The Bones of Valhalla (Purge of Babylon, Book 9) (26 page)

* * *

“
G
aby
.”

She opened groggy eyes while her hand instinctively moved an inch or two closer to the rifle leaning against the desk she had laid her head on to sleep.

“You’re back,” she said, her voice barely a whisper, even as she pulled her hand away from the weapon.

“Yes,” he hissed.

She opened a bottle of water and took a drink. “I’m never going to get used to how quiet you can move. Even with all that stuff on. What were you doing out there?”

“Scouting.”

She smiled. “Danny was right. You can take the man out of the Ranger, but you can’t take the Ranger out of the man. So what did you find out?”

“Nothing new.”

“What about the collaborators?”

“They’ve arrived.”

“Where, exactly?”

“Everywhere.”

“That’s not good.”

“They don’t matter.”

“Right. The plan.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “So Ashley wasn’t lying after all.”

“No.”

“I didn’t think she was anyway.”

“Lara?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I haven’t heard back from them yet.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s only a few minutes past midnight, and she did say this was probably going to go all the way till morning.” The chair creaked as she leaned back on it and let out a yawn. “Do you ever get tired?”

“Not anymore.”

“But you can get hurt. Like back at Gallant.”

“Yes.”

“You can die, too.” She added quickly, uncertainly, “Again, I mean.”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“I feel like Blaine sometimes. As much as I’ve gotten used to being around you—this new you—there are still things I’m never going to understand, and I’m not sure if I really want to.”

“Gaby,” he said.

She looked over at him, suddenly alarmed by the tone of his voice. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“The woman.”

“What woman?”

“The collaborator.”

“What about her?”

“I need her.”

“You need her?”

“Yes.”

There was a moment of confusion on her face, but it was quickly replaced by understanding.

Then something else, something… Disgust? Fear? Or maybe it was resignation, an acceptance of the way things were. The way
he
was.

“I need her,” he said again.

“Are you hurt?” she asked quietly, as if afraid Blaine and the woman would overhear outside the office.

“No.”

“Then why?”

“I need more. I need to be stronger.”

“What about back on the
Trident?
”

“It wasn’t enough.”

“Because of what happened at Gallant?”

“Yes,” he lied. “Because of what happened at Gallant.”

She looked past him and out the window—at the truck, but mostly for the woman in the backseat, whom she couldn’t see from her angle but knew was out there.

Her eyes finally returned to him. “Is there another way?”

“No…”

“There has to be…”

“There isn’t.”

Her face darkened, anger replacing the uncertainty. “Then why are you telling me this? You could have just taken her. It’s not like Blaine or I could have stopped you.”

“You needed to know.”

“Needed to know what, Will?”

“Who I am. What I am.”

She sighed, then nodded and turned back to the desk, and said quietly, “Then I guess you should do what you have to do.”

* * *

B
laine was
asleep in the front seat of the truck when he opened the door and took the woman out. Her eyes flew wide and she might have screamed, except his hand was over her mouth before she could utter a single noise and he carried her out of the side door and into the darkness.

He took her far from the garage, far from Gaby, before laying her down on a rooftop. Her eyes, as wide as he had ever seen a pair of eyes, focused on him instantly and every inch of her body shook uncontrollably and never stopped.

“Please,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

It seemed like the thing to say, even though he didn’t mean it. He didn’t know this woman, but he had no ill feelings toward her. She was simply there and he needed the precious liquid pumping through her veins.

“Please.
Please
,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“But I did everything you wanted. I even
killed
for you.”

“Not for me.”

“I don’t understand…”

“You don’t have to,” he hissed, and bent over her.

She whimpered as he bit down. Her hands clutched at him, fingernails digging into his skin. He didn’t feel it and continued to feed, drawing the life force out of her one slurp at a time.

Over and over and over, until she stopped thrashing and lay still in his arms.

I’m sorry
, he thought, but the words sounded hollow even in his mind, so he concentrated on the feeding instead.

She tasted sweeter than the two from the
Trident
, and for a moment—just a moment—he allowed himself to savor her in the way he was meant to. The way Mabry always intended him to.

