Implacable: Vicky Peterwald, #5 Page 13

"Don't move, Your Grace," he said, pulling her back into the living room so Marines could pass. "We don't know how many other rooms hold gunmen with hostages."

  "Okay," Vicky grumbled.

  Somewhere a machine pistol chatter was cut off by a single shot. The cry of "Corpsman!" followed.

  A medic raced past Vicky. A glance back into the bedroom showed a team of men and women caring for the four former hostages. A second medic broke loose from that team and followed the first into the hall.

  There was another case of rapid fire that didn't last long. Two shots cut it off.

  "I've got more hostages," was the shout from the hall.

  A Gunny slipped past her. He began calling room numbers, followed by "Clear."

  One of the punks panicked. There were screams and shouts.

  "I'll kill her! I will! Let me out of here!" was hardly done when two shots ended that conversation.

  Now Vicky ventured into the hallway.

  "Ma'am," the Gunny said, "we’ve still got a few rooms to clear."

  "And I have a few hostages to check."

  Vicky turned toward the right. She knew the rooms between that bunch and the fire door just now disgorging Marines was safe. She carefully stepped her way through the gore of the dead and dying redcoats.

  "Kill me," one begged.

  "Consider it practice for hell," she snapped back and passed him by. A grenade fragment had sliced open his belly. Blood welled in the pit of his stomach and pulsed out as it overflowed. An artery had been slashed. He would die soon enough.

  As far as Vicky was concerned, he'd die way too soon.

  She found what she'd been looking for. Four women huddled on the floor where they had been blown or maybe just slid off the couch.

  "Are you okay?" Vicky asked. "Are any of you hurt?"

  It was the youngest woman who seemed to have it together here. She looked up at Vicky with red and empty eyes. "Yes, but we'll survive."

  "Did the grenade hurt any of you?" Vicky corrected herself.

  "No. I knew something was happening when they let go of my hair. I ducked down, and took the others with me. I think the couch protected us." She turned to look at the three men bleeding out where they'd fallen half over the couch.

  "Leastwise it protected us more than it did them pigs."

  "Good. There will be some women and medics along in a moment. We've got some injured hostages down the hall."

  "Take your time. It won't matter all that much to us. No one can really help us."

  "I'm the Grand Duchess Victoria, and I promise you that you will be heroes to your people and to your family."

  "You're . . . you're the Grand Duchess?"

  "That's what I see in the mirror every morning," Vicky said.

  "And you came to save us?" held so much surprise in it.

  "I'm doing my best. I just wish I could have gotten here sooner."

  But the young woman had turned to her sister hostages. "Do you hear that? The Gracious Grand Duchess herself has come to our rescue."

  It took a moment for heads to turn her way, but Vicky was soon sinking into wide, dull eyes that seemed to see too much of the past and had not yet begun to see the present.

  A pair of women, one a nurse the other a civilian, hurried up the hall at that moment. An alert Marine tried to keep up with them, but failed.

  The arriving women slid to their knees as they reached the former hostages and began to render aid. One checked vitals, the other administered hugs and soothing words while wrapping them in blankets and offering steaming cups of tea.

  Vicky stood and eyed the other end of the hall. She climbed over the couch. The tough guy was still taking his time dying. His eyes followed Vicky, but he seemed past words.

  Vicky gave him the middle finger as she left him in her wake. She also drew her automatic as she entered unknown territory.

  "You can put that away, Your Grace," the captain said. "We got the last of the bastards. This floor is clear."

  "Yeah," she said. "Only two floors to go."

  "Skipper, we got a problem," came from the Marine holding open the door at the end of the hall. "Somebody on the next floor wants to talk to you."

  "After me, Your Grace," the Marine officer said, and led the way.

  25

  "Nobody comes up this stairwell. This one or the other one. You set one foot off that landing and a hostage dies. You hear me?" was screamed down from the next floor. The voice held stress and a strong dose of terror.

  It also sounded like it meant business.

  "Also, we want a ride out of here and up to the space station. We want a ship to take us anywhere we tell them to."

  "You're asking for a lot of stuff," the captain said.

  "If we don’t have what we want in four hours, we kill two hostages. Four hours later, we kill four. You get me?"

  "You're dead the second you kill your last hostage," the Marine spat back.

  "We got plenty of 'em. You think those pieces of shit had girls? Wait until you see how many girls we got up here. You're wasting my time. Go tell someone they want to get us a ride out of here or we start shoving dead bodies down these stairs."

  "Let me go talk to my superiors. This may take time."

  "You don't got time. Now, quit wasting it."

  The captain let the door close with a loud click.

  "Killing 'em just gets tougher and they just get meaner," he muttered.

  "Let's get the engineers up here," Vicky said.

  Five minutes later, an engineering LT was at Vicky's elbow. Ten minutes later, a full squad with equipment was taking the ceilings apart in several rooms of the third floor.

  The sound-proofed ceiling panels were easy to pop out. In most cases, they only had to be lifted up. However, that only showed them their next serious problem.

  While the ceiling above the floor was easy, the floors below the next apartments were concrete pads supported by steel beams.

