Chapter Four
Ryan knew his sudden appearance would result in one of two possible reactions from the pair.
The expected one wasn’t long in coming.
Dunlop gasped out a curse, swung his M-16 around and prepared to fire. Ryan didn’t hesitate, and the SIG-Sauer thrummed a second payload of death, two rounds drilling into his adversary’s upper chest and neck. The man gurgled as his body fell backward, his arms pinwheeling wildly as a wet spray of crimson flew in the wake of the exit wounds. His feet stumbled over the body of his former acquaintance, and he fell flat on his back across the chest of his dead associate.
Breaux merely stood there, not making a sound. His right cheek and head were spotted with red, but he made no move to wipe the gore from his face. The only noticeable change in his composure was how pale his head suddenly looked sticking out of the open collar of the flannel shirt. A slight sheen of sweat covered his ears. He kept his hands low and at waist level.
“So much for the Funk Machine,” Ryan said dryly as he stepped out from behind the table, the SIG-Sauer leveled at the standing Breaux. “I’m hoping you’re smarter.”
“Compared to those two, I already am,” Breaux said in a wobbly tone. “I’m still alive.”
“For the time being. Drop the blaster now, before I chill you, too.”
Breaux followed the order, opening his hand and letting the weapon fall to the ground with a clatter. Ryan stepped forward to kick the pistol away when the nervous Breaux decided to make a move. With surprising speed for someone so young, he lunged forward in an attempt to grab the SIG-Sauer from Ryan with his free right hand.
Ryan had seen the plan of attack coming. To his practiced combat eye, the boy was moving in slow motion, the grab for the blaster an obvious distraction to cover the small but lethal stiletto that had slid down Breaux’s checkered shirt sleeve and into his waiting left hand. An old dodge, but a good one in a bar fight over a drunken slut or an unpaid beer tab.
Only this was no bar, and Ryan was no drunk.
“I was really hoping you were smarter than those two wonderful examples. Guess not,” Ryan snarled, and lashed out fiercely, catching his surprised attacker flush in the teeth with the barrel of the SIG-Sauer. Blood and drool mixed with bits of white enamel poured from the young man’s ruined mouth as he dropped to his knees with a whimper.
The stiletto fell to the floor, forgotten in the haze of pain the youth was suffering. Ryan used the toe of his boot to flick the fallen blade out of range.
“Listen close,” Ryan grated as he reached down and pulled up the weeping boy by his collar. “I don’t like liars and I like liars with knives even less. I’ve been on the defensive since walking into this scum-soaked hole, and I don’t even know who you losers are or why you’re lurking around here. So spill it.”
Breaux stared dully at Ryan. All of the white heat of the attack had been doused with the taste of cold steel against his now bleeding gums. “Who are you?” he asked painfully through his broken mouth.
“Who I am doesn’t matter. Talk to me, boy. And make the story interesting.”
“We’re part of Northern Panhandle. Sec squad of three. We were sent here to keep an eye on this place.” He spit out a gob of pink-tinged saliva.
“Sec squad? That explains the twin M-16s and utter lack of training to use them, I suppose. Who trained you?”
The boy’s defiant look from earlier returned in force. “Rollins. Rollins trained me personally back at the barracks in Mobile.”
“Alabama?” Ryan recalled there was a ruin of a military base there.
“Yeah. Trained me good. I’m a professional,” Breaux said indignantly.
“So tell me, professional, what’s up with the skull patches?” Ryan pointed the muzzle of the SIG-Sauer at the round black spot sewn to the pocket of the boy’s shirt.
“All of Rollins’s men wear them.”
“Who is this Rollins?”