The Spears of Laconia (Purge of Babylon, Book 7) by Sam Sisavath Page B

ground. Dirt, not concrete.
    The same pair of hands pulled her slightly forward, off the open tailgate, and stood her up. “Don’t move and you won’t fall,” the man said.
    She stood still and listened to more clinking and clacking going on all around her. There were a lot of people squeezed into a small area, and every single one of them seemed to be in constant motion.
    A man next to her grunted, then a familiar voice said, “Are we there yet?”
    Danny.
    She almost smiled, but didn’t. There was no telling who was watching and how they would react.
    “Where are we?” someone else said. Nate.
    “Shut up,” the voice from the radio said. “You’ll speak when spoken to. Got it?”
    “Can you run that by me again?” Danny said.
    The whump! of something hitting flesh.
    Danny’s voice again, but this time sounding like he had his teeth clenched in pain, “So that’s a no?”
    “Smartass,” the gruff voice said. Then, “Where does he want them?”
    “He’s in the hangar,” another voice said. “Take them over.”
    “On foot?”
    “We need the truck for transportation. Besides, you need to lose some weight anyway. The walk’ll do you good.”
    “Fuck you.”
    The other voice laughed.
    A hand grabbed Gaby’s right arm and held her steady as someone else cut the zip tie around her ankles. The same hand then pushed her forward. She took that as a sign they wanted her to walk, so she did. Hopefully she didn’t run into something, like one of the many vehicles moving around her.
    Her escort walked slightly behind her. A woman. Gaby could tell even with blindfolds on, because there was no mistaking the sudden difference in bodily smell between the guys who had brought her here and the one who taken over.
    “This would be easier if I could see,” Gaby said, picking her way over uneven dirt floor, the rising heat of the sun beating down on her.
    “No talking,” her escort said. Gaby was right; it was a woman.
    “You have a name?” she asked anyway.
    There was no response.
    “Are we at an airport?” Gaby asked.
    Still no response.
    “Not the most talkative bunch,” Danny said somewhere to her right.
    “You okay?” Nate said from her left.
    “I’m fine, dear; don’t worry about me,” Danny said.
    “Gaby,” Nate said.
    She smiled before realizing he couldn’t see through his own blindfold. “I’m okay. You?”
    “Trying not to trip. And a little sore all over.”
    “That’s what she said,” Danny said.
    “Shut up and keep walking straight,” Gaby’s female escort snapped. She was sure the woman wasn’t alone, though her companions were keeping their distance.
    After about thirty seconds of walking silently across what felt like an open field, the woman finally said, “How did you know?” just as Gaby felt the ground under her switch from soft dirt to hard concrete.
    “Know what?” Gaby said.
    “That we’re at an airfield.”
    “Someone said to take us to the hangar.”
    “Ah.”
    “What’s going on? Are you guys making bullets?”
    The woman didn’t answer.
    “I thought we were talking,” Gaby said.
    “You thought wrong,” the woman said.
    “That’s what they used to call me in college,” Danny chimed in. “Thought Wrong Danny. Wanna know why?”
    “No,” the woman said.
    “Sure you do.”
    “I have a gun that says I don’t.”
    “Well, since it’s my personal motto that the gun is always right, I’ll save the explanation for later.”
    “You do that,” their guard said.
    They walked on for another five minutes, until the loud chatter of people, machines, and vehicles began to fade behind them. She wasn’t sure how far the paved ground went, but it seemed to stretch on endlessly. She was trying to remember how far they had walked when the ground began to vibrate and a loud rush of air hit her with such surprising force she started to fall over, and would have, if a pair of hands didn’t grab her from behind first.
    “Easy there,” the woman