“Fuck you!” Emery screamed.
“Suit yourself.” Blade rose, holding the pot above the assassin’s groin.
“Who’s behind the assassination attempts?”
“I don’t know,” Emery responded.
Blade started to tilt the pot of steaming water.
“Honest I don’t!” Emery yelled, panic-stricken. “We’re never given the identity of our employer in case we’re caught!”
Blade hesitated, the pot at an angle, the water near the edge. “You keep using the plural, which means you belong to an organization and you work under someone else. What’s the name of the organization? And who is your boss?”
Emery was trying to grind his teeth down to the gums. He stopped, his eyes locked on the pot. “If they find out I talked, they’ll kill me!”
Blade went to dump the water.
“Wait!” Emery screeched, his eyes wide. “The Gild! I belong to the Gild!”
“What is this Gild?” Blade queried.
“It’s a brotherhood of assassins,” Emery revealed, scowling.
“What’s the name of your leader?” Blade asked.
Emery shook his head. “I can’t! I can’t!”
“Suit yourself.” Blade tipped the pot.
Emery’s neck muscles bulged, his face reddening, as a stream of hissing water splashed onto his lap. The scalding liquid penetrated his kitchen uniform, seeping through the fabric and enveloping his genitals. Emery went crazy, bucking and thrashing against his rope bonds, bouncing the chair, uttering an inarticulate cry.
Blade stopped pouring. He patiently waited until the assassin ceased shaking. “All right. That was just a taste of what will happen if I upend the entire pot. So one more time. What’s the name of your leader?”
Emery was sagging in the chair, his face beet red, continuing to gnash his teeth. “Kraken,” he said feebly.
“Kraken?”
“That’s right,” Emery confirmed.
“Where is the Gild based? Here in California? The Civilized Zone? Or in Soviet territory?” Blade asked.
“None of them,” Emery replied.
“Then where?” Blade persisted.
“Paris.”
Blade did a double take. “Paris, France?”
Emery nodded weakly, his teeth grinding-grinding-grinding.
“You’re not French,” Blade noted.
“Canadian,” Emery said. “I was born in Saskatchewan.”
“This Gild is an international organization?” Blade questioned.
Emery nodded.
“How many members are there worldwide?” Blade inquired.
“Thirty-six,” Emery replied.
“How many came to California?”
“Twelve,” Emery divulged.
Blade’s forehead creased as he pondered the news. A brotherhood of assassins! And they had brought one third of their membership to California to slay the Federation leaders, which meant they were determined to see the job through at all costs. But the crucial information was still missing: the identity of the party responsible for hiring the Gild.
He heard Emery crunching his teeth together and he gazed down at the assassin, mortified. Why was the man grinding his teeth so much?
Emery unexpectedly straightened, a smile lighting his face. “Finally!” he exclaimed in relief.
“Finally what?” Blade asked.
“Finally I don’t need to answer any more of your damn questions!” Emery retorted.
Blade elevated the pot an inch. “You don’t?”
“No, bastard,” Emery said. “I don’t! Go ahead! Pour the water! See if I care!”
Blade was perplexed by the assassin’s evident sincerity.
“It should only take a couple of minutes,” Emery stated.
“What should?” Blade wanted to know.
Emery grinned. “For me to die.”
Blade looked at General Gallagher, who shrugged, indicating he was stumped too.
“You’re not going to die,” Blade said.
Emery laughed bitterly. “Wrong, asshole! The poison is already in my system. There’s nothing you can do.”
Blade leaned forward. “Poison? What poison?”
“The poison from the capsule contained in my false tooth,” Emery explained.
“You took poison?” Blade inquired in amazement.
“Give the bright boy a prize!” Emery quipped.
“He’s bluffing,” General Gallagher commented.
“You think so, huh?” Emery said, sneering at the officer. “Shows how much you know.”
“That’s why you’ve been grinding your teeth!” Blade deduced. “To break the capsule!”
“To break the false tooth,” Emery corrected him. “The damn thing didn’t break as easily as they said it would.” He chuckled at some private joke. “They extract one of our wisdom teeth and implant a fake containing the capsule. All we have to do is grind our teeth until the fake breaks, and out comes the capsule. One swallow and the job is done.” His eyelids began to droop.
Blade placed the pot on the floor and gripped Emery by the shoulders.
“What kind of poison is it? There might be an antidote.”
Emery tittered. “No antidote.”
“How do you know? What kind of poison is it?” Blade pressed him.
“Too late,” Emery said, his head nodding.
“Emery!” Blade shook him.
“Let the idiot die,” General Gallagher remarked. “It’s no great loss.”
“We should try to help him,” Blade said, straightening.
“Why bother?” General Gallagher countered. “A minute ago you were ready to boil his balls, and now you want to help him? You don’t make any sense.”
“I was ready to torture him for the intelligence we need,” Blade admitted, “but this is different. It’s a waste. The Family doesn’t believe in meaningless killing.”
“But I heard you Family types are real spiritual,” General Gallagher observed. “If this son of a bitch has a soul or whatever you want to call it, he’ll survive death, won’t he? So what’s the big deal?”
