Which suited Ricky. He didn’t recognize the man as having personally hurt any of his family or his friends, but the EUN armband was enough for Ricky to wish him a worse send-off than he got.
The sound of muttering voices sidled like
chupacabras
between the walls.
Voices. Ricky’s blood ran cool despite his exertion. El Guapo—if that was indeed he—wasn’t alone.
Softly Ricky stole down the corridor. He held no weapons. If he encountered
chupacabras,
especially a pack of the hissing, black-spiked, red-eyed monsters, he reckoned his best chance at living lay in not looking like a threat.
When he got alongside the open door from which the low, intense conversation came, he drew his .45. The whisper-quiet blasting of the carbine didn’t outweigh the advantage of an Enfield longblaster’s famed fast bolt-action. A room’s occupants would notice if one of them suddenly went down, no matter how hard they were concentrating on the task at hand. He would need to shoot fast.
And not miss.
He pressed the backs of his shoulders against the concrete wall. Holding his Para-Ordnance right-handed with its muzzle toward the ceiling he fished inside the open collar of his shirt and hooked a thin, light chain.
From where it hung against his breastbone, he drew a small silver medallion, the size of an old quarter-dollar coin. It was tarnished, nicked, so badly battered by years—and eroded from reverent fondling—that it was hard to make out the image of a woman, with what looked like a mutie’s outsized round head, cradling a baby in her arms.
Ricky knew it wasn’t her head that was round. It was her halo.
On Puerto Rico, as on the mainland, the faith of the old times had mostly died away. The Armageddon that humanity had endured, the fire and plague followed by the cold and the dark, had brought judgment of a sort. But no promised Messiah. And the survivors who had emerged from the shelters after the skies cleared and the sun shone again, about thirty years on, were embittered and disillusioned with just about everything about the world that had betrayed and almost killed them. Especially its faith in the rival religions of science and God.
One they blamed for causing the devastation. The other they blamed for not preventing it.
Yet in some places, hints of the ancient beliefs clung on as superstition. Not least in the peaceful, prosperous, happy seacoast ville named for the lady on the medallion.
Ricky had been raised a rationalist, a scoffer, even by the standards of the day. His uncle regarded with cynicism anything he couldn’t touch with his hands or measure with a micrometer or precision scales. But since they had been infants, both he and his beloved elder sister had worn the medallions given to them by their grandmother, who seemed to believe in every superstition.
So he whispered, “Blessed Maria, pray for me,” and kissed the medallion. Just in case.
Then he let it drop back into his shirt. It wouldn’t do to let the Virgin see what he was about to do.
Just in case.
Then he folded his left hand over the one that held the blaster, keeping the thumb well out if the way of the reciprocating slide and a forefinger hooked over the front of the trigger guard. He sucked down the deepest breath of his young life.
Then he swung around into the open doorway.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The control room was small and mostly dark. A stocky man with a bush of kinky black hair sat hunched in a swivel chair, his round bearded face underlit by the glow of a computer screen. El Guapo bent over his shoulder, pointing to something on his display. A second guard stood back, his AKM slung over his shoulder, his face drooping in boredom.
That would quickly change.
With practiced speed and chill calm, Ricky lined up the three dots of his sights on the plump technician’s head. He squeezed his whole hand, but fast, giving the trigger what his uncle’s
pistolero
and
pistolera
friends had taught him as a compressed surprise break.
The yellow muzzle flash was as bright in the gloom as the blast was loud. The fuzzy head jerked. Dark droplets spattered the glowing screen.
Ricky was already swinging his muzzle right. When he fired again, the flash illuminated the most surprised look he had ever seen on a human face.
He saw the guard’s head snap back. Even noted the beret flying off behind. Time seemed to have bogged down, be running slow. Ricky flash-aligned his sights and fired the second half of a double tap as the man folded. He didn’t know if he hit him or not. It was the habit he’d been trained in and it was a good one.
He swung back to cover El Guapo. As he did, he noted the first tech. His normal practice would have been to give him a second shot, too, to be sure. But if the guy wasn’t chilled, the way he had his cheek propped against the screen and his eyes staring half-lidded from his slack face, he was doing a fine job of acting for a man with a hole that big and blue in the side of his head.
As Ricky expected, the Handsome One had a tiger’s reflexes. He reacted to the reality of his current situation fast enough to halt his right hand in its move for his the handblaster holstered at his hip and raise both hands. That meant Ricky didn’t have to drop the hammer a fourth time.
Yet.
He wouldn’t have chilled the would-be baron with that slug. He had his sights lined up on the middle of El Guapo’s flat belly, about four inches above the brass U.S. Army belt buckle.
“Easy, kid,” the man said, holding his hands by his head. “Easy now. Nice and easy. Let’s talk.”
“All right,” Ricky said. “Talk.”
His whole body was so tight he could barely pry words out of it. Squeezing the handblaster in a crushing grip was also part of the combat-pistol doctrine he’d been taught, but it was taking all his concentration to keep his arms from wobbling fatally. The blaster barrel did sway. But it never strayed far from his enemy’s midsection.
