Implacable: Vicky Peterwald, #5 Page 14

  "There are a lot of hostages on the top floor, but only three pieces of shit. The battalion commander, the deputy commander, and the adjutant took that entire floor over for themselves and their . . . sex slaves. That's what we are. Sex slaves. They threatened to knock our front teeth out if we so much as touched their roots when they were jamming them down our throats. Ha. I got that one good."

  "What can you tell us about that floor?" Vicky asked. "Are there guards?"

  "Nope, no guards up there now. They don't like having the goons eyeing the naked boobs of their girls. About four hours ago, they ordered everyone down to these floors to guard them from here. All you people are supposed to be dead by now. That's what they figured would keep them safe. With all these other bastards already dead, I guess they kind of got it wrong."

  "Sounds like it," Vicky said. "Captain, could one of your engineers put a snooper scope into the hall above our heads?"

  He nodded at a sergeant who left at a jog. Soon, a small fire team with two engineers was silently working their way up the stairs.

  Vicky opened her battle board again, and quickly found herself looking at a hall very much like the one she was standing in. Maybe it was a bit fancier.

  Unlike this one, it was empty. Very empty.

  "Captain," Vicky said, "if you would, please put together a platoon-size force with your best sharpshooters. Reinforce it with all the engineers you have and let's go kill us some high muckety-mucks.”

  Two minutes later, Vicky strode along beside the captain as they moved upstairs. One four-man fire team slipped into the hall and took up prone fire positions covering the rest of the length of the hall. They were followed by another team that backed them up. Finally, two engineers slipped toward the first door.

  While one slipped a snooper scope under the door, the other went to work with a lock pick. About the time the scope showed the living area empty, the door clicked open.

  The backup fire team slipped inside, and soon there was a whispered call of, "Clear."

  A squad moved forward to cover the hall while Vicky and the captain hurried through the open door and into the suite. It was larger than the ones downstairs. Thicker carpet. Wall paper with quaint country scenes on it. The furniture was soft cream leather. Definitely upscale.

  The bed was badly rumpled and there was blood on the carpet in the bedroom. Vicky made a face at it. She had been warned that the SOBs up here went for violence with their sex.

  Their chances of surviving the next hour went from nil to zed in her opinion.

  In the bedroom, the engineers were at work. They were as careful as they could be. They'd pressed two hand-holds onto the wall before they started cutting a large hole in it. Two engineers with circular handsaws quietly attacked the drywall in this room. One cut from the right, ceiling-to-floor, while the other cut from the left, floor-to-ceiling.

  The third engineer lifted the slab of drywall out and set it on the bed. A fourth immediately punched a tiny hole in the wall for the snooper scope.

  The next bedroom was empty.

  A few quick cuts later and a four-man team slipped through the freshly cut hole and spread through the apartment.

  "Clear," came back in a soft voice.

  They quickly repeated it another time.

  They approached the fourth suite more cautiously. They cut the first hunk out of the wall then paused as an engineer applied a listening device to the back of the wall for the next room.

  He listened intently, then waved Vicky and the captain over.

  "I've got something," he said. "I'm not sure what. No one's talking."

  "Crying?" Vicky asked.

  The Marine engineer shrugged.

  Vicky stepped back, then turned to the engineers. "Cut a small hole in the bedroom wall and listen in there."

  A few minutes later, the report from the bedroom was negative. No noise of any sort.

  Vicky pursed her lips and decided she had a target. She pointed to the corner where the bedroom wall and the living room came together. "Get me a shooting position two feet out from there."

  "Aye, aye, Your Grace," came back at her immediately.

  Four minutes later, Vicky was standing on a stepladder, her head bumping up against the ceiling as her automatic's sight gave her a view of the next room.

  A dozen, maybe more, naked women were roped together at the neck into a circle. Some faced inward, some outward. Some held on to each other as they wept softly.

  Every once in a while, the piece of shit in the middle of them would growl for silence and threaten them with his machine pistol. That usually got a squeak from at least one of the women hostages.

  He might slam his pistol against that one's head, shoulders, or back, but there seemed to be no real intent behind the blow.

  They'd make more noise. He'd hurt them more. Then he'd go back to nervously eyeing the floor below him or looking up and listening intently.

  Whatever he did, he kept himself well down. The huddled women gave Vicky no target.

  Then she heard him mutter, "Why's it so bloody quiet down there? Why aren't they still shooting?"

  Vicky studied the situation. As it stood now, to get a shot at this head thug, she'd have to shoot one or two of the women. She didn't want to do that.

  Having her Marines bust in would have too much of a chance of the women being caught in the crossfire, with deadly results, or giving the punk time to machine gun them in the back.

  She needed something. Something new had to be added to this equation.

  Vicky waved the captain over. "I want several of your people downstairs to start a fake firefight. Machine pistols, M-6s, whatever you have. I want volleys like you'd get if there was a firefight going. Could you order something like that up for me?"

  The captain grinned, then stepped well back from the wall and began whispering into his commlink. A moment later, he gave Vicky a thumbs-up.

  She began to slow her breathing, calm her heart rate. She wanted to be ready when the shot came.

