirty rounds apiece meant a total of sixty, and Keo had gotten by with much less. Like zero-bullets-at-his-disposal less. So he was definitely not going to complain. At least, not out loud.

  It was already eight in the morning, and the sun was forcing its way into the room through the high window. Although Mary had claimed the doctor was supposed to show up to check on him by now, the man hadn’t done so in the hour since she left. That left Keo to wonder if she had gotten her boss’s schedule wrong or if someone had held the man back. Not that he needed a doctor at the moment. Everything throbbed occasionally, but he’d never felt more alive, even if he didn’t look the part. Besides, there were plenty of bottles in the drawers and cabinets around him if he was feeling adventurous.

  He couldn’t see the Trident from the room’s lone high window because the sickbay was on the wrong side of the island. He couldn’t see much of anything really except for blue skies. But they were out there, with Lara meeting with Rhett. It was only a matter of time before Rhett came back, and whether he had agreed to pitch Frank’s plan to the other islanders or not, Keo was gone after that. He wasn’t looking forward to a confrontation if Rhett said no, but Keo was tired of asking people for permission.

  Have German guns, will swim.

  Hopefully he wouldn’t have to swim too far to get back to the Trident. What were the chances Lara would immediately leave without him if Rhett turned her down?

  He was still trying to figure that one out when the door opened and Henry stepped inside. Keo glimpsed Vern, one of his newer guards standing in the hallway with Kelly.

  “Glad you’re up,” Henry said. “Saves me the trouble of waking you.”

  “I was never asleep,” Keo said. “Hard
to have nice dreams when half the people on this island want you dead.”

  “You’re being dramatic. It’s more like one-third.”

  “Hurray for me. Rhett come back yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “So what is this, a social call? You miss our chats, Henry?”

  “Cameron wants to see you.”

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  “Rhett put her in charge while he’s gone. Come on.” He nodded at the MP5SDs. “Just bring one of those, and be careful where you point it.”

  Keo slung one of the submachine guns and walked over to Henry. “Trust me, I don’t go around pointing my muzzle at people unless I plan on pulling the trigger.”

  “Yeah, well, not everyone’s ready to accept the sight of you walking around with a gun yet. Let’s not give them any excuses to see you as a threat.”

  “Since when did they need an excuse? Besides, the people on this island should be used to me doing things they don’t approve of by now.”

  “I guess we’ll find out.”

  Keo followed Henry to the door. “I was just going to bring one anyway. What do I look like, a redneck with a gun fetish?”

  Henry chuckled. “I don’t think anyone’s ever going to mistake you for a redneck, Keo.”

  In the hallway, Keo locked eyes with Kelly. She appeared rested and had changed clothes, and for some reason was prettier than he remembered or had initially thought when they first met. Of course, people tended to look more attractive to him after they had saved his life, and Kelly had definitely done that last night.

  “Now that’s a look I didn’t think I’d ever see,” Kelly said.

  “Heckler & Koch is the latest accessory fad in Paris this year,” Keo said.

  “Yeah? I gotta get me one.”

  “Maybe in pink?”

  “Why, is that your favorite color?”

  Keo smirked. “It’s not not my favorite color.”

  Besides Vern and Kelly, there were two other soldiers waiting outside. One of them was named Mallory, but Keo had never caught the other one’s name. Henry started heading down the hallway and everyone followed, with Keo and Kelly behind him. He guessed Henry was one of Rhett’s more loyal men and had been put in charge of the guards, though all of it was confusing to Keo without proper ranks on uniforms. It made him appreciate the obvious hierarchy of the U.S. military just a little bit more.

  They walked for a while and turned two corners.

  A few minutes later and after two more empty stretches of hallway, Keo asked, “How big is this place?”

  “Big enough,” Henry said.

  “That’s big.”

  “I know, right?”

  “I can talk to you all day, Henry.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “So where are we going?”

  “I told you, Cameron wants to see you.”

  “But where.”

  Henry tossed a quick look back at him. “Why? You afraid I’m luring you into another trap?”

  “You’ll forgive me if I’m not in the most trusting mood.”

  “I don’t blame you after last night,” Kelly said beside him. “But this isn’t that. Cameron just wants some help.”

  “Help?” Keo said.

  “People have gone missing,” Henry said. “As far as we know, it happened after Pollock and Stans’s attempt on your life.”

  “Mercerians,” Keo said.

  “I like the name,” Kelly smiled. “It kind of fits with what they did with the black armband, with the M and everything.”

  “Creative types, huh?”

  “That’s one description for them.”

  “Whatever you wanna call them, we have people looking, but they’re coming up empty,” Henry said.

  “And how can I help?” Keo said. “Do I look like a bloodhound to you? I’ve been locked in solitary all morning. I didn’t even know for sure the Trident had arrived until you told me. I don’t know anything about what’s happening on this little jovial island of yours.”

  “I don’t know what she thinks you can do, but Cameron asked for you, and I’m assuming she’ll let you know when we get there. So just chill and stop with the questions. You’re starting to get on my nerves.”

