Uzi in hand, J.B. hopped from the back of the flatbed and surveyed the area. “Looks good,” he said, tilting his fedora back to a more comfortable position now that there was no danger of the wind carrying it away. “I’ll check the farmhouse for unwanted guests.”
“Want any help?” Stephen offered, shouldering his longblaster. This was his convoy, and he didn’t like these outlanders making every decision. Even if they were the right decisions.
The Armorer snorted in reply and disappeared from sight through a hole in the clapboard wall.
His boots crunching on the dry soil, Ryan walked over to the passenger van, and Krysty stuck her head out the window.
“Hey, lover,” she said, smiling in greeting, “we making camp here?”
“Going to find out in a tick,” he said, watching the farmhouse. “J.B. is doing a recce.”
A few minutes passed with no sign of the man, and Ryan was starting to get uneasy when the quiet of the farm was violently ripped apart by the sound of an Uzi blast.
“Fireblast!” he cursed, chambering a round in his longblaster. “Krysty, stay here and give us cover. I’m going after him.”
Moving fast, the redhead threw open the door to the cab and drew her blaster. Standing on the tire, she rested the wheelgun on the metal roof to steady her aim.
Sprinting for the predark building, Ryan slowed as J.B. walked casually into view carrying a huge opossum by its skinny tail.
“Dinner is served,” he announced with a grin.
GRUNTING FROM THE STRAIN, the sec men pulled up the rope going out the window of the fortress at Casanova ville until the bucket full of moat water came into view. Carefully lifting it over the sill, they carried the sloshing plastic container across the bloody floor and threw its contents onto what remained of the naked woman tied to the surgical table.
Thick with slime and stinking of waste, the filthy water sluiced the blood and flies off the prisoner, momentarily awakening her.
“Everywhere!” she screamed, thrashing about, opening old wounds on her wrists and ankles, fresh red trickling down the sloped table surface and onto the sticky floor. “Assassins! Murderers! They know everything! They’re here now! Behind you!” Her screams slowed to mumbled speech, then unintelligible mutters as she fainted again, her mutilated body supported only by the binding ropes.
Reaching into a vest pocket of his silk vest, Baron John Henderson extracted an antique silver snuff box, opened it carefully and took a pinch of the powder inside, sniffing it up first one nostril, then the other. The finely ground mixture of tobacco and jolt tingled deliciously, the electric sensation feeling as if it were going straight into his brain. Suddenly, his aged body felt alive again, young and strong. The sunlight streaming into the room started to take on altered colors, the hues shimmering and overlapping as if he were looking at the world through a distorted prism.
As usual, the baron of Casanova was wearing a pre-dark business suit of raw silk and dainty velvet bedroom slippers. Tassels dangled from an ornamental saber hung at his hip, and the blaster in his shoulder holster was heavy with gold filigree. Even the holster itself was covered with elaborate embroidery. Every button and buckle on his clothes shone with polish, but his nails were cracked and deeply caked with old dirt. Unshaved, with greasy hair, there was a definite odor of urine and festering disease about the elderly man. The reek was only partially disguised by heavy doses of sweet perfume literally poured over his clothing and hair.
Walking about the breathing horror on the table, Henderson scratched at a scab on his face while surveying the monstrous work dispassionately. Her denim dress was in tatters, the encrusted strips covering nothing. The bra and panties were long gone to the interrogator’s scissors. Both nipples were only glazed areas on her bruised breasts, the flesh seared smooth with white-hot branding irons. Smaller burns covered her body, and several of her teeth were laid out in a neat row on a tiny metal table next to a pair of pliers. Each eyelid was gone, and the prisoner could only wildly stare about herself, unable to even escape into the privacy of her own mind.
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