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  And further still.

  There!

  It was either the eleventh or fifteenth second (or possibly the twentieth minute) since he began his mad dash, but Keo finally glimpsed camouflaged fabrics moving along one of the branches about twenty meters in front of him. It wasn’t too high up—seven or eight meters from the ground, give or take—and the man wearing those fabrics was standing.

  Keo felt a sting along his left hip (Shit!) but he kept moving, knowing that if he stopped for even a second to lick his wounds that he was a dead man. Instead, he lifted the MP5SD into position—it wasn’t hard to do since he had the submachine gun in front of him the entire time, and all it took was tilting it slightly in the right direction—and squeezed the trigger, and kept it depressed. He’d switched to full-auto earlier, and he sent every shot toward the tree where the figure was standing—some kind of wooden platform covered with natural colors to help it blend in with its environment. A hunting stand!

  Branches and foliage disintegrated against Keo’s 9mm rounds. The figure attempted to crouch—or maybe he was trying to somehow spin out of the bullets’ way?—but ended up staggering, then falling over the edge and slamming into the ground below with a loud thwump!

  Keo made a run toward the fallen figure, slinging the almost-empty Heckler & Koch and drawing the Glock as he did so. He checked his left hip as he ran and saw a hole in one of his pouches. When he slowed down to open it, he glimpsed the portable radio inside, along with the hole that had gone through it.

  But a destroyed radio was better than a hole in his leg!

  Keo picked up his pace, fully expecting the sniper to be dead by the time he reached him. Except the man was alive and lying on the ground where he had fallen. He was on his back and gasping for breath while his rifle—some kind of heavily modified AR covered in camo paint with a big scope on top—rested a few yards from his outstretched right hand. The weapon had a built-in suppressor, much like Keo’s own MP5SD, and its magazine had come dislodged in the fall.

  Calvin was still alive, but he gave up reaching for the rifle when Keo neared. Instead, the sniper pulled back his hand and rested it on his chest. He looked like a man who had just decided to lie down to rest instead of one that had been shot out of a tree. Keo couldn’t tell how old he was with all the paint on his face, but the Bucky was probably in his thirties, maybe early forties. Not exactly a big man, but tall even with his ghillie suit covering most of his body.

  The man from Fenton turned his head to look at Keo as he walked the final few meters and stopped. Calvin hadn’t bothered to go for the sidearm on his right hip and seemed more concerned with the small puddle of blood forming underneath his legs, coming from a hole in his right thigh. Keo didn’t think it was the wound that had made the man give up. No doubt the fall was the real culprit.

  “Shit, I think all my bones are broken,” Calvin groaned.

  “Don’t be so melodramatic,” Keo said. “I’ve seen worse. Besides, it’s not that high up.”

  Calvin smirked but didn’t reply.

  Keo snatched the Bucky’s handgun—a Beretta 9mm—out of its holster to alleviate him of any temptations of going for it. Now that there was no danger, Keo holstered the Glock and reloaded his MP5SD. Calvin hadn’t bothered trying to get up but had both hands on his bleeding thigh. Blood oozed through his fingers and stained his gloved hands.

  “Calvin, huh?” Keo said. “Not exactly the most dangerous sounding name, for a sniper.”

  “This, coming from a guy named Keo,” Calvin grunted.

  “I’m not a sniper. Snipers should have fearsome names, like Hawk. Or Doom. Or Hawky McDoom.”

  “You’re not a sniper, but you’re plenty dangerous.”

  “Lies. All lies, I tell you.”

  “That’s not what Buck said.” Calvin sucked in a deep breath. “Can I pull myself over to a tree and sit up? I gotta tend to this.”

  “Be my guest.”

  Keo meandered away to pick up Calvin’s rifle while the man crawled over to the tree he’d fallen out of and sat himself up with a pained groan. He took out a handkerchief from one of his pockets and wrapped it around the bullet hole.

