Charlie Hardie 02: Hell and Gone by Duane Swierczynski

Author:Duane Swierczynski
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Crime
ISBN: 9781444707595
Publisher: Mulholland Books
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Hardie quickly pulled the tactical pen from his pocket—X-Ray slapped it away. The weapon flew out of Hardie’s hand, bounced off a wall, landed on the cement floor, and started spinning. Whiskey, who was closest, punched Hardie in the head, drawing blood. At almost the same time Yankee attacked from behind, kicking the cane out from beneath his hand. Hardie’s arms pinwheeled. He collapsed to the ground. Victor pinned Hardie to the floor with a meaty forearm.

“Thought you’d be different,” he said, a childlike bitterness in every word. “I really did, mate.”

“Listen to me, Victor…”

“No, listen to this—”

Upon that last syllable Whiskey smashed a boot into Hardie’s stomach, which immediately forced his body into a fetal position. Come on, breathe through it. Breathe. Breathe… Hardie stretched his fingers out, grasping at the floor as though he were trying to claw through the cement. Victor loosened his grip to let him respond to the pain; Hardie took the opportunity. He’d been hit in the stomach many times before; he knew how to contract the muscles to minimize the damage. And while Victor thought he was fighting for air and trying not to puke, Hardie marshaled all the strength he could into his right arm. And then he launched it up like a guided missile directly into the space between Victor’s testicles.

Victor’s entire body seemed to float up in the air a moment, just a few millimeters in orbit above the surface of the floor. His mouth curled into an O shape.

Hardie blinked the blood out of his eyes and saw that X-Ray and Yankee had their electrified batons out. The ends of them sparked and snapped, like portable Tesla coils.

From the floor, Victor spoke in a quavering voice that—although not a full octave above normal, had definitely changed in pitch.

“It was a test, you stupid bastard,” he spat. “After all that I told you, why couldn’t you believe me? You’ve chosen the wrong side. This is what she does. She gets inside your mind, twists everything around.”

Behind them, one of the guards spoke in a harsh language that Hardie didn’t recognize. The meaning, however, was clear:

We’re going to kick your ass unless you submit to us.

The other three guards moved in closer with their snapping, electrified sticks. One touch, Hardie realized, would probably cause him to wet his pants and forget who he was for a half hour. The object, then, would be to avoid being touched with the business ends of those sticks. And what then? If by some miracle he were able to overpower the guards here, and maybe knock out the Aussie cocksucker on the floor, what then? Where do you go? What do you do? Take the elevator up, so everyone else down here dies? Good guys and bad?

“Shit,” was all he could say.

Because this was his last stand.

The battle was brief yet violent. The electrified ends of the batons did touch Hardie, and more than once. He did not soil his pants, but he did scream, and punch and kick and try to repeat his trick with Victor—namely, aiming for private parts.

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