Now she understood why men ran toward the widow maker.
On the ninth floor, she joined two squads standing by for the engineers to finish cutting a hole in the deck above. Two Marines stood by, ready to run a ladder into the hole. Another two stood ready to rush up the ladder, eager to be the forlorn hope.
Vicky elbowed her way through until she was right behind them.
That left General Pemberton with two bad choices. He could follow her and put himself behind her and ahead of some Marine that might actually contribute to saving the Grand Duchess's neck. Or he could hold back, letting his crazy Majesty get away from his clutches.
With a scowl that had thunderheads at both edges of his tight lips, he held in place, while giving her the stink eye.
Vicky grinned back at him and gave him a little finger wave.
The engineers got a concrete-and-rug chunk of decking loose and shoved it off to the right. The ladder rushed in from the left and was slammed into place. Even as those two Marines held it down, the two other Marines stormed up the ladder.
The lead Marine paused just centimeters below the deck, unleashed his rifle from where it slung around his neck, and took the last step up with both hands on his rifle. Not an easy thing to do.
He did a quick twist around to check out the room, whispered, "Clear," then with the rifle still held up with one hand, he used the other to hurry up the last steps. The other Marine followed him.
Since no shots had been fired, Vicky followed him up, just ahead of a dozen Marines, a sergeant, and an LT.
The bedroom above got crowded very fast.
An engineer was buried somewhere among all the riflemen. He hastened to the door and slipped a snooper scope under it. A moment later he whispered.
"It appears clear."
The two eager-beaver Marines came to stand beside the door. After a quick three count, the engineer yanked the door open and the two Marines slipped through and began to survey the living room over the sights of their rifles. Two more Marines followed them through.
Like a good little Grand Duchess, Vicky held in place until a "clear" call came through. She was just slipping into the living room when General Pemberton came up the ladder.
Seeing her disappear into the living room did not improve his scowl.
One Marine stood in the middle of the kitchen, three more held down the main room. Like the bedroom, these rooms looked like they'd received hard use. The kitchen table was in the middle of the living room. The couch wasn't far from it. There was blood around both. It looked like some Roman gladiatorial arena, if gladiators toyed with unarmed and helpless women for cheers of the crowd.
Vicky thought the other floors had been bad. This floor was going to be sickeningly worse. The engineer soon gave more evidence of that.
"All the doors on the other side of the hall are secure. There are gunmen at each end of the hall, prone, and with clear lanes of fire if we show our butts there. We'd be the ducks in a shooting gallery."
The LT and sergeant put their heads together on that. Vicky joined them.
"If you'll pardon me. We faced something like this in the building we cleared," and she filled them in on her technique of shooting the gunmen before they breached the bulkhead and stormed the room.
The LT gave General Pemberton a questioning glance.
"I wasn't there, but we did get more survivors out of her building than the others."
"Okay, Your Grace, we'll try the first one your way," did not sound all that sure she could do what she said.
"Get a stepladder up here."
Five minutes later, an engineer was up on the stepladder, cutting a small hole in the wall. Vicky watched the take from his snooper on her battle board with one general, one LT, and one sergeant . . . all skeptical.
Vicky swapped places with the engineer. He joined the other one, ready to cut a big slab out of the next room's drywall.
The sicko in the next room was enjoying playing with the soft skin of a young girl – with his knife. Two other gunmen looked on, their tongues hanging out like dogs.
As much as Vicky wanted to get off a quick shot, she took her time to get a solid sight picture on the head of the guy closest to her. She'd take the three out from the back to the front. Unfortunately, it was the front guy wielding the knife.
Slowing her breathing, she waited for her heart to beat, then squeezed of a quick three round burst.
The man's head exploded.
She got the second guy before he could react.
The guy with the knife was just looking up, terror in his eyes, as he tried to figure out what was going on.
Vicky put a round between his eyes as he turned to face her.
The poor girl began to scream her lungs out.
Vicky was down the stepladder, shoving the Marines aside. She was first into the living room and first to the girl. She held her until she finally stopped screaming and wound down to sobs. Vicky held her until a corpsman showed up to care for the shallow but bloody wounds on her breasts.
A woman hurried in to take over holding the girl, and Vicky stepped aside. Her battle gear now was covered with blood.
More corpsmen and women hurried by to help the women lashed together in the bedroom. It would take a while to empty this suite.
The LT must have been impressed. "Admiral, we've got a gunman in the room on the other side of the room we climbed into. While we check out the next room here, could you take care of that bastard?"
"Is it as bad as here?"
"At least he's not using a knife."
Vicky hastened back across their first room. Marines and women aids were stacking up or passing through, depending on someone's orders.
The ladder was in the bedroom. She climbed it to find a redcoat with his pants down. By the way his hostage screamed, it was likely she was not used to that type of sex, nor was he using any lubrication.
Again, Vicky forced herself to take careful aim and prepare her body for the shot. She caught the bastard in the face. One second, he was grinning. The next minute, he had no jaw. He reeled back in shock, giving Vicky a clear shot below his belt. She took it.
