Vicky Peterwald: Target

by Mike Shepherd

“They certainly do. Hussies, huh?”

  “I’ve brought the occasional general’s wife with a picky appetite when they had to dance attention to the Empress. Oh, and the occasional junior Marine officer just as worried about her waistline. But, hey, I brought in a good, simple girl with a ravenous appetite this time,” he said, flashing her an oh-so-innocent smile.

  “I haven’t been called good since I was six years old,” Vicky admitted with a sigh, then felt the need to correct that falsehood. “Well, I’ve been called good, but not for being good, if you know what I mean.”

  “Maybe I’m a good influence on you?”

  “A Marine a good influence? Never,” Vicky said with a laugh.

  “There is that occupational problem,” he admitted. “But, given a chance, I understand that some of my elders did indeed manage to make fairly well housebroken husbands. At least that’s what their wives tell me.”

  “Yeah, right,” Vicky drawled, wondering whether to believe him or ask the waitress to better define “hussy” when she delivered their meal. “There’s a problem with our relationship, you know.”

  “Just one problem?” was not what she expected Captain Morgan to say.

  “One of many,” she conceded.

  “And what might this one of many be?”

  “You’ve, no doubt, read my file and know everything about me. I know nothing about you.”

  “Hmm,” he said. “Yes, there is the matter of your file. Actually, files. All several inches thick. Must be lots of stuff in them.”

  “Must be?” Vicky said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Yes. I wasn’t allowed to read them. All I got was a six-page report that had only the basics. I know where you were when, but only the minimum about what you were doing. For example, I know nothing about how sensitive your breasts are and whether or not you prefer to be licked, kissed, or sucked.”

  “Wow,” Vicky said, jerking her head to the left as if watching a race car go by. “That was a fast one.”

  “I’m a Marine, ma’am.”

  “And you’re supposed to steer clear of those dangerous women from the palace.”

  “Yes, that’s something I’ve been wondering. Are you one of ‘those women,’ or, being a lieutenant, are you one of us? Then again, you could be a Grand Duchess, and be in a totally different category from all other women.”

  “I like the idea of being in a class all my own, but slow down, trooper, I’ve got a few questions of my own. You got six pages on me. I’ve got nothing on you. Where’d you come from, Marine? What crimes did you commit that you took the Corps over jail time? What are the chances that you’d still be there when I woke up tomorrow?”

  “Ah, the lieutenant wants a full intelligence write-up, huh?”

  “I saw what happened when Kris Longknife jumped before she looked. Maybe I want to learn from her mistakes.”

  “Very wise. One might say extraordinarily wise for one of your sex.”

  “Watch your step, boy, or you’ll talk yourself right out of any sex.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to do that, m’lady. Let’s see, where to start with my tale of woe and errors?”

  The Marine put a finger to his lips, scrunched up his face, and did a dramatic rendition of one struggling to think.

  “I was born Navy. My dad was a chief who put in a full thirty years. Lucky for me, I was the last drafted into the family. I think Dad’s being gone all the time was hard on my four older brothers and sisters. Two each. About the time I was starting at the gymnasium, we moved to Wismar, the second of the Navy colonies. I was fifteen, and just starting to figure out how the world worked, and Dad was suddenly home every night and having to figure out his own new place in a new world. My older brother and Dad had volcanic fights. I found I kind of liked the old man.

  “He bought a sailboat. Have you ever been on a sailboat?”

  Vicky shook her head.

  “They only go where the wind sends them. If you can figure them out, you can go some against the wind, but the smart move is to go with the wind. I went where the wind blew me, and Dad and I got along great guns.

  “It was the summer before my senior year when I got to work on a cattle ranch. That was real fun, and one of the reasons I decided I didn’t want to spend my life behind a desk. Dad and I had our one row over that. He said he’d had to work for a living. He wanted us kids to have decent jobs and decent to him was not having to get your hands dirty. He was really pissed when my oldest brother ran off and joined the Navy.”

