Vicky Peterwald: Target

by Mike Shepherd

“Otto,” Albert said, exasperated, “cuff her left hand to her right hand.”

  “I can’t, the right hand’s already cuffed,” Otto said as he tried to put the new cuffs on over the old cuff’s chain to the bed.

  “Otto, put the new cuff on closer to her elbow than the old cuff. You do know what an elbow is, don’t you?”

  “I know an elbow,” Otto said, and this time got Vicky’s two hands cuffed together.

  “Now uncuff her from the bed.”

  A second later, Vicky was free.

  She stretched languidly on the bed to both guys’ attentive stares, scratched at her ankles where they’d been hurting like hell, then rubbed her wrists gingerly.

  “You said you had to pee,” Albert reminded her.

  “Or shit,” Vicky added.

  “Well, do it. The bathroom is off there.”

  There was a bathroom off to the left. It was filthy, but Vicky took a second to run some water and rinse the vomit out her mouth. Then she swallowed a few quick gulps.

  “Pee,” Albert demanded, waving his gun.

  “I’m gonna. I’m gonna,” Vicky said, and settled onto the toilet.

  No surprise, at least to her, she could do nothing.

  “I thought you said you had to shit,” Albert demanded, gun waving more nervously by the second.

  “Have you ever tried to shit staring down the barrel of a gun?” Vicky asked with all the sarcasm she could muster.

  “No,” Otto said, from where he was standing peering over Albert’s shoulder.

  “Shut up,” Albert said, but he didn’t order his erstwhile subordinate away from where he gawked.

  Vicky managed to produce some pee and a few grunts.

  Albert waved the gun a whole lot more.

  Vicky swallowed hard . . . and made her play.

  She’d let her skirts fall to the floor, hiding much of herself as she sat on the toilet. Now she pulled her hem up slowly, revealing her shapely legs, wiggled one leg out of her panties, and lofted them in Albert’s general direction.

  He had to reach to make the catch with his free hand. Immediately he put them to his nose for a sniff.

  “You like it,” Vicky tried to purr.

  “Can I have them, too?” Otto pleaded.

  Albert took another long sniff, then handed them back to his cohort in crime.

  “You know you’re gonna get sloppy seconds if the big boss gets his way,” Vicky said, voice as sultry and low as her nerves would allow. “Or, we can arrange for you to get it first.”

  “The boss ain’t gonna like that,” Otto said.

  “You want to have a go at her after me?” Albert said.

  “Yeah,” came back without a second’s reflection.

  “Then go wait outside.”

  “Can’t I watch?”

  “Outside,” Albert demanded. Clearly now intent on losing his virginity, he intended to lose it in style.

  Once Otto was gone, Vicky sauntered up to Albert.

  “Don’t get too close,” he said, waving his gun some more.

  “You want to unzip me? Unsnap my bra?”

  “Yeah. Turn around and back up slowly.”

  Vicky obeyed. His hand fumbled at the zipper and bra as badly as he was fumbling with the gun.

  Vicky stood obediently, and even managed a shiver as he unzipped the dress all the way down. If he wanted to assume the shiver was for the sex, that was his mistake. His hands were cold and clammy.

  Vicky hated his very touch.

  “How do you want to do this?” Vicky asked, all obedient and pliant on the outside.

  “You go lie down on the bed.”

  “Or you could lie down on the bed,” Vicky offered. “It’s easier to keep your hand on that gun if you aren’t holding yourself up with both hands.”

  “Yeah, I should have thought of that.”

  He dropped his pants and settled expectantly on the bed.

  Vicky had been holding her dress up, what with it unzipped and the bra undone. Now she shimmied out of the dress.

  Albert’s lust was burning in his eyes and his bobbing manhood.

  Vicky swallowed twice. It would not do to throw up again just now.

  She let her bra fall and stuck a pose for her kidnapper. Potential murderer. Intent rapist.

  His smile was a disgusting leer. The gun still wavered, but it never left her general direction.

