Page 80 of Duke

“Slaves. To be sold for—for…sex,” the girl answered. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen at most, and I saw a few who were younger than that, thirteen or fourteen.

“Yeah, well, not any more,” I growled, and the raw rage in my voice had the women around me scrabbling away from me in fear.

“But—they—they are many.” She blinked at me as if I’d spoken incomprehensible nonsense. “They will kill you.”

I focused on containing my rage and when I was calm enough to speak, I glanced at the girl. “They’ll try,” I snarled. “And they’ll fail.”

I heard footsteps beyond the door, faint voices. “…Be awake by now. Last time, we gave him enough for three men and he was awake within hours.”

I stood up and shooed the women away from the door, herding them into the farthest corner. I held my finger over my lips and crept to stand by the door.A key rasped in the lock, the knob turned, and the door swung open, away from me. A man entered, carrying a shotgun in both hands, a second behind him, also carrying a shotgun.

I pivoted away from the wall, grabbed the man in front by the shirt and smashed my forehead against his nose, kicking out with my foot at the same time to launch the second merc flying. My forehead crunched cartilage, blood squirting. I grabbed at the shotgun while the guy was dazed, snatching it away, stepping backward and to the side, and then fired one-handed. Which isn’t as easy as Arnie makes it look inTerminator. Outside of point blank range, I would have missed, but as it was I was close enough to send the lead merc sailing backward with a ragged hole in his chest. The shotgun was a tactical model, thankfully, so I didn’t have to pump it. I hurled myself through the door the second I’d fired, smashed the barrel into the chest of the second merc, who’d landed against the far wall opposite the doorway. I pulled the trigger, turning my head away from the spattering gore. Fucking messy, Jesus. There was a third man, standing outside the door holding a submachine gun and looking stunned. He didn’t get a chance to get over his surprise: I laid the barrel over the elbow of my injured arm and fired again. The kick sent a spear of agony through me, but I didn’t stop to let it take hold. I scooped up the submachine gun, an HK MP5, and rifled the body for magazines. The women were standing in the doorway, looking fearful and tentative; one of the bodies on the floor, the first man I’d shot, had a key ring in his hands.

“Get the keys,” I said, pointing at the ring. “Start letting people out.”

I kicked a shotgun across the floor to them. “Use that, if you’re so inclined.”

There was a moment of silence, and then a girl of maybe twenty or so stepped forward; she had dark hair and dark skin and a bindi in the middle of her forehead, making her from India. She caught up the shotgun, examined it, then bent and scooped up the key ring. She nodded at me, and then moved down the hallway to another door, tried half a dozen keys, and found the one that fit the lock. She threw it open, waved, and went to the next door.

I didn’t stick around for the reunions, though. I stuffed the spare magazines in my pockets and jogged for the open door at the end of the hallway. I heard shouting, and knew my not so subtle escape technique had alerted the rest of the compound, or whatever this place was.

Reaching the doorway, I leaned my shoulder against it and peered around the frame and up the stairs; light from above cast long, distorted shadows that were moving down the stairs toward me. I hesitated, considering letting them come down to me, but then decided I didn’t really have the patience for tactics. I jogged up the stairs, twisted to aim the submachine gun upward. As soon as I saw a flash of black BDUs, I fired a burst, and then leapt up the stairs three at a time, hitting a landing, aiming upward, and firing again. There were more coming down the stairs, a lot of them. In this scenario, though, I had the advantage. No one behind me, no one in my way. A rifle barked and a round pinged off the railing to my left, then ricocheted off the wall. I ducked away, leaning against the wall to find the best upward vantage point, firing another burst at the scraps of black I saw on the stairs above.

I worked my way upward like that, ducking the occasional close round, but these operatives were clearly not well trained in the art of stairway warfare. It’s all about angles, and being an accurate shot. You see a scrap of cloth or a hint of a body, you have to make the shot instantly and accurately, or your round will hit the stairs or the railings, which most of theirs did and a good number of mine as well, seeing as I was firing with a handicap. Fortunately the MP5 is small enough and packs little enough of a kick that I was able to fire across my elbow, even though each burst sent jolts of pain through me. All I could do was grit my teeth and keep going.

I reached the top of the stairs eventually, climbing over bodies, and kicked open the door, hesitated to one side, then took a peek.

Fuck.

The door led outside to a nook between wings of the building, and surrounding the door at a distance of twenty feet or so was a semi-circle of mercenaries waiting for me, their rifles trained on me.

In the center of the group was a single, unarmed figure. Tall, broad-shouldered, dressed in the same paramilitary black as the others. He was rocking a bit of a gut, with side-swept blond hair and brown eyes. He held himself erect with the bearing of a career military man, his hands behind his back.

“Mr. Duke Silver. Thank you for joining us.” He spoke with an Eastern European accent.

“Cain.”

He nodded. “That is one of my aliases, yes.” He gestured to me. “Come, lower the rifle. We have to talk.”

“So talk,” I snarled, not leaving the doorway.

“I would prefer to do it somewhere more…amenable.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not feeling particularly amenable.”

Cain shrugged. “You’re probably wondering why I brought you here.”

I groaned. “Is this where you monologue like a James Bond villain?”

“Aren’t you at all curious?”

I shrugged. “To kill me slowly, I assume, and send the video to Harris.”

“Oh my, how unoriginal. No, not at all.” He brought his hands around front, revealing a tablet computer, an iPad or something, which he set on the ground and slid over to me. “Press the home button, and then play the video.”

I snagged the pad with my injured hand, and then ducked back inside the doorway. I hit the home button as he’d instructed, which brought the screen to life, showing a stilled, blurry image of blond hair and pale skin.

“Fuck,” I snarled. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”