The Fields of Lemuria (5 page)

“Yeah, I figured that part out by my little lonesome. So what are we gonna do about it, that’s the question.”

Keo grinned. “What would Riggs do in this situation?”

Norris laughed. “I think you know the answer to that one.”

“Who’s Riggs?” Fiona asked.

Keo got up and walked back to the wall where he had placed Fiona’s pack. He rifled through the contents and pulled it out. It sported camouflage colors and was slightly five inches long and one-and-a-half inches wide, with a pin at one end.

He looked over at Norris. “You ready for this, old-timer?”

“No,” Norris said, “but when has that ever stopped your crazy ass from doing something anyway?”

“Um, what’s going on, guys?” Fiona said, more than just a touch of worry in her voice.

“Have you ever seen
Lethal Weapon?
” Keo asked her.

“What is that, a movie?”

“Yeah. Apparently it was a big action series from the ’80s.”

“And ’90s,” Norris added.

“Right, and ’90s.”

“So?” Fiona said. “What’s that got to do with what you’re about to do now?”

Norris chuckled. “You gotta grow the mullet, kid.”

“If I survive this, I’ll think about it,” Keo said.

The smoke would
last for ninety seconds. It was a thick, billowing white cloud that engulfed the bottom of the stairs almost as soon as it touched down. The speed with which it spread was impressive, though Keo wished Fiona had been carrying a third canister with her. Two of these bad boys would have been ideal.

He went down first with the MP5SD, fully intending to rely on its sound suppressor capability as he moved through the makeshift camouflage. He didn’t have any illusions that whatever advantage he had purchased was going to last for very long. There were eight people down there—
at least—
and they were all heavily armed. His only hope was that they had become complacent since arriving, knowing nothing was going to happen until Pollard arrived.

The first man he saw was coughing, swiping his hand in the air and stumbling around near the stair landing. His black clothes made him easy to spot against the white smoke. He had come from the direction of the kitchen, his AK-47 pointing at the floor in front of him. Keo wondered where he was going. For half a second, anyway.

The submachine gun went
pfft-pfft!
in Keo’s hands as he shot the man once in the chest, then again as the body fell to the floor in front of him.

Norris was coming down behind him, the bigger man moving with difficulty down the destroyed bottom half of the stairs. Keo kept to the side, skirting around the damaged area, then hopped the last four steps. Unlike last time when he stumbled and crashed into the wall, this time he landed in a slight crouch next to the dead body lying facedown on its stomach.

Voices, screaming, and radios squawking exploded all around him.

“The house!” someone shouted. “They’re coming down! Converge converge converge now!”

Now there’s a man with his head on straight.

Keo straightened up and twisted right, toward the living room. He hadn’t even completed his turn yet when he caught a ripple of movement in the expanding smoke. He fired twice and hit something that sounded like glass as the figure disappeared out of his line of sight.

More footsteps. Coughing.
From behind him.

He spun all the way around, just as a large black-clad silhouette staggered through the open door. Keo knew the front door was wide open because he could see the rectangular opening, like some kind of extra-dimensional portal with the sun glowing brightly on the other side. That, and the cloud was flooding in that direction, being sucked out by the hot air.

Keo shot the man once and hit him in the neck. Then as the man stumbled into a wall, gagging, blood spurting out of the hole just under his chin, Keo put a second round into his chest. The man slid down the wall with a heavy
thump
, his rifle clattering beside him.

There was loud, crashing gunfire behind him as Norris unleashed at the other side of the house with his M4. Norris was standing too close when he fired, and Keo flinched at the thunderous booms, one after another after another.

“Go, kid, go!” Norris shouted.

Keo made a run for the door. He hopped over chunks of the wall, ceiling, and floor that had been gutted by Fiona’s grenade from earlier. Loose tiles
crunched
under him, but the sound was quickly lost in another volley of bullets as Norris sprayed into the living room again. Keo just hoped the ex-cop was keeping count of his magazine, because he wasn’t entirely sure if they were going to have a chance to reload before this was over.

How long had it been? The smoke wasn’t going to last for more than ninety seconds.

Was it thirty seconds yet? Maybe a minute?

He was losing track of time. It probably had something to do with the hammering in his chest. He did his best to not breathe in the smoke as he ran through it, wishing the damn foyer wasn’t so long and—

Another black figure appeared in the doorway, the radio Velcroed to his assault vest blaring with someone’s voice, shouting, “They’re making a run for the door! Who the hell is at the door?”

This guy,
Keo thought, and shot the man in the face from almost point-blank range.

Blood and brains might have exited the back of the man’s head and sprayed the suffocating hot summer air behind him, but it was difficult to see through the smoke and bright sun assaulting every one of his senses.

Then he was through, jumping over the falling body even before the assaulter had gone completely down.

“Norris!” he shouted.

“Behind you!” Norris shouted back. “Keep moving!”

Keo kept moving, bursting out into the opening and landing on the cobblestone pathway that connected the door, snaked around the front yard, and reached the boathouse on Downey Creek Lake. It was a damn shame there wasn’t a boat in there waiting for them.

Where the hell are all the boats?

Considering how much lead Norris was pouring into the house behind him, Keo guessed most of the assaulters were back there. He had killed three—one was coming out of the kitchen, but two were clearly guarding the front door—so that left five out back. Unless he had hit the fourth man he saw moving earlier, then maybe four. Not that one more or less made any bit of difference at the moment.

Keo didn’t go down the pathway for very long. After about a second, he turned right and darted through overgrown grass that went up almost to his knees. It was like running across quicksand, only with more things slapping at his legs as he went.