“A soul only survives if the person possesses faith,” Blade stated, watching Emery’s mouth twitch.
“Either way, his death will not be any great loss,” General Gallagher stated.
Blade gazed at the officer with a stern look of disapproval on his face.
“What’s with you?” General Gallagher asked defensively.
Blade crouched, feeling for a pulse. Emery’s eyes were closed, his chest immobile.
“Is the sucker dead?” Bear queried.
“He’s dead,” Blade verified.
“Good riddance,” General Gallagher muttered.
“We needed him,” Blade stated irritably.
“No we didn’t,” General Gallagher disputed him. “What’s with you? You’re the one who’s supposed to have killed dozens, maybe hundreds, according to all the rumors floating around. So why are you getting all misty-eyed over one lousy hit man?”
Blade stared at Gallagher. “I’m not getting misty-eyed. When I said we needed him, I meant it. I wanted to discover the location of their local base of operations before they strike again.” He paused, sighing. “And as far as the number of foes I’ve dispatched to the next life is concerned, I haven’t counted them. But I do know this. Every time I’ve killed an enemy, it’s been out of necessity, not out of revenge or for the sheer thrill of killing. Every enemy I’ve faced has been a threat to my Family or myself.”
“The noble Warrior, eh?” General Gallagher said, and chuckled.
Blade suppressed his rising temper. “I’ve been honest with you. Now why don’t you be honest with me?”
“What do you want to know?” Gallagher asked.
“How the hell someone as tactless as you ever got to be a general in the first place?” Blade remarked.
Gallagher wheeled and stormed from the room.
Bear laughed and moved closer to Blad
e. “You sure laid it on that jive-ass honky!”
“I shouldn’t antagonize him,” Blade commented.
“Don’t sweat it, man,” Bear said. “The turkey goes around askin’ for it. What I want to know is what we’re goin’ to do next?”
“There’s nothing we can do,” Blade stated, “except wait for their side to make the next move.”
Chapter Nine
Hickok’s reaction was as instantaneous as it was unexpected. The assassin had him covered, his Colts in his holsters. No one in their right mind, looking down the barrel of a rifle, would try to buck the odds. By all rights, the gunman should have raised his hands over his head and meekly surrendered. Instead, Hickok relied on his lightning speed to pull his fat out of the fire. The gunfighter threw himself to the right, his right Colt streaking up and out.
Only Nightshade’s inhuman reflexes saved him from the Warrior’s incredible speed and accuracy. He darted to the left of the door as Hickok’s Python boomed, the slug plowing into the jamb a hairsbreadth from his head.
Hickok was caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.
Nightshade would be waiting for him outside if he tried to get away through the front door. And to his rear was a chamber filled with deadly assassins. His agile mind weighed the probabilities, and in the space of two seconds his mind was made up.
The Warrior whirled and dashed into the meeting room.
All of the Gild members were on their feet, staring in confusion at the door in the west wall.
Hickok expected the majority of the assassins to have weapons concealed under their robes. He knew he couldn’t nail all off them without being seriously injured or worse. And since his top priority was still to warn Blade and Plato, he had to stay alive if he ever hoped to see them again. Accordingly, as he entered the west door, he was already angling toward the door in the north wall.
The Gild members were highly trained. They overcame their initial bewilderment and went into action. Several ran toward the mystery rifles leaning against the north wall, while others made a grab for arms hidden in their black robes.
Hickok opened up, three shots in astonishingly rapid succession, and the trio of assassins, two women and a man bolting toward the mystery weapons, were downed on the run, each one struck in the head, each one dying in a spray of blood and brains.
“Get him!” Kraken thundered.
Two of the Gild assassins began blasting with pistols.
Hickok was a stride from the north door when the first rounds thudded into the wall, and he ducked and hurtled through the doorway as the Gild members fired in earnest. He was in a narrow hallway leading to an exit door, and he wasn’t alone.
The assassin known as Leftwich, the hit man with the sallow complexion, was halfway between the Warrior and the exit. He was alongside a dust-covered clothing rack, in the act of changing from his black robe into one of the four Free State Army uniforms suspended on hangers from the rack. Leftwich was gaping at the gunman in unbelieving stupefaction.
Hickok was about to gun down the skinny hit man when a pistol roared to his rear and a bullet missed his left ear by a fraction. The gunfighter spun, his left Colt belching lead.
A female assassin poised in the north doorway was hit in the left eye, the impact propelling her backward out of sight.
Hickok faced the exit just in time.
Leftwich, a 14-inch survival knife in his right hand, was almost upon the gunman, mere feet away.
Hickok side stepped to the right as the knife sliced toward his face, evading the blow, slanting the Python barrels upward, intending to perforate the assassin’s noggin. But the hit man tripped.
Leftwich had been only partially dressed when a solitary shot had sounded from the direction of the west entrance. He’d already removed his black robe and slid into a pair of fatigue pants and combat boots when he’d heard the shot. He’d frozen, his fingers gripping the laces to his right boot, about to tie them, listening. When, just moments later, three shots had thundered in the meeting room, he’d straightened, forgetting all about his untied laces. And now, as he charged the gunman, his oversight saved his life. He tripped on the flapping bootlaces, stumbling forward, past the man in the buckskins, his momentum catapulting him toward the meeting room door in a wild cartwheel of limbs and tangled clothing.