  “A retired chief mad at his boy joining the Navy?” Vicky said. “What am I missing?”

  “He enlisted. Dad wanted him to go to college and be an officer. Wismar had its own Naval Academy. All the Navy colonies do. They’re free if you score high enough on the entrance exam.”

  “How’d you score?” Vicky asked.

  “Top ten percent,” he admitted with a grin.

  “What was your standing at graduation?”

  “Didn’t graduate?”

  “What?”

  Their burgers, fries, and shakes arrived so Vicky had to swallow her next question long enough to taste what was set before her.

  Hungry, Vicky took a bite of the burger, then a sip of the shake. “Wow! I’ve never tasted anything so good.”

  The waitress beamed. “I’ll tell the cook. Billy brought us another satisfied customer.”

  Vicky took another bite as the waitress left. As she chewed it, she remembered. “Damn it, Captain. I was supposed to quiz that font of hospitality on just who the gals were that you brought here with such sparse appetites. Okay, we’ll save that for later. Now spill it. Why didn’t you graduate?”

  “I couldn’t sit still that long. Two years, and I knew I didn’t want to spend my life chained to a desk, and most Navy officers are just glorified paper pushers. I’d spent another summer on the ranch, then one working with a mountain guide, taking tourists up-country on horseback. I liked roughing it!

  “So, at the end of my second year, I looked up the Marines and asked them how much of this finishing school I needed to put up with. They said I’d done about enough, and I signed up for OCS.” He paused.

  “And my dad went ballistic.”

  “About you leaving school or you signing on with the jarheads?” Vicky asked as she chewed another delicious bite.

  “Hard to tell what bugged him more, I have to admit,” the Marine said.

  Vicky thought she saw part of the problem. “Did he ever salute you?”

  The captain laughed. “You have a point. Most of the other proud papas at graduation showed up in the uniforms they’d earned in their years: Marine colonels, majors. A full heaven of Gunny Sergeants. You do know Marines spell Gunny Sergeant G. O. D., don’t you?”

  “I’ve heard the official story,” Vicky admitted.

  “Anyway, Dad would have been the only chief there had he worn his uniform. At least he did come, though in civilian camouflage.”

  “So you like getting your hands dirty?” Vicky said.

  “Never happier than when I’m rooting around like a pig in mud.” He grinned, unapologetically.

  “And the palace?”

  “Plenty of mud, but all the wrong type for me,” he said, taking a big bite of burger.

  “And the women,” Vicky said, leading, “either admiral or general’s ladies, or junior Marines with squared-away heels.”

  “Very,” the captain admitted.

  “Did the admiral ever tell you to have fun with one of them?” Vicky asked casually.

  “Did he tell you to have fun tonight, too? He said something like that right after I came back from having my black eye tended.”

  Vicky allowed herself a frown but a pretty one. “Strange, he told me to have fun tonight, too, right as we were finishing our dance. What do you think an admiral means when he tells a Sailor to have fun?”

  “Interesting question,” the captain agreed, putting his half-finished burger down and wiping his hands on the napkin. �
��It’s a rather vague order. One that junior officers might guess wrong about fulfilling.”

  “But the admiral did seem forgiving the time or two I saw him not totally approve of how you executed one of his orders.”

  “It is always easier to get forgiveness than ask permission,” the captain said, “or so I’m told.”

  “Plenty of experience asking forgiveness, huh?” Vicky said.

  “And very little asking permission.” That damnable grin of his was back.

  “Well, why are we sitting here?” Vicky said. “We should be making mistakes and having fun.”

  The Marine captain threw down two bills for payment, and the two of them executed an enthusiastic withdrawal. They were laughing as they settled into the sedan, though Vicky wasn’t sure just what the joke was.

  The Marine backed the car out of the parking slot. The lot was narrow, just a few head-in parking slots in front of the diner. He turned parallel with traffic and paused to find an opening to gun into.