If he still had a jaw, he'd have dropped it as he gazed down at his pulverized flesh.
This idiot had failed to secure the hands of the women in the bed and around him on the floor. They descended on him, blocking Vicky's view of his last few seconds of life.
She didn't rush into that suite, but left it to the Marines and women aids. She stalked back to see what the other end of the battle line had for her.
At least these four bastard were dead drunk. Vicky regretted executing them while they was senseless, but she had no time for niceties. Word was, they had a sicko back at the other end.
Thanks to the silencer on Vicky's automatic, the four died before the last one even knew why their heads were exploding
Her runs between suites grew longer as the Marines extended their reach down the hall. As luck would have it, they had breached a room on the side away from the elevators. They soon held rooms from one end of the hall to the other. Two full companies were arrayed up and down the length of it.
Some troops were already positioned prone and ready to turn the place into a shooting gallery. Others had orders to take the stairwells from their rear. A third group stood by to bust doors down and force their way into the as-yet unsecured rooms across the hall.
It looked to be a bloody storm, but time was short, and the bastards were getting nastier. Girls were being forced out to service gunners in the halls and then shot to raucous laughter.
The redcoats plumbed the depths of depravity. At least one girl was murdered before their eyes. One redcoat played his knife all over a girl, from face to groin. Then he did the unspeakable. Holding her up by her hair, he grinned in her face as he slit her throat and watched her bleed out.
Then he shouted for another toy to play with.
Vicky joined the fire teams aiming to take down the force holding the elevato
rs and that stairwell. This bunch of gunmen were a more cohesive clump. Worse, they had a gaggle of hostages intermixed with them.
Vicky had been eyeing this group for a bit, studying the snooper scope take off them. Several of the guys seemed better dressed. Also, when three of them gave orders, the others hopped to it. And of the three, two did what one of them said.
Vicky tagged him for the count. She wanted to personally see to his departure from this life. She unshipped her shield before General Pemberton told her to, but she stood third in line to storm down the hall to the elevator foyer.
The general scowled and stood aside for a Marine sergeant to come stand at Vicky's elbow. A big, hulking corporal was on her other side.
Somewhere. a whistle sounded. Doors slammed open. M-6s snapped out sharp, quick bursts. Women screamed.
Vicky bellowed in the strongest voice she'd been taught for commands. "Ladies, down. The Marines are here. Drop."
Those who could, obeyed her command.
Others, held in strong grips by desperate men, did their best to obey her. They winced as bullets and darts whizzed past them, or screamed when one buried itself in their soft, vulnerable flesh.
Marines did their best. From suddenly opened doors, they shot the bastards laid out on the deck. Instead of the bad guys shooting ducks, they became the ducks, shot at from behind.
More Marines moved quickly out of the door to take aim at those standing behind the doors to the stairwell.
These punks had women mixed up with them and servicing them even as they wept.
The Marines did their best to shoot the rapists and avoid the raped. However, fate is fickle, and people move. People flinch. People who didn’t deserve it, ended up dead.
The clumps around the stairwells at either end of the hall turned into bloody charnel houses with people screaming in pain, sobbing in shock, cussing with their last breath.
The Marines moved quickly among them, separating the women from the dead men. If a man wasn't dead yet, they made sure it happened quickly.
That left the elevator hallway. There, tragedy danced among them.
Three gunners lay on the carpet, ready to shoot down anyone who came in view.
Well, maybe not so ready.
As three Marines burst through the door of the suite just up from that hall, they saw three gunners and three women.
One gunner rode a woman who was down on her hands and knees. While he kept his hips moving, he also kept his machine pistol pointed in the general direction of the Marines.
A second man lay on his back, a weeping girl above him, doing her best to please him. He'd threaten her with his machine pistol, then bring it back to above his head, ready to fire down the hall, even if he wasn't ready to make those aimed rounds.
The third man was serious about keeping guard. He lay with his weapon at the ready. However, he was shirtless and had a nude woman sitting astride him, massaging his back as he lay on his stomach.
That was the picture that greeted Vicky as she stepped up behind the three Marines. Each one of them got off a short burst at their assigned target.
However, they were not the only ones to act.
The woman on her hands and knees followed Vicky's command. However, as she dropped, she kicked back with one leg. The gunman above her was knocked about. The first round missed him, but the next two rounds blew his face off.
The weeping woman sitting astride the middle gunman, screamed what could only be called a war cry and dropped onto the bastard that had been forcing her. Unfortunately, he'd just been menacing her. She fell onto his weapon as he was trying to roll out from under her and fire.
Instead, he emptied a long burst into her. Blood flew as bullets blasted through her body. Three Marine rounds took the gunner in the top of the head. Even then, it took a moment for his finger to relax in death.
The third was the most tragic.
That gunman was the most alert. Even as he brought his machine pistol up to fire, the woman on his back threw herself at his arm, grabbing it and yanking it back.