Hickok kept going, sprinting to the exit door and shoving it open.
A weed-choked expanse of ten yards separated the building he was in from several more towering structures. Off to the left was the forest, and to the right, to the east, was dense brush, stands of trees, and a glimpse of another body of water.
Hickok bore to the right, heading for a stand of trees about 40 feet from the door. If he went to the left, he knew he risked exposing himself to the assassin named Nightshade—if the mutant was still near the front porch. By going straight he would have entered one of the other buildings, and he didn’t want to be confined with a passel of murderers on his tail.
Bearing to the right seemed to be the wisest course. He covered 20 feet with no signs of pursuit, and he was congratulating himself on his brilliant escape from the jaws of death, when there was a buzzing noise close to his right ear and the ground in front of him abruptly exploded, peppering his buckskins with dirt.
Uh-oh!
Hickok ran even faster, glancing over his left shoulder. The silent shot had obviously come from one of the mystery rifles, and since the trajectory went from his ear to the turf, the sniper had to be positioned somewhere far above the ground. He looked up and found his foe, yet another of the Gild assassins on the roof of the building to his left. He realized the guard must have been posted there all along, but had somehow missed spotting his approach earlier. The dense foliage in the forest must have screened him from view from the roof.
The assassin was trying to get a bead on the racing figure.
Hickok weaved to the right, and another section of sod erupted in the space he’d occupied a millisecond before.
The assassin swiveled, trying to compensate for his target’s deliberately evasive pattern.
Hickok jogged to the left, then the right again, never running for more than two steps in a straight line. He was ten feet from the trees when the sniper tried a third time, hitting the ground a few inches to the Warrior’s left.
Someone to the rear was yelling.
Hickok reached the stand of trees, diving for cover behind the wide trunk of an oak tree. He flattened on the musty earth, turning to see if they were after him.
They were.
All of them were gathered outside the exit door, checking their weapons. Kraken was barking orders and gesturing angrily. Nightshade stood by his side. Charley, the Englishman, was listening attentively.
Leftwich was hurriedly donning a fatigue shirt.
Was that all that were left? Hickok quickly calculated the numbers.
There had been nine in the room initially. Neborak had been killed by Nightshade. And he had personally accounted for four of them. So counting the cow chips on the roof, there were five Gild members remaining. Five he knew of, anyway, but there could be more.
Kraken waved his right arm and all four assassins jogged after the Warrior.
Hickok crawled backwards until he was obscured by a thick bush. He rose and ran deeper into the trees, seeking a likely hiding place. How good could the assassins track? he wondered. The soil underfoot was soft and would readily leave prints. He needed a stretch of rocky terrain to throw his enemies off the scent.
More shouting to his rear.
What a bunch of dummies! Hickok chuckled. They weren’t making any effort to conceal their pursuit. For professional assassins, these yo-yos were pathetic.
The stand of trees came to an end. Beyond was a section of brush, then more trees, then more water, either another lake or river or the continuation of the one he’d been following after entering the amusement park.
Hickok looked over his right shoulder to insure they weren’t gaining
on him, then ran toward the line of trees ahead. He hoped he wouldn’t stumble on another alligator —or something worse.
The Gild members were making quite a racket, yelling back and forth.
Hickok paused when he reached the line of trees near the water, glancing back. Why were Kraken and company being so careless?
Something wasn’t right here. He moved through the trees until he found the lake.
Dominating the landscape to the northeast were a pair of miniature mountains. The highest of the pair was brownish in color, and there seemed to be a half-dozen caves dotting its side. The smaller mountain was a gray spire with a waterfall cascading from its peak to its base. Both mountains were on the far side of the lake. In the middle of the water, and not all that far from shore, was a large island. Docked next to the island’s southern bank was a giant antiquated boat.
Hickok eyed the island speculatively. If he could swim to it before the assassins reached the lake shore, they’d never be able to find him. He glanced to the left, and there was a wooden dock projecting into the lake at least a third of the distance to the island.
Perfect!
Hickok sprinted to the edge of the dock. The wood was old and sections were rotted, but the dock appeared to be sturdy enough to support his weight. He tentatively placed his right food on the nearest board to test its strength.
“Any sign of him yet?” bellowed a voice perhaps 30 yards from the lake.
Hickok threw caution to the wind and hastened to the end of the creaking, sagging dock, carefully avoiding ragged holes in the planks, keeping his eyes on the trees behind him. A few small, ramshackle structures bordered the dock, none of which betrayed any hint of recent habitation. He stepped to the very rim and stared at the blue water below.
Countless hours of frolicking in the moat at the Home as a child qualified him as a passable swimmer. He could easily reach the island, which was not more than 20 yards from the dock. But he didn’t like the notion of getting his cherished Pythons wet. The water wouldn’t damage the revolvers, and he would clean them thoroughly at the earliest opportunity, but the idea bothered him and he hesitated.
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