The house was to his right, the thick woods spread out on all sides except to his left where the lake was. One of the reasons they had chosen the house was because of its isolated location. It was far from the other homes and connected to the main road by a private driveway. The problem with that was there wasn’t another house for them to run to for cover, and once outside the front door they were essentially out in the open, with the tree line (their only option) nearly forty meters away across open field.

No sweat. Time to run for your life, pal.

Keo ran, the MP5SD clutched tightly in his hands, ready to shoot anything that popped up in front of him. Sweat poured down his temple and stung his eyes, and it had only been a few seconds since he came out of the house.

Goddamn, it was hot out here.

It took five (or was that ten?) seconds before the first gunshot
zipped!
past his head, so close he swore the damn thing might have singed a stray hair or two as it went. After that first shot, the bullets started coming faster, like bees
buzzing
around him. Bees made of lead. One bite and he was a goner. He already had two holes in him; a third might just about do it. Especially in the right place—

“Too many!” Norris shouted behind him.

Keo threw a quick glance back and saw Norris struggling to keep up. The older man was already sucking in air like a drowning victim, the M4 swinging wildly in front of him. Keo had never seen him look more tired or ready to drop. And they had only been running for…what was it now, twenty seconds…? Ten?
Five seconds?

He looked past Norris at two figures emerging out of the front door of the two-story house further back, the white smoke billowing out with them, turning them into specters instead of assholes with assault rifles. Two more were coming from around the side of the house, both running full speed and firing in their direction at the same time.

“Keep running!” Keo shouted.

“No, no,” Norris said. “We gotta split up!”

“Are you crazy?”

Norris grinned at him. It was a slightly unhinged look, and Keo wondered if
he
ever looked like that whenever Norris called him crazy and he grinned back at the ex-cop in response.

“We stick together!” Keo shouted.

“Okay, okay, just keep going!” Norris shouted back.

Keo faced forward again. The wall of trees was coming up.

Ten meters.

Five…

Tree barks shattered in front of him from stray bullets. Well, not stray, exactly. Those bullets definitely had a target. Him and Norris.

Then he was through!

He breathed a sigh of relief, though he didn’t stop running for even a nanosecond. Soft and slightly damp earth squelched under his shoes instead of the hard, sun-drenched ground of the house front yard. The cool relief from the shade provided by the dome of trees was immediately obvious. And it was only going to get cooler, because soon it would be night, and night meant…

Run! Stop thinking and run!

“We keep going until we hit the shoreline!” Keo shouted. “Then follow it back around to the west side of the park!”

He waited for Norris to respond.

“Norris!”

Keo risked slowing down a bit. Not a lot, just enough to be able to glance over his shoulder—where he saw nothing back there.

He slid to a stop and grabbed at the gnarled face of a tree and used the moment to catch his breath while he looked around for Norris. There were no signs of him.

Where the hell did Norris go, and how long had he been running all by himself?

“Norris!”

He realized what a stupid thing that was to do immediately and almost paid for it with his life when a black-clad figure thirty meters away, barely visible behind some trees, turned in his direction and snapped off a shot.

The tree he had been holding onto sent splintered bark in his face. Keo cursed and squeezed off three shots back in the man’s direction. He couldn’t really see who he was shooting at because his eyes were half closed. It felt like needles had been hammered into his eyeballs. He did see a black blob ducking for cover, and Keo used the opportunity to spin around and take off running again.

He waited for the man to unload on him, but maybe the guy didn’t have a shot, or maybe Keo was a lot faster than he ever gave himself credit for. Either way, he kept moving, not looking back, doing his best to blink away whatever was trying to drill their way into his eyes and the brain behind them.

At least he wasn’t blind. He knew that much, because he could see the trees coming up at him from all sides. Left, right, and front. Everywhere. Every tree look identical to the last one hundred he had already passed.

He had been running for ten
(fifteen?)
seconds when he heard gunfire from behind him. He braced himself for a new swarm of bees, but they never came. That was because the shooting wasn’t anywhere nearby.

It was coming from behind and to the right of him.

Norris.

He stopped for a moment, slipping behind a big tree for cover, and looked back with the MP5SD at the ready. The rattle of automatic gunfire continued, like rolling thunder smashing across Robertson Park, and they were moving
away
from him.

What the hell are you doing, Norris?

Then, just like that, the last shot faded and there was just…silence.

He waited and waited for more shooting, but there was none. There was just the quiet all around him. He didn’t know silence could be so utterly suffocating.

Norris…

He was either dead, or he had escaped his pursuers. The only way to know for sure would be to head back to the house and pick up Norris’s trail and locate him…or his body. It was a hell of a choice. If Norris had managed to get away, then Keo would be heading right back into the teeth of the bad guys—

The squawk of a radio from nearby and the sound of a male voice intruded on his thoughts. “Did you get them? Someone answer me.”

Keo didn’t recognize the slightly muffled voice, but he knew a man in a position of authority when he heard one, even through a radio’s tiny speakers. His life was spent taking orders from men who knew the value of their words, and the man he was listening to now understood that power and wielded it without hesitation.

“We’re looking for them now, sir,” a voice on the other side of the tree he was positioned behind answered. The man wasn’t
too
close because Keo had to strain a bit to hear all the words clearly. “I think they split up.”

There was a moment of silence before the second man answered through the radio. “Find them quick. You’re running out of time.”

“Yes, sir.”

Keo stood perfectly still and listened to the man with the radio walking past him. When he was sure the footsteps were fading, he slowly slipped around the tree to get a better look. A figure in black clothes and assault vest was picking his way through the woods cautiously when he suddenly picked up speed. A second later, he was jogging through the woods, heading north up the park, until he slipped through some underbrush and was gone.

He cursed under his breath. He could have used the man’s radio. That, more than anything, would have allowed him to keep tabs on his pursuers.

Too late now. Way too late now.