Grabbing her by the forearm and digging her fingers under the iron manacle encircling Fleur’s wrist, Krysty wrenched it open. Fleur cried out in pain as Krysty flung the cuff aside. It clanged against the wall.
“That could just as easily have been your heart,” she said softly, not releasing her.
Doc pushed his way forward, slapping dirt from his frock coat. He reached out to touch Krysty, thought better of it and said urgently, “My dear, she can help us reach Ryan and Mildred. She may prove useful to us.”
Turning her head, eyes glowing with a jade flame, Krysty stared at Doc for a long moment. Then the blaze in her eyes faded a bit and she said quietly, “Let’s get on with it. I haven’t much time.”
Doc took back his swordstick, and J.B. and Jak armed themselves with the sec men’s blasters. The door of the building was barred on the inside, but rather than bother with the unlocking mechanism, Krysty kicked the door off its hinges. J.B. cursed at the loud splintering of wood and the screech of screws ripping from the wall.
Luckily the door faced away from the street and no one saw it sailing away or heard it hitting the ground. Though their chrons had been confiscated, J.B. estimated the time at around eight o’ clock. It was early yet for the denizens of Helskel, too early for the riotous partying that seemed to go on every night.
As the five people made their way toward the armory, trying to keep to the darkness, the few people they encountered paid them no attention. Krysty led the way, with Jak bringing up the rear, checking their backtrack with quick, all-seeing glances.
Two men were guarding the armory. One was an X-scarred sec man and the other was a novitiate, obviously participating in an uneventful exercise. The sec man was trying to light a hand-rolled cigarette, his Tec-10 clutched under one elbow. The novitiate was standing at the corner of the flat-roofed, windowless building, urinating into the shadows.
Because of a steady breeze, the sec man was having trouble getting his lighter to stay aflame. He had his hands cupped around it. By the time his cigarette was afire, his eyes were swimming with multicolored spots from the dancing flame. He didn’t see Krysty’s bold approach, but he felt her hand fit itself around his throat and squeeze.
The sec man didn’t gasp or cough or cry out. Fingers like bands of tempered, tooled steel closed around his neck, crushing his windpipe, his larynx, his esophagus and his top vertebrae all in a single clenching motion. The only sounds were a wet, mushy crunching of flesh and muscle mashing against bone and cartilage.
The novitiate heard the crunch, but he wasn’t startled by it. He zipped up his fly and turned. When he saw the titian-haired beauty gripping his tongue-lolling mentor by the throat, his eyes bugged out and his mouth opened wide. For an instant he forgot all about the .38-caliber Colt M-1911 tucked in his belt slide rig.
By the time he remembered it, Doc had lunged around Krysty, sword blade extended. The razor point punctured the man’s heart in a swift, darting thrust.
Jak and J.B. dragged the bodies to the side of the armory, hiding them behind a clump of sagebrush. The armory door was secured by a padlock, and neither of the guards had keys on them, so Krysty wrenched away the lock and a sizable portion of the doorframe.
Fleur knew the location of the light switch, so they shut the door behind them and turned on the overhead lights. The interior of the storehouse was stacked nearly to the ceiling with wooden crates and boxes. Most of the crates were stenciled with the legend, PROPERTY U.S. ARMY. They moved down the main aisle, taking a check of the contents of open containers. M-16 A-l assault rifles were neatly stacked in one, along with what had to be thousands of rounds of 5.56 mm ammunition. There were AR-18 rifles, 9 mm Heckler amp; Koch VP-70 semiautomatic pistols complete with holsters and belts, plus more than an ample supply of Tec-10s. Farther on they found bazookas, heavy tripod-mounted machine guns like the M-60 and the M-249, and several crates of grenades. Every piece of it, from the smallest caliber hand-blaster to the big M-79 grenade launcher, was in perfect condition.
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