Hawker stopped, straining to listen. From somewhere, some other room in the house, he could hear the woodwind refrain of classical music. The music was muted beyond recognition. But Hawker heard something else too. He heard someone calling out, someone calling softly, almost moaning:
“Help me.… Won’t someone help me? … Please help me.”
Hawker broke into a sprint. He slid around a corner in the darkest part of the corridor. There the stench was overpowering. He had to strain to see through the dusky light. The hall seemed to be built like a stable. There were five or six stalls behind the sliding doors and barred windows. Hawker stopped to listen again. The voice was silent, but now he sensed the presence of life in the darkness.
“Clare,” he called. “Clare, can you hear me?”
He heard the rustle of straw and the clank of chains off to his left. He put his hands around the bars and looked in. There was just enough light to see the dim shape of someone in the corner, someone on her knees, head bent, long hair hanging in a matted tangle.
“Clare! Clare, it’s me, Hawk.”
A girl’s voice answered mechanically, repeating a plea by rote: “Water, please. I need water. Queen Faith said we’re supposed to have water any time we want, and it’s not fair for you guards to torture us—” Her eyes widened. “Hey, hey—who are you? You’re not one of the guards. Who are you?”
Hawker locked his fists around the bars. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and he could see her better now.
It wasn’t Clare.
The girl might have been sixteen. She had stringy blond hair and a haggard face that clearly would have been beautiful had she been cleaned up. She wore only a soiled skirt, no blouse, and straw and dirt had matted onto her breasts. In the darkness, she looked like some pathetic creature from the Middle Ages.
Whispering, Hawker tried to calm her. “You’re right, I’m not a guard. I’m a friend. I’m going to help you get out of here. But you’re going to have to help me too.” Hawker reached his hand through the bars. “What’s your name?”
The girl stood and looked at the outstretched hand suspiciously. She took another step back. “My name is Elizabeth. Elizabeth Harrington.”
Hawker recognized the name from his list of kidnap victims. He tried to remember some of the data. She was one of the dozen or so who had been snatched off the streets of the Marlow West suburb. She was a high-school girl, missing for nearly eight months now.
Even most of her family assumed she was dead.
“My name’s James, Elizabeth. I’m going to help you escape. You have to trust me.”
Hawker was aware of movement in the adjoining stalls now. Pale, grim, disembodied faces appeared at the bars to the left of him, to the right and behind him. Most of them were women and girls. A couple looked to be adolescent boys. They all had the same haggard, feral expression on their faces. He had seen that look before. It took him a moment to match it in his memory bank. It was the expression he had seen on the faces of exotic animals in the cheap, low-budget circuses. It was the look of the wild creature that has been captured, mistreated, ill fed, and beaten until it is totally, unthinkingly submissive.
“She’ll kill us if we try to escape,” one of the women said.
“Or worse,” added another. “He’s a crazy man. Don’t listen to him. He’s just going to get us all in trouble.”
“I’m not crazy, and you’re not going to be hurt—I promise,” Hawker said loud enough for them all to hear. “But you have to help me. I can’t drag you out of here.”
“I’ll help. I’m willing to try.” Elizabeth Harrington stood just on the other side of the bars from him now. Half naked, dirty, she was a pathetic sight … except for the eyes. Hawker saw she had large, childlike brown eyes that now glowed with a hatred he’d never expected to see in a girl her age.
“Good,” he said, smiling at her. “All I needed was one of you, Elizabeth. If you go, the rest of them will follow.”
She reached up tremulously and touched his hand. “I’ll go. I’ll do anything you ask. Just get me out of here. Just get me home.”
“I will, Elizabeth. I promise. But first, you have to tell me about this place. Where are the guards? Where do they stay? Where do they keep the weapons? Any little thing you can tell me might help.”
