The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

The smoldering body of Angel Tijuca lay faceup in the center of the entryway. He’d been shot in the chest, twenty or thirty times at close range. The 1-cm powergun bolts had burned most of his torso away. He still held the pistol he’d managed to draw in the last instants of his life.

“Fireflies,” Margulies said softly. “He wouldn’t have liked it when Pepe brought Johann in.”

“I’m sorry, Mary,” Coke said.

She looked at him. Her face was freckled by the overlay in one quadrant of her visor, echoing the image from Barbour’s console. “Don’t be,” she said. “We all die. He didn’t—die a bad way after all.”

Coke nodded. “Sten,” he said, “Niko—check the barracks upstairs and rejoin when it’s clear. Mary, Johann ought to be—”

Margulies had already swung herself into position beside the heavy door to the right of the anteroom. It was ajar, though it had a lock.

“Go,” said Coke. He had the automatic weapon, so he would be first through.

Margulies pulled the door open. The room beyond was the armory. Weapons lockers lined the walls, most of them emptied or nearly so for the sudden attack. The cases of Frisian equipment that Ramon’s men had taken from Hathaway House lay on the floor among the remains of the L’Escorial hardware.

A restraint cage stood against the far wall. Johann Vierziger was in it. The probes touched his nude body at a dozen points including his genitals, sending fluctuating currents through his nerve pathways.

A fat man, naked to the waist, sat on an ammunition case beside the prisoner. He was mopping sweat from his face with the red bandanna tied around his throat. He jumped halfway to his feet between the time the door opened and the moment Coke’s long burst disemboweled him.

Margulies fired into the control box at the top of the cage. The electronics disintegrated under the jolt of plasma. Droplets of metal and silicon shards sprayed a wide area. Some splashed on Vierziger as the cage released him to topple forward, but the prickles were nothing to the pain from which he’d been freed.

Coke started toward Vierziger. A young L’Escorial, scarcely a boy, stepped into the room behind the Frisians. He was buttoning his trousers. “Wha—” he cried as Margulies turned, bringing her heavy weapon to bear less than arm’s length from the gunman’s breastbone.

He didn’t have a gun. That wouldn’t matter, but as her finger took up slack on the trigger she recognized—

“Emilio!” she said. “Your name’s Emilio and you come from Silva Blanca.”

The muzzle of the 2-cm weapon shimmered yellow. The iridium was cooling slowly from the five rounds she’d put through it in the street a moment ago. Coke glanced back at the lieutenant, but his real attention was on Vierziger. Margulies’ situation was under control, though he wasn’t sure what she meant to do.

The young L’Escorial swallowed. He leaned back, afraid to move his feet and unable to take his eyes from the 2-cm mouth that would swallow his life with another millimeter of trigger travel. “How did you know?” he whispered. “How did you know me?”

An automatic carbine leaned against the wall by the doorway, probably Emilio’s weapon. Margulies doubted the boy would have been able to grip it if she picked it up and put it in his hands.

“Go home to your parents, Emilio,” Margulies said. The boy wore a red armband. She ripped it off while her right hand continued to steady her weapon on the youth’s chest. “Farming’s better than dying. You’ve got no talent for this business.”

“You’ll shoot me if I turn,” Emilio whimpered. Tears dribbled down his cheeks. “Oh, Mama, Mama …”

Margulies thrust the 2-cm weapon toward Emilio’s face. The heat of the muzzle made him flinch away. He turned and ran into the night, still crying.

Moden and Daun strode into the armory. “All clear,” Niko called. He was bright, spiky with hormones and eagerness.

The logistics officer lifted the triple rocket launcher and checked it with a critical eye. “Who was that?” he asked Margulies in a low voice.

Margulies grimaced. “A civilian,” she said. “Somebody who didn’t have any business here.”

Coke helped Vierziger rise cautiously from the floor where he’d fallen. The little gunman waved him away.

“Find me some clothes,” Vierziger said. His eyes were open. He looked straight ahead and held himself stiffly. “They cut mine off me when they put me in there.”

Niko Daun turned and sprinted up the stairs to the barracks without formal orders from anyone. The dead torturer’s pants wouldn’t have fit, even if they’d been in better condition than the corpse which wore them.

“They had the cage’s power turned all the way up,” Coke said in a quiet voice. “They put him through hell.”

Vierziger looked at Coke and managed a shaky smile. “No, Matthew,” he said. The lilting insouciance was back in his tone. “That was somebody else entirely. And it can’t have been Hell, can it? Because I still have a chance to do penance.”

He flexed his hands with apparent approval.