How had she gotten hold of her sophisticated weapons? Her response to that had been to plead an old-fashioned, old-maidish ignorance of such things, explaining that she’d found them and wouldn’t even know really how to use them.
Nanci was only too aware from her foreknowledge of the Hunters of the Sun that it was all probably futile. They had no need of a single old woman and would dispose of her as quickly and cheaply as possible as soon as they’d carried out their superficial interrogation.
Already she’d seen and heard about the row of stout hooks set in a corridor near an outer wall of the complex and the loop of thin wire that was hung behind the door.
Nanci Simms had no illusions at all about how brutal her passing was likely to be.
The only time that the young man with the pink-tinted glasses caught her momentarily off balance was in the last of the sessions.
She’d been sitting in a plastic chair, lower than the top of his high-tech steel desk. The questioner, his badge with the polished golden arrow glittering through the heart of the silver sun, had been flicking through a large folder, looking bored and somewhat put-upon.
Then he’d casually tossed over a single sheet of paper with stats and photographs of a dozen men and women.
“Ever come across any of these people?”
Nand had guessed who it was going to be and schooled her face to careful indifference.
There they all were.
Mostly looking younger and rounder than the lean group that she’d met. Their names were printed neatly beneath each picture. Not all of them were familiar.
James Hilton, captain of the USSV Aquila. A good thirty pounds heavier and with markedly less hair than the man Nanci had gotten to know. To know and to admire.
Marcey Cording. Alongside the name was typed: D.O. Landing?
A similar line was next to Michael Man, Ryan O’Keefe and Bob Rogers.
But there was Kyle Lynch and Steve Romero, and Carrie Princip, looking a good deal perter and prettier than the tough young woman Nanci had met.
It had crossed her mind to wonder how many of them were still alive.
An older, harder face. Henderson McGill. The one who had a family in New England and had gone off with the second pilot, Pete Turner. Nanci knew that Jim Hilton felt in his heart that both men were dead.
Jed Herne. Nanci had studied the face carefully, certain that Jeff Thomas had murdered him. And there was Jeff.
“Think I might know him,” she said, pointing at the foxy face with the smug, self-confident smile. “Have I seen him on the vids or someplace?”
“Could be.” The man took back the sheet. “Doesn’t matter about him. Not him.”
As she’d been returned to her cell, Nanci had wondered why it didn’t matter about Jeff. Could be he was already dead and they knew it. That made sense.
Now she was going to get chilled. “Down there. Move it, you old cow. Don’t wanna miss my chow.”
There were slitted windows, high in the cinder-block walls, and she could just see through them that afternoon light was already fading away.
The guard was six feet six tall, with the physique of someone who worked out with weights. To add insult to murder, her Port Royale machine pistol was slung loosely across his broad shoulders, and one of her pair of Heckler & Koch P-111 automatics rested in his belt.
“Where are you taking me?” Her voice quavered, and terror and bewilderment played over her features. She let her head slump, hands plucking at the seams of her khaki pants and dragged her feet so that the heels of her boots scuffed at the dusty concrete floor of the narrow corridor.
“Taking you outside.”
“Why?”
“To let you go.”
“Free?”
“Sure.” The brutish laugh gave the lie to his words. The man was totally arrogant in his sense of complete power over the cringing old woman.
For a few paces they were out in the open, crossing a patch of dead grass and barren soil. Nanci glanced around her, trying to get her bearings, making sure that he was taking her to the isolated killing passage.