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. Im 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.
“Get the” began Mephisto, his voice drifting away as the beautiful blond girl hoisted up her scanty red skirt and began to peel off her panties.
Directly in front of the sec men, Ryan and J.B. were unable to risk any sudden moves. Doc Tanner stood a little more to one side, his shoulders stoopeda defeated old man, waiting for death.
Suddenly the defeated old man had a cannon in his right hand.
It was his thirty-six caliber percussion Le Mat revolver, nine-chambered. But the unique quality of the pistol was that it had a second smooth-bore barrel, chambered to take an eighteen bore single scattergun round.
There was a smile on the wrinkled cheeks and a merry twinkle in the old man’s eyes as he squeezed the narrow trigger.
The boom of the explosion drowned out the crackling of the flames from the corridor. A great burst of black powder smoke filled the cellar, blinding everyone. Ryan heard screaming as he pushed Krysty to one side, the G-12 falling ready to his hands and snapping off a double burst toward the doorway.
The Armorer’s Uzi barked a quarter-second later. Some ballets whipcracked off the stone walls, pinging and ricocheting off the metal pipes. Some tore into soft flesh.
As the smoke cleared, it was almost as though a master magician had performed a skillful illusion. Mephisto and the two sec men had disappeared. Then Ryan made out a pair of boots, sprawled in a corner, of the corridor, moving spasmodically.
He edged sideways, seeing that all three of the baron’s men were down and done. The single round from Doc’s blaster, at point-blank range, had been perfectly aimed. The shot spread just enough to hit all three men at face level. Both guards lay kicking, one mumbling for aid through a mouth filled with blood. The lead had ripped into their eyes and cheeks, tearing flesh from bone. The impact had been sufficient to send them all staggering backward, easy prey to the torrent of lead that followed from J.B. and Ryan.