"Who's in charge up here?"
Parkwood regarded her with a perfectly straight face.
"I thought you were."
The captain's eyes widened as if she'd been slapped. Vickers looked away. He didn't want to see any more people come unhinged. Up ahead the squad with the steam hose had it in position and were looking back for some kind of instruction. Debbie glanced contemptuously at the captain.
"Don't you think you ought to give them some sort of order? You seem to be the highest rank around here."
The captain stood straight up, seemingly without stopping to think. Vickers reached to pull her down but he was too late. She opened her mouth and suddenly a section of her face, just above the left eye, was missing. She toppled backward.
"Oh Christ."
Vickers looked quickly over the top of the golf cart and yelled to the crew on the steam hose.
"Okay, goddammit, let them have it."
The valve opened with a roar. There were screams from the other side of the barricade. The crew let it run for about thirty seconds and then shut it off again. The steam drifted back past where the four corpses were crouched. Yabu ran a hand over his bald head.
"That probably wasn't too much of a good idea. We may have cooked a couple of them but the rest will pull back inside. They'll still have their weapons. Steam won't hurt them. They may even build a second barricade."
"I just wanted to stop them shooting at us."
Yabu's stone face cracked the faintest of smiles.
"Always a laudable motivation, but perhaps we should have tried to negotiate first."
"How in hell could anyone negotiate? Those women know they're all going to be killed."
"Some would have forced themselves to believe it. Individuals will become exceedingly credulous when the matter in hand is their own deaths. It might seem a cruel deception but it might have also saved a number of lives. As it is, they will fight with the knowledge that they are already doomed. You know the saying."
"The best killers have already died."
"Also the most frenzied have already died."
"Did the Japanese make that up?"
"I heard it was the Irish."
As Debbie had predicted, it did indeed take a good deal of time and a number of lives before the barricades were cleared and the uniforms fought their way into the living area. For almost two hours both security and military had held off from the final assault. Nobody in the corridor wanted to take the responsibility for giving the order. It was quite likely that, when all was said and done, Lloyd-Ransom would simply look at the casualty lists and, in a fit of pique, order the execution of whoever had assumed command. In the end, Lamas had arrived in the corridor with apparently enough authority to start something. Quite in character, he had decided that it would be done the hard way. More golf carts were moved up to provide a certain amount of cover. The barricades were hosed down with high pressure steam, pounded with ultrasonics and finished with frag grenades. One grim little major had suggested also using gas but this had been vetoed as far too likely to contaminate the air system of the whole bunker. Grappling hooks were shot into the tangle of metal and as much as possible was dragged away. Only then did the very reluctant troops move in.
The handlers fought like furies. When their ammunition at last ran out they used homemade fire bombs, they threw corrosive cleaning fluid into the faces of the attackers and they went for them with knives and steel bars. When the area had been all but secured, the butcher squads, who had effectively kept themselves out of the costly first assault, moved in to finish off the wounded and probably a number of women who had had no part in the fighting at all. The butchers swept through the living area killing everyone that so much as twitched. Their simplest technique was a fast bullet in the back of the head from a sidearm but others did fancier, more disgusting work with garroting wires and bayonets. Lamas made no effort to stop them. Apparently General Living Area 26 was to be used as a terrible example of the penalty for rebellion.
Vickers, Yabu, Debbie and Parkwood walked slowly into the scene of carnage. Bunks had been overturned and the walls were pitted with bullet holes and spattered with blood. A half-dozen small fires were still smoking. There were bodies strewn all over, both soldiers and handlers. A uniformed corporal had a handler down on her knees. She was bleeding from a gash on her forehead and the top of her uniform had been torn away. He held a pistol but he seemed in no hurry to fire. He seemed to be savoring her terror. Suddenly and inexplicably, Yabu erupted.
"Leave her alone!"
The corporal looked up and made a fatally stupid mistake. He told Yabu to go fuck himself. Yabu was on the man before anyone could stop him. The action was too fast for Vickers to see exactly what he did. In one fluid movement, seemingly impossible for one of Yabu's size and bulk, he ripped off the corporal's helmet. He grasped the back of the man's head like a basketball. His other hand came down, a clubbing fist. Blood spurted out the man's eyes, ears and nose. Yabu let the body drop to the ground. He looked defiantly around the room.
"I sleep with this woman. Nobody harms her."
He helped the woman to her feet with unexpected tenderness and put a protective arm around her. The entire area froze. Lloyd-Ransom, with his bodyguards and dog handler had walked into the area at exactly the right moment to see the whole incident. It was, however, a very different Lloyd-Ransom. His white uniform was creased and dirty. His collar was unbuttoned and he looked sallow and ill. His appearance was something of a shock. Not as much of a shock, though, as Yabu's next move. Yabu glared and walked slowly toward him, still supporting the woman. His expression was one of undisguised disgust.
"You've made a very bad mistake, Lloyd-Ransom. You have left these people with no hope."
Yabu continued walking, right out of the area. Nobody, not even Lloyd-Ransom, made an attempt to stop him.
There was a deep, uneasy silence in the security club room. The people in there drank with a quiet determination. There was far too much to blot out. It had been just about possible to keep the butcher squad and the individual assassinations out of sight and mind. The rationale was fairly easy. Life in the bunker was lived at a fairly drastic level and, from time to time, drastic solutions were required. The mass destruction of an entire living area was something else entirely. It left no room for moral maneuvering. A feeling hung in the air of the club room, almost as the smell of fire and death still lingered on the second level. The bunker was starting to tear itselt apart. The death toll was ninety-three and that was too much to be dismissed as a "solution." It was a massacre. No omelette could be worth that many eggs.
The public address didn't help lighten the weight of gloom. Wolfjohn had taken it into his head to read the full list of names in a slow, doleful rasp. Inside the club room, guilt was driving a wedge between those who had taken part in the killing and those who hadn't. Yabu's stand, even though it was a matter of self-interest, had made it hard to use the excuse of blind obedience. The whole bunker was wondering what would happen next. For the moment, there seemed little danger that Lloyd-Ransom would lose control of the bunker. The military and its officers were still solidly behind him while security seemed to be sullenly turning in on itself. Some of those without uniforms were coming in for a good deal of hostility. Yabu had been the one who'd actually made the protest but it had also been noticed that Parkwood, Vickers, and Debbie had virtually sat out the action well to the rear. Even some of their own kind seemed about to turn against them. Annie Flagg, Carmen Rainer and John Walker all appeared to side with the uniforms. There had been some snide remarks but it had yet to go any further.