The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

L’Escorial gunmen poked and prodded the passengers, a pair of sailors and their local whores. A gunman took the liquor bottle from a sailor, drank from it, and handed it back. The business wasn’t a formal search, just harassment and almost good-natured— until the end.

A gunman lifted up the bandeau of one of the prostitutes to uncover her breasts. The woman’s nipples were tattooed blue.

The gunman’s quick feel turned into a vicious yank. The woman screamed. Another L’Escorial thug bashed her behind the ear with a pistol butt.

Half a dozen of the red-clad gunmen converged like soldier ants to the sound of an intruder. They kicked and punched, stripping the prostitute as she tried to crawl away from them. One of the men thrust the muzzle of his 2-cm powergun between the woman’s legs.

Coke’s vision focused into a narrow tunnel. His mouth was half open and his skin was cold.

He didn’t know her. She was nothing but a whore and a stupid whore besides, a whore who took an indelible stand in favor of one gang of thugs over another.

But he was going to do it anyway, violate his own orders and he’d have had the balls of any team member who did the same—

The L’Escorial lifted his powergun, laughing, and kicked the woman instead. His nailed boots tore a double row of gashes in her buttocks; but that came with the turf. She continued to crawl, ignored now by the gunman and other citizens alike.

The two sailors and the remaining woman slipped through the cordon during the incident. The driver left the jitney where it was. He ducked into a doorway marked DRINKS & ENTERTAINMENT.

Pilar shut off the van’s engine. “There’s no way through or around,” she said. “No safe way. They—”

She closed her eyes and whispered something with her finger on the crucifix again.

“This doesn’t happen very often,” she continued in a resigned tone. “I suggest you take beds in one of these—” she grimaced “— places. That’s what I’m going to do. It will be quite horrible, but …you can’t tell what they’ll take it into their heads to do. Many of them mix tailings and alcohol together. It makes them crazy. Crazier.”

“This doesn’t look like a great neighborhood a-tall,” Niko Daun said, looking around at the dingy buildings.

He was right. The add-on levels above the original constructions were reached by rickety outside staircases. The signs reading BEDS or SLEEP or (in one case, and perhaps little more of a lie than the others) SAFE LODGINGS were always on these outside stairs.

“How far away is the Hathaway House?” Coke asked Pilar as he continued to scan.

“It’s right across the street from the L’Escorial building,” Pilar said, “but that’s the problem. It wouldn’t do you any good to walk around the, the armed children, because they’re exactly where you want to go.”

“Hathaway House may not be any better than these flops anyway,” Sten Moden suggested. He didn’t sound concerned.

“There’s six of us,” said Robert Barbour. “We ought to be safe enough for the night.”

“The Hathaway is a decent place,” said Pilar. “I mean really decent, the only one in Potosi. But you can’t get there. It doesn’t have any back door. That’d just be another point to guard.”

“I would say,” Vierziger said coolly, “that it’s not too far to carry our luggage if the lady doesn’t want to drive us.”

“It’s not want,” Pilar burst out angrily. “It’s not safe to cross that gauntlet, safe for you!”

People with great need or great confidence were getting past the cordon. A gunman in red cordovan boots cut a citizen’s belt and sent him scampering away with his trousers around his ankles.

Women were fondled, generally roughly. A few people were relieved of small objects—a gun, a chip recorder; perhaps some money. For the most part the cordon was an irritation, not an atrocity.

But it could become an atrocity at any moment, Coke knew. The only apparent check on the gunmen’s activities was their own desires. There was no sign of external control.

Coke glanced up at Margulies on the roof of the van. He’d order her into a firefight without hesitation, but this was something else again. At the start, anyway.

“Mary, it’s your call,” he said.

She shrugged. “I’m not thrilled either way,” she said. “But we came here to get information. I guess we may as well go do that.”

She hopped down, bracing her left hand on the van roof. Her toes took her weight, so that she landed as lightly as if she’d stepped from the side door.

“All right, that’s what we’re going to do,” Coke said. “Whatever comes, we’re going to take it. When we’re in the hotel, we’ll take stock—but not before then. Understood?”

Sten Moden shrugged. Daun said, “Yessir,” very quietly, and Robert Barbour nodded. The intel lieutenant looked nervous, which was actually good: that meant he understood what was likely to happen. Coke thought he’d be okay.

“You mustn’t do this!” Pilar said. “Please, just come with me.”