The Peacekeepers. Books 1 - 3.

by Ricky Sides

  Almost instantly, a shot rang out from one of the nearby rooftops and Reggie felt that bullet tug at his shirtsleeve. He dropped to the floor and rolled away from the window cursing the sniper who must have been observing his building quite near his actual location in order to respond so quickly.

  Leaping to his feet, he cursed the sniper and he cursed his own loss of control that had given away his position. He made it to the ground floor and was almost to the exit when the door opened and two men darted inside the building. Firing his rifle from the hip, Reggie saw the men dive for cover. He darted around a corner, heading for the back exit.

  One of the men who’d entered the building ran in hot pursuit of Reggie. He rounded the corner and stopped when he saw Reggie kneeling on one knee waiting for him, with his rifle at the ready. Reggie stroked the trigger knowing that this time he had one of the enemy dead to rights and that he was looking at a dead man. A millisecond before Reggie fired at the hapless man the peacekeeper’s partner rounded the corner and collided with him with such force that both men fell just to the left of Reggie’s shot. The bullet ripped through his intended victim’s shoulder instead of the center of the chest as Reggie had planned. The man’s partner brought his own rifle into alignment with Reggie and stroked the trigger but the bullet missed Reggie by a centimeter as he scuttled aside and fled down the hall making another turn in his quest to escape.

  The wounded man grimaced in pain and said, “I’ll never keep up and I’ve got to stop this bleeding. Go ahead but be careful.”

  However, the man’s partner was a trained medic. He shook his head. “You’re bleeding too badly. I can’t leave you like this. If you pass out, you could bleed to death before help arrives,” he ended all talk of moving on with that blunt assessment as he rapidly emptied the contents of an emergency kit he’d need to treat the peacekeeper’s wound.

  Reggie paused at the back door and examined the area outside as well as he could and determined that there was no one waiting just outside the back door but he also had an ear trained for possible pursuit by the two-man entry team he had already encountered twice. Taking a deep breath, he darted out the door and headed for a back alley where he could find safety from his enemies.

  During his time in Jewel, Reggie had learned the lay of the land pretty well. He knew of a spot where he could enter the sewer and make his way to the outskirts of the city undetected by his enemies. He just had to get to the alley and enter the sewer system undetected, and then he would be safe to plot his revenge on the peacekeepers. He would as the old saying goes, “Run away, to live and fight another day.”

  He ran as he had never run before. By the time he reached the sewer opening he needed, Reggie was drenched in sweat. He removed the manhole cover from the sewer access tunnel. Climbing down into the tunnel, he paused and dragged the lid over the manhole settling it into place. When he did so, he was immediately plunged into darkness but that wasn’t a problem. He could easily work his way down the ladder and then find a flashlight in his emergency gear he’d stashed beside the wall on the floor of the sewer below.

  Descending carefully, he soon came to the end of the ladder and knew from experience that it was a three-foot drop to the floor of the sewer below. He cursed the designers who’d determined that a ladder extending to the floor would just trap debris in the sewer constantly so they’d opted to let the maintenance crew drop the last three feet.

  Overhead he heard the shouting of angry voices and the sewer manhole cover lifted a couple of inches but fell back into place. Cursing, he released his hold on the ladder and dropped the remaining few feet landing in a crouch with a splash. The manhole cover was pulled free and a circle of light illuminated Reggie standing there in a crouch. “Nice of you to drop in,” a voice said from behind him and Reggie whirled toward that voice trying to bring his rifle to bear. He recognized Jim Wilison as he struggled to bring the weapon to bear on the man, but before he could do so Reggie felt something hard slam into the back of his head. Reggie pitched forward, face first into the inch or so of sewage currently flowing through the system.

  “You were right, partner,” Jim said with a chuckle. Pete was standing there looking down at Reggie’s unconscious form.

  Looking up at Jim, he nodded and said, “He always did like to use the underground passages in cities to his advantage. Finding evidence of recent passage into the alley that led to the sewer entrance was a dead giveaway.”