  Taking a last breath free of his stink, Vicky swayed toward Albert.

  She knelt on the bed beside him and fondled his package.

  “No. Don’t touch me there. I want to be in you.”

  So maybe he wasn’t a total virgin. But he wasn’t going to settle for premature ejaculation from just a hand job tonight.

  It took a couple of tries to arrange that. Vicky was dry as sandpaper. On the third effort, he slipped in, and she settled on top of Albert.

  He breathed a sigh of intense passion as Vicky wiggled above him. She raised her hands high, inviting his hands to her breasts. First he reached for one. Then when Vicky moaned and gyrated more, he put aside his gun and roughly massaged both of her breasts.

  And Vicky brought down both hands—hardened into fists—and smashed them into his Adam’s apple.

  CHAPTER 29

  ALBERT grabbed for his throat. Big mistake.

  Vicky grabbed for his automatic and got it.

  The thug struggled for a breath, as Vicky felt him shrink inside her. Now he did grab for Vicky, one hand for her throat, one for his gun.

  She swatted his hands aside and slipped off him, kneeing him in the balls for good measure.

  Now he grabbed, right hand for the agony in his groin, the other for his throat, still struggling to gasp for air. He rolled up in a ball of agony.

  Vicky towered over him, gun aimed at his head, wondering if she should put him out of his agony. Nope, let him suffer. And I don’t want to make any more sound than I have to.

  It took him a long minute to die. In the end, his face was purple and his tongue and eyes bulging. To Vicky it looked like he was pleading for a quick bullet to the head.

  Vicky ignored him. She had more trouble waiting for her outside the door.

  Once Albert finished his convulsions, Vicky went through his pockets and found the keys to her cuffs. She also found a dull-looking knife. Freeing herself of the cuffs at last, she went to stand beside the door, gun in one hand, knife in the other.

  She lowered her voice, and muttered, “Come on in, Otto.”

  The chubby little guy was through the door like a shot, already busy unbuckling his pants.

  Vicky slammed him in the head with the butt of her gun, and he went down in a heap.

  Quickly she used the knife to slit his throat.

  And was amazed at the amount of blood that gushed over her. She stepped back, then had to get in close to the spurting body to move it out of the door so she could close it.

  Poor planning on my part. I should have moved him before I killed him. She shrugged. I’ll do better next time.

  Vicky listened to see if she’d attracted any attention, but the house was still silent around her.

  She’d had enough of being naked, but she was now covered with sticky blood. She took a second to duck into the bathroom and wash off the worst of it, then retrieved her dress from where it had fallen on the floor and pulled it back on and zipped it up.

  Then she shook her head. The long skirt was fine for the dance floor at the palace but not so good for what she would be doing in the next few minutes.

  Once again, she wielded the knife, this time on the silk as she slashed the skirt off at midthigh.

  She also found she needed to take time to put back on her bra. Tonight’s strapless gown could not hold those puppies up on their own. Finally, she retrieved her dinner jacket from where it had been tossed in a corner. She was a lieutenant, God damn it, and she’d do her fighting looking like a lieutenant, thank you very much.

  The jacket also had an inside pocket that the
knife fit into very nicely.

  All necessities done, she slipped barefoot out the door and began a search of the upper floor. She found a bathroom and two empty bedrooms.

  The third had a man snoring away loudly. He was all in black and had a machine pistol within easy reach on the bed stand beside him. One of Morgan’s assassins, no doubt, ordered to get some sleep before he relieved the others.

  Vicky slit his throat.

  She was careful this time to get out of the spray, but some blood still ended up on her.

  His eyes popped open, and he made a grab for her, but his life’s blood was fountaining toward the ceiling. He died before he could so much as touch Vicky.

  “Three down. How many more to go?” Vicky told no one in particular.

  His automatic pistol attracted her attention. It had a full magazine of sixty 4.5 mm rounds, and a second magazine beside it. There was also a rolled-leather holder that revealed a dozen gleaming sharp things that, no doubt, were to be used on Vicky’s delicate parts in a near future that, thankfully, wasn’t going to happen.