She didn’t know much, unfortunately. When they were being used in porno films, Queen Faith kept them drugged. And when they weren’t being used, they were kept in this dungeon. But the girl told him what little she did know, and then the others began to help out, adding bits and pieces of information. Sometimes the male guards would sneak down without permission and haul one of the women or young boys upstairs for their own sexual entertainment. Most of Hawker’s information came from the captives who had been used in this way. Because the guards couldn’t afford to be seen, the girls they chose got to see more of the house than any of the others. One of the women told a weird story of how a guard had taken her through a trapdoor and down a secret passageway.
“The house is full of them,” she cautioned. “Be careful. You never know when someone is watching you.”
Hawker ignored her warning as the ravings of a woman who had been pushed beyond the limits of sanity.
Before he turned to go, he asked the girl, “I think a friend of mine is here somewhere. A woman. Her name is Claramae Riddock. Have you seen her? Do any of you know anything about her?”
“How long has she been missing?”
“Not long. Just tonight, I think. But I don’t know for sure. They knocked me out.”
The girl’s eyes were steely. “They haven’t brought her here, James. Not yet, anyway. Not yet.” There was something in her tone that Hawker found chilling.
One of the other women verbalized the horror the girl had left unsaid. “The new girls are given very special treatment. The fat bitch entertains them. She takes them to her nasty little chamber and has her nasty fat way with them, playing that weird churchy music all the while. We’ve all been there, friend. All of us.”
Elizabeth hugged her arms to her chest and said with emotion, “If you care anything at all about your friend, find her quick. Of all the things they’ve done to me, being with her was the worst; that was the most … degrading thing that has ever happened to me. Being alone with that animal is worse than hell, worse than death—”
“Where? What room, Elizabeth? Tell me.”
“I don’t know. One of the lower floors. Maybe even down here someplace. It’s like a laboratory. They do some of the filming there.”
“Do any of you know where that room is?” Hawker demanded, his voice louder than he wanted it to be.
None of them did.
“Look for her, James,” the girl insisted. “Look for her and don’t stop looking until you find her—”
James Hawker had already disappeared down the dark corridor.
NINETEEN
Following the vague directions given to him by the girls, Hawker found the exit door. The door was up a short bank of steps—a great wooden portal between the stone walls—and once again Hawker had the impression he was in some medieval castle.
Hawker rapped sharply at the door then stepped back into the shadows. In a few seconds, a man appeared at the small barred grate and peered through. Hawker watched him scowl. There was the rattle of keys and the door creaked open.
Hawker slid in behind the door.
The guard leaned into the darkness, his head swinging back and forth. He held a heavy-caliber revolver in his hand.
Hawker waited. He couldn’t afford to make any mistakes now.
The guard took a step down, then another. He lifted the revolver up and scanned the darkness.
Hawker struck. He took the guard’s wrist in his left hand and brought his right forearm crashing down on the guard’s elbow.
The revolver went clinking and clanking down the steps.
The man’s mouth opened to scream, but Hawker slammed his throat shut with a hard right, th
en followed it with a left to the kidneys.
The guard whoofed and gagged and tumbled headfirst down the stairs.
Hawker ran after him. He wanted there to be no doubt who got to the revolver first.
It was no contest.
The guard belly-slapped to the bottom, gave a groan, moved his broken right arm feebly, then lay still.
Hawker picked up the handgun. It was a .44-caliber Blackhawk, a real man-stopper. He was damn glad the guard never had an opportunity to take a shot at him. He punched out the cylinder. Even the hammer chamber had been loaded.
Hawker snapped the cylinder back into place and listened intently for the sound of men running and the harried voices that would announce the news of his escape.
But he heard nothing.
Quickly, then, he bent over the guard and checked his pockets. He was a man about Hawker’s age, in his mid-thirties, and he smelled sourly of tobacco and alcohol. He carried two sets of keys: one on the chain snapped to his belt, another on an elaborate ring.
Hawker took both sets. A wedge of light spilled down the stairs from the first floor. Hawker was anxious to get back to the dungeon and release the women so he could continue his search for Clare. But it would be stupid to leave the cellar door open. It would invite investigation by any guard who happened to be passing by.