  "It's going to be a bitch drilling holes for snooper scopes," the engineering officer said. "And noisy, too."

  "We need some noise to cover it up," Vicky said. "Maggie, get me someone who has some serious speakers. I want to rattle the bastards on the next floor."

  "There is a performance center three blocks away," Maggie reported quickly.

  "Get me the sound system. Meanwhile, Maggie, get me the most obnoxious sounds you can think of. A baby screaming is the worst I can think of. Maybe loud trash music. Stuff like that."

  "Knowing this bunch," the captain said, "they might like the trash stuff. How about the most saccharin boy band?"

  "We'll try them all. Just so long as it's noisy and crazy-making."

  "You know, what's bad for the goose is migraine-making for the gander," the skipper pointed out.

  "Maggie, can you come up with white noise to cancel out that racket?"

  "Yes, Your Grace. I know what's coming. I can cancel it. However, the troops will have to close down their helmets to get any benefit from it."

  "We can survive," Vicky said.

  While they waited for the sound gear, the engineers tried slow drilling holes in the overhead over close to the outside walls. Since no one shot a hostage, it appeared to be silent enough.

  They'd guessed right that the first four rooms on either side of the hallway and closest to the stairwells were empty.

  Even while they waited for the noise, they began sawing through the concrete flooring above their heads. They started with shallow cuts, just taking a layer off the surface.

  That done, they went back and cut a bit deeper. This kept the noise down. Slowly but surely, deeper cuts were made into the concrete.

  The sound system arrived and was quickly put into use. With speakers in the stairwells that were lifted high to set the floor of the hallway above vibrating, all chance of thought fled until everyone had their helmet closed and white noise on.

  It wasn't long before the guards at the stairwells were reporting a demand from the head redcoat that
someone in authority talk to him.

  The captain went.

  "What do you want?" he demanded.

  "You the boss man?"

  "Close enough for your purposes," the Marine shot back.

  "Shut off this crappy noise."

  "You don't like kids crying, huh?"

  "I'd have killed my kid brother if he screamed like that brat."

  "Okay. Kill the noise."

  Blessed silence reigned.

  "Good."

  "Now, I'm busy," the captain snapped.

  "Getting us a ride out of here, right?"

  "Getting you out of here, yeah."

  "Just make sure it's a good ride or some of these fucking sluts die."

  "I hear you," and the door slammed shut.

  "I guess they haven't heard our drilling," he said to Vicky.

  "I guess they haven't. How long do we let them enjoy the silence?"

  "Two minutes. One hundred and twenty seconds. Then we go with the head-banging heavy metal music.”

  They returned to walking the halls, checking on how the sawing was going and what the size of the next strike team would be.

  They had the entire company now waiting patiently, sprawled in the now-empty rooms. Some slept. Some played video games. A few card games had sprouted up in corners out of the sergeants' view.

  Troopers waited as troopers had for thousands of years.

  After the racket resumed with heavy metal music, it wasn't long before someone at the top of the stairs was shouting to talk to someone. For several minutes, the skipper ignored the shouts from the watch at the doors that the guy upstairs wanted to talk. At the third call, Vicky ordered the music switched to the boy band, though with their plaintive puppy love songs going at full blast. It took a while, but the complaints were soon coming in again.

  Vicky switched to the sound effects. Airplane crashes. Train wrecks. Truck horns blasting, brakes squealing that ended in crashes. Huge chalk boards scratching. Mixed in with this was the howl of the banshee, screams of women and loud, rapid drumbeats. All were designed to get the heart pounding and adrenaline pumping.

  Oh, and no one was resting. If they weren't nervous before, they certainly were now.

  It was during the howling of a hurricane mixed with trees crashing down on metal structures, that the floors were sawed through. Lifts slowly lowered the heavy blocks of concrete to the deck. Ladders were quickly put in place and fire teams climbed up, ready to shoot if shots were fired.

  As the snooper scopes showed, the bedroom was empty. More use of the scope showed that there was no one at the door.

  It appeared that, again, the SOBs had concentrated themselves and their hostages in the middle apartments. Their barricades protected just two apartments on each side of the hall. Gunmen were visible at all four doors

  What was different was the barricades.

  Each consisted of an upended table with hostages in front of it. Only this time, the women had their hands tied behind their backs and they were hanging from the edge of the table from their armpits.

  Some of them managed to hang their on tiptoes. A few just hung from their arms. It looked excruciating for both, but the shorter girls had the worst of it.

  Vicky and the captain quickly agreed on an attack from the middle. They concentrated their four attack teams down to two. One on the right, the other on the left at the other end of the hall. Then the engineers got busy cutting through drywall.

  They came up short when they arrived at those four apartments protected by the human barricade. The next bedroom was full of women under the nervous watch of two gunman.

  One focused on the woman who sucked on his member. It still didn't calm him down much. He couldn't seem to get it up.

  The other was naked, a woman at his feet. He eyed the door, then turned to brandish his weapon at the hostages, then turned back to the door.

  Vicky signaled the engineer to cut out the drywall in this room, but not break through the drywall to the next room. Then he made her the kind of peephole her automatic needed.

