“Why the rush?” his father demanded. “You wouldn’t leave a post without a reason.”
“Is Jak okay?” J.B. asked, tilting his rumpled hat backward.
“He’s fine. But Overton is in the east wing with twenty sec men,” Dean reported. He still wasn’t sure of the numbers, but decided it would be better to err on the plus side. “Jak is keeping a watch on them.”
“Any sign of Krysty?” Ryan asked. There was a touch more emotion in the question than he would have preferred. “Does he have her prisoner?”
“I didn’t see her with the blues, Dad. Sorry.”
Trying to control his rage, Ryan scowled, his mind racing back through the years to remember the side streets and alleys. But it was too long since he’d had any sleep, and nothing definite was coming to mind.
“Fireblast!” Ryan cursed in annoyance. “Nathan, what’s the fastest way to the main hall from here?”
The baron pointed. “Shortcut this way.”
“Watch for an ambush,” Ryan warned, removing the partially used clip from the Steyr and inserting a fully loaded one. “This could be a trap.”
“More for the slaughter,” J.B. said, checking his Uzi.
“Attention! Overton is in the fortress!” Nathan shouted through cupped hands. “Who wants a piece of his hide with me?”
Waving blasters, the sec men roared their approval.
Although not pleased with publicly announcing their intentions, Ryan understood the need for keeping the morale of the sec men high. They were winning at the moment, but how many of them had died already? He had to keep their minds off dead friends and focused on chilling the man responsible.
“Double time, march!” the baron shouted, and the browns charged forward.
Taking a side street, the armed group traveled for a block, then angled into another side street. Going past wreckage from the keep, and some dead civilians shot in the back, Ryan noticed what seemed to be a blank wall starting to move at the end of a small alleyway. He slowed to watch as the damaged expanse of wood paneling sluggishly lifted into the ceiling of a small room, exposing a battered LAV 25. On the ground were a dozen seemingly dead blue shirts and a redheaded woman slumped against the left wall, her long fiery hair waving as if stirred by secret winds.
“Krysty!” Ryan shouted, charging headlong into the garage.
TURNING A CORNER inside the fortress, a blue-shirted sec man fired his AK-47, and a maid holding a broom was cut to pieces from the deadly hail of slugs. Stepping closer, a corporal lowered his blaster to dispatch the wounded servant.
“Please, no,” she whimpered, blood flowing down her clothing and dripping off her trembling hands.
“Don’t shoot her!” Overton ordered sternly. “Are you mad?”
“Sir?” the corporal asked, worried.
The baron sneered. “Idiot. We’ll need every round we have to get out of here should the brown shirts find us. Don’t waste a single bullet.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry.” Kneeling, he slit the crying woman’s throat, and the troops moved onward.
Armed pointmen swept the grand staircase, checking for enemy sec men before allowing the main body of troops surrounding Overton to advance. Then they did the same for the east hallway. Finally reaching his former suite, Overton ordered a corporal to kick open the door, and a brace of troopers sprayed the room with their assault rifles, cutting down three brown shirts waiting in ambush. The fusillade of rounds tore them apart, driving one man out the window in a crash of stained glass. He screamed all the way down to the street and abruptly stopped.
“You there, kill the pigeons,” Overton directed, furious over the lapse of secrecy. “You, rip the wires out of the radio and take them along.”
A private reached into the cage and took the trusting birds by the throat and snapped their necks one at a time. The other private removed the guts of the communications unit and stuffed the wires into a pants pocket.
Moving to the armoire, Overton inserted a key and unlocked the heavy ironwood doors. Inside was an arsenal of blasters, grens and a fat canvas bag.
“Everybody fill their pockets with spare clips,” Overton ordered, stuffing some grens into his pockets.