  Grabbing Reggie by his hair, he pulled the man’s head back and took his knife from its sheath.

  “Hold on, Pete. You can’t kill him until we know where the girl belongs. Her family will be frantic,” Jim added in a serious tone of voice. For a moment, Jim thought that Pete would kill the man anyway. He wanted to and that was plain by the expression on his face. This man had caused so much suffering that he deserved to die and to die hard. But Pete knew that the child would have been severely traumatized and might not even live to tell them who she was and where she belonged. Her parents would need to know what happened to their baby girl. This stayed his hand where very few other things could have done so.

  Working quickly, Pete and Jim secured Reggie’s hands behind his back and passed a rope under his arms, tying it in the back between his shoulder blades. Pete tossed the other end of the rope up to one of his men standing on the ladder and asked that the men topside pull Reggie up on his command, but be prepared to stop the moment he signaled for them to stop. Pete then slapped Reggie’s face hard until the man woke up. “Ah you’re awake now. Good, I wanted you to be awake for this,” Pete said grinning.

  Reggie wondered what Pete was talking about for just a moment, and then the men above began the process of hauling their captive up out of the sewer and he felt a wrench of pain as his body was lifted off the floor of the sewer. Pete was an expert when it came to rigging loads so that the stresses would not be transmitted to make such lifts painful on the person being lifted. To be such an expert one had to know intimately and understand the mechanics of what one should avoid to prevent discomfort. Pete had deliberately applied this knowledge in such a manner as to make this process as painful as possible in an effort to loosen Reggie’s tongue during the interrogation concerning the identity and origins of his young victim.

  The man’s body was drawn up toward the manhole of the sewer a foot at a time. Every stop of the upward pull generated a wave of almost unbearable pain as the ropes wrenched upward savagely on Reggie’s arms threatening to dislocate both his shoulders.

  The entrance to the sewer was approximately twenty feet above the floor of the sewer upon which Pete and Jim stood. Pete was using the radio to communicate with the team pulling Reggie out of the city septic system telling them when to pull and when to stop. He had them stop pulling the man toward the surface when his feet were dangling in front of his own chest.

  “Let’s play a game, Reggie,” Pete said calmly as Reggie gritted his teeth in pain. Taking hold of Reggie’s ankles, he pushed down on them, which had the effect of sharply increasing the pain in the man’s shoulders. “I want to know if there are traps in the van, Reggie,” he said calmly.

  Reggie snarled a curse and spit at Pete. “That was the wrong answer, Reggie,” Pete said and signaled the men above to pull him up another foot. As they did so, he yanked downward on Reggie’s ankles savagely, causing the man to scream in pain. Pete signaled for the men to stop pulling. “Let’s try this again, Reggie. Are there traps in the van waiting to harm anyone attempting to free the girl?”

  “Yes. There is a grenade trap in the van,” Reggie said gasping in pain. “It’s under the body of the dead girl,” Reggie added in anger. He was furious with Pete, and angry that he had broken so easily so early in the interrogation. Moreover, it was such an unimaginative and seemingly harmless application of force.

  Pete transmitted the information to Sergeant Wilcox and instructed the man to order the rest of his team away from the van and wait for him to arrive to disarm the trap. But Sergeant W
ilcox argued that it would be better for him to disarm the trap. Pete had trained him in that sort of thing, and it was his job. Pete then told him to wait a moment while he clarified with Reggie if that was the only trap in the van.

  Looking up at Reggie’s face, he asked him if that were the only trap in the van promising that if Wilcox and the remaining girl were injured he would castrate Reggie and force him to eat his own testicles. Reggie knew real fear then, for looking into Pete’s eyes, he knew that the man would do precisely what he had threatened to do to him if the two people in danger were injured. “I thought one trap was enough and I didn’t want to risk more traps. There was a risk to the girl with even one and I didn’t want her dead,” he said. Even in this dire circumstance, he was unable to keep the expression of sick lust for the child out of his eyes.

