The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

All that was visible of Blanco was a left foot and left boot—from the ankle down. The mines’ steel sleet hadn’t had time to spread when it hit the L’Escorial officer. Blanco’s torso must have been above the plane of the projectiles, but the shock wave had flung it indistinguishably into the bloody ruck.

Someone’s right arm lay a few meters farther on. The radius and ulna were fleshless, but the hand and upper arm remained unmarked as a freak of the explosion.

Another gunman, still clutching a sub-machine gun, gasped on his belly in the middle of the street. He’d been at the edge of the area the projectiles cleared. Blood from a dozen pellet wounds pooled the pavement around him. The blast had stripped his clothes off. There was a ragged wound where his penis and scrotum should have been.

Vierziger glanced at Coke. Coke nodded. Vierziger shot the L’Escorial behind the ear, then reholstered his pistol. Coke blinked at the speed and smoothness of the motion.

Most of the gunmen’s bodies lay against the wall fronting the L’Escorial compound. A L’Escorial wearing oil-stained coveralls and a short helmet—one of the armored truck’s crew—ran out the open gateway. He gaped at the carnage.

Coke pointed his powergun at the L’Escorial and shouted, “Hold it!”

The L’Escorial carried a pistol in a shoulder holster where it would be out of the way aboard his vehicle, but he seemed to have forgotten he was armed. He didn’t look so much frightened as dumbfounded, like a man who’d met a talking dog.

Holding his weapon with the muzzle pointed but the stock in the crook of his arm, Coke walked over to the L’Escorial. More gunmen scampered into and out of sight through the gateway. Nobody else left the courtyard. The armored vehicle’s engine roared to life, then stalled with a clang as an inexperienced driver tried to operate it.

Coke lifted the muzzle of his 2-cm weapon. He reached into his purse with his left hand and removed a business card, which he stuck between the L’Escorial’s pistol and its holster.

The card read:

MAJOR MATTHEW COKE Frisian Defense Forces Representative

The chip embedded within the card would project his image and description through a hologram reader.

“Go on back inside,” Coke ordered. “Tell your leaders that we didn’t come here to have a problem. We’re here to do business on behalf of our principals, and that’ll be very good business for the side that strikes the deal. Do you understand?”

The L’Escorial stared at the shoulder weapon, not at the man holding it. His eyes were wild, and he gave no indication of having heard a thing Coke had said.

Coke sighed. There was such a thing as making a demonstration too effective.

He put his left hand on the gunman’s shoulder and rotated the fellow to face L’Escorial headquarters. “Go on,” he said. “Tell your bosses that this just involved a few individuals—it wasn’t important.”

Coke pushed the man gently. The L’Escorial stumbled, then broke into a shambling run around the gatepost and out of sight.

Coke turned, though it made his skin crawl to do so. Backing away from the red-painted structure would have sent a signal of weakness to the gunmen certainly watching through firing slits in the upper floor of the building.

The street was a smear of blood and pulped organs. It reflected the light of advertising signs. Coke’s bootheels shimmied as he stepped. He felt dizzy, and the stench of disemboweled corpses made him want to vomit.

A few of the bodies which the mines slammed against the courtyard wall were still alive, at least technically. Coke didn’t want to think about that. There was nothing he could do now if he wanted to. He wasn’t a medic.

He was a killer, no more and surely no less.

May the Lord give them rest; and may there be rest for the slayer, in his time.

The team, all but Barbour—visible through the open door at his console—waited outside Hathaway House for Coke’s return. Daun blinked in amazement and a certain distaste. Moden and Margulies,

the combat veterans, were grimly silent.

Johann Vierziger smiled.

“I gave a card to a citizen to deliver up the street, Matthew,” Vierziger said in his liquid voice. He gestured with an open hand toward where the Astra cordon had been. The mine blasts brought the blue-clad gunmen running a few steps toward the scene, then scurrying back into their compound to take stock. “Now what?”

“Now,” said Matthew Coke, “you await developments here, and I take care of some personal business.”

Coke stepped into the lobby of Hathaway House. He was shaking. He hadn’t done anything to burn off the adrenaline with which his body had pumped itself in preparation for fight or flight.

The Hathaways stood with arms entwined about one another’s shoulders and their other hands linked at waist level. Georg was blank-faced. Evie’s expression was one of slowly dawning joy.