  Any guilt she was feeling at the casual way she was killing this scum evaporated at the sight of all those sharp edges and the agony they promised her.

  She traded in Albert’s rather dull knife for one of the longer, sharper ones.

  She also swapped the pistol for the automatic weapon. Slipping the safety off, she sighted down the barrel. From what she remembered of the attack at the diner, the assassins had been shooting from the hip.

  It had taken six of them to handle one Marine captain.

  Vicky figured she could draw a solid bead on five or six of them, now, before they got her.

  Upgunned, but still barefoot, Vicky made her way to the stairs.

  She could see light at the bottom of them, and hear screams coming from somewhere down there.

  Was there a second victim?

  Had they somehow captured Kit or Kat? Doc Maggie!

  Swallowing hard on the urge to charge straight down the stairs, shouting and shooting, Vicky made her way down carefully. She put one foot down, then another, taking care to slowly transfer her weight—and to put her weight only on the very side of the step, next to the wall.

  It seemed to work. She made it to the bottom of the stairs with no one the wiser.

  The screams were coming from a dimly lit room off to her right. By now she was pretty sure someone was watching a vid. To her left was a kitchen.

  Brightly lit, it was empty.

  Vicky edged toward the dark room.

  Yep, they were watching a woman get carved up something horribly. No doubt, they were taking notes to try the worst twists on her unwilling body in a few minutes.

  Her hand tightened on the weapon in her grip, as she found she could make out the contents and arrangement of the next room reflected in a mirror.

  There were three heads, one above an overstuffed chair and two on a sofa. Facing them was the man in black. He seemed to be concentrating on his commlink and ignoring the vid.

  She remembered Mr. Smith’s advice. “Shoot for the center of mass. Not the head.”

  Well, she had only one person she could shoot for the center of, the guy in black. She’d have to go for the heads on the other three unless they stood up.

  Targets selected, prioritized, and marked, Vicky checked her weapon one more time to make sure it was on fully automatic. She shouldered the machine pistol, sighted down the barrel and stepped into the living room.

  A tap of the trigger and a quick three-round burst went into the chest of the guy in black before he even had a chance to look up from what he found so interesting.

  She swept her sights to the right and put a pair of short bursts into the two heads above the sofa. One exploded, the other slumped.

  The guy in the chair was coming up, machine pistol swinging around as Vicky targeted him. Five rounds in the chest blew him backward to sprawl half-on, half-off a coffee table.

  Vicky hurried forward.

  Two more shots into each of the guys on the couch, and they would never trouble a girl again. Next was the guy in black. He lay on the floor, struggling to reach for his own gun. Vicky put a bare foot on him, pressed her heel into the gore she’d made of his chest, and listened as a groan escaped his shattered lungs.

  “Who hired you?” she demanded, putting the barrel of her pistol right between his eyes.

  “Go to hell,” he groaned.

  “You first,” Vicky said, and put a round in his brain.

  She was smearing a lot of gray matter around tonight. “They should have made better use for it when they still had it,” she muttered bitterly to herself.

  COMPUTER, she thought.

  I AM HERE, came back to her.

  WHERE?

  I HAVE NO FRAME OF REFERENCE FOR THAT QUESTION, was her computer’s answer.

  She rummaged through the guy in black’s pockets. She found the automatic she’d bought on Wardhaven for its sleepy dart option that wasn’t available on firearms for sale on Greenfeld. She pocketed it. Next she came across her computer about three centimeters from where one of her shots had gutted him.

  I’ll have to be more careful next time.

  Better yet, let’s make sure there isn’t a next time.

  She relieved one of the dead assassins of his boots; she’d had enough of being raped and barefoot. His boots had a place for a knife and a whetstone. His knife looked sturdier than the thin blade she’d borrowed from the dead man upstairs. She took what she found.

