“There are the intruders!” he bellowed, thrusting an arm toward the nearby hills. “Send out every man we have, use the dogs and the Bell. Find them! The man who chills them will be promoted to major and serve as my right hand. No prisoners, do you understand me? I want them dead. No prisoners!”
“Yes, sir!” the sergeant replied. Although visibly shaken, he managed a salute and started off at a run already shouting orders. The rest of the sec men closely followed, the excitement of the possible promotion wiping the shock and fear from their faces.
“You!” Sheffield barked, pointing at the sec man in charge of the transformer. “Turn the circuits off!”
Hesitantly, the blue shirt obeyed and, bracing for a shock, he threw the insulated switch. There was a snap of power, and the hum of the bus bars softly faded, but the huge copper coils continued to faintly crackle with the secondary effects of recharging the accumulators.
Moving quickly, Sheffield retrieved the disk and shoved it into a pocket. “Back on,” he snapped impatiently, walking around the transformer until the southern hills were no longer in sight.
“Power is restored, sir!” the sec man shouted, excited at still being alive. “Should I summon some slaves to clean up…ah, gather the remains?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Sheffield said coolly. Drawing a handblaster, he aimed at the blue shirt and fired.
Shrieking in agony, the sec man fell to the ground, clutching his groin, dark blood flowing across his clothes. Ruthlessly, Sheffield fired again and again, first removing fingers, then other small body parts until the slide of his blaster kicked back, showing it was out of ammo. Reloading, the major started again, dissecting the man alive, until blood loss made the tattered lump of human flesh stop making noises and go unconscious.
Placing the weapon against the forehead of the gurgling thing on the ground, he paused, then thumbed the safety back on.
“No, you die slow,” the major stated, holstering the blaster. “Unlike Silas, I don’t tolerate failure.”
Walking briskly to the lab, the new baron of the ville placed his palm on the wall plate, and waited anxiously until it chimed and unlocked the door. Hurrying inside, Sheffield stared through the Plexiglas windows at the sloping hills encircling the complex.
“Better start running, Ryan,” he said softly, almost in a whisper. “Because you’re next.”
Chapter Twenty
“Let’s go,” Ryan said, standing. Working the bolt on the Steyr SSG-70, he opened the breech to remove the spent clip and slid in a fresh magazine.
“Did you get him?” Dean asked, shading his eyes with a hand. Sirens started to howl, something was on fire, sending black smoke wafting into the sky, and sec men seemed to be rushing about madly. The electric lights in the guard towers flickered, died away completely, then came back on again.
“Silas is dead,” Ryan replied, easing the bolt home and starting up the slope.
“Can’t get much more dead,” Krysty agreed, walking alongside him. “He’s gone forever.”
“I am only sorry I did not get to pull the trigger,” Doc replied, staring backward at the busy ville.
“Put a few rounds into the transformer, too. But I missed the chief sec man,” Ryan said, stopping at the ridge and cupping his hands. “Bastard moved fast.”
Krysty stepped into his grip, and he boosted her up onto the higher ground. Then she grabbed his arms and helped him climb the steep embankment.
Uzi at the ready, J.B. watched the hillside as the rest of the companions assisted one another, then Ryan covered him as the wiry Armorer scrambled up on his own.
“Any chance they can know the shots came from this direction?” Mildred asked worriedly, as they started quickly for the trees. She would feel a lot safer once they gained some cover.
“No way,” Ryan replied, striding along. “I could have taken that shot from anywhere in the valley.”
Just then, J.B. sneezed in warning and the companions went flat, shifting for cover in the stubby grass. A few seconds later, a sec man in a blue shirt walked out of the pine trees with an AK-47 cradled in his arms. The man gasped at the sight of the armed companions and swung the barrel of his blaster toward them. But there was a low cough, the blue shirt fell to the ground, shook and went still.
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