Pitfall (20 page)

Albert caught me staring. “Cute, isn’t she? I did her a couple of times before tonight. Every which way. She wasn’t the best I’ve ever had, but not the worst either.”

I didn’t trust myself to speak. I couldn’t.

“Don’t worry about your reaction. The few people that have been allowed in here all did the same thing. Me, I puked my guts out the first time I saw what we really do here. Second time too. But after a while I kind of started liking it. It’s interesting. Like science. That’s why they let me watch every so often. It doesn’t cost them anything.”

I finally found my voice. “It cost that poor girl everything.”

“Yeah, well, price of doing business, I guess.”

While we verbally sparred, Sarah mutely stared around; her eyes glazed. She’d be a long time getting past this. If ever.

My speech was clipped, overflowing with disgust. “You really are a company man, aren’t you, Albert? You’ve completely bought into your boss’s treachery.”

“Why not? The money’s great, and so’s the pussy.”

“What did Eli promise you? Profit sharing?” I could feel the derision leaking out. “You? Lieutenant Bootlicker?”

Mercilessly Albert screwed the gun barrel tighter against Sarah’s scalp. “You’re going to hurt my feelings if you keep saying stuff like that.”

“I’ll hurt more than that if you don’t stop.”

“Ready when you are, friend.”

This conversation was going downhill fast. But before I could reply, Sarah beat me to it. She screamed. At last she’d found her voice as she violently wrenched herself free of Albert’s grasp, and tried her best to run.

“Stupid
bitch!”
Albert lunged and grabbed the girl, pulling her back hard. A second later had her clutched against his side more tightly than ever, his Glock now pressed into her ear.

But Albert Trask wasn’t the only quick one in the room. Turning his attention back to me, his gaze was drawn to something I’m sure was a nasty and unexpected surprise. From years of range practice my Browning had almost teleported into my hand.

And I had its barrel lined up on his left eyeball from a distance of less than six feet.

I could have killed him right then, as easy as you please, but I figured his being my prisoner might prove useful, especially if we needed a human shield to get us out of here.

Sweat trickled down Albert’s face, despite the AC. He tried putting together another smile, but it wasn’t very good, looking more like a grimace. “Well, hell. Quick Draw McGraw. I should have patted you down right at first. My bad.” He licked his lips. “This is some kind of a strange situation, isn’t it?”

I kept my voice as level as the barrel of my gun. “You like sunrises, Albert? All you have to do to see the next one is to let her go, lay your weapon down and kick it away, and put your face on the floor. Nothing could be easier.”

“No.” He seemed to be recovering some of his composure. “No, I don’t think so. See, I’ve heard about you. And your main problem is, your being a hilljack is a worse condition than you know.”

I frowned, still keeping him lined up. “How’s that?”

“Physics. One action affecting another.” Slowly he pulled his head back around Sarah’s until only his right eye was showing. “If you shoot me, physics says the sudden impact will cause my muscles to contract. I’ll be pulling this trigger even though I’m dead. The only way for you to beat that is to drill me so my brain is destroyed faster than my finger can move. And I don’t think you’ve got the balls to try it.”

I kept my gun’s sight centered on his pupil. “Are you willing to bet your life on that?”

“That’s not the question,” he said. “Are you willing to bet hers?”

“Then I’d say we have a standoff. Sooner or later somebody’s going to get a cramp, or a quiver in their muscles, and things will turn messy. So how about this? What do you say about us both laying down our guns and finishing this like men?”

He shook his head a millimeter. “No way. Word is you’re some kind of an armed forces hardass. Plus you’re from West Virginia or some such. They teach you country kids how to fight when you’re young, right?”

“And shoot.”

“That’s what I thought. So I won’t fight you, but I’ll tell you what I
will
do.” He smiled. “I’m going to kill this girl.”

Sarah gasped, twisting, vainly trying again to slip his grasp. Albert tightened his grip, his fingers buried in her hair, and he brutally yanked her head back so hard I could hear the vertebrae crack.

“Oh, relax, hon. It’ll be a hoot, and over quick.” Narrowing his eye at me, his voice grew thin. “Yeah, I’m going to shoot you both quick time, double tap. How’s that strike you?”

“Like somebody dropped you on your head.” A bead of sweat rolled down the side of my nose. I didn’t dare touch it. “Look, it doesn’t have to go this way. You can find better ways of making points with your boss than pulling a fool stunt like this.”

“No, I don’t think so.” Pausing one last time, he drew a steadying breath. “Now don’t blink. You’ll want to see this.”