  Beneath her feet there was the sound of a short burst from an M-6. It was quickly answered by the wild chatter of at least two machine pistols. They paused. An M-6 cracked out a three-round burst. The shorter machine pistols snapped off a reply.

  Vicky ignored the noise from below. She eyed the man, willing him to stand up.

  "Now that's more like it," the deputy commander of the battalion said, coming to his feet. "Lay it on them, boys," he shouted as he rose to his full stature.

  Vicky held her breath and squeezed off three rounds at the guy's head.

  At least one of her rounds slashed into his left eye. Maybe another one hit his right eye, or maybe it was just below it. The third buried itself in his forehead. They were small puncture wounds.

  The back of his head blew off, splattering bone, brains, and blood all over the women on that side of his forced circle.

  He didn't even seem to know what hit him. He crumpled like a bit of newspaper in an open fire.

  The women who had been splattered with blood, or maybe cut by skull fragments screamed, but the other women leapt on the downed punk. They slammed his lifeless body with their fists over and over.

  When the bloodied ones saw that, they dropped to their knees and joined the others in smashing his body, especially his genitals.

  "Make me a hole," Vicky said, coming down the step ladder. The engineers quickly cut their way through the wall.

  Vicky shouldered the captain aside and put herself at the head of a fireteam, ready to storm the next room. She was first through the breach.

  One of the women spotted her. She looked up but did not stop smashing her fists into the body. "Who are you?" she demanded hoarse voice.

  "I'm the woman who just blew his head off," Vicky growled.

  As the Marines stormed into the room, the women seemed to panic.

  "These Marines are under my command," Vicky snapped. "They will not harm you. There will be nurses and women from the country up here so
on to take care of you."

  "Who are you?" one diminutive woman demanded.

  "I think she's the duchess," an older woman of maybe twenty-five put in.

  "Yes, I'm the Grand Duchess Victoria, and your planet is now under my protection. I'm putting an end to this kind of shit."

  "Why couldn't you have been here last month when my mom was still alive?" a harsh voice asked.

  "I'm sorry. I went to Dresden first. You're my second planet to liberate. Lublin is next."

  "I guess you have to take a number and wait in line. Ain't life the shits," another woman said.

  Then they fell into each other's arms and began sobbing and weeping.

  An engineer with a big knife made to cut them loose, but Vicky stepped forward and took the knife from him. She slipped up behind one of the weeping women and said, "May I cut this rope?"

  "Please," was pure begging.

  Starting with that woman, Vicky worked her way around, asking first as she went from those who were just weeping to finally finishing with a poor girl who was wailing pure pain to the air.

  Vicky hoped that her sobbing wouldn't get through to the next target, but there was no way she would attempt to silence the poor girl. Two of the other women came to console her.

  Vicky made a point to offer them her canteen of water and encourage them to head into the next suite. The oldest of the three women seemed to catch on to Vicky's concern and slowly urged the woman out of the room.

  27

  Considering her next move, Vicky listened as the woman's wailing dissipated with distance.

  "Well, Captain, do we switch sides of the hallway and go for the battalion's so-called commander or do we keep going on this side?”

  "The boss skunk is likely to be the hardest nut to crack," the Marine officer said. "Let's slip across the hall."

  With a squad left behind to keep this section secure, a fire team kept the hall under armed observation while two engineers checked out the room and picked the lock into that suite.

  Quickly two squads crossed the hall. The small arms fire below was rather desultory at the moment, just enough to show that no one had lost interest in killing someone.

  The engineers found the next suite both larger and empty. It had been occupied enough to pretty much trash it. There was way too much blood on the carpet and walls for Vicky's taste.

  Mentally, she signed another death warrant.

  They didn't tarry there. The engineers moved quickly to breach the wall into the next empty suite. It was as if every member of this small strike force wanted to see someone very dead.

  That suite also showed way too much blood in both the living room and the bedroom. Even the kitchen and bathroom had blood splatter.

  In every Marine’s eye was a single thought. Someone needed to die, and they'd be only too willing to oblige him.

  The snooper scope was silently extended into a hole high above the living room. It showed naked and bloodied women huddled on couches that had been moved to block the path from the door to the bedroom. They were tied up tight with many colored ropes, most artistically and creatively. They could neither duck nor fall out of their seats.

  There was a clear line of fire between the bedroom and their heads.

  Silently, the engineers moved their interest to the bedroom. Quickly, Vicky found herself looking at its view.

  A man lay on the bed, covered with layers of naked women, both hog-tied and tied together. Many were still bleeding from cuts to their breasts and genitals. Most had tape over their mouths to stifle their cries. All wept in silent terror.

  Vicky felt a violent need to vomit, but she suppressed it. She didn't have time, nor could she afford the noise.

  The captain was looking over her shoulder at the video take. A low growl rumbled through his throat.

  Vicky quickly went through all the ways she'd killed these thugs this night. Most had hidden behind women. This man had brutalized them most cruelly, then burrowed under them to use them as shields from the justice he so deserved.