“Come closer,”
Mabry beckoned somewhere in the back of his mind.
“Come closer…”

“
E
xcuse me
, but I thought I just heard you say there might be
millions
of those bloodsucking things in Houston right now, waiting for us to walk right up to their front door and ring the dinner bell. But that couldn’t have been right, because what suicidal moron would volunteer for something like that?”

Keo grinned to himself. He had to admit, Peele had a way with words for someone who looked like he should be filling out people’s tax forms and not volunteering to lead the tank portion of an attack on the enemy position. Then again, Keo had met plenty of people who didn’t look like they could defend themselves, but proved otherwise when the chips were down. Peele may or may not be one of those folks, but he was certainly asking all the right questions.

“And how do we even know this Frank guy will be there?” Peele continued. “For all we know, he might not even make it into position. And then what? We’ll be slugging it out with a few thousand—you did say thousands, right?—collaborators who probably came better armed this time after what we did to them during R-Day.”

Because Frank is a blue-eyed ghoul. Because he can go where we can’t. Because if you knew the truth about ol’ Frank, you’d piss your pants.

“Frank will be there,” Lara said. “He’s the most sure-thing part of this plan. It’s everyone else you should be worried about.”

“Who is he?” Cole asked. The pilot stood with his arms across his chest like he didn’t want to be there.

And yet here he was, along with Peele and Alex, another one of the tankers. Of the three, Cole stood out. He was, after all, the guy who had been doing Warthog strafing runs all across Texas ever since Mercer’s war began. Of the three pilots on Black Tide, he had been the only one to volunteer. It made perfect sense to Keo that Cole would be here. Only the grizzled veteran would be able to shake off what he had done in Mercer’s name in such a short turnaround. It wouldn’t surprise Keo at all if the other two were too disillusioned to ever climb back into a cockpit ever again, though to hear Cole tell it, he was on the verge of convincing at least one to join the fun.

It’s all fun and games until the bullets fly, right, boys?

They were inside a large room in the command area of Black Tide’s facility. It didn’t have the size of the earlier room where Keo had met with Cameron, but then it also wasn’t riddled with bullets and blood. It was big enough to accommodate all eight of them, including the two R’s—Rhett and Riley—while still leaving room for a few more bodies.

“The kind of intel he’s sending back takes a lot of work for one man,” Cole continued. “And you say he’s been out there this entire time. So who exactly is this guy, that he’s able to do all of this?”

Keo couldn’t tell if that was suspicion in Cole’s voice or just straightforward curiosity. Maybe it was a little of both, and from the looks on Alex’s and Peele’s faces, it was a question that was also on their minds.

“He was an Army Ranger before all of this,” Lara said. Her voice was steady and confident, and if Keo didn’t know any better, he would swear she didn’t have a single doubt about Frank or his plans. “He served in Afghanistan, then was part of a SWAT unit. When I tell you that he’s the most sure-thing part of this plan, I’m not exaggerating. This is what he does. And he’s very good at it.”

Alex and Peele exchanged a quick look, but Cole remained unmoved. Or, at least, Keo couldn’t read anything on that lined face of his.

“Why didn’t you say that before?” Alex said. He was the youngest by far—twenty-two, if that, with dark blond hair. Keo thought he looked a bit like Danny, if Danny were shorter and learned to shut up once or twice.

“A Ranger,” Peele said. “That explains a lot.”

Lara looked over at Danny, standing next to her behind the table with the map of Texas. That was a signal for him to pitch in.

“We served in Afghanistan together,” Danny said. “He’s a good bloke. Smart as a whip. The guy excels at SERE and you should take everything he sends back as gospel. I can’t count the number of times I’ve put my life in his hands. A lot of people have. Lara, Keystone Cops over there, to name just a few who wouldn’t be here if not for him.”

“If his intel is correct, that just confirms we’ll be running into a buzz saw,” Cole said.

“Speak for yourself,” Peele said. “You’ll be in the sky. We’ll be the ones on the ground with all those collaborator assholes.”

“You volunteered, remember?” Rhett said. He had kept quiet while Lara did the briefing, and this was the first time he had spoken up in almost twenty minutes. Keo had almost forgotten he was even in the room with them. Then again, he wondered if anyone remembered
he
was present, since he hadn’t said a word since the meeting began.