“Son.” My voice degenerated to a guttural rasp. “Don’t make me kill you.” I was thinking of Sarah. She really didn’t need to have this added to her experience. I was asking for her sake. “Please.”

“Don’t beg, briar.” His reply didn’t even sound human. “It turns my gut. What’s about to happen, you can’t stop it. Nobody’s that good.”

I held my mark.

Still smiling, his knuckle grew white as it tightened down on the Glock’s trigger, taking up the last half-ounce of slack as his eyes flickered his intent. Sarah moaned in fear.

And then everything stopped as my Browning roared, its round rocketing six feet across the room and straight into his open blue eye.

The bullet mushroomed as it hit, growing instantly from the size of a pea to the diameter of a gumdrop. That’s what hollow points do. As the round exited his head at that short distance the entire back of his skull vanished in a spray of pink and gray, his gun flying free and unfired from his limp hand as he slumped to the floor, deader than four o’clock.

“I am, Albert,” I whispered to his still form. “I’m that good.”

And then Sarah started screaming again.

Chapter Twenty-six

“S
hut up, girl.” I hoped she could hear me. The gun’s report in that enclosed space was making my ears ring, and I figured she wasn’t immune.

At any rate, the time for niceties and hysterics was over. With that shot we’d crossed into dark and uncharted waters. What would happen next was anybody’s guess. I had to get her attention as the echo faded away.

“Sarah!” I snapped, shaking her. Not hard, but hard enough. I’d never hit a woman, and didn’t want to start now. Not unless she gave me no recourse.

She stopped her caterwauling and regarded me blankly. I choked back the acid burn of bile rising in my throat. Red, sticky gore from the overspray covered the whole side of Sarah’s face, hair, and the back of her clothes. I’d experienced this many times before, on a hundred fields of battle. It never gets any easier.

“Listen to me. Can you hear me?” Nothing. I looked into her eyes with a penetrating stare. “We’re about to get company. I need you to do something.” Reaching in my pants pocket, I removed Blakey’s key card and thrust it out. “Take this.”

A long moment slid by as she studied the card like it was an alien creature. Then slowly she withdrew it from my hand.

“That’s good.” I spoke reassuringly, like I was talking to a skittish foal. “You know how to make the elevators here work, right? You’ve seen it done?”

She nodded yes, still mute. I wondered if she was so traumatized she’d never speak again.

“Good.” Knowing there was no time left, I spoke rapidly. “Here’s what I want you to do. Open the first elevator you come to. Ride it to the top, get out of the building, and then run like the wind. Don’t stop until you’re outside and on the highway. Flag down a car, and have them take you into town, to the police station. Sheriff Hardesty’s a good man. Tell him about the others. He’ll help you get home. Okay?” I hoped she was getting all this.

Again she nodded wordlessly, and my chest tightened with emotion. She’d been through unshirted hell, a lot of it my fault. I’d completely underestimated the enemy, but the least I could do by my death was to buy her time to get clear.

“That’s … real good.” Sweat-soaked and blinking rapidly I winced in pain as my broken ribs grated. “Listen to me, Sarah. Listen hard. Your father loves you so much. That’s why he sent me here. To save you.” She still said nothing. “So you be sure to give him a big hug when you see him. And when you do, you tell him …” I swallowed. “You tell him John tried.” I took one last furtive look up and down the hall. She had time, if she was fast. “Now, kid.
Go.”

And like a flash she was gone, disappearing around the left curve of the hall.

Ten seconds later I felt the air rushing toward me from the right. Boneless’s guards. Had to be. Albert hadn’t needed to trip the alarm in the operating room; whether the sensors were working or not, the sound of my gun’s discharge had most likely reverberated all over the metallic walls of GeneSys.

Okay, think. By my admittedly arbitrary count, there had to have been at least a dozen armed troops bearing down on me. Frantically I weighed my options.

There weren’t any.

Two paths presented themselves, and only two. Neither was attractive. I could surrender to those men and find myself back in the torture chair.

Or I could go down firing.

For the first choice, forget it. Boneless had done to me all I was going to allow. I wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of killing me piecemeal. No, we southern boys have an honorable tradition of making last stands against superior firepower. Our blood-soaked soil runs all the way from Bull Run to Chancellorsville to Gettysburg.

To here.

Readying myself, I pulled Shelly’s Glock from its place in the small of my back and held it barrel-down in my left hand. I grasped the Browning in my right the same way. And then I zeroed out everything but what I needed to do.

A moment later nearly twenty guards came thundering around the bend, weapons drawn; I guess my count had been off. Boneless was in the lead. Seeing me, he pointed.

