"Remember that little mutie girl with the sweet smile and the broken arm?" Finnegan asked. "Old Fletch was carrying her, an' she reached up an' plucked his eye out just like picking a fucking grape."
"I recall the Trader with an old, old woman, near blind, who brought him a watch. Good make, but it was empty. No works. Just the case. Trader took it from her hand real gentle." J.B. paused. "Never forgot the look on his face. He picked up a dried soya box. Empty one. Figured he was going to give it to her as an exchange. He looked at the old woman, you know the way he had, and he..."
"We all heard it before, friend," Ryan interrupted the Armorer. "It's time to get ready. Weapon check."
Each man slipped into the private ritual of checking and rechecking his weapons. Doc Tanner awoke and agreed to stand by the door and keep watch for the janitor. Bolts clicked, and ammunition tinkled on the floor. Then bed sheets were torn into strips to clean and polish the guns. It was fifteen minutes past midnight.
They were ready a half hour later. Finn led the way, surprisingly catfooted for such a bulky, clumsy-looking man, his HK54A2 with the drum mag and built-in silencer in his beefy hands. Doc came second, clutching the massive hand cannon of the Le Mat. Ryan prayed silently to himself that the old man didn't need to pull the trigger down on anyone with the ancient blaster. The noise would bring every man and boy in Ginnsburg Falls on the run, thinking their precious gas storage tanks had been blown.
J.B. was third, mini-Uzi braced at his hip, with Ryan, bringing up the rear of the group, holding the 9 mm SIG-Sauer pistol.
The building was quiet, with the occasional creak of settling wood and stone. Outside, through the clean windows facing north, the sky was alight with the distant pattern of lighting from a chem-storm.
They'd been watching the patrols from the dormitory, timing them and checking their frequency. Around eight in the evening, they'd heard wags come lumbering back into the ville, spilling out loads of excited men and tired young lads, exhausted from the day's ritual of exposing female infants. Since then, Ginnsburg Falls had become quiet. The pairs and triads of sec men had come down the main street, Sissy, making a left along Fourth in front of the dormitory. They had returned once every hour, at ten minutes to eleven, and again at ten to twelve.
"Clear," Finn whispered, trotting out of the main door and leaving it to Ryan to slide it quietly shut behind them. There was a sharp-edged section of moon sailing low across the mountains over the lake.
Ryan took the lead, moving quickly through the back-lots and yards of stores and large houses. It was a cold night, but not with the same dreadful bite that set cheekbones aching with the sharpness. They passed a house with a row of laurels along its back border. From an open attic window came the unmistakable sound of a woman weeping. A man was shouting. Then there came a flat crack, like the palm of a hand across a face.
And then silence.
Doc Tanner paused. "If there was an amplitude of time, my friends, I vow that it would be a fine cleansing to burn this ville to the foundations. A place of more nugatory worth I never did see."
"I'd be happy to fucking chill it, Doc."
"No, Finn," Ryan warned. "What we want best is to get away quick and quiet and easy. If'n we need to ice some sec men, then we do it. J.B., I reckon it's time you went down and got the Kenworth ready. Start her up the moment you see us coming. We'll be moving fast and low."
"Sure. Shoot to kill, you guys," the Armorer said, grinning as he ran toward the wag park, his fedora at a jaunty angle on his head.
The other three kept on toward the oblong shape of the old workhouse.
Ryan saw the sec men before they had a chance to see him in the darkness. He flattened himself against the chipped brick wall of a warehouse. There were two jeeps there, with a half-dozen men lounging around them. The way they stood made him suspect no officer was with them. They looked as if they didn't expect to be needed for some time.
"There's a back entrance," Ryan said. "Saw it this afternoon. Goes along the waterfront. There's an old pier. Runs the whole length and connects with another jetty. Cuts right in by where the wag's waiting for us."
The back door was open. Several low-watt bulbs were strung along the pale green corridor. A painted board directed visitors to the main entrance and reception areas, but a gilt arrow pointed to the Arthur Sissy wing, and Ryan and the others took this direction.
They passed many open doors to empty rooms that contained iron bedsteads. On each was a pile of gray blankets, folded with edges so sharp it looked as if they'd cut bread. The corridor turned left. The arrows led them up a short flight of stairs and through a pair of swinging doors along another corridor to a closed door on their right.
Ryan had seen old police vids where the heroes kicked open doors and leaped through. That often wasn't the way. Better to turn the handle and walk in slow and quiet, as if you had the right to be there, but with your finger on the trigger of your blaster.
He glanced at Finn and Doc. They nodded, the old man forcing a thin smile.
"Now," Ryan said.
There were five people in the room, which looked around twenty feet square. Two beds were pushed back against the far wall, and a window, barred and curtained, was on the left.
Standing just inside the door, a sec man glanced around as the three men casually entered.
Krysty Wroth sat on the nearest bed, face pale as death, eyes closed, lips pressed together. From the painful tension, Ryan spotted immediately that she was in the process of calling on her Earth Mother, Gaia, to give her the strange power and unnatural strength to perform some almost supernatural feat.
A second sec man was standing in the middle of the room, holding his carbine, its muzzle pressed against the back of Lori Quint's neck.
She was kneeling, hands supporting her on either side of her spread thighs. Her long yellow hair dangled around her face, hiding what she was doing. But the bobbing of her head made it unmistakable.
She was naked, with bruises across her shoulders and ribs.
Ryan heard the sharp intake of breath from Doc Tanner by his side.
The fifth person in the room was Mayor Theodore Sissy, sitting squatly in his wheelchair, eyes tightly shut, a sickly smile hugging his lips. From where Ryan stood, he could just see that the front of the cripple's trousers was unzipped. Lori's blond tresses brushed against the frail, dangling, stunted legs.
"Don't do it, Doc," Ryan said quickly, not wanting to have the building explode with the boom of the big Le Mat.
Finn didn't need telling what to do.
The Heckler & Koch was set on triple burst. He touched the light trigger just once, opening up the throat of the guard at the door. In the confined space, the silencer was surprisingly effective, no louder than fingers rapping on a table.
The man's body jerked back and hit the wall, sliding down and leaving a great smear of bright scarlet blood across the clean paint. The other guard turned, the barrel of his carbine jerking away from Lori's skull. His mouth dropped open in shock, eyes widening as he saw his death a pulse away.
Ryan took a chance, firing a single round from his pistol. At less than fifteen feet, the nine-millimeter bullet hit the sec man through the bridge of the nose. The impact lifted him off his feet, then his boots came clattering down, kicking and flailing for balance. The bullet exited out through the back of his head, slightly behind the right ear, taking a chunk of bone with it. Blood and brain splattered under pressure, dappling the whitewashed ceiling with a pink-gray mist.