Trader shut off her words by clamping his hard left hand over her open mouth. His right hand gripped the hilt of his hunting knife, which he drove into Thea’s back, just to the left of the spine, a hand’s span down from the shoulder.
Ryan was just in front of her and he saw the shock in her face, the walleyes widening, rolling toward the ceiling. The force of the blow nearly lifted the scientist off her feet. There was a rictus of pain as Trader twisted the knife while pulling it out, then driving it in again, with a ruthless force.
“Best thing, Ryan, old friend,” Trader said, panting with the effort of holding the doomed woman, stopping her from screaming out a warning. She was struggling frantically, trying to claw at his left hand, kicking out at Ryan.
“Yeah.”
He stabbed her a third time. “It was when she said that ‘but,’ you know.”
Ryan turned away and checked the corridor, but nobody had heard the slight scuffle. He looked back, seeing that Trader was lowering the corpse to the floor, a little blood seeping from the mouth. More crimson daubed on Trader’s knife and hands.
“I heard the ‘but,’ as well,” he said to his old chief. “Meant she was readying herself to betray us. If you hadn’t taken her out, I would’ve done it.”
Trader wiped the blade on her coat. He looked at the woman’s Anschutz Kadett rifle, considering whether to take it, straightening. “No. Stick with the good old Armalite,” he muttered.
“Best see to the sec men,” Ryan said.
“Why not?”
THERE WERE TWO OF THEM, totally occupied in playing cards at a little table. As Ryan pushed the door open, using the barrel of the SIG-Sauer, Trader right at his elbow, they didn’t even look up at first. “Pair of fours takes one. Close the door behind”
“Quiet,” Ryan ordered. “Keep real quiet and it’ll all be fine. Keep your cards in your hands, and your hands flat on the table there.”
“You’re the two missing outlanders,” said one of the guards, a young man with a stocky build and curly blond hair. “The two they went out to”
“To what, son?” Trader asked, pushing the muzzle of the Armalite under the sec man’s chin, the foresight cutting the soft skin, a worm of blood crawling down toward his collar. “They went out to do what?”
The older man, older with hollow cheeks, answered. “They said to chill you.”
“Why?” Ryan asked. “What’s going on here?”
The young man swallowed hard. “Redhead is someone special. Mutie but not gross. They’ve got the rest of your party locked up. Once they’re finished with the woman, they’ll chill them all. That’s what they told me.” A note of panic ran ragged in his voice. “Let us go.”
Ryan heeled the heavy door closed behind him, hearing the lock click, shutting them off from the rest of the institute. “Tell me what they want the woman for.”
“Going to”
The older man suddenly lost his nerve and kicked out, sending the table spinning over. Trader pulled the trigger of the Annalite, the 9 mm round taking off most of the top of the young sec guard’s skull, spraying blood and brains across the wall and ceiling.
Though Ryan was very much on the alert, he was still taken by surprise at the older sec man’s attempt to escape. The man had rolled away from the threat of the SIG-Sauer, his hand groping desperately toward the silvered Mossberg that stood in one corner of the little room.
Ryan shot at him, but the tumbling, flailing body of the other dying guard got in the way, the bullet striking it through the left shoulder, blowing the joint apart.
“Fireblast!” He shot a second time, moving sideways, off balance, seeing chunks of bloody flesh erupt from the older man’s forearm, the 9 mm round almost severing the wrist, the hand dangling by shreds of torn sinew.
The attempt for the shotgun was instantly aborted and he rolled into the corner, huddling in a ball, the fingers of the shattered hand leaking blood in five pathetic trails across the clean plastic tiles of the floor.