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name."
"Go home, Gramps," a third snarled. "This is men's work."
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"Jimmy?" Doc asked, peering inside the kiosk. There was only a single person
behind the grilled window, and the Oriental nearly fell over his chair in his
haste to draw a weapon.
"Kill that man!" Ki cried. "He's one of Ryan's men!"
Doc dived to the ground, drawing and firing the big LeMat twice, the
thundering booms filling the confines of the passage with volumes of black
smoke. There was a rush of boots and Doc shifted position, firing twice more.
This time he heard screams of pain. A movement in the smoke made him jerk to
the side, and a shiny bayonet at the end of a Kalashnikov stabbed past his
head, missing by an inch. Grabbing the rifle barrel, Doc used it to guide his
aim and shot twice at point-blank range, high and then low. Still clutching
his weapon, the sec man reeled backward, bleeding from the neck and belly.
"That's six, Grandpa," cried a grinning corporal, stepping into view from the
smoke. "That wheelgun is empty. Get him!" The sec man charged with two
privates bracketing the rush to forestall any attempts at escape by the
unarmed whitehair.
Doc chose his targets and fired three additional rounds from the oversize
blaster, shooting the blues in cold blood. The corporal died with an
expression of total shock, completely unable to comprehend how any wheelgun
could fire more than six rounds.
"Now that trick gun is out," Ki snarled, rising behind the grilled barrier.
Switching the selector pin to the second barrel of the Civil War handcannon,
Doc leveled the blaster at the chief of the sec men. "Freeze!" he commanded.
Ki sneered in contempt at the feeble bluff, then saw the raw determination in
the whitehair's face and clawed for his own blaster.
The stubby .63-caliber smooth-bore shotgun vomited lead and smoke, a barrage
of pellets hitting the stonework and bars of the window. Screaming, Ki clawed
at the ruin of his face, teeth shattered, blood squirting with every
heartbeat, one
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eyeball dangling on his cheek at the end of its cord. Half-blind, the man
slammed shut the door and twisted the key in the lock, his hands slipping in
the volumes of blood.
"Never get in," he cried madly.
Arm extended, Doc lunged at the bars, the Spanish sword darting between the
bars and stabbing the sec man directly in the heart. The twitching man exhaled
once, a rattle sounding in his torn throat, and he collapsed out of sight.
Fishing about with the gory blade, Doc managed to catch the ring of keys and
delicately haul it through the bars. Unlocking the door across the passageway,
he dragged the bodies into the storage room, then opened the kiosk and took a
position behind the barred window with a stack of AK-47 blasters by his side.
The only door to the ville was again under Nathan's control, and Overton would
get no fresh troops from outside. That was a major point in their favor of
regaining control of the ville, but his main objective hadn't been achieved.
"Where could Krysty be?" Doc demanded rhetorically, watching both directions
of the tunnel while reloading the LeMat with expert speed.
RYAN, J.B., NATHAN and the others converged on the barracks, weapons at the
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ready. The thick door was ajar, the interior black and smoky from the earlier
fire.
Suddenly cheering sounded from above, and the armed troops looked up to see
the villagers waving at them from the second- and third-story windows.
"Shut up!" Nathan ordered. "Want to tell the bastards where we are?"
The people recoiled in fear and closed the window shutters in a series of
wooden bangs.
"Goddamn idiots," a sec man growled.
"We'll cover the street," Nathan said, hoisting his weapon. "Take five of my
men
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and see what you can find. Even one more blaster would be a big help."
"Agreed. But I'll take four men in a standard two-on-two defense formation,"
Ryan replied, slinging the Steyr and drawing his SIG-Sauer. "Ready?"
The brown shirts looked blankly at Ryan, unsure of where to go or what to do.
"Fireblast," he growled. "You four watch each other's asses. I'm on point, and
J.B. covers the rear."
"Go," J.B. said, leveling the Uzi.
Swift and silent, the six men entered the damaged building. The barracks was
completely different from when they were last there only hours earlier.
Corpses lay underfoot everywhere, and the fire from the Claymore had consumed
huge sections of the structure until the sky was visible in most areas.
In the front, the blaster rack was burned to ashes, the remaining weapons
destroyed by the heat. However, several boxes of ammo had fallen free and
survived the ravages of the flames. The sec man gathered the crumbling boxes
eagerly, filling their pockets with the shiny brass shells. Outside the bunk
room, the stack of blasters in the hallway was untouched, merely covered with
hot ash.
The excited sec men gathered armloads of the precious weapons, and two carried
the first batch outside to the waiting troops.
Standing dangerously near the sagging doorway, Ryan could see that beds and
the floor of the room had tumbled into the watery basement, swamping the
cesspool and masking its purpose. Several roasted corpses lay amid the
destruction, their clothing reduced to ashes. It could have been anybody until
Ryan noticed the good boots. They were blue shirts, but Ryan hoped the
suffocating smoke and awful heat of the fire had aced them, and not the fast
clean blast of the powerful Claymore.
Reaching the rear office, Ryan darted into the empty room first. The browns
stayed in the hallway as J.B. followed his friend with the stubby Uzi leading
the way.
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The office was bare, not even a corpse on the floor from the blues they had
rendered unconscious.
"Deserted," Ryan stated, shoving aside the chair to glance under the desk.
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