And that was all right. It was time.

Both guns forward now, I spread my feet, settled my weight—

And let fly.

Chapter Twenty-seven

T
hat’s how I ended up in that hallway. From the looks on the guards’ faces I surprised them all with my Wild West act. The Glock, with its faster action, emptied first. As I popped off the remaining rounds in the Hi-Power, Boneless and his boys flattened themselves in panic, each trying to hide behind the other. My marksmanship was still solid: six guards had gone down right away, never to move again. Ejecting the empty clip, I rammed a fresh one in the Browning.

But after only firing one round, it jammed. Shit. Before the others had a chance to regroup and open up again I ducked down the nearest branching corridor, those useless weapons still in my hands. It wasn’t until I was halfway down that I realized it ended in a blank gray wall. Oh, for— another mistake. What could I— Then time ran out as Boneless’s troops took flanking positions in the hallway’s entrance.

As the bullets from their P-90s began ripping through the air my way, I wedged myself into a tiny alcove just barely big enough to hold me. And that’s where this tale began.

Somehow Boneless had managed to get his hands on Sarah quickly. She’d never had a chance. Much later I found out from one of the surviving doctors he and a couple of Boneless’s men had been near the elevator, catching her just as the doors opened. The freak wasn’t shy about rubbing my face in it either. It wasn’t until he started to choke her, though, that I saw red and came up with that desperate plan to rush them.

Every sight, every sound, every movement slowed down and became as crystal. Since my weapons were useless, all I could do was throw them and their magazines up into the lights and hope for the best. Heart slamming and making like Nate Forrest charging the Yankee line, I charged full tilt at Boneless and his boys. I knew I wouldn’t get a second chance, that it was a suicide play even as I did it.

And it failed spectacularly. Disregarding my rebel scream coming at them from the darkness, Boneless’s well-seasoned men had merely hunkered down and opened up on me with everything they had.

In retrospect the action couldn’t have lasted more than five seconds, but having been under fire many times before, I know time can be a relative thing; apologies to Dr. Einstein. All I can say for sure is that I found myself running at, and then somehow through, the harsh blackness and red thundering muzzle flashes from those nasty P-90 mankillers.

Choking smoke from burnt cordite hung heavy in the air, still strong in my nostrils when once more the ceiling-mounted emergency lights in this sector suddenly flickered and flashed and came fully on. The entire scene was lit up in halogen-bright relief.

And stumbling to a stop, amazed at my luck, I dropped my hands, for the second time tonight staring in shock.

Boneless’s men were dead. All of them. They were croaked, gone, shot to pieces. Miraculously only one of those dozens of bullets had found me; from the meaty part of my left shoulder blood trickled from a jagged hole about the size of a dime.

I hadn’t felt the impact of the projectile as it struck and penetrated my flesh. There had been enough adrenaline, hate, and intensity inside me to forestall any sensation of shock. But then the searing pain from the wound riveted my attention. How bad was it? I took a few seconds to lean against the wall and assess the damage; I needed to save myself to save Sarah.

Gritting my teeth till I thought they’d crack, I probed deep with my finger, the white hot shooting torment making me groan, my own warm blood soaking my hand. It sank in about two inches before it touched metal. Try as I might, I couldn’t grasp it.

Whipping free, I twisted forward, checking the wall I was against. No blood there, which meant the wound wasn’t a through and through. As Shelly had told me, the rounds the P-90s fired were frangible, so I’d been double lucky; if I’d been nailed by a whole bullet, my arm would have been ripped away. That meant that what was in my shoulder was only part of a round from a ricochet.

Ricochet … Again I looked around. The rest of the bullets had found other targets. No one ever gets used to the surrealistic scene of combat, me included. Boneless’s troops lay everywhere, like broken dolls, like cracked-open cherry pies, every mother’s son of them.

As wild as it was to consider it, they’d killed each other in the crossfire.

Ground-combat soldiers have a phrase: “battlefield luck.” I’d seen it myself enough times to know its reality, but I had never been its recipient. Until tonight. With this carnage I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d used up my allotment for ten lifetimes. But truth to tell, this was beyond luck. As hard as it was for this lapsed Baptist to consider it, somebody obviously was watching over me, and for His own purposes; why, I have no idea.

At any rate, I could ruminate on it later, when not so many people were trying to kill me. The one body I expressly needed to see wasn’t there, and he was gone with the girl I’d promised to save. The worst was far from over.