Hawker trotted up the stairs, reached for the door—and dove for cover just as a deafening shotgun blast splintered the wood above his head. Hawker peeked around the stone wall. Two men were trotting toward him. The man in the lead carried the shotgun: one of the police force’s Winchester Model 97’s. The other guard carried one of the small, folding-stock submachine guns—it looked like an Uzi.
Hawker ducked back behind the stone wall. If that was any sample of the firepower Queen Faith’s people used, he was in trouble. As powerful as the Blackhawk was, it just couldn’t compete with the fast-volume long guns.
He had to disarm them and disarm them fast. If the other guards had time to assemble, his cause would be lost … right along with the women locked below and the life of the woman he was growing to love, Clare Riddock.
The vigilante cocked the Ruger Blackhawk and jumped from cover, firing carefully but with speed. The noise of the .44 made his ears ring, and the heavy weapon jumped in his hands as the guard with the shotgun suddenly exploded backward as if he had been hit in midstride by a baseball bat. The guard with the Uzi lowered his weapon to hip level to fire, but was spun savagely as the top portion of his left shoulder was blown away.
The guard screamed wildly, kicking at the floor. Already suffering from shock, his face drained to a sickening gray as the blood pooled beneath him.
The other guard lay nearly still, moved only by the natural escape of gases and fluids from his body. He was dead.
Hawker looked both ways, like a kid at a dangerous intersection, then hustled out of the cellar to where the two dead men lay. It gave him his first look at the house: one of those massive, gothic, turn-of-the-century mansions built before the days of big taxes and cardboard joists. A balcony crossed the inside wall and a gargantuan crystal chandelier was suspended from the ceiling. The floors were polished wood, segmented by Oriental carpets and ornate furniture. The couches and chairs had scrolled arms and feet. The fireplace was as wide as a small room. A fire roared between brass andirons, illuminating a portrait over the mantel: an oil painting of a hugely fat woman dressed like an Old West saloon matron. The woman’s expression stopped Hawker cold for a moment. The thin lips and lardish jaw were drawn into a chilling smile of contempt. Her eyes were tiny, pale, piggish. The artist had communicated a sense of loathing, a sense of disgust for his subject, and Hawker wondered if Queen Faith hadn’t wanted to affect him just that way.
For it was certainly Queen Faith. It could have been no one else.
Hawker knelt over one of the corpses and retrieved the Uzi. He checked the clip. It was full. He found two spares in the dead man’s pocket and took them both. He hesitated, then stooped to pick up the shotgun. He had no idea how much firepower he would need, but it was better to carry too much.
He started to stand, then hesitated. He recognized the second man. It was Bobby, one of the three greasers who had attacked them in the parking lot.
Now there was only one left alive.
Hawker pumped another round into the chamber of the big Winchester.
The night was still young … and he could hear the heavy footfall of men running in the hallway above. Hawker retreated to the heavy cellar door and waited.
There were four of them. One was still trying to pull on a shirt; they had been in bed. The first three carried heavy handguns; the fourth—the big greaser who had beaten Hawker unconscious—carried another Uzi.
Putting down the 12-gauge and picking up the Uzi, Hawker watched as they reacted to the corpses. They shouted, they swore, they sprinted for the stairs.
The vigilante waited until they were halfway down, then brought the Uzi to bead. Hawker preferred the American-made Ingram submachine gun. It was much lighter and had double the cyclic rate. But he had used the little Israeli weapon before and knew that inventor Uziel Gal’s Uzi had not only been an ordnance breakthrough back in the forties, but it was also dependable and lethal as hell. With his thumb, he pressed to make sure it was on full automatic. Then he opened fire.
The first two men spun and vaulted as if dismounting a trampoline. They landed on the marble steps with bone-crushing impact and tumbled the rest of the way down.
