“Hey, Bill,” Damm said, grinning. His teeth were smeared with red from a cut inside his mouth. Nara stared and said nothing. “I would’ve thought you already had enough blood on your hands, Captain,” Thrill Bill said to her.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“Heard that song, done that dance,” the warlord said. “We got business with Major Loo-jan, then we’ll deal with you.” The warlord turned to face the mob, shot his fist up in the air and shouted, “Vengeance!”
The bellow of approval made Ryan wince. Automatic-weapon fire rattled, sprays of bullets sparking off the street’s concrete ceiling.
The warlord headed for an undamaged facade ahead. Ryan and the others found themselves pushed along behind by a legion of sec men. The shouts of the surrounding crowd were so loud they rattled his insides.
Thrill Bill stopped at the building’s entrance, which consisted of four glass panels, the middle two of which were sliding doors. Beyond the transparent wall, bathed in weak light, the foyer was packed, nearly shoulder to shoulder, with more excited people.
Thrill Bill waved for the pair of tactical squad unit survivors to be brought forward and lined up before him.
He reached out and rapped a knuckle on the helmet of the shorter of the two. The black tint drained away and a man’s face appeared. Blood leaking from his nose painted his upper lip and chin. His dark eyes were narrowed to slits.
“Oswaldo,” Thrill Bill said, “you fucked up.”
The major was defiant. “My orders were to rescue Shadow Man from Damm at any cost.”
“Mitsuki has always been real generous when it comes to other people’s suffering,” the warlord said.
“They are thinking about the bottom line, same as you.”
“I don’t think so,” the warlord replied. He gestured toward the field of dead. “I don’t think me and Mitsuki are on the same page. You picked the wrong place to fuck up, Lujan.”
If you kill me, you know there will be reprisals.”
“If I don’t kill you, there will be reprisals. Where, oh, where is the profit in that?”
Thrill Bill signaled the bodyguards with a jerk of his hand. “Take these Global humps inside.”
Lujan and the other man were shoved through the doors and into the foyer, where they suffered a rain of wild blows and kicks. They would have been knocked down, but there was no room for them to fall. Ryan, Nara and Damm received much better treatment from the people insidethey were only spit upon and cursed. Prodded by sec men, they were made to follow Thrill Bill through the foyer and into a stairwell packed with more humanity. Then they were forced to climb the flight leading up. It wasn’t easy. They had to squeeze by the three or four people sitting on every step.
At the first landing, Thrill Bill paused. He ordered his guards to proceed up to the next floor with the Mitsuki prisoners. “You know what to do with them,” he said. As the men in armor were pushed up the packed stairs, the warlord turned to Ryan and said, “While those two are being dealt with, I think the rest of us should sit down and have a little chat.” The landing’s door opened onto a windowless hallway, lit by a row of bulbs strung along the ceiling. The sight of more mob didn’t surprise Ryan; he was starting to expect it When the sec men cleared the people away from a doorway, Ryan saw a wide band of greasy dirt along the walls where countless hands had brushed. Thrill Bill opened the door, and, after ordering his guards to wait outside, waved Ryan and the others into the room.
It had a few furnishingsa couple of battered couches, a mattress and bed frame. Along one wall was an arsenal of blasters. Not just laser weapons, but the sort of thing Ryan was used to handling in Deathlands standard military, stamped-receiver, mass-produced automatic rifles, stacked boxes of metal-jacketed rounds, armored breastplates and helmets. There were also open plastic crates of grens and antipersonnel charges. What the room didn’t have was people. There were just the four of them.