Adrenalin still surging, I crouched down, wiped the slick blood coating my hands on my pant leg, and picked up one of the P-90s from a dead guard’s hands. Then stepping around the gore, I started to run. I knew the elevators were the only way up out of there. I had to catch them before Boneless and Sarah reached one.

Despite my injuries, somehow my mind stayed clear and focused. As I plunged on down the corridor, I pictured the Cross’s destruction, and that of their abomination, GeneSys.

The place was a canker, a blight on creation, true enough. But no more. The seeds it had sown, the untold miseries it had inflicted and planned to inflict were about to bear fruit in its undoing. And there’d be no recourse for mercy. None. Executioner terms came to mind. It was past time for me to pull the switch, hit the plunger, drop the gallows door, and end it.

But hustling around the bend as I bore down on the elevator bank, suddenly my resolve faltered. I was too late. The doors of the nearest elevator were already sliding closed. Through the rapidly shrinking gap I saw a glimpse of Boneless’s ghastly white face, and in his dead eyes I caught a flicker of surprise at my survival.

That amazement left as quickly as it had come. Beaming in victory, the man’s strong bony hands closed tight around Sarah’s throat. The beseeching lost look in her coffee-brown eyes seared my soul.

I leaped, attempting to jam my right hand in the doors but reached them a fraction of a second too late. As they sealed, the green indicator light above them blinked on, and the machinery kicked in. My fingernails broke and ripped free as I tried to force the doors open. Too late. The sound dropped, faded. She was gone.

Huffing and sweating profusely, I knew I was pushing my body’s endurance far past its limits, but there was nothing else for it. Warm blood flowed like sticky syrup from the bullet wound, soaking my already ruined undershirt and trickling down my leg and onto the floor as I looked at the elevator’s direction arrow.

And as I did, time slid to a stop. I’d thought Boneless was taking Sarah topside, to make good his escape. But the light indicated the car was headed down. Down? Why? All that was down there was … 

The Pit.

There was no doubt about it now. I knew what he was planning to do; I knew it as sure as I knew my own name. With the death of his pet troops, things had gotten personal between us. Boneless’s goal to cap off the evening’s fun by tossing me alive—more or less—into that abyss, was ruined.

Instead he would throw in the girl.

*

Pivoting abruptly, I lost my balance and rebounded off the wall, causing an expanding ball of fire to flash inside my skull. Somehow I managed to regain my footing, and I began jogging and stumbling as fast as I could back the way I’d come. I needed another key card to follow them, and the only place to get one quickly was off a dead guard. And “quickly” was the operative word. Boneless had all the time in the world. Sarah had none.

Reaching the hallway where the bodies were, the quiet was like a tomb. I was tiring, my left arm leaden like a prizefighter’s in the ninth round. Cold sweat soaked me, and my breathing was faster and more ragged. I knew soon I’d be heading into shock. If God or whoever was still running this play, it was time He stepped up His game. Bending down, I retrieved a card from the belt of the first dead man I came to.

As I straightened up the room swam before my eyes, and more ominously, my back spasmed. Not this. Not now. I almost dropped to my knees. Bad, bad time for it to go out. The fierce stabbing in my side grew more intense with every maneuver as waves of nausea and weakness swept over me. Plainly put, I was a wreck. But again I recalled my Ranger instructions. Pain is an enemy. Fight it. Rest comes when the mission is done, and only then.

Without a backward glance I rushed back to the elevators as fast as I could, making no attempt at concealment. No point. I was winded, but pushed through it. As I slid the card in its slot, I was driven by one overpowering thought—to save Sarah Cahill.

The middle doors had barely opened when I jumped inside and punched the down button, my chest heaving with effort. As the thing sank, I tried to ready myself for what I might find. Five seconds more and it opened. Anyone looking would have seen me squatting on my haunches near the floor against the chance of Boneless getting cute and waiting there for me.

But the hall appeared to be empty.

With a grunt I stood reeling, and lurched out of the elevator and across the way, to the last door. According to Shelly the room with the blank door beyond it was the only place Boneless could be. The fresh pain of Shelly and her small son’s deaths unexpectedly flooded over me. I shoved it away, closing the door on it in my mind. Later. Later I’d avenge them. And take my time doing it. 

Belatedly I checked the P-90’s magazine, like I should have done when I first picked it up. I’d thought it had felt suspiciously light  but had neglected to check it. 

And don’t you know it was empty.

Son of a— Well, this was just great. Murphy’s Law never takes a holiday; it had hit me from every angle. Obviously my thinking was more scrambled than I thought.