  She’d noticed that the guy in black had a thick envelope of money in his pocket but no evidence of where it came from. Now Vicky relieved him of it, as well as his commlink and a pair of car keys.

  “I’ve been here long enough, time to get going.”

  She found a dark leather coat, swung it about her, and left the carnage without looking back.

  CHAPTER 30

  THERE were several cars out front. A nondescript four-door sedan matched the emblem on the keys in her hand.

  It started the first time she tried.

  She was several blocks away, carefully obeying the speed limit for a quiet residential district, when she had her computer contact Admiral Waller.

  “Captain Morgan is dead,” she said by way of introduction.

  “We know. We found his body. How are you?”

  “Not dead yet. But not for the lack of some very intent trying.”

  “Where can we get you?”

  “I’m moving. I’ll contact you again later. Maybe by then we can figure out what we do next. I am not going back to the palace.”

  “No. No need for that. I think some people were excessive optimists if they thought you could find anything out in this hellhole.”

  “I was one of them,” Vicky said with a sigh. “Good-bye for now.”

  “Good luck.”

  “I suspect I’ve used up a whole year’s allotment of luck tonight,” Vicky said, and had the computer ring off.

  She drove, choosing right and left turns without any apparent reason. She stayed off the main roads but worked her way out of the suburb she’d found herself in.

  She heard no sirens. One would think that automatic-weapons fire in the house next door to you would merit at least one call to the local constabulary. Apparently, the rule of “hear no evil, see no evil, speak nothing at all,” was working for her tonight.

  Then again, maybe the palace, or at least the Empress’s family, had its thumb in even the local beat cops and was answering that call with silent alarms.

  No way to tell on Greenfeld.

  Vicky drove to a trolley stop. Even this late at night, it was running. The city worked twenty-four/seven. She caught the next trolley and rode it for a couple of stops, found a cross-line and switched to it. She kept her collar up. There was a felt hat in one pocket. She put it on and kept it pulled down over her face.

  One stop brought her to a subway station. She switched there for a fast express to downtown. One change the
re, and she was on a fast express for the business center to the south of town.

  She saw only one sleepy cop the entire time she was on the lines.

  Clearly, no alarm had been raised about her disappearance. Either one of them.

  It was sad to think about how unimportant she was.

  Or could be made to be.

  As the sun came up the next morning, Vicky was exhausted but alert and standing a few doors up from a Navy-Marine recruiting station.

  A Gunny arrived first and began unlocking the door.

  Slowly, Vicky approached.

  “Morning, Gunny,” she said.

  “Morning,” he said, over his shoulder, then turned. “You look like shit, Your Grace,” he added as he got a good look at her.

  “Feel like it, too,” Vicky admitted.

  “You got blood all over you,” he said, opening the door.

  “It’s someone else’s.”

  “Ooh-rah, and outstanding, ma’am.”

  “What do you know about my situation, Gunny?”

  “Only that you disappeared. That the Marine captain escorting you had more holes in him than a sieve. And that we should be on the lookout for you.”

  “Captain Morgan didn’t have a chance,” Vicky said, letting the words empty her.

  “Damn bastards were smart not to give him one. They’ll pay.”

  “They already have. But not enough.”

  “Yeah. You want to come in?”

  “I don’t think I ought to. Gunny, could I borrow your car?”

  Without a word, he produced his keys.

  “I need a way to come in out of the cold,” Vicky said, taking the keys.

  “In an hour, come back here. If that poster”—he pointed at two eager kids listening to a bemedaled Gunny—“is still in the window, keep driving and don’t come back. If it’s down, come in.”

  “It’s a risk, Gunny, getting close to me.”

  “I didn’t put on the scarlet and blue to be bored, ma’am.”

  “Ooh-rah,” Vicky answered. “Thanks, Gunny.”

  “Thank you for avenging our captain, ma’am.”

  Vicky left. She was starved, but if the Gunny could spot the blood on her, so could anyplace she went, even a drive-thru.

  She meandered through quiet streets and listened to her stomach growl for an hour.