  There was no way Vicky could shoot down at him. His head was too close to the wall. If they stormed into the room, he'd start shooting hostages. They might kill him, but far too many women would die at his hands. A machine pistol carried a lot of ammunition.

  Vicky pointed at his head. He'd covered everything, but his head was "safely" up against the solid wall.

  The captain nodded and called his engineering sergeant over for a look. He looked at the video, then looked at the wall. He did it several times, then nodded.

  "We can do this. Carefully. Quietly. What about the headboard?"

  That was where the rub came in. They could make a hole in the drywall, but the wooden headboard was another matter. Drilling or cutting a hole in it would make noise and take time.

  Vicky measured her options. Shooting through the wooden headboard was very possible. You just jack up the M-6's propulsion charge to maximum range and pull the trigger. Maybe pull it several times so if one bullet didn't make it through the wood, the next one would, or maybe the next one.

  Of course, if she jacked it up too high, the dart might go right through the guy's thick skull, maybe half his body and still be going strong when it hit a woman in the stomach.

  Then there was the worst case. She could be too high, too low, too far right or left. If she missed him entirely, he would more than likely pull the trigger and hold it down as he mowed down his hostages.

  "We shoot through the headboard," Vicky said.

  "I'll get my best sharpshooter," the captain said.

  Vicky shook her head, violently. "This won't require a sharpshooter. Just someone with a blackened heart willing to pay the hangman's price."

  "Your Grace."

  "Get me an M-6, Captain."

  "Ma'am?"

  "Don't ma'am me. This is what a Grand Duchess does. I pronounce judgement. I pull the trigger."

  The captain looked none too happy, but he had the nearest Marine give up his weapon. Vicky checked it over. It carried a full magazine of 4mm darts. Its propulsion flask showed full. The sights showed her the picture of where she was aiming.

  "Any problems with your weapon?" she asked the Marine.

  "No ma'am," was the quick response. The response she expected.

  "Engineers, move the scope over to just above his head."

  Five minutes later, the engineers had used their knives to cut her a hole fifteen centimeters above the top of the headboard. At least with the headboard in this suite.

  The curved lens of the snooper scope distorted the view the farther away you got from directly in front of it. Things were pretty distorted at the bottom of the screen. Still, it looked like his head was directly under the scope.

  Vicky would just have to trust it.

  The engineering sergeant finished silently whittling a hole in the wall. He measured the height of the bed they'd moved away to gain access to the wall, then he checked the location of the scope. Finally, he drew a cross on the wooden headboard.

  Silently, he mouthed to her. "That's the best anyone can do here, Your Grace. God be with you."

  Vicky would have expected "Good luck," or even "God speed." The blessing and prayer threw her. For a moment she found her eyes misting up. That had never happened before.

  But then no one had ever offered to bear half the blame if she killed the wrong person.

  She gave the sergeant a nod. One more time, she checked her weapon. The power setting was on high. The safety was off and moved to fire a three-round burst each time she pulled the trigger.

  The captain came to stand beside her, showing the sniper take on her own battle board. There was no use trying to use the gun sight. She was shooting blind based on a measurement and a horribly warped video.

  Vicky said a quiet prayer to any god who would pay attention to a black-hearted Peterwald . . . and squeezed the trigger.

  Three rounds snapped from the rifle.

  On the screen, nothing seemed to hap
pen. The thug did not react. Neither did any woman. Vicky could see no sign of blood. She'd aimed a dart at the top of his head. It should have carried all the way down his body to the soles of his feet.

  Gritting her teeth, Vicky lowered the butt of the rifle, aiming for a high angle.

  Again, she pulled the trigger and the weapon spoke three times.

  This time, the punk's head was twisted around. This time, there was screaming from the women who didn't have their mouths taped shut.

  The engineer pushed the snooper scope forward. Its head was curved down, and it took some of the distortion out of her view of the man and the writhing mass of tightly bound women.

  The man wasn't moving. His machine pistol had fallen from his hand, knocked loose by one of the women.

  "Make a hole," Vicky ordered.

  The engineers quickly cut through both layers of dry wall and shoved the wreckage out of the way.

  Again, Vicky was the first through the hole. She had her automatic in one hand, a sharp knife in the other. If the guy so much as twitched, she'd put another dart through his head.

  Three steps to the bed and it was clear that all six rounds had hit him, killing him instantly. The top of his skull showed where each round had gone in. The length of his body showed where they had gone from there. One of the last rounds had shattered his jaw, but not pierced the skin.

  Now, his body twitched in its death throes as the stench of piss and shit filled the room.

  Vicky holstered the automatic and switched the knife to her right hand. She studied the women tied up and tied together, spotted where two were roped together and attacked the rope.

  The sight of the knife sent the women into panic. As one, they struggled to get away from Vicky's knife.

  "I'm cutting you loose. I'm not going to hurt you. The hurting died with that son of a bitch," Vicky said, as soothing as she could.

  Getting through to women who had been pushed way past hysteria was not going to happen. Not while knives were out.

  But with all the ropes, there was nothing to do but use the sharp steel. Vicky was now joined by engineers with the small circular hand saws. They slipped the guards down and began working on a rope here or there.