One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [67]
Realizing I was dead meat if I remained on the floor, I forgot about the cover and launched myself straight into them. The one I had wounded was holding his shoulder and crawling back to the first floor in an effort to escape. Of the other three, one was changing magazines and two continued to shoot ineffectually. One of the guards, shooting wildly at my charge, apparently thinking the noise alone would stop me, hit the man standing in front of him in the back of the head, killing him. Deadeye quit shooting, shocked at what he had done. Nothing like a little luck. I killed him while moving at a dead run down the stairs, close enough to see the look of shock on his face as his soul fled his body.
Continuing to move, I reached the third man before he could work the bolt release of his weapon. I jammed the barrel of the 416 into the man’s forehead, causing an imprint of the flash suppressor on his skull and knocking him out. I double-tapped the unconscious man’s head as I vaulted over him, feeling the weapon lock open on an empty magazine. Intent on stopping the man with the shoulder wound from getting away, I wasted no time trying to reload.
The man was on the ground floor and on his feet, moving toward a door off the huge, cathedral-like den at the base of the stairs. He was shuffling along like Quasimodo, looking back over his shoulder as if he was being chased by the devil, his shattered arm dangling uselessly beside him. I caught him just as he reached the door. Dropping the 416 on its assault sling, I reached across the man’s face, pulling his head back by digging my fingers into his eyes and yanking upward. I hammered his windpipe above the thyroid cartilage with my other hand, crushing it. I let the man fall, his mouth working like a fish out of water, his lungs pumping to get air in through his destroyed windpipe.
I had now cleared the entire house and seen no sign of Jennifer. Shit. Maybe they took her. I knew I was running out of time. If I was still here when the men from the Plaza Mayor returned, I would be dead.
JENNIFER WAS YANKED UP FROM THE FLOOR by her hair. On her knees, her hands cuffed to her front, her face swelling from the earlier blows, she looked up at the lead guard before her. He leered down, holding on to her head by her hair.
He drew his finger across his throat and said, “You no bite.”
He then unbuckled his pants, dropping them to his knees. The rest of the guards giggled like they were on a school outing to an amusement park, anticipating their turn on the ride.
Jennifer looked into the man’s eyes, saying, “Por favor . . . Por favor . . . Por favor.”
The man only laughed. She lost all hope. She was nearly catatonic, resigned to the atrocities about to occur. The man let go of her head and began to lower his dingy, stained underwear. She looked up at him again, praying to see some sign of humanity, some shred of decency that would make him rethink what he was doing. Instead, she saw his head explode like a burrito in a microwave. She stared uncomprehendingly as the man fell over backward.
Before his death could register, a cyclone of violence erupted around her, the head of man after man exploding as if touched by the hand of God. The local standing behind her grabbed her around the neck and jerked her to her feet, shielding his body with hers. He placed a knife against her throat and whirled her around toward the door. Her eyes focused on a man advancing toward them holding a rifle pointed directly at her.
40
I placed the crosshairs on the head of the man holding Jennifer. He was about thirty-five feet away, far enough that I didn’t trust the zero of my weapon to make the surgical shot required to kill him without risking Jennifer.
When I had initially entered I had seen