Doc joined them, beaming at his success, manipulating the action, on the smoking Le Mat, ejecting the spent cartridge and reloading from one of the capacious pockets in his old frock coat. He shifted the hammer so that it rested over one of the thirty-six caliber rounds.
“Upon my soul, Mr. Cawdor, but that was vastly enjoyable. To see the wicked so smitten and righteousness triumphant.”
“Early days, Doc,”‘ grinned Ryan, watching the wounded sec men. “But you done real good. And you, Lori,” he called. “Fucking great.”
“Thank you,” said the girl, breathing hard with excitement. “Wanted to see the motherfuckers drown in their own shit and blood.”
“You done that,” J.B. commented dryly.
“The matter is not quite concluded,” Doc said, looking down at the three men. One of the guards was already still, his chest and stomach ripped apart by the G-12 or the Uzi, his blood and bone and intestines mingling on the floor. The second sec man was dying, his face shredded from taking the worst of the Le Mat’s shot. He was moaning, rolling from side to side, his hands holding his ribs from where blood oozed.
“The quality of mercy is not strained,” said Doc. Still smiling broadly, he knelt and placed the muzzle of his pistol into the raw hole where the sec man’s mouth would have been. He squeezed the trigger. The bullet bounced the man’s head off the stone, killing him instantly. Doc thumbed back the hammer once more, turning to look at Mephisto.
The sec boss was dying. Several pieces of shot had pocked his face, one bursting his left eye. And more bullets had stitched across his chest from Ryan’s and J.B.’s shooting. But he still breathed, flat on his back, his carbine thrown several feet away. Smoke drifted down from the main part of the burning building, and the heat was growing appreciably.
The firing from the front entrance had slackened. Ryan guessed that Jak Lauren’s army had vanquished most of the baron’s shattered forces.
Mephisto blinked up through the blood that ran down over his one good eye. “Still won’t catch Baron. Too clever for you.”
Krysty looked coldly down at him. A sudden anger washed over her, and she spat in the dying man’s face, wanting to tear and hurt him. Lori was at her side, also looking down at the sec boss with bitter hatred on her lovely features.
“Bastard killer,” Lori said, lifting her foot and stamping down with all her weight. The heel of the red leather boot struck Mephisto in the center of his one good eye, splattering it to a bloody liquid. The tinkling silver spur hooked in the corner of the socket, and the girl jerked at it. Mephisto shrieked in stunning pain as his head was rolled backward and forward. Finally the spur was wrenched clear, tearing the flesh away like raw meat.
Doc straightened, leveling the antebellum pistol, squeezing, the trigger once more. The ball splintered the blood-slick forehead of the sec boss, killing him.
“Should have left him-gut-shot,” said J.B.
“Better dead,” Doc said, bolstering the heavy gun.
Ryan looked along the corridor. The billowing smoke was tearing at his lungs. “Gonna be roasted if’n we don’t move fast.”
“That mother said the baron was making a run. Which way? “‘asked Krysty.
“Got to be across the far side. By the lagoon.”
“There is boats there,” said Lori.
“Boats?”
“Canoes. Small ones,” amplified Krysty. “And the biggest mother of a gator I ever seen in my life. Makes the one that tried for Finn look like a baby.”
Ryan hesitated, then turned to the Armorer. ” J.B. we gotta go help Whitey and his group? Sounds like it’s going well.”
“Want me to go check? And you go after the baron?”
“Yeah. Take Doc and the women.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll come,” said Krysty.
Ryan shook his head. “Way I look at this, it’s kind of personal. It’s like a debt.”
” You don’t owe anything to anybody, Ryan,” said Doc Tanner. “Except myself. Now let’s move.”
THE BLAZE HAD BECOME a full-fledged firestorm. A gusting wind tugged and howled about the inferno that had once been the Best Western Snowy Egret. Jak’s men were already mopping up, trailing and killing any of the bewildered and demoralized sec men they could find.