  A large black SUV pulled in ahead of them and braked to a halt. A second one cut them off from behind while a third stopped in traffic next to them.

  “I guess the palace caught up with us,” Vicky said.

  “They never mess with this end of town,” Captain Morgan said as he turned off the ignition. “Where are the SPs when you need them?”

  He opened the door and stood up, ready to explain his way out of whatever they were in. “Leave this to me.”

  That was when Vicky spotted the windows coming down in the SUVs and the machine pistols coming up.

  She slammed the door open even as she went for her automatic. Beside her, the Marine was going for his.

  He never had a chance.

  Half a dozen weapons on fully automatic caught him, held him, pinned him to the door, and would not let him fall. Even as he died, his body was forced into some obscene jig.

  Vicky had her automatic out as she stood, waiting for the executioners’ volley, but intent on getting shots off herself.

  She wanted one of them dead for Billy and one of them dead for her.

  Instead, as she brought her weapon up, she felt three darts slice into her.

  Suddenly, her hands were heavy and her eyes were blurred. She put everything she could muster into pulling the trigger, but she knew, even as her knees began to fold, that she’d only managed to get a single round into the asphalt at her feet.

  Then the darkness opened up, and she tumbled into it.

  CHAPTER 28

  VICKY Peterwald, Grand Duchess, lieutenant, maybe lieutenant commander, but now certainly captive, came back to wakefulness from a drugged dream that she couldn’t remember but that left her feeling helpless and violated.

  Without opening her eyes, she took inventory of herself.

  She was thirsty, and her mouth tasted like vomit. Apparently three sleepy darts did not agree with a medium-rare hamburger.

  She could still feel her bra and panties. Apparently the feeling of being violated was not the result of being violated. At least not yet.

  She swallowed hard on that thought.

  She was spread-eagle on a bed of some sorts. Her hands and feet were cuffed to the bed with cold steel that had been tightly and painfully fastened to her wrists and ankles.

  She opened her eyes.

  The light overhead glared too brightly; she made a face and looked away. Two men sat in straight-backed chairs eyeing her. Dressed like slobs, both looked only too eager to make her acquaintance more intimately.

  “Go tell the boss she’s awake,” the taller of the two thugs said.

  The shorter, fatter one, shambled off.

  Vicky’s first thought was that these guys couldn’t have been the ones that kidnapped her. Who gunned down Captain Morgan.

  There, she’d said it, at least to herself. Captain Morgan was not going home tonight to explore her bed and the happy girl in it. He was dead. They hadn’t given him so much as a fighting chance.

  So why am I still alive?

  Vicky wasn’t sure she wanted the answer to that question.

  A tall man, dressed in black from head to foot, including a black ski mask over his face, came back with the pudgy one.

  “You are alive,” he muttered. “Three sleepy darts and you’re awake before morning. You Peterwalds really are tough.”

  “And we get our revenge,” Vicky spat.

  “Not this time, doll. We have you locked down tight and there you will stay until our employer comes to verify you are who you say you are and to watch you die.”

  Vicky suppressed the urge to struggle against her restraints. If she could get loose, she didn’t want to do it when this guy was watching. He had a machine pistol slung around his shoulders.

  “I’ll pay you to let me go,” she said, staying in character. Hell, it was her character.

  “Sorry, doll, but we’re honest crooks, aren’t we Albert. We negotiate an outrageous fee to do the dirty things, then we stick to our contract. Makes for more work when you have a good reputation, don’t it boys.”

  “Yeah, boss.”

  “Whatever you say, boss.”

  Vicky spat at the man in black.

  “I could use that for my ID on you. You are Victoria Smythe-Peterwald, aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m Käthe von Klaus,” Vicky said, naming someone she’d gone to school with.

  “I doubt it, Victoria,” he said, and jabbed her in the arm with a short needle. “This should allow me to do my own field test and get a visit from our clients. They will want to conduct their own proof, but I don’t think you’ll miss a bit more blood. Not from what you’ll be giving up later. They may want you to answer a few questions, too. I would suggest you answer them quickly and accurately. Otherwise, our questioning may go long. Fun for us”—Vicky could see the grin through the ski mask—“but hard on you.”