“I know that, Rhett,” Peele said. “But I didn’t know
this
was what we’re going up against.”

“It doesn’t matter how many are out there,” Lara said. “I’m not asking you to win. Your objective—your only objective—is to keep them away from Willie Boy while they finish the mission.”

“That’s this guy Frank’s group?” Alex said. “Codename Willie Boy?”

“Yes.”

“Who came up with that, anyway?”

“I did,” Danny said.

“What’s it mean?” Alex asked. “I get that we’re Rolling Thunder and Cole’s Eagle, but what the hell’s a Willie Boy?”

“Trade secret. Maybe I’ll tell you when this is over.”

“So we’ll just be a distraction,” Peele said, still focused almost entirely on Lara. “Keep as many of them off Willie Boy’s back as possible?”

“Yes,” Lara nodded.

“For how long?”

“As long as you can.”

“What if we’re forced to retreat?”

“As long as you can,” Lara repeated. “I’m not asking you to sacrifice yourselves. We just need to give Willie Boy every single second possible.”

That seemed to appease Peele somewhat, and he nodded. He had a good ten years on Alex, but looked young next to the aging Cole.

“While they’ll be busy with you on the ground and Eagle in the air, Striker will assist Willie Boy,” Lara said. “Together, they’ll complete the mission.”

“Just like that?” Cole said.

“Just like that,” Danny said. “What, it should be harder?”

“Is it really going to be that easy?” Alex asked. He sounded doubtful, but Keo thought he heard a little bit of hope in there as well.

“It won’t be that easy,” Lara said. “None of this is going to be easy in the slightest.”

She stared at all three of them, one after another, and gave time for her words to sink in. Keo had to admit, it was the right play. It was the same as telling them that she wasn’t hiding anything, that she wasn’t going to bullshit them about how hard all of this was going to be.

“Everyone will have to do their part,” Lara finally continued. “We need to give Willie Boy every chance in the world to succeed. That means holding on for as long as you can.
As long as you can.
”

“How does it work?” Alex asked. “Not the plan, but everything else.”

“The ghouls share a hive-like mind. This King Ghoul, as Danny calls it, controls them through a psychic link. Don’t ask me how it all works, it just does. You’ve all been out there; you’ve seen them for yourselves. The things we don’t know about them could fill a book. But we know enough, thanks to Frank.”

“It’s all supernatural shit,” Rhett said. “I stopped trying to understand them a long time ago.” He gazed across the table at Lara. “If she says killing King Ghoul takes them out, then I believe her.”

Lara nodded gratefully back at him.

“I’ve seen it up close and personal,” Danny said. “I’ve gone toe-to-toe with them. And I’m not talking about your garden-variety black eyes.”

“The blue eyes,” Riley said.

“We’ve heard stories about them,” Peele said. His voice had dropped noticeably for some reason. “They lord over the towns, keep the blood pumping.”

“They do that, and then some,” Danny said. “The important takeaway is that they run the show. They use the black eyes like marionettes. Cut the strings by taking out the baby blues, and the puppets go down for the count.”

“How?” Cole asked.

“That’s for history and scientific folks to figure out. I just know that when you snuff out one of them, every black-eyed ghoul in the area just stops.”

“Just stops?” Peele said.

“Like they ran out of batteries or something.”

“That’s…insane.”

“Right, because this whole year has been so sane,” Keo said. It was the first time he had spoken, and they all turned to look at him. “I’ve seen the same things Danny has, up close and way too personal for my liking. You take out one of the blue eyes, and the rest don’t know what the hell to do. Imagine what happens when you remove King Ghoul. The one that controls them all. The head of the snake.”

“Think of it like a military chain of command,” Danny said. “At the bottom you have the grunts—the black eyes. They make up the vast majority of the ghouls out there. The baby blues are the COs and NCOs rolled into one—they run every aspect of the daily grind. And up at the very top—”

“King Ghoul,” Cole said.

Keo watched the veteran’s face carefully. Cole might have been the only pilot to volunteer so far, but he had come into this room with a lot of doubts, and from the looks of it, Keo had a hunch he would eventually leave with less.