  Vicky chose the same weapon load as last time. She calmed her breathing and waited for her heart rate to slow . . . as much as the situation allowed.

  Then she took the shot.

  The bastard standing at the door seemed utterly dismayed by the holes Vicky's rounds made in his chest. He opened his mouth to react, but the sleepy bullets did their work. He collapsed onto the woman lying on the floor.

  The woman stared dumbly at the sudden burden. Then she rolled him off her and began pounding her fists on his bloody chest.

  The other gunman was too busy urging the women to get him up to notice that the man behind him had gone down. Vicky put three rounds into his chest. He gasped in pain, then keeled over.

  The woman's eyes followed him down, letting his sex fall from her mouth. Then she slammed a fist into this groin. If the man wasn't already dead, that would have hurt.

  Around the room, the other woman hostages sat against the walls. Even at the sight of these dead or dying punks, they didn't move or make a sound.

  Vicky thought it strange that none of the women rested on the rumpled bed, then answered the question for herself.

  Meanwhile, she'd side-slipped up to where the wall was ready to cave in and pushed her way into the room.

  The women took her in with bland, blank faces.

  Vicky raised her finger to her lips with a shushing sign, but they didn't need it. They were sheep led to the slaughter too many times. With throats raw from screaming, they kept silent.

  Around Vicky, Marines moved with deadly intent and purpose.

  One combat engineer went to check the next room. He quickly began to cut through the wall. Eight Marines came to stand behind him.

  The other engineer slipped up to the open door, careful to keep his back plastered against the wall. His snooper scope showed eight thugs standing behind the two barricades.

  The captain deployed his two best sharpshooters to the door to await the go order.

  He also had teams ready to break into two of the rooms. They would rush the rooms at the same instant that the two troopers shot out the men skulking behind the barricade.

  Vicky eyed the take from the snooper on her battle board. Four men stooped low in the space behind each table. A couple of them enjoyed the screams they got from the poor short girls. They hung from the table's edges, unable to reach the deck with their toes. A vicious pull on their arms would leave the woman screaming in pain.

  Meanwhile, now and again, one of the thugs would pop up to check the hall, carefully keeping their own head behind one of the women's heads.

  Real cowards, these.

  Vicky eyed the captain, he just looked back at her then ordered up two more sharpshooters.

  "Maggie, tell everyone we go on three." She paused for a moment, then counted, "One. Two. Three."

  The four troopers ahead of Vicky slipped through the door in pairs, side by side. As one, they leveled their guns and fired.

  The hoodlums died, first with a shot to the chest, then a second shot to the head.

  Unfortunately, one of the punks who had been standing, eyeing the hall in front of him from the vantage point behind a hostage's head was too close to her. Unlike the M-6's that the US Marines used, Vicky's troops had only a single charge load.

  A dart went right through the thug's skull and buried itself halfway through the hostage's brain.

  The company had its first dead hostage.

  But Vicky had no time for that. As soon as the troopers had fired their four rounds at two targets, Vicky was running for the door to the room they didn't have a team ready to break in.

  She busted through the door to find herself facing a man with his pants down and his member buried in a redhead's mouth. He also had a machine pistol aimed nowhere in particular, neither at the hostages, nor Vicky.

  "Move that gun and you die," Vicky growled.

  The redhead eyed Vicky, turning, with her mouth st
ill full. Then rage filled her eyes . . . and she bit down.

  The guy let out a howl, and brought his gun around, he slammed it into the head of the hostage, sending her sprawling. He looked at the blood gushing from his still-attached sex and screamed in rage.

  He brought the machine pistol up to aim it at his attacker.

  Vicky had her automatic up in the proper two-hand stance. Six rounds stitched up the guy from his belly, through his heart, and ended blowing his face off, leaving a bloody mass in place of the back of his skull.

  The blood, and what brains he had, splattered all over the women in the next room. That set up screams of dismay and fear.

  Vicky hurried past the redhead, who grinned at her through bloody lips. She raced into the back bedroom.

  "Everything's okay. The Marines are here. The Navy's got medical people waiting for you. Women from the farms will be up here in a minute."

  Maybe half of the women seemed to understand what Vicky was saying. They held each other, those that could soothing those that hadn't yet comprehended their new safety.

  The redhead came to stand beside Vicky.

  "I got one of the bastards," she said, running a hand over her bloody lips, and held up her bloody hand for all to see.

  Now, there was a cheer.

  Vicky let it roll down naturally, then turned to the naked woman. "Why don't you take that around for all the women to see? I think they could use a cheer."

  "You're in all four rooms!"

  "Yep. There's not a live piece of shit on this floor. All we've got left is the top floor."

  "What do you know about them?" the redhead asked.

  "Not one damn thing," Vicky answered.

  "Then I better talk to you before I go show the girls what I got my teeth into."

  26

  Vicky huddled with the company skipper, three platoon LTs and a couple of sergeants. The other sergeants were busy overseeing the movement of the freed hostages or bringing order back to platoons that had become pretty mixed up during the assault.

  When the former redheaded hostage's stomach didn't so much rumble as growl, the captain offered the young woman a chocolate bar. She quickly attacked it and seemed unbothered when it mixed with the blood on her lips.