“What do you want to talk about, my friend?” the horrifically scarred man asked. “You want me to tell you a bedtime story?”
El Guapo’s tone was light, amused, as if he were in command of the situation. As if he had the blaster hand.
And he was bastard good at it. Ricky frowned in concentration to make his surging stomach remember that
he
held the blaster here.
“Yes,” he forced out between teeth gritted so hard they squeaked like frightened mice. “Tell me a story. About my sister.”
“Who? I know
lots
of sisters. I know them very well.” His smirk widened. Ricky almost fired, but he didn’t.
“Yami,” he said. “Yamile Morales. Beautiful black-haired girl. Olive skin. Big dark eyes. About eighteen.”
“We are Hispanic mostly here, you may have noticed. You just described ninety percent of the girls on the island. The beautiful ones, anyway. Care to be more specific?”
“The seaport ville you made an example of,” Ricky said. Sweat streamed into his eyes, salt stinging them, threatening to cloud his vision. He blinked desperately to clear them. “Nuestra Señora. Mebbe a week ago. Your shark-head sec boss brought you one. Your shark-head sec boss who’s at room temperature now downstairs, with his guts ripped open by the one-eyed man.”
El Guapo shrugged. “If Tiburón let that happen to him,” he said, “it was time I got a new chief of sec, anyway. Which I already reckoned, after he fucked up and let your friends in here. They are your friends, yes?”
“That doesn’t matter now!”
“Whatever you say, son.”
“I’m not your son!”
“Do you want to hear about your sister or not?”
“Yes.”
El Guapo laughed. “I do remember her. You’re right. She was very beautiful. Spirited, too. A fighter. Her teeth gave me a few more scars on my cheeks. Not that anyone would notice, of course. But in the end she gave it up sweet. They always do.”
“You bastard!” Hot tears stung Ricky’s eyes now.
“Of course,” the Handsome One said. “What else would you expect? The island needs to be united. Needs to be lifted from the misery and anarchy in which it’s been mired for centuries since the Nuke War. That takes a strong man with a strong hand. And the only way to show your strength is to act in a way that, inevitably, causes some people pain. Because, you see, people are stupes. For many, pain is the only language they understand.
“It’s for their own good, you see. And surely—what’s that?” His body jerked. His gaze slid past Ricky to the door behind him, and his eyes snapped wide.
Ricky’s brain knew it was a ruse. But he wasn’t a seasoned blaster. His body bought the head-fake.
He couldn’t help himself, though he knew El Guapo was this very instant grabbing his own blaster to shoot him. Ricky looked over his shoulder at the indicated threat behind him....
But his arms, pushed out in front of him and locked in an isosceles triangle, never wavered. He pulled the trigger blind, two times fast, then he ducked back though the door. But it wasn’t necessary. With a groan El Guapo collapsed. His handblaster dropped to the floor with a clatter.
Ricky strode back to stand over the supine man. Despite falling for the trick he felt pride in his shooting: two red stains were spreading over the front of the army boss’s khaki shirt. One was about an inch above that belt buckle, the other six inches up and to his right.
Ricky pointed the gun at El Guapo’s face. The wasteland of red, angry scar tissue was even more twisted than usual with pain, and sweat was pooling in the gouges and furrows.
“Talk, you fucker! Where’s my sister? What have you done with her?
Tell me!
”
“Or what?” Despite the agony wound tight around the words, the injured man’s tone was bantering, almost light. “You’ll give me the mercy of a quick death? Or...let me live?”
“Yes.”
The bastard actually chuckled. He winced, sure—it had to feel like a knife was being twisted in his viscera—but Ricky had to admit the man had stones.
“Why not? I sold her, kid. A slaver from the mainland. He claimed he wanted her himself, but he couldn’t fool me. He knows a baron with a taste for Spanish girls. Virgins especially. Pay triple-good jack.”
“Virgin? But you said—”
“I...say a lot of shit. Anyway,
technically
virgin. You know?”
“You asshole!” Ricky shrieked. “I should chill you! I should blow your dick off!”
“You should, you know? Honestly. You should chill me.”
And the gutshot man uttered a hearty laugh.
“But you won’t. And that’s a mistake. Because, see, this is nothing. I’ve been belly-shot before. Had worse happen to me—take a look at my face. Yeah, you hurt me like a bastard, and I’m gonna make you pay with interest, you little shit!”
For a moment rage darkened and contorted the man’s disfigured features. But El Guapo mastered both. He was every scrap as strong as he imagined himself to be.
“Got meds,” he said. “Antibiotics. We found a boatload of them in this strange old-days place. Infection won’t get me. My men’ll find me before internal bleeding finishes what you couldn’t. I got healers who’ll patch everything back together and not fuck up. If they want to keep their skins on, anyway.”
“But not if I blast you first!” Ricky shouted. His hands were shaking all but uncontrollably. The Para-Ordnance was waving all around.
“But you won’t. You don’t have the balls. Because you’re soft. Like the people of your shitty little ville. You won’t finish me off. You can’t.”
