Part 63 (1/2)

David held up his useless hand. ”What would you suggest I do? I can't handle my piece if my hand's useless.”

”You won't be able to handle it, anyway, once you get a cast on it,” Tom said.

David shrugged. ”So just kill them all now and be done with it.”

”If you'd done your job properly,” Tom said, ”they'd already be dead and we'd be finished with this thing.”

David sighed. ”Look, like I told Sheila, I did my best. They must have somehow gotten help to get free. I made sure that the tranquilizer drug you shot them with was strong enough to knock them out cold.”

Annja looked at Tom. ”You shot us last night?”

Tom smiled. ”I suppose I ought to come clean about that. Name's Tom Slackmore. Former sniper with the Marines. It's kind of a skill of mine.”

”That explains the gillie suit,” Annja said.

Tom raised an eyebrow. ”You know about gillie suits?”

”I met a Marines sniper once-a far better man that you'll ever be apparently-who taught me about what it meant to do his job. He had honor about him. Courage, too. Both of those traits seem absent in you.”

Tom laughed. ”Yeah, maybe you're right. I served my country and my country forgot about me. I got wounded in a little war no one ever wanted to know about, so they kicked me out and I wound up in this dump with nothing to show for all my hard work. You think honor's something special? It's not. At the end of the day, it doesn't get you a d.a.m.n thing, except a flag on your casket when you die.”

”Touching,” Annja said. ”I'm sure that will go over real well with the judge and jury when you're brought up on charges.”

Tom laughed louder. ”And who exactly is going to do that?”

Annja smiled. ”Day's not over yet.”

David grunted. ”This d.a.m.n thing's killing me.”

Tom glanced at Sheila. ”Get his gun.”

David looked at him. Tom smiled again. ”Relax. No sense in you having it if you can't even use it, right?”

”Yeah. Guess so.”

Sheila unholstered the automatic pistol and slid it into her waistband. She looked at Tom. ”What now?”

Tom motioned at David. ”Didn't I tell you this guy was going to be trouble?”

”We needed him. How else could we bring the stuff in?”

”Yeah, well, he's a liability now.”

David looked up. ”What did you say?”

”Uh-oh,” Annja said.

But her voice was drowned out by the sudden explosion in the dining room that took David clean off his feet as the shotgun barked once and cut him open at the midsection. He fell over backward and lay there in a spreading pool of blood.

Sheila gasped. ”You know, I used to like him. A lot. Now you killed him!”