He stared at them in silence for a moment. These people were at home and at peace with their choice. He could tell that just from the way they talked and moved around. His first instinct was to pity them, but maybe they were the smart ones. They had accepted and embraced the reality of the world, and from the looks of it, they were happy. People like him and Jordan, on the other hand, were living hand to mouth, getting by on what they could scavenge, and always looking over their shoulders.
Who was he to pity them? They would probably pity him, and he would have a pretty hard time convincing them it should be the other way around.
Jordan hadn’t said a word since they looked out across the river. He wondered if she was rethinking the last few months of her life. She had been trying to rescue these people, but they probably had no idea and might not have been all that grateful if she had succeeded.
“Jordan,” he said softly.
She looked over.
“You okay?”
She nodded, then got up. “Let’s get going. I don’t want to be caught out here when it starts raining.”
She stood up and pushed through the brush. She was moving too fast, as if she was in a hurry to get away from the civilians and their carefree laughter on the other side of the river. She was already a full meter ahead of him when Keo saw something black moving against the green and brown of the trees and branches in front of her. Jordan had her head slightly down and didn’t see it. He would have screamed at her if he could, but there was no time and he was afraid someone else might hear him anyway.
Jordan finally looked up and froze at the sight of the man stepping out through two large trees. He was wearing a black uniform and he mirrored her response, halting completely at the sight of her. They stared at one another for just a second, though he imagined it must have seemed longer to the both of them. Time had a habit of stretching endlessly when you were staring death in the face.
“Hey, wait up,” a voice said behind the man.
That seemed to spur the man into action, and he reached for his sidearm because his M4 was slung uselessly behind his back.
Jordan, on the other hand, hadn’t moved at all.
Keo fired past Jordan, the pfft! of his gunshot sounding much too loud to his own ears even though he knew for a fact it was little more than a coughing noise. The soldier had a name stenciled across his name tag, but Keo didn’t get the chance to read it before the man fell to the ground on his stomach and face-
Revealing a second figure coming out through the same trees behind him.
Jordan was still stuck in time, and by now Keo had already caught up to her. He almost pulled the trigger again at the sight of the second black-uniformed body but somehow stopped himself. It wasn’t the fact that the second one was barely out of his teens. Age didn’t enter into Keo’s calculations at all.
The teenager’s eyes went straight to the dead man in front of him. For a split second Keo thought he would turn around and run for it, but instead the kid scrambled to unsling his rifle.
Jordan finally snapped out of her stupor and began fumbling with her carbine, but she was having as much difficulty getting a handle on it as the soldier seemed to be. Keo didn’t let either one of them get to their weapons first before he fired a second shot, his bullet sailing over the soldier’s head and hitting the tree behind him on purpose. Bark flew into the back of his head, and the kid ducked as if missiles were coming at him.
That gave Keo another extra second or two, enough time to grab Jordan’s arm. He said, “Don’t,” and kept going.
The soldier had gotten back up. He was already gasping for breath, and when he saw Keo coming right at him, it only made him scramble faster for his weapon. But he was having so much difficulty Keo wondered if his rifle was covered in oil.
The teenager had finally gotten a firm enough grip to raise the M4 when Keo reached him and slammed the stock of his submachine gun into his neck. He gagged, the rifle forgotten, and reached up as Keo shoved the MP5SD’s suppressor into his cheek, putting a finger to his lips. “Shhh.”
Jordan hurried over, skirting around the dead man on the ground. She was hyperventilating but slowly getting control. “Jesus, where did they come from?”
The soldier was looking at Keo, his face turning slightly blue. Keo grabbed him by the back of his shirt collar and sat him down on the ground, his back against a tree, before disarming him. The teenager didn’t fight, probably because he was too busy trembling.
“When was the last time you shaved?” Keo asked. When he got a confused look back, he said, “Never mind, just thinking out loud.”
He crouched in front of his captive and waited for him to gather himself. Like all the other soldiers he’d met, this one had a name tag with letters stenciled across it: “Eric.”
“In and out, slow breaths,” Keo said. When Eric had turned less blue, “There you go. Better?”
Eric nodded. He opened his mouth to say something, but Keo shook his head and Eric stopped short.
“Just listen,” Keo said. He produced Tobias’s ring from his pocket and held it up, then turned it around, making sure Eric got a good look and had enough time to read the inscription at the top. “See it?”
Eric stared at the gaudy piece of jewelry as if his life depended on it.
“Got it memorized?” Keo asked.
The teenager looked unsure.
“Good enough,” Keo said. He stood up. “I want you to go back to Steve and tell him what you saw. Tell him Keo wants to give it to him. He’s to meet me at the bridge in an hour. Got all that?”
Eric nodded.
“Get up.” The teenager stood up and Keo patted him on the shoulder, then pointed him across the river. “Off you go.”
The soldier looked at him, then at Jordan, maybe wondering if this was a trick. It didn’t take him long to decide to risk it anyway, and soon he was running off. They could hear him snapping branches as he barreled his way through the woods long after he had disappeared out of view.
Keo turned back to Jordan and found her staring at the dead soldier behind them.
“You okay?” he asked.
She didn’t answer, and he wasn’t even sure if she had heard him.
Keo put a comforting hand on her arm. “Jordan. You okay?”
She finally looked up. “I know him.”
“The kid?”
“No, him,” she said, looking back down at the dead man.
“Who was he?”
“He was in the camp when we first arrived. His name’s Dominic. He helped us get used to how things were. We…” She paused. “We were friends. I always thought I’d be helping him escape one of these days. The last thing I expected was to see him out here in that uniform.”
The last thing he expected was to see you out here, too, Keo thought, remembering the stunned look on the dead man’s face when he saw her.
Jordan had gone silent next to him. She had said they were friends, but the way she was looking down at the back of Dominic’s head, with broken twigs in his hair, he guessed they were more than that.
“Sorry,” he said. “I had no choice.”
“I know,” she said. Then, already moving off again, “Let’s get out of here before your messenger boy decides to bring back more of his friends.”
*
“So how’s this brilliant plan of yours going to work?” Jordan asked. “You’re going to kill him when he shows up on the bridge? Then what?”
“Killing him isn’t going to get me closer to Gillian,” Keo said. “That’s the whole point of this, remember?”
He looked out of the tree line and toward the bridge, almost a full 200 meters in front of him. They were far enough to be invisible among the woods, but close enough to see with binoculars. It had taken them an hour to find the location, most of that time spent skirting around areas that could potentially have soldier presence.