The two struggled even as a Marine aimed carefully at his head and put three good rounds into him.
Unfortunately, the two rolled in their struggle. Two darts took the man at the top of his skull. The third dart took her low in the face, shattering her jaw and slicing through her neck.
"Medic!" the Marine shouted.
Vicky ran forward, twisting through the Marines, then bringing up her shield, blocking her view down the hall. However, the shield had a cutout for her weapon. She used the remote screen to sight her automatic at a brute holding a woman up before him. She, however, had gone weak in the knees and was doing her best to drop to the deck.
Vicky's aim was wrecked as her shield took several bursts of slugs from several directions down the hall. She went to her knee and set her shield, angling it to send shots ricocheting into the overhead.
Behind her, Marines snapped off quick bursts as she knelt in frustration, unable to get a sight picture as her shield bucked on her arm. Intellectually, she knew she was drawing the fire, helping the Marines. Still, her blood was up.
She wanted to kill someone.
As the rattle of automatic weapons fire and the snap of quick bursts wound its way down, she saw her chance.
The three men she'd picked for the head of this collection of wild beasts and criminals broke for the stairwell door. They dragged four women behind them and pushed another two ahead of them. With machine pistols at their heads, the women fled. The two ahead even tried to outrun the thugs.
They disappeared into the stairwell before anyone got a shot at them.
"They're mine," Vicky screamed as she raised her shield and ran after them.
On the deck in front of the elevators, women rolled out of Vicky’s way, or helped those who were too traumatized to know what was going on around them. She stepped over one woman, writhing in pain.
Whether she had been hit by a dart or a slug, Vicky couldn't tell. She was totally focused on the door to the stairwell.
She kept her shield up, holding it just high enough not to cover her eyes.
Shoving the door open, she shouted, "Marines, hold your fire in the central stairwell! Friendlies above you!"
Since she was the only woman running around in this building, she expected that the Marines below knew who was yelling for them not to shoot her.
When the barking of M-6s fell silent, Vicky stepped into the stairwell. It seemed empty above her.
Crouched low and keeping her shield on her threat axis, she made her way cautiously up the stairs. She had some bastards to kill.
34
At the top of the stairs, Vicky cautiously shouldered open the door to the roof. She kept her shield in front of her, using only the screen on her automatic to sweep the roof of the building.
Slugs rattled into her shield. It dented in more places, but it neither shattered nor holed. No doubt, tomorrow, Vicky's shoulder would ache.
The thick metal door beside her also thudded against her other shoulder as slugs slammed into it. It seemed to take more hits than her shield. Was most of the shooting coming from a blind spot on her left?
"Maggie, I need some eyes above."
Immediately, a vision of the roof appeared before her eyes. There were two large housings on an otherwise flat graveled deck. She was edging out from one, and there was a stairwell and elevator housing. Across from her was what looked like an air conditioning stack.
Behind it, there were two gunners. One hunkered down on her right. She caught occasional glimpses of him as he ducked out to fire at her. He had four hostages tied in pairs. The other one was to the left, blocked by the door. He had two naked women hostages with him.
A third figure was also to her left, also blocked. He also had two hostages. He fired from behind the elevator housing.
No wonder the door was smashing into her space-armored shoulder so much.
The one target she could possibly hit ducked out of c
over to fire a long burst at her. She was just lining up a shot at him when he swung back behind his cover.
Vicky sent a few shots his way just to let him know she cared.
No matter how much Vicky thought about her situation, she could not come up with a good way to break the stalemate. If she moved from her present position, she'd be shot to hell before she got halfway to the air conditioning unit.
Vicky kept the one guy she could under fire and waited for matters to change.
The guy to her left made the first move. He pulled back from his spot behind the elevator housing, then began to drag the two women with him around the structure. He was careful to keep the hostages between him and any Marine snipers a thousand meters away.
Smart man.
Vicky kept up her base of fire, just to let everyone know she was still here, while she waited to see what the movable object was up to. As expected, he made his way around the housing and came up on her right side.
He walked bent over, keeping the women above him as he covered the distance. Once to the corner off to her immediate right, he hunkered down to work up his courage.
That left Vicky on the sharp edge of decision. She had to keep up her fire at the guy across from her. She also had to get ready to fire off to her right as soon as the guy went gunning for her.
She fired a burst, then pulled back a bit, scraping the shield over the roof.
The noise was enough to settle it for the SOB to her right. He leaned out low and made ready to snap off a burst.
Vicky had guessed how low he'd be crouched. Her snap shot caught him in the shoulder and shoved him back. His head strayed out just enough for Vicky to take the top of it off with three solid shots.
He collapsed screaming, but not for long.
"Girls, get back!" Vicky yelled, even as the gunman across from her hung his machine pistol out and fired a burst at the edge of the elevator housing.
No woman screamed, so Vicky guessed they got back in time.
That left her with two bastards to kill.
"Ma'am?" came nervously from behind her.
Implacable: Vicky Peterwald, #5 Page 17