  Pete informed the sergeant that Reggie seemed to be honest in regards to the one trap. Sergeant Wilcox went to work the moment his team was out of blast range. He would have preferred to move the other child out of harms way but Reggie had tied the two children together in such a way that freeing the living girl would cause the corpse of the dead girl to be moved thus triggering the explosive trap.

  Five nerve-wracking minutes later, the trap had been disarmed, and Sergeant Wilcox carried the tortured little girl from the nightmarish prison of the van. Some of his men removed their uniform shirts and spread them on the ground. Sergeant Wilcox laid the girl on the makeshift blanket and then removed his own shirt to cover the girl’s nakedness.

  He reported to Pete that the girl was out of the van and that they were awaiting the arrival of the Peacekeeper so that Maggie could see to the girl who seemed to be in pitiful condition. He asked Pete the child’s name and Pete promised to find out.

  “Her name?” Pete asked and when Reggie sneered defiantly, he ordered the men to tie the rope to a secured position. Reggie was then to be raised a foot, after which the men pulling him up were to let go of the rope. A moment later, they performed the maneuver.

  “Her name is Lisa, Lisa Blackwater!” Reggie said in agony. He was more than willing to give that information to prevent a repetition of that drop.

  Pete transmitted that information and then asked, “Her family and their location?”

  “Dead, all dead. They died in the disasters,” Reggie lied and smoothly continued, “I picked her up in Arkansas off the streets of a small town there, but none of her folks are left alive.”

  “Name of the city?” Pete asked though he correctly suspected that Reggie had killed her parents.

  “Lake Village, a small town in Southeastern Arkansas,” Reggie said gasping.

  Pete nodded to Jim to report this information while he kept up the pressure of the interrogation.

  “You are doing well so far, Reggie. Now tell me if you trapped the bodies of the peacekeepers that you killed and the location of your trophies,” Pete said with a mildness that belied the anger in his eyes.

  Now Reggie grew stubborn and refused to talk. It was necessary to raise and drop him twice before he found it within himself to reveal the information that they wanted. “Three of the bodies are trapped, yes. Now stop with the damned rope!” Reggie said panting in agony.

  “The traps are pressure release grenades?” Pete asked.

  “Yes they are, now get me out of this damned sewer,” Reggie insisted.

  “Which three bodies, Reggie?” Pete asked ignoring the man’s demands to be taken out of the sewer.

  “I trapped the three bodies away from the main group. All are lying on their stomachs. The other three are together and lying on their backs. I trapped the separate bodies to maximize the efficiency of the traps,” said Reggie, his deranged mind seeking the approval of the man who’d taught him so much about survival.

  Pete contacted the Peacekeeper instructing the communications lieutenant to pass the word that the six bodies were not to be touched. He didn’t trust Reggie to be telling the complete truth, and was sure that at least one of the three bodies grouped together was also trapped.

  “Give me the name of the dead girl and her place of origin?” Pete asked.

  “Jane Fondane. I found her wandering down a country road in Mississippi. She was alone and scared. I offered to help her and she trusted me because I had another girl with me at the time. She said her house burned and she had escaped the fire but her family had died.”

  “The trophies?” Pete asked.

  “They are in the room where your sniper took a shot at me. I didn’t have time to grab everything there when I left,” Reggie explained in acute pain.

  Pete then had Reggie’s body lowered to the floor of the sewer and redid the bindings to take the strain off the shoulder joints.

  Chapter 13

  The Peacekeeper landed a safe distance from the strike team, which was assembled not too far from the van. Maggie and Lacey exited the ship and came running toward the assembled peacekeepers, carrying two of the portable stretchers. Maggie took a moment and examined the work being done by the two medics who were caring for the man with the shoulder wound, and then she moved over to examine the young girl.

  The child had been brutalized. Her earlobes showed signs of bite marks and Maggie shuddered recognizing that as one of the means rapists use to subdue their victims. Apparently, her captor hadn’t been generous in feeding the child either. She appeared to be severely malnourished. Maggie suspected that this had been deliberately done to the child to keep her too weak to think of escaping. Her vital signs were terrible. The girl was suffering from dehydration, malnourishment and was running a terrible fever. There were obvious signs of abuse written in the bruises and abrasions to her skin.