  “Where’s all your equipment?” Keo asked.

  “Tree stand.”

  “Whatcha got up there?”

  “Climb up and find out.”

  Keo glanced up at the stand, barely visible against all the foliage even though he was standing almost directly underneath the hide. The fact that he had seen it at all earlier was a miracle. Maybe it had something to do with a man standing on it that had made it more obvious. You could camouflage something to look as natural you want, but once you put a human being inside it, it becomes unnatural.

  “How’d you get up there?” Keo asked.

  “Ropes and spikes.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Still up there.” He grinned at Keo. “You want my gear, you’ll have to climb up for them.”

  “I’m a pretty good climber.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Uh huh. My mom used to call me wonsungi.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Monkey.”

  “So you’re what, a Jap?”

  “Do I look like a Jap?”

  Calvin shrugged. “I don’t have a fucking clue.”

  “You alone?” Keo asked.

  “I already told you I was.”

  “I thought you might be lying.”

  “Well, I wasn’t.”

  Maybe, Keo thought, looking around the woods. He felt good about reinforcements not showing up anytime soon. If Calvin hadn’t gotten any Bucky support before, it was doubtful he’d get them now. Besides, both he and the sniper had been using suppressed weapons, so even if there were people walking around out there, it was doubtful anyone had heard their back and forth.

  He turned back to the sniper. “You gonna die on me?”

  Calvin looked up from his bloodied rag. “Not yet. But I assume you’re going to kill me eventually.”

  “And why would you assume that?”

  “This is war, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?”

  Calvin squinted at him. “Isn’t it?”

  Keo shrugged. He opened one of his pouches and took out a small bundle of gauze and tossed it over.

  Calvin caught it. He stared at it for a moment before looking up at Keo. “What’s this?”

  “What’s it look like?”

  “Bandages.”

  “Looks like bandages to me, too.”

  “What’re they for?”

  “To keep you from bleeding to death, genius. Granted, it’s unlikely you will even without it, but all that bloodletting won’t be very good for you. Take it from someone who knows.”

  Calvin didn’t say anything, and he also didn’t do anything with the bandages, either.

  “Go ahead,” Keo said.

  “Why?” Calvin asked.

  “I have a proposition for you.”

  Calvin kept squinting at him, but kept quiet.

  “You a Mercerian?” Keo asked.

  “A what?”

  “A Mercerian.”

  “I don’t know what that is. Is that Chinese?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “So what’s a Mercerian?”

  “The circled M that Buck’s boys wear on their vests. I assume you have one, too, when you’re not all covered up in mud and trees and out here lying in wait for innocent folks like myself.”

  “Innocent,” Calvin snorted. “Right.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Calvin shrugged. “I didn’t know that was what the M stood for.”

  “No?”

  “Nah.”

  “What did you think it stood for?”

  “I dunno. I never bothered to ask.”

  “Never?”

  “Well, that’s not true. I asked once or twice, but the guys I asked didn’t know either, and after a while, I didn’t bother to ask again.”


  “Not the curious type, huh?”

  “Not really.”

  Keo grinned. “Go on. Fix yourself up, and we’ll talk.”

  “About what?”

  “Do it first.”

  Calvin did. Grudgingly.

  Keo took the moment to look around the area again, then back up at the tree stand. It wasn’t that high up, and he’d definitely climbed higher trees. Except those always had things for him to grab onto. He could see indentations along the trunk where Calvin’s rope and spikes had cut into the bark as he scaled the big elm tree. Minus the gear, the closest branch was a good three meters up, and Keo wasn’t going to be able to jump high enough to reach it.

  When Calvin was done dressing his wound, he tossed what remained of the bandages back, and Keo put it away.

  “What kind of name is Keo, anyway?” Calvin asked.

  “Hey, we can’t all be Calvins. Some of us gotta make do with what we’re given.”

  “That’s not Japanese, is it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Chinese?”

  “Strike two.”