“Exactamundo,” Danny said. “Cut off the head and the tentacles flail around all dramatic like, then they eventually die. That’s what Frank found out while he was out there. Trust me when I tell you, he went through hell and back just to get this information to us. He sure as hell didn’t do it for the LOLs.”

“And now he’s back out there again,” Lara said, picking up after Danny.

It was almost as if the two of them had rehearsed it, but of course Keo knew better because he had been with them for the last five hours on the
Trident
,
coming up with the plan.

She continued: “He’s moving into position, and when the time is right, Frank will kill King Ghoul.”

“How?” Peele asked.

“It doesn’t matter how. What matters is that he’ll be the one to do it, with a lot of help from us. From you and Cole, and Keo over there. He can’t do this alone. If this is going to work, he’s going to need all of us to throw everything we have at the city.”

Alex and Peele exchanged another quick look, and this time Cole joined them.

“What do you think?” Alex asked, looking across at Rhett.

“I think this is our chance,” Rhett said. “Lara and her people know more about these things than all of us combined. Mercer had us so concerned with the collaborators, with the towns, that sometimes I think he forgot who the real enemy was. Lara and her people never did. I think we need to grab this opportunity before it’s gone, because we might not get another shot at these fuckers.”

Keo watched the faces carefully, and he was almost certain Alex was completely convinced. Peele still had some way to go, but he was headed there. As for Cole…the pilot could have been thinking about a cheeseburger, for all Keo could decipher from his facial expression.

“There’s some good news,” Keo said.

“Spill the beans, Kerosene,” Danny said.

Keo got up and walked over to the table. He leaned over the map and made a circle around the city of Houston. “They’re calling every available patrol unit to help secure the roads into the city. That leaves everything else”—he circled the rest of the state—“wide open.”

“Meaning?” Peele asked.

“Meaning, when we reinsert back into Texas and start moving toward the target, there won’t be any opposition until we reach Houston itself. Or if there’s any along the way, it’ll be but a shadow of what they could have thrown at us. Will we run into a patrol or two out there? Maybe. Maybe not. But it won’t be as many as we were going to before they recalled everyone to help guard Houston. So in a way, Head Ghoul—or King Ghoul, or whatever it’s called—did us a big favor and it doesn’t even know it.”

“Even if all that’s true, there’s gonna be a hell of a lot of opposition once we do reach the city limits,” Peele said. “Truthfully, I can shell those black-eyed fuckers all day, but the other type of enemy does tend to shoot back. The tanks can withstand a lot of damage, but if what your people are saying is true and there are a couple thousand collaborator assholes waiting for us…” He shook his head. “Man, I wish we had more tanks.”

“What about you, Cole?” Alex asked, looking eagerly across at the former airman. “What are you thinking?”

Good question
, Keo thought, turning to observe the grizzled veteran himself.

“It’s going to be more dangerous for you boys down there,” Cole said. “Like you said, Peele, I’ll be in the sky. Unless the bad guys have learned to fly since R-Day, I’ll have the airspace all to myself.”

“So you’re in?” Peele asked.

Cole pursed his lips, but he nodded, if almost reluctantly. “After what we’ve done, even if it was in another man’s name, I don’t see how I can
not
do this.” He paused, before continuing: “If you’re asking me to tell you what to do, I’m not going to do that. That’s for every man to decide for himself. But I got markers on my soul, boys. We all do, after R-Day. I figure we owe it to ourselves to try to make up for that. It’s not going to magically erase every horrible thing we did out there, but maybe it’ll help me get some sleep in the nights to come.”

It was a damn fine speech, and even Lara and Danny were impressed by it. The fact that it had come from Cole meant even more to the other islanders from the looks on their faces.

Leave it to the old guy to bring it home.

“Are you guys in?” Rhett asked, looking across at the tankers.

Alex hesitated and looked to Peele.

“Yeah,” Peele nodded. “I’m in.”

“Then I guess I’m in, too,” Alex said.

“Good,” Lara said, as if she never had a single shred of doubt that this was exactly how the meeting would end up.

Damn, she’s good at this.

Lara glanced down at her watch. “Go back to your people and fill them in. Then try to get some sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day for all of us.”