Tossing the thing away in disgust, I checked myself for anything on me that could be used as a weapon. Nothing. The facts before me were stark in their dread simplicity. I was a wounded, weaponless man, facing down a rested, trained martial arts expert in superb condition. Sounded fair to me. Not. And behind those doors, Boneless held Sarah. I hoped. For all I knew the freak had already killed her while I was farting around in this hall.

But he’d made several serious errors in judgment. The first was letting his temper get the best of him when I’d goaded him while I was still held in that chair; he’d simply over-reacted. Another mistake had been his leaving me with alone with Blakey and Chet; they’d been easy enough to handle. The last was his assuming I’d been killed in the firefight with his guards. The net result was, he wasn’t infallible. He was rattled now. He would be again.

With that I armored my mind against all sensation of fear and death, refusing to surrender.
To free the oppressed …

Sliding the key card into the slot, my expression hardened and my resolute tone held dark promise. “You’ve met your match, you sick nutjob. This stops here. Today.”

*

Going through the first door I found myself in a short corridor, not unlike the entrance to the dome. Observing the mechanics, they appeared to operate on the same principal: the door I’d just come through closed and sealed tightly behind me before the one in front opened. When it did, as quietly as I could I slipped through it.

Shelly had been batting a thousand. The room was huge, its diameter nearly one-sixth of the length of a football field. Why? Maybe just because they could. Whatever, I gave the place props for intimidation, in a deep-space ore ship, metallically oppressive,
Aliens
kind of way.

Surveying the area at a glance, I saw the entire circumference was ringed with mirrors, reaching from floor to ceiling. For the split second I had to ponder it, the only answer that made sense was that those mirrors would increase the terror of any victims unlucky enough to still be alive when they were brought in. They’d also intensify Boneless’s pleasure as he made their final moments more anguished. Dead center in the middle of the floor I saw the Pit itself, its huge, iris-like opening cycled closed.

For the moment.

But as I said, I processed all this in only a flash of time. What grabbed my attention was what was happening just this side of the hole. Boneless lay on top of Sarah, writhing. He was fully clothed, his pants still zipped, but she was naked, and her features were etched in terror and shame. With the room’s bright acoustics I could distinctly hear her terrified reverberating screams as she struggled helplessly in his grasp.

Seeing me, Boneless’s face lit up in a smile, his eyes glinting with pleasure as he stood and jerked her to her feet. “John! Good man. It’s about time you made it. I wondered if you’d been hit in that melee topside.” Then he frowned. “But I see you didn’t get through it completely unscathed. As you can see, I had to start the party without you.” I felt my face harden in wrath. I didn’t answer, but slowly began moving toward them.

I’d only gone a yard or so when he stopped me with an upraised hand. “That’s far enough. Let me finish with the girl. Then we’ll chat.”

With sick appreciation, even with my blurred vision, it was evident what he’d done. Sarah’s face was battered, her right eye swollen and her split lip dripping blood. Worse, from somewhere Boneless had secured a curved knife, a wicked-looking monster, fully six inches long with a black grip. He’d used it to run an X-shaped cut across both of Sarah’s breasts and down her torso to her pubis.

The tip of the knife was now pressed against her flesh to deepen the cuts, and the blood trickled in steady rivulets down her body, where it laid obscenely red and glistening on the floor. I could tell from the rate of flow it wasn’t too deep or life threatening yet, but the very fact he’d felt compelled to humiliate and hurt her without cause made my pent-up rage come roaring to the surface. 

Glowering, I threw down the metaphorical gauntlet, my tone murderous as I spat the words. “I’ll make you a deal, freak. Best one you’ll get today. Me for her.”

With another unnerving smile Boneless moved the blade away from Sarah, his shark eyes glinting like black pools as he softly bobbed the knife up and down, the light from the mirrored room sparking and reflecting off the blade.

Then his grin gradually altered as the flicker of interest faded out. “No. No, I don’t think so. You’ll just have to wait your turn.”

“Why don’t you
stop?”
I yelled, my voice cracking. “Why are you
doing
this?”

“You mean this with Sarah in particular?” He motioned with his knife and grinned. “Or my appalling actions in general?” Before I could reply, he answered his own question. And it was one whispered word. “Revenge.”

“Revenge?” I frowned. “For what?”

His comeback was simple. And in that moment as he gritted the words, I saw the human behind the monster. “For being born.” 

I shook off the horror of what he’d said. “Come on, Boneless, be a man.” I flashed a savage grin of my own. “What do you say? A strapping young crazoid like you needs a better challenge than a scared girl.” I spread my right, uninjured arm. “Let’s dance.”