The Destroyer 045 - Spoils of War by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

Author:Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir [Murphy, Warren & Sapir, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Pulp Action
Publisher: PINNACLE BOOKS
Published: 2010-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Artemis Thwill awoke to the taste of bit­ter black cof­fee burn­ing his ton­sils.

“Up and at ‘em, Art,” Randy Noon­er said. “Two hours to show­time.”

Thwill tried to shake him­self out of his drugged stu­por. “My back,” he mur­mured, touch­ing the sore spot where the nee­dle had en­tered. “What did you do to me?”

“On­ly a mild seda­tive. It worked won­ders. The troops think the gov­ern­ment is out to kill you. See­ing you alive will give their morale a re­al shot in the arm.”

“Saman­tha,” he moaned.

‘Tin right here, hon­ey,” Saman­tha called from the floor, where she was count­ing a stack of green­backs. She licked her lips in ap­pre­ci­ation. “Gol­ly, Artemis, that faint­ing spell of yours pulled in al­most fifty thou­sand dol­lars. And we didn’t even have a ser­vice. Maybe we should make it a reg­ular part of the rou­tine.”

“No,” Artemis said, feel­ing the headache throb in his skull.

Randy Noon­er smiled. “No,” she re­peat­ed.

“That’s on­ly for spe­cial oc­ca­sions. Like when Artemis doesn’t feel like read­ing his speech­es the way they were writ­ten. You won’t make that mis­take again, will you, Artemis?” Her eyes grew cold ás she spoke ev­er more soft­ly. “Be­cause if you do, the next shot won’t be a tran­quil­iz­er. And cof­fee won’t wake you up. Do you un­der­stand?”

The very air in the room seemed to chill with her words. For an end­less mo­ment Üíé three fig­ures re­mained mo­tion­less in the room: Thwill ly­ing on the bed, his face blank with fear; Randy Noon­er stand­ing above him, her freez­ing stare ra­di­at­ing the truth of her words; and Saman­tha, sit­ting stock still on . the rug, the mon­ey sift­ing through her fin­gers like sand.

Saman­tha was first to speak. “Hey, guys, how about if I brew a fresh pot of cof­fee?” she of­fered bright­ly.

“There isn’t time,” Randy Noon­er said. She pulled a piece of pa­per from her jack­et. “Here’s your speech, Mr. God. Read it ex­act­ly as it’s writ­ten.” She walked slow­ly to the door, opened it, and turned around to face Artemis. “Or else be pre­pared to meet your co-​mak­er.” She laughed hu­mor­less­ly and was gone.

The sta­di­um at Fort Vadas­sar buzzed with the prepa­ra­tions of news­men, cam­era crews, and sound tech­ni­cians, in­ter­spersed with the teams of un­der-, cov­er FBL CIA, and army in­tel­li­gence agents sent to in­ves­ti­gate the press con­fer­ence. A clus­ter of re­porters gath­ered around Sen­ator Os­good Noon­er, who had ar­rived a few min­utes be­fore via he­li­copter. Re­mo spot­ted him and joined the group.

“How are you in­volved in all this, Sen­ator?” a young man with a mi­cro­phone asked, care­ful to keep his most pho­to­genic side to­ward the tele­vi­sion cam­eras.

“Son, ev­ery Amer­ican in­ter­est­ed in un­cov­er­ing the heinous de­vel­op­ments lead­ing to the gov­ern­ment’s atroc­ities at Forts Antwerth, Be­son, Tanne-​hill, and Wheel­er is in­volved. That’s why you boys in the press are so vi­tal to our coun­try. With­out you, the truth might nev­er be known, the per­pe­tra­tors of these mas­sacres nev­er un­cov­ered.”

“Sen­ator, how do you know the gov­ern­ment or­dered the killings?”

Noon­er looked thought­ful, pos­ing care­ful­ly in front of each of the net­work cam­eras. “Fel­low hu­man be­ings,” he said, “all I know is that four U.

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