  Glancing up at the concerned faces of the strike team gathered about, Maggie ordered, “Give us some privacy guys. I need to examine her.”

  The strike team lined up between the doctor and Reggie. Reggie was kneeling on the ground facing the Peacekeeper ship and thinking of the power that would be his if he could contrive a means to acquire that ship. Jim and Pete each stood to one side of Reggie observing his every move. Bill Young emerged with a camera. He documented the bodies for identification purposes and then he came to stand before Pete. “Five minutes. Just give me five minutes with him, Pete,” the man asked. Bill was enraged at the atrocities he’d just documented.

  But Pete shook his head and said, “I can’t let you do that, Bill. You’d hate yourself later and he isn’t worth a moment of your self loathing.”

  Reggie spit on Bill’s boot in defiance and Pete kicked him in the mouth, knocking his body to the ground. “Now I on the other hand, can live with it just fine,” Pete said grinning as he sat Reggie back on his knees. “You’d best remember that before insulting my friends,” he warned Reggie and then slapped him across the face to emphasize that point and asked, “Do you understand me, Reggie?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get you big man,” Reggie said still defiant.

  A moment later, Maggie asked two of the men to carry the girl to her infirmary. Lacey went with them and Maggie turned her complete attention to the wounded peacekeeper. A few minutes later, she nodded her approval and congratulated the medics on their fieldwork. She had the man loaded onto the stretcher and the two medics carried him aboard the ship with Maggie a few steps behind.

  Pete watched as the door to the Peacekeeper closed and then he ordered the strike team to back well away from the area, but to form a circle around the bodies, and be prepared to shoot Reggie should he attempt to escape.

  “Where are the radios?” Reggie asked, his curiosity finally getting the better of him. Pete looked at him and grinned but refused to answer. “Oh, come on, I see you passing orders, but I see no sign of a radio. Not even the style used by the secret service, so where’s the harm in telling me?”

  “You never did know when to keep your mouth shut, did you, Reggie?” was all the response his query elicited from Pete.

  Turning to examine the disposition of the strike team, Pete had one of the sniper
s shift position a bit, the better to cover the entire area and then he turned to Reggie who was still kneeling on the ground. Moving behind him, Pete took a short length of rope and tied Reggie’s ankles together leaving about twenty inches of slack in the rope between the ankles. Thus hobbled, if Reggie attempted to run he wouldn’t be able to do so effectively.

  Moving around to stand in front of Reggie, Pete said, “Now this is what we’re going to do. I’m going to free your hands and then you’re going to go get the bodies of the peacekeepers you killed and bring them to this spot.”

  “Some are trapped. I already told you that,” Reggie said in irritation.

  “Then you will disarm your traps and leave the ordinance on the ground or the snipers will shoot you in the groin,” Pete said, voicing no preference as to which option took place and then he issued the orders to the strike team.

  Reggie began to sweat then, but he said, “Why should I do anything you say? What’s in it for me? You’ll kill me no matter what else happens here today,” Reggie said angrily.

  “That’s a fact. You’re a dead man, Reggie, and nothing can change that, but there are a lot of ways to die. It can be quick and painless or terribly slow and infinitely painful,” Pete responded and then gave some specific instructions to Tim aboard the Peacekeeper.

  In the middle of the road nearby was the body of a dead dog that had been shot. It was just another victim of Reggie’s inhuman cruelty. The Peacekeeper hovered silently for a moment and then moved slowly into position with the dog underneath the nose of the ship. Reggie watched curiously, as the ship hovered there for a moment and then the belly gun of the ship fired a sustained beam of energy. Slowly, inch by inch the ship moved forward. The heat was so intense that the asphalt bubbled and soon the beam touched the dog’s tail, which immediately caught fire and incinerated. A stench filled the air as the dog was slowly consumed by the beam an inch at a time until the animal was incinerated.