  Keo smiled. “So this is what it takes to get on your nerves?”

  Henry chose to ignore him and kept walking through the empty corridor, with Keo, Kelly, and the other two following behind. After a while, Keo was starting to get the impression he had wholly underestimated the size of Black Tide.

  “By the way,” Kelly said next to him, “I’ve been meaning to ask: What kind of name is Keo, anyway?”

  “Brad was taken,” Keo said.

  “Huh?”

  “That’s what Brad said.”

  Cameron was in her late forties, graying around the temples, and looked like someone’s grandmother instead of the woman in charge of Black Tide while Rhett was away on the Trident. She looked up at Keo with a tired face that told him she hadn’t gotten a whole lot of sleep recently. She was bent over a table with a map of the island inside what looked like a command center. There was a bigger version of the map on one of the walls, but the one on the table had small green figurines placed strategically over it. Toy soldiers, the kind you’d find in a kid’s room.

  For the first time since he arrived, Keo got a good idea of what Black Tide actually looked like from an aerial view, including the interconnected buildings that made up the base. He had been kept in the brig on the east wing, while the quarters and the Comm Room were in the middle sections. And just minutes ago they had walked through the west wing, which had a noticeably higher presence of soldiers and armed people going in and out of operations-centric rooms.

  “So you’re him,” Cameron said. “The man who destroyed everything we’ve been planning for the last year with one bullet.”

  “You say it like it’s a bad thing,” Keo said.

  “It is, for some people.”

  “Are you one of those ‘some people?’”

  Cameron shrugged and gave him a tired look—which was to say her expression didn’t change since he stepped inside the room. “I’m just trying to keep people alive. If calling off the war brings everyone home, then all the better.”

  “So we have that in common.”

  “Was that why you killed Mercer? To stop the war?”

  “What do you think?”

  “You don’t look like the savior type.”

  “I can be very deceptive.”

  Henry and Kelly had stayed outside in the hallway with the other two, so Keo walked over to Cameron by himself. There had been three others in the room when he arrived, but after Cameron sent them off, it was just the two of them in a place designed to accommodate twenty, maybe more, comfortably. There were no windows, but the lights were bright enough for Keo to see every worry line on Cameron’s face.

  “When was the last time you slept?” Keo asked.

  “I can’t remember.” Cameron waved a dismissive hand. “But I didn’t ask you here to talk about my sleeping habits. What did Henry tell you?”

  “He was short on specifics.”

  “The specifics is that as of right now we’re missing nine people.”

  “Define ‘missing.’”

  “As in, unable to confirm their whereabouts. They didn’t report in for duty this morning, and when people were sent to their quarters, they weren’t there.”

  “Mercer loyalists.”

  “Possibly. Rhett and I talked about searching the rooms for those black armbands Pollack and Stans were wearing, but we decided against it.”

  “He told me. Something about not wanting to set off a powder keg.”

  “We were being cautious. But now…”

  “Now you have nine guys with guns somewhere on the island hiding from you.”

  “That’s it in a nutshell.”

  “Did you find any black armbands in their quarters?”

  “No.”

&nb
sp; “Have you told Rhett?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because nothing’s happened yet. Right now it’s just nine missing people. Maybe they snuck off the island after news of what happened to Pollack and Stans reached them.”

  “And why would they do that?”

  “They know we have Pollack, that he’s still alive. Maybe they’re afraid he might break and start naming names.”

  “Lots of maybes.”

  She nodded. “Too many.”

  “Did he? Pollack. Did he break?”

  “He hasn’t said a word since he woke up this morning. I don’t think he’s going to, either.”

  “You should tell Rhett about the missing men.”

  “Not yet.”

  “You don’t think this is something he’d want to know?”

  “I don’t want to interrupt what’s happening on the Trident right now. What they’re talking about over there—what’s eventually decided—might very well change the course of humanity.”

  Overstatement much? Keo thought, but he quickly realized she wasn’t entirely wrong or that far off the mark. Lara and Rhett were, at this very moment, talking about Frank’s plan, which if it worked could save mankind.

  Okay, maybe not too much overstating it, after all.

  “He told you what the meeting’s about,” Keo said.

  “Word gets around.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Keo said, remembering Mary’s words not too long ago:

  “It’s a small island, Keo. Secrets don’t stay a secret for very long around here.”

  He wondered how much the missing Mercerians knew and if this was their reaction to it. That thought made him a bit uneasy, and suddenly he was less concerned about what they were planning to do to him and more about Lara and his friends on the Trident.

  “I’ll call him when I have something substantial to tell him other than that I can’t find a few missing people,” Cameron was saying.

  “So that’s your problem,” Keo said.

  “That’s my problem.”

  “And why am I here? How can I help?”

  Cameron stared at him from across the table for a moment. He thought she might be trying to read his face. and he wanted to tell her good luck seeing through the scars and the bandage around his head. Even Keo wouldn’t be able to read his own face—that is, if he’d let himself see his own reflection, which he still hadn’t yet.