  “What is it?”

  “That’s for me to know and for you to find out.”

  Calvin grunted.

  “So you weren’t lying,” Keo said. “You were trying to capture me alive all by yourself.”

  “I haven’t told you a single lie since our first encounter.”

  “That’s awfully decent of you.”

  “I can be a pretty decent guy.”

  Chang and Banner would disagree, Keo thought, but he smiled and said, “Me too.”

  The sniper’s eyes, mostly hidden behind his face paint, really focused on Keo’s face. “What exactly do you want with me?”

  Keo crouched in front of Calvin. He had kept enough distance that he wasn’t afraid the other man might try something stupid that would force Keo to shoot him, but just in case, Keo had the MP5SD draped over one knee as a deterrent. You never knew when someone would get a case of the stupids.

  “I need to get into a very specific part of Fenton undetected,” Keo said. “Then once inside, I need a way out.”

  “So? What’s that got to do with me?”

  “You’re going to assist me.”

  “How the hell am I gonna do that?”

  “I’m sure we can figure it out.”

  “Even better question, why the hell would I even entertain the idea of helping you get inside?”

  “I already have a way inside. But you can never have too many options, just in case.” He pointed at the sniper. “You’re my ‘just in case.’”

  Calvin stared at him but didn’t respond right away. Finally, he said, “What if I say no?”

  “Then I shoot you and bury you behind a bush so your friends can’t find you, but anything else can, especially when night falls.”

  “You’re going to do that anyway.”

  “If I were going to do that, it would have been done. You’d be dead, and I’d be on my merry way to Fenton right now. But here we are talking like two grown men. We are two grown men, aren’t we?”

  “Last time I checked.”

  “So there you have it.”

  Keo paused to let his words sink in. He could see it in Calvin’s eyes—the man was thinking about it. How close or far Keo was from convincing him, on the other hand, was difficult to really tell.

  “You’re not a Mercerian,” Keo said. “You would have known what that M stood for if you were.”

  “Unless I was lying,” Calvin said, smiling.

  “You weren’t.”

  “You willing to risk your life on that?”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  “Brave man.”

  Or a stupid man, Keo thought, but he said, “Look, it’s a simple deal: Give me a hand with this job I gotta do, and I let you live. After that, we go our separate ways. You’ll be free to go, and no one will ever know you were involved. You have my word.”

  “Your word?” Calvin said and almost laughed. Almost.

  But he didn’t. Did that mean something?

  Maybe…

  “You’re not going to get a better deal than that,” Keo said.

  “Buck would kill me.”

  “Only if he finds out. You have my word that he won’t.”

  “And what’s your word worth?”

  “A lot more than the alternative.” Keo stood up and held his hand out to Calvin. “We got a deal?”

  Calvin stared at Keo, then at his proffered hand. “Do I have a choice?”

  “Of course you do. We all have choices. The question is, will you make the right one?”

  “I guess we’ll find out.” The sniper extended his own hand and shook Keo’s. “You’re crazy.”

  “I’ve been called worse,” Keo said, pulling Calvin up—

  When Calvin grabbed at the Glock in Keo’s holster with his other hand.

  For a man moving on one gimpy leg, the sniper was surprisingly fast, and he had his hand on the pistol and was trying to yank it free even before Keo could react—when there was a single, thunderous crack!

  Calvin spun and dropped to the ground, leaving behind a puff of red mist in the space he had been occupied mere seconds ago.

  Keo twisted around, unslinging his submachine gun.

  Rita was standing next to a tree, her rifle pressed against it as she pulled her eye away from its scope and smirked across the distance at him.

  Keo looked back at Calvin, a thin trail of blood dripping from his left temple while his brains and chunks of skull had splattered the tree trunk that he’d been sitting against earlier. He was as dead as dead could be.

  Rita walked over to Keo while glancing around alertly at their surroundings, the Mk 14 gripped tightly in front of her. The weapon still looked way too big for someone who was so small.