“No,” Ricky said. His voice was calm, and suddenly, so was he. “I won’t.” He stepped back and aside. “But
they
will.”
Chirping with vengeful glee, a pack of
chupacabras
skipped through the door and swarmed the prostrate army chief. They ignored Ricky as if he weren’t there.
For a moment, he stood and listened to the screams. Despite how it would have horrified his mother and his father, they were music to his ears. Nor did he look away from what the black talons and toothy mouths were doing to his enemy’s flesh.
But he couldn’t linger. His friends were hard-pressed. He knew they’d leave him if he didn’t reach them soon.
He ran out the door and down the hall, the echoes of his footsteps pursuing him.
* * *
W
HEN
THE
DOOR
FLEW
OPEN
on a corridor swarming with EUN troops, the coldhearts’ first reaction was to freeze. As anybody might, confronted with the half a dozen strangers in the middle of a secret underground redoubt.
Half a dozen heavily armed strangers.
Mildred saw brown faces turn toward them, some bearded, some smooth, all slack and round-eyed with surprise.
Most of the coldhearts in the gray corridor had their arms full of crates and containers. One dude with a beard and an obvious stiff-leg limp was pushing a dolly loaded with big green metal canisters of some sort. They were emerging from doors on both sides.
Apparently, the worthwhile scavvy was stored on this level.
And beyond them was the gateway. So near, so far.
Mildred and Ryan were in charge of taking down the coldhearts with actual blasters in their hands. She was already lining up the sights of her Czech-made target revolver on one of the handful of coldhearts standing casual watch with longblasters slung. Then she saw the astonished faces dip down and look toward the floor, toward the round fragmentation grenade bouncing at them along the floor.
Mildred saw the flash, then the report hit her in the face like a hard slap. And then the people standing immediately around the small bomb were falling away.
She saw a boot arcing through the air, about six inches of leg still stuck out the top.
She’d flinched, though not as badly as her target had. She dropped her aim a fraction to center of mass and fired once. The others cut loose with a storm of fire as Doc yanked the pin from a second gren. Hard and fast, Ryan had said before kicking open the door.
And hard and fast was how their enemies went down.
* * *
W
HEN
HE
WAS
HALFWAY
back down the stairs, Ricky heard a strange squealing commotion below. Pausing to stick his head over the rail, he saw horror blocking the next flight.
A pack of scorpion dogs was tearing at a supine man, though he was hard to recognize as human. The exposed skin of hands and face was mottled red and black and green, grotesquely swollen from a dozen stings. His torso and limbs were bloating the tough uniform fabric like balloons.
Yet, somehow, he wasn’t dead yet. Or maybe that was just the poison, making his body jerk. It was causing him to make some awful noises if it was, though.
Whatever contract he had managed to make with the
chupacabras
—for however long they’d choose to honor it—Ricky had no deal with the sting-tailed mutant canines, who apparently considered this their home, as well.
Ricky wasn’t a major fan of heights, but he was not eager to experience the toxins from monster stingers as they exploded the blood cells in his veins. All while he was being eaten alive by feral dogs.
Around him, the
chupacabras
continued to swing from landing to landing like monkeys. They ignored him, but seemed to want no more of the scorpion dogs than he did.
If they can do it... Ricky thought. Then he scrambled over the rail and let himself hang by his hands.
He became acutely conscious of how his feet dangled over empty space that ended abruptly in concrete. If his straining hands slipped, he was done.
But he was committed now; no way he could pull himself back up. He could only hold the weight of himself, his weapons and his own pack for a few more seconds on the cold, hard rail. He made himself swing his legs back and forth. Once. Twice.
The third time his hands lost their grip. He swung his body toward the landing below by sheer force of will.
He brushed the rail with a heel on the way down, almost caught. His left ankle twisted painfully on landing, and he had to get both hands under him to keep his face from slamming into the perforated metal platform. That hurt his right wrist. But he made it, and didn’t get a waffle face for his troubles. A couple of the dogs looked down at him, curiously, then went back to feeding noisily on their still-groaning victim.
With a great heave, Ricky pushed himself to his feet and hobbled down the stairs as fast as he could.
* * *
“A
NY
SIGN
OF
THE
KID
?” Ryan asked as J.B. ducked back around the corner of the gateway’s outer chamber after loosing a burst from his Uzi at the coldhearts back up the corridor.
“Not a hair,” the armorer said. He popped the magazine out of the well in his stubby weapon’s grip. Hunkering down, he began thumbing loose cartridges from his pack into it.
Krysty stuck her arm and half her face around the jamb and fired three quick shots from her short-barreled handblaster.
“Looks like they’ve got reinforcements arriving, lover,” she said. “There’s nearly thirty of them out there, near as I can tell.”
Squatting low in case somebody was in firing position where Krysty’s head had vanished, Ryan peered around. He didn’t bother trying to shoot his SIG.
Sure enough, more men in ragged camo and EUN armbands were crowding in doorways and huddling behind the heaps of scavvy and high-piled carts that dotted the corridor.