"And the man with one eye?"
"Who?"
Tourment reached for his trembling sec boss and grabbed him by the front of his jacket. "You heard me, offal! Was there a man there with only one-eye? He's the one to be feared. I know it. I've seen it."
"Didn't... didn't see him. Time's racing, Baron. The place is lost. Got to get out."
"Side way, canoes," said the giant black, striding to the door of his suite. "Get the two women and bring 'em."
"Too late for that," said Mephisto, his voice rising until, it was almost a hysterical scream. "Don't you... it's fucking over. We lost. One fucking bang and a damburst of fire, and we're done."
Krysty lay still, resting, harvesting the layers of calmness. Knowing that if the motel was under attack by Ryan, then it would not be long before Baron Tourment, or one of his sec men, remembered them and came looking for them. That could be the moment when her special powers might be most needed. Lori, at her side, lay still, whistling to herself to keep her spirits up.
Half a dozen swampwags were already rolling around the back of the blazing building, with sec men still clambering into them, ready to run. Exchanging fire with Ryan's party, all of them fell dead, with only a single casualty in the attackers group.
"Blow the buggies?" asked one of Jak's men.
"No. You'll need 'em after this is done."
"You figure we're winning?" asked another of them as they neared a large rear entrance.
"Yeah. Leah gave us better than we'd hoped for. When this is finished, you ought to build her a bitching great statue and bring your children to look at it every fucking anniversary."
There was a foot of stagnant slimy green water at the bottom of the pool. It reflected the flames that were already beginning to break through the roof of the Best Western. One of the sec men came sprinting around the corner of the motel, heading toward them, clutching a suitcase. He saw them but didn't check his stride, figuring them for his own comrades.
"Mine," said Ryan, putting a single round from the H&K through the man's neck. It kicked him back, his feet flying up in front of him as though a wire had been pulled around his neck.
"Rat abandoning the sinking ship," commented Doc Tanner.
The door was unguarded and unbolted. To their left they heard shooting. Their nostrils filled with the acrid stink of poisonous smoke. The speed with which the fire spread was startling. Ryan realized that he hadn't really taken into account the way a dried-out hundred-year-old husk of a building would blaze. The plan had been even better than he could have dreamed. A single crushing blow.
"All we gotta do is find the girls and get clear," he said. "Whitey figured the basement. Best get to it 'fore we all go up."
Out front, Jak Lauren had managed to stop crying. Seeing his father's hideously mutilated corpse dangling from the flagpole, like some obscene trophy of battle, had created an ocean of grief and anger within him. In his fourteen years, the boy had seen enough killing to last most people a full lifetime. But for his father to die now, with victory suddenly and magically within their grasp Ч that was bitter.
The tears lasted only a minute or two before his iron self-control returned and he led his people in a screaming charge. Taking the firefight into the burning building, they massacred anyone around. He used a .357 Magnum with a satin nickel finish, spare ammunition rattling in the pockets of his torn jacket. So far only a half dozen of his group had gone down, compared to more than two-thirds of the Baron's defending sec men.
One of the gaudy sluts came running toward the boy, her mouth open in a scream of horror and agony, burning napalm dappling her naked shoulders and back. Jak steadied his right wrist with his left hand and shot her carefully between the eyes.
He was greatly tempted to stop and lower his father's body from the pole. But that would take time and men, and both were vital to maintain the momentum of the attack. What had been his father was no longer around. It didn't seem to matter what happened to his dismembered corpse.
Krysty managed a smile as Ryan came kicking in through the cellar door, the G-12 raking the room, ready to butcher anyone there.
"Hi, lover," she said.
"Hi. How's it gone?"
"Could have gone a whole lot worse ifТn you'd left it till tomorrow. That Tourment is one evil fucker. And his sec boss isn't any better."
Doc had rushed straight to Lori, and laying down his sword stick, embraced her while she wept. J.B. pushed past him, the Tekna knife in his hand. The keen edge parted the cords that bound the girl to the table; he turned and released Krysty the same way.
Smoke was billowing in from the corridor, making them cough. Someone ran past outside, loudly yelling for help.
"We winning?" asked Krysty.
"Yeah," replied the Armorer.
"Looks that way," said Ryan, steadying the girl as she stood up. She brushed the fiery hair off her face, smiling at him.
"The Baron been chilled yet? Or Mephisto?"
"No. Unless Whitey's got 'em."
"I'd like 'em," she said. "Half hour in here with them tied like we were."
There was a look of venomous hatred in her eyes that Ryan had never seen before.
Some of Lauren's men were getting anxious. "Fire's getting close," said one. "Best go help Jak."
"Sure. We'll go out the same way and round the far side. By the lagoon."
He couldn't understand why Krysty shuddered at the word.
Doc was still comforting Lori; the tall blonde hung on to him, her face buried in his chest. J.B. was fumbling with the knife, resheathing it. Ryan's arm was around Krysty.
Then Mephisto appeared silently in the doorway, with two sec men at his elbow. All three of them had M-16s.
"You're all fucking dead," he said, favoring them with a graveyard smile.
Chapter Twenty-Three
"One move, and you're all swamp-fodder." The sec boss looked mad, his eyes bulging, white froth hanging from the corners of his lips. His suit was stained with soot and mud and was torn across one shoulder. But the muzzle of his carbine was rock-steady.
The men on either side of him were typical stony-eyed sec men, their uniforms also smoke-stained and scruffy; their guns covered the five people in the cellar.
It was desperate ill-luck that none of the three men in Ryan's party were able to get immediately at a blaster.
"Baron's making ready to leave the ville. Set up house somewheres else. IТm going with him with a few good men like Rafe and Pierre here. You bastards have done in one night what, the dirt-poor under the snow wolf haven't done in years." He stared at Ryan Cawdor with an intense curiosity. "Baron been doomseeing you, mister. Man with only one eye. Figured it would be his ending."
Ryan said nothing, easing away from Krysty, freezing as one of the sec men shifted his aim to cover him more closely. J.B. hadn't moved an inch since Mephisto appeared. Doc had let go of Lori, standing with his hands on his hips, looking contemptuously at the three gunmen.
"Don't look like his ending, mister. Looks more like your ending."
"Why don't you take us to see the Baron?" asked Krysty. "You know he likes me and the straw hair. Might be angered if you don't."
The sec boss shook his head. "Sorry, slut. It's going to be here. And it's going to be now."
Ryan's reflexes were stretched adrenaline-tight, ready for a last desperate, hopeless try, before they were all ripped apart.
It was Lori who checked the executions. She took a step away from Doc, teetering as she often did on her ridiculously high heels, drawing eyes as she wobbled. "I'm sick," she said. "Got to take clothes off." Her speech was slurred as if she were drugged.