The big greaser dove bellyfirst down the steps in a desperate effort to avoid the slugs while the fourth man opened fire with his big handgun. Wood splintered beside Hawker’s head, but he held fast and swung the muzzle of the Uzi in a spraying motion. The revolver flew from the man’s hand as he was slammed against the staircase wall, his contorted form interrupting the uneven line of black bullet holes in the white plaster. The man’s mouth opened as if to speak, but all that materialized was a frothy gush of blood.
He writhed down the wall, dead.
That left only one.
The man who had beaten Hawker was hidden near the fireplace behind a massive mahogany sideboard. Hawker punched out the empty clip and slid a fresh one in, waiting. He pushed the wooden door completely open. It made a creaking sound—a sound answered by a two-second burst of gunfire that all but severed the door.
Hidden safely within the confines of the cellarway, Hawker waited another minute, then pushed the door wide again.
The burst of fire from behind the sideboard was shorter this time, and Hawker hoped he knew why: At ten rounds per second, a thirty-two-round clip didn’t last long.
He listened for the metallic clank of the empty clip hitting the floor, but heard nothing.
Hawker poked his head around the corner to see the big greaser crawling desperately toward a handgun one of the dead men had dropped. His left arm was bleeding and his swarthy face was covered with sweat.
The vigilante ex-cop stepped out carrying the Uzi in his left hand and the Winchester 12-gauge in his right. He walked calmly toward the fallen man and didn’t change his cadence even when the greaser lunged for the handgun, picked it up, and got shakily to his feet. As he raised the revolver to fire, Hawker raised the Winchester and the Uzi in chorus. “Go ahead,” he said, his voice deadly calm. “Take your shot. But you’d better make it good, because if you hit me anyplace but square between the eyes, I’m going to blow your head right off.”
The greaser stood directly in front of the fireplace. Because the roaring flames held him in silhouette, Hawker couldn’t see his eyes. But he saw the gun waver, and he heard the tremble of the man’s voice. It told the vigilante all he needed to know.
“Look,” the greaser said, “I’ve got nothing against you. I was just doing my job. I swear.” He tried to laugh, but his laughter sounded like grating glass. “Hell, we’d probably be buddies if we met in a bar or someplace like that.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, boy.”
/> “What I’m saying,” the man went on, his voice touched with desperation, “is that you got no reason to kill me. Hell, you want Queen Faith? You want the fat bitch? She’s yours. I’ll tell you exactly where to find her—her and your girlfriend.”
Hawker’s eyes were riveted to the revolver in the man’s right hand. “I’m listening,” he said. “Keep talking.”
“Not until you put those guns away, man. You think I’m dumb? Here, we’ll both put our guns down at the same time—” He made a motion as if to discard the revolver, but Hawker was ready when the greaser’s knees bent and the gun came up to fire. He squeezed the triggers of the Uzi and the 12-gauge simultaneously, and the greaser was catapulted straight back into the fireplace. He screamed hideously, but somehow found the strength to climb out again, his clothes ablaze. Hawker watched without emotion as the dying man sprinted into the heavy draperies that covered one wall and clawed at them until the curtain rods gave. The draperies fell, and they, too, burst into flame.
The fire grew brighter. It made a nauseating crackling sound.
James Hawker knew the dry wood of the walls and the floor would go next. He turned back to the cellar, running.…
TWENTY
As Hawker retraced his steps through the massive cellar, something one of the women captives had said kept hammering at his brain … something about the music Queen Faith played when she was alone with a new girl. “Weird churchy music” was the way she had described it.
Hawker had heard music. Classical music that some might consider “churchy.” He had heard it when he’d first climbed out of the vat.
Clare Riddock was there someplace. There in the cellar. Hawker felt a wave of desperation take him. He had to find her, damn it … and something told him he had to find her soon.
Hawker quickened his pace.
At the stable area where the captives were imprisoned, Hawker searched the wall until he found the switch to the bare overhead bulb. It threw a garish light over the cells. Hawker could see the stalls were in a kind of stone tunnelway, and the cells were covered with soiled straw and human fecal material.
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