The settlers were like a flock of patient sheep, their faces showing emotions that ran from anger to blank disbelief. But the threat of the overwhelming firepower kept them cowed.
“Very well, Cawdor! Here goes with the next two! And then we’ll take us a break and have us another lottery”
Mildred was about forty yards from Cort Strasser, barely half that distance away from Doc Tanner. She eased the ZKR 551 from its hiding place.
J.B. dropped the glass. “Rad-blast it!”
“What?”
“Get ready. I just spotted Mildred pull out that target blaster of hers.”
In the square Mildred steadied her breathing, making a conscious effort to slow her heart. She used the Zen techniques that she’d been taught when she’d taken up pistol shooting, techniques that had brought her an Olympic silver medal.
Strasser was leveling the machine pistol, his reptilian tongue darting out to brush his bloodless lips.
“Listen to death, Ryan Cawdor!” the leather-clad figure screeched.
“Spare me, Jesus!” one of the kneeling men yelled.
“Die slow, you bastard,” said the other, face turned stubbornly up to Strasser.
“Die fast, fucker,” the ex-sec boss replied, squeezing the trigger twice.
The first bullet drilled between the man’s eyes, knocking him on his back in the dirt, all life immediately gone.
The noise of the gun made the praying man start sideways, so that Strasser’s second shot, even at point-blank range, nearly missed. It ripped off his ear, creasing his skull, bringing a fountain of blood, the spent round burying itself in the man’s right shoulder.
He slapped at Strasser in his agonized shock, struggling to get to his feet. The Stechkin snapped a third time and he went down alongside the other corpses, one hand opening and closing convulsively.
The cobbled yard was totally silent, and every single pair of eyes was focused on the scene of the brutal executions.
Every pair of eyes but one.
Mildred’s.
As calmly as if she stood in the target butts of her old hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska, she leveled the revolver and began to shoot, careful, spaced shots, picking her targets with care.
“Let’s go,” Ryan ordered.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
DOC WAS the only person out in the yard who’d spotted the disappearance, of the stocky black woman, and it had been a great relief to him to see her make her safe getaway. If Strasser hadn’t been blinded by his own quest for vengeance against Ryan and Jak, he’d probably have followed a slower course of careful interrogation, which would have meant speedy betrayal for Mildred.
Now she was gone.
Doc had taken a private wager with himself, trying to figure out what Ryan would be doing. He guessed that the first deaths would do nothing to stir him from hiding, and that Ryan’s fighting brain would tell him that Strasser would go through with his threat, would massacre every man, woman and child on the wag train just to ease his own lust for blood.
The only question was, when would Ryan make some sort of move and how would he do it?
Doc knew his own fate was sealed. The odds were too high for any rescue bid, but there was the hope that Ryan might be able to use his rifle to take the life of Cort Strasser, even though it wouldn’t save most of the hostages.
“Might be joining you shortly, Emily, my dear,” the old man whispered.
Then Mildred came back again. Doc blinked, wondering whether his brain had slipped sideways into the darkness once more.
“Why?” he said, wincing at the triple echo of the last execution shots. Then he saw the gleam of sunlight off blued steel and he knew.
“Save a last bullet for the woman.” The words rolled around Mildred’s mind, even though she couldn’t recall what old flick she’d heard them in. It sounded like big John Wayne should have said them. Maybe he did.
The Zbrojovka revolver had been chambered to use the common Smith amp; Wesson .38-caliber rounds, six of them. Mildred had thought through what she was going to do with all six, and she moved her hand steadily from target to target.
For someone who had a party trick of putting a bullet clean through the center pip of the five of hearts at thirty long paces, killing men at less than that range wasn’t hard. Not once you’d set your mind to doing it.