  She spat again. Or at least tried.

  Her mouth was dry as scorched sand.

  With a laugh, he left.

  Again, she found herself alone with her two flabby zeros.

  They stared at her. She did her best to ignore them.

  She did listen. From the sound of the man in black’s footsteps, he went down a hall, then down some squeaking stairs. After that, she heard nothing.

  In a while, the shorter one produced a game from his pocket and started playing. A bit later, the taller one did the same. Now, they ignored her as much as she ignored them.

  Vicky quickly found there was not a lot of fun in ignoring two thugs totally ignoring her.

  As inconspicuously as possible, Vicky tried the restraints. All she got was a groan from the brass bed.

  “You can’t break that bed,” the taller one said. “We tried. It’s strong.”

  “Yeah,” his shorter version agreed.

  Vicky went back to contemplating her fate.

  She’d heard stories of dead people that the State Police certified as very dead, solidly proven by DNA testing, only to show up, years later, not quite as dead as they had seemed. Apparently, loving Stepmother and her family wanted to make sure that there were no later surprises in her case.

  That gave her time, but it didn’t suggest what she do with it.

  COMPUTER, she thought. The implants were still buried in her hair, but the computer made no reply. Either it was out of range, turned off, or destroyed. The last option she doubted. That computer was worth, if not a king’s ransom, certainly a minor duke or a senior baron’s. It might be locked down for now, but certainly someone would save it on the off chance that they might find out later how to unlock it.

  Whatever the case, her computer would not help her now.

  Honey, you’re going to have to figure your way out of this with your own two hands, she thought, then added, or other body part.

  Admiral Gort had joked, well, at least half joked, that at the palace she studied the Kama Sutra and needlework for offensive and defensive purposes. She checked out her two jailers from the corner of he
r eye. They looked utterly disgusting and totally losers.

  If her opinion mattered for anything among her half of the human race, those two had to be virgins.

  Likely, by the time her dead body was disposed of, they wouldn’t be.

  But did they know what her loving stepfamily intended for Vicky’s demise?

  “Either of you two guys got a bedpan?” Vicky asked.

  “Bedpan?” came in dumb two-part harmony.

  “Yeah, you know the things you pee and shit in when you can’t get out of bed? You two ever been in a hospital?”

  “No,” came even more dumbly back.

  Likely as not they hadn’t even been born in one, just dropped in an alley and abandoned. Vicky ignored that thought and went on to her next move.

  “So, what do you expect me to do, shit the bed?”

  “They’ll make us clean it up if she does,” the shorter man told the taller one.

  “Shit,” he said. “You need to go to the bathroom?”

  “Badly,” Vicky lied. In the last hour she had indeed discovered you can be scared shitless.

  The taller man seemed truly on the horns of a dilemma. Finally, he pulled his automatic from his pocket. “Otto, here’s the keys. You go undo her legs.”

  “The boss ain’t gonna like this.”

  “The boss ain’t never gonna find out about this. You want to clean up her shit?”

  “No. No.” And the shorter one went to fumble with the shackles on Vicky’s ankles.

  Vicky tried not to look all that intent about what was happening. She kept her eyes on Albert, who kept his gun on her.

  “Now, Otto,” Albert said when Vicky’s legs were free, and Otto had felt up her legs to her crotch, “undo her left hand.”

  Otto did that and copped a feel of her left breast. At least he didn’t hurt her when he did.

  “Now, Otto, listen carefully, come around to the right side.”

  While Otto moved to the last handcuff, Albert went to the foot of the bed. “Now you listen carefully, Miss whoever-you-are. Put your left hand over by your right.”

  Vicky rolled over as told.

  “Cuff her hands, Otto.”

  “I can’t, she’d still cuffed to the bed.”