Keo couldn’t see how Jasper reacted behind him, but he saw Olsen releasing his arm as the man scrambled for his rifle while Travis was less decisive and continued clinging to Keo. Even as Keo tried to figure out what was happening, the words Drop! Drop! Drop! flashed across his mind.
He did exactly that, letting both legs turn to jelly and dropping like a sinking rock. In the process, he dragged Travis down with him. His knees had just slammed into the floor, sending stabs of pain through him, when a familiar figure appeared in the open doorway in front of him.
Erin.
She had a gun in one hand, and if she saw him she didn’t give any indication of it. Instead, she fired again, the gunshot a thunderous boom! in the small communications room. She had fired high, which meant she wasn’t aiming at him, so it was either Olsen to his right or Jasper somewhere behind him. Keo hoped it was Jasper because he had a feeling the big man was going to be the hardest one to take down.
Two shots responded from behind him and from such close proximity that they might as well be nukes going off, and Keo wondered if he might not have gone deaf as a result. In front of him, Erin seemed to take a staggering step back before collapsing, having made it only a couple of steps into the room, while her gun fell out of her numbed right hand and clattered to the floor.
But it wasn’t Erin’s falling gun or Erin herself that Keo found himself staring at. No, it was the instantly recognizable oblong-shaped green object rolling out of her left palm when the back of her hand slapped the floor and the fingers unfurled and—
Uh oh, Keo thought as he spun at the waist while a pair of hands tried desperately to keep his left arm in place. Travis, unwilling to let go despite everything happening around them. But Travis wasn’t fast or strong enough, and Keo twisted free and turned around and looked up at—
Jasper, staring back at him, even as he started to lower the Smith & Wesson in his right hand to aim at Keo’s head, when someone shouted, “Grenade!”
The shout froze Jasper in place — at least, for just a second — but it was enough time for Keo to launch himself and grab Jasper’s arm and jerk back down with everything he had. The loud crack! as Jasper’s arm snapped at the elbow was only drowned out by Jasper’s screams, but Keo was beyond caring. He wrested the gun out of the man’s suddenly pliant hand and spun back to the door.
Travis was on the ground, staring wide-eyed at the grenade that had rolled out of Erin’s left hand. Except Travis didn’t see what Keo had spotted earlier—the pin was still intact. Erin might have come here with the intention of taking all of them (Mercer) out with the grenade if she couldn’t do it with the pistol, but somewhere between shooting the two outside and stepping into the Comm Room, she had never armed the frag device.
But Travis didn’t know that and kept trying to get up, draw his gun, and keep his balance at the same time, and failing at all three. Next to Travis, Olsen lay on his back on the floor with blood pumping out of his chest.
Keo was still taking stock of the action behind him (a second? Half a second, if that?) when a fist landed against the back of his head. But the blow, while catching him by surprise, wasn’t nearly as strong as it could have been if it had been delivered by someone who didn’t have a broken arm and was relying on his weak hand. Still, it staggered Keo just enough while Jasper followed, useless right hand dangling at his side like a stump while his left cocked back for another strike—
Keo shot the man in the stomach at almost point-blank range. At the exact same time, he glimpsed Mercer in the back of the room taking aim with the Sig Sauer he had taken from Keo earlier.
“Keo!” Mercer shouted.
Fuck you! Keo wanted to shout back, but he was too busy ducking as Mercer fired and Jasper’s body twitched against the impact above him.
He grabbed the big man by the shirt collar and hid in front of him, using him as a shield the way he had done Mercer earlier. Except Jasper was much heavier (and dead?), and it took all of Keo’s strength to keep him propped up on his feet. Keo stuck his gun between Jasper’s side and left arm and squeezed off two rounds in Mercer’s direction.
The first shot missed completely and hit a radio receiver, but the second struck Mercer in the left thigh and the man stumbled, his gun hand wavering for just a heartbeat before he raised it again and fired a second time, then a third—
Keo shoved his shoulder into Jasper’s limp body and ran it forward, using the man as a moving battering ram. He only caught a blur of Mercer before he had crossed the remaining space between them and slammed the soldier into his superior and knocked all three of them down like stray bowling pins. It would have been comical if Keo weren’t so close to death that all he could think was move, move, move!
Luckily for Keo, he ended up on top of Jasper, whose back had collided with Mercer and now pinned the man to the floor under them. Mercer glared up at him, but his gun was somewhere trapped underneath Jasper’s heavier body, along with his entire right arm. For the very first time since he met the man, Keo saw real concern flashing across Mercer’s face.
So he is a real boy after all!
Keo might have laughed out loud if he wasn’t too busy checking on Travis, who had finally managed to gather enough of his senses (and had realized the grenade wasn’t live) to stand up and turn around.
He shot Travis in the hip — it was his best angle while still perched on top of the unmoving Jasper — as the soldier was turning, gun in his hand. Travis let out a startled grunt and dropped the pistol, then stumbled to the door and leaned against it while grabbing at his wound. He still had his rifle slung over his shoulder, but he might not have remembered as he hobbled outside into the hallway.
He’s got the right idea, Keo thought as he looked back at Mercer, still struggling underneath Jasper. The only thing Keo cared about was that the older man’s right hand — and the gun in it — was still absent.
He could already hear pounding footsteps behind him coming from outside the Comm Room. In a minute — maybe half that time, but even that was being overly generous — there would be enough guns here to keep him from doing what he needed to do, what he had come here to do in the first place.
After all the struggling hadn’t done him any good, Mercer finally ceased all movement and seemed to lie back and stare up at Keo. “Don’t,” he said.
“Don’t what?” Keo said.
“The war,” Mercer said. “Someone has to do it. If not me, then who?”
“Fuck your war,” Keo said, and shot Mercer between the eyes.
He was rewarded with a fresh coat of red paint on the floor.
28
Gaby
“Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
She hated the sound of his voice and the stupid cavalier attitude he was trying to project through the radio. She would have turned the two-way off if she could, but there was no upside to that and plenty of downside. As long as he was talking, he was giving her valuable information even if he didn’t know it. She couldn’t decide if he was stupid or if he just didn’t care.
“We can play this game forever. I got all the time in the world, sweetheart. Don’t know about you, though.”
I’m not your sweetheart, asshole.
She would have said it out loud if she weren’t afraid he might hear the pain in her voice. At least this way he didn’t know if she was even still alive, and that, hopefully, would deter him from coming in because she wasn’t entirely certain she could take Mason and however many men he had out there with him if they did.