  “What did you think you were doing?” she asked.

  “I was trying to make a deal with him,” Keo said. “Increase our odds of success once we’re inside Fenton.”

  “It didn’t work.”

  “Obviously,” Keo said, and let out a frustrated sigh.

  Six

  Five Days Ago

  “She’s safe and sound and was exactly where you told me she’d be. The first thing she asked when we found her was, ‘Did you save my mom?’ The second thing was to demand to know where you were.”

  “She demanded?”

  “That’s what the guys said.”

  Keo smiled. “Yeah, that sounds like Megan, all right.”

  “Did you adopt her or something?” Gaby asked.

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “You just spent a lot of time with her and her mom at Winding Creek.”

  “Yes.”

  “How long are we talking about here?”

  Keo thought about it before answering. “A while.”

  “That’s not very specific, Keo.”

  “I wasn’t exactly marking the days off on a calendar, Gaby. It was one of those things that happened, and I went with the flow.”

  “And I’m sure the fact that her mom was a full-blown babe didn’t hurt.”

  He chuckled. “‘Full-blown babe?’”

  “Something I heard some of the guys say. Supposed to mean she’s a real beauty.”

  “I guess so.”

  “So was she?”

  “What?”

  “Megan’s mom. Was she a full-blown babe?”

  “She wasn’t ugly.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t tell Lara.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” She grinned. “So, after five years of avoiding us, here you are. Funny how things work out, huh?”

  “Funny wouldn’t be the word I would have used.”

  “How does it feel?”

  “It’s…weird.”

  “What’s weird about it?”

  “What’s not weird about it?”

  They stood on the rooftop of the building where the Black Tiders were quartered,
watching as an A-10 took off from the makeshift tarmac about two hundred meters away. If Keo squinted, he could just make out a clown’s face on the front of the Thunderbolt.

  “Mayfield?” Keo asked.

  Gaby nodded. “The clown gives it away.” She sipped her coffee, one hand inside her jacket pocket. “She’s doing aerial reconnaissance over Fenton. Lara wants them to know that we’re watching them day and night.”

  “She told me.”

  He sipped his own coffee, but the cafeteria lady had put in too much sugar, and it was way too sweet. He grimaced it down anyway and made a mental note to pour his own cup next time. Coffee wasn’t something you turned away these days, even if the taste wasn’t to your liking. The croissant he’d enjoyed at breakfast was settling nicely in his stomach, as were the bacon and scrambled eggs. Keo had forgotten what it was like to be back among civilization. Winding Creek had been close, but it wasn’t Darby Bay.

  He turned away from the airfield and sat on the ledge and looked toward the civilian side of the port city. Instead of Jeeps and aircraft, there were fishing boats moored to docks while others moved steadily up and down the coastline with their large sails flapping in the wind. The townspeople relied on horseback and wagons, but most of them were on foot. He wondered if any of the people down there knew what was happening around Fenton or even why Black Tide had taken over a large chunk of their town.

  What’s that saying? Ignorance is bliss?

  Until guys in technicals show up in your streets, anyway.

  “How’re your wounds?” Gaby asked as she sat down next to him.

  “Healing,” Keo said. “Yours?”

  “Getting there.”

  “Are you coming with me?”

  “Lara won’t let me.”

  “Why not?”

  “She thinks I need more time to heal up.”

  “You look fine to me,” Keo said, which wasn’t completely true. Gaby was still limping noticeably when she first showed up in his room that morning, but he didn’t think she wanted to hear that.

  “Tell Lara that,” Gaby said. “She won’t believe me.”

  “Maybe she’ll come around by the time I leave.”

  “From your lips to God’s ears.”

  Keo grinned. “Is that what Lara is now? God?”

  Gaby chuckled. “Depends on who you ask. But don’t tell her I said that. She hates the idea that people think she’s more than just a failed medical student.”