wrong people. She forced herself to wait.
When the first camp whore screamed, Sofia pivoted toward her, but a sledge silenced the woman before she could fire. The woman's boyfriend struggled to rise off the couch, a bearded, shaggy-haired, potbellied maggot with a red bandanna tied over his head. Ben and the other Mormons were distracted by gunfire from the front of the Hy Top.
Sofia brought the crosshairs of her Remington up to the bandanna boy's unibrow, took a deep breath, and let it out.
As she exhaled, she kept the muzzle of the gun on target until her finger completed the pull of the trigger. Bucking in her arms, the rifle put a single round through the agent's unibrow, disintegrating the top half of his skull in a spectacular shower of bloody gruel, dropping the corpse back onto the couch. She felt a surge of anger and… something else. It was a feeling she did not recognize, but it was powerful. No, it was… power itself. She felt her power over the man whom she had shot, whose life she had taken. It was a good feeling. Sofia forced herself to work the bolt mechanically, spitting out the spent.30-06 casing and sliding a fresh round into the chamber. The Mormon men, having discarded their sledgehammers for their M16s, took cover behind the couch and exchanged fire with those who tried to run back into the Hy Top.
Sofia tracked two more agents sprinting for the door, dispatching one with a clean torso shot that spun him off his feet and into a dry wall facade with a crash that shook the entire front of the club building. The other man she drilled in the ass, slowing him down long enough for the Mormons to pour a stream of tracer fire into his back. So intense was the fire that it disassembled him from the hip to shoulder height.
She had expected this to be hard, yet she felt nothing but a deep sense of satisfaction as she scanned the windows of the Hy Top for more targets.
In fact, Sofia was ashamed to admit as she dispatched another road agent firing from a second floor window, it was kind of fun. Miguel kept up the banter as two more women emerged from the dark room. He had seen one of them earlier while scouting the building, but the other was unfamiliar, and he quickly noted that Adam did not recognize her, either. Another captive, then, most likely. She did not have the hardened aspect of the longtime camp whores, appearing every bit as traumatized as the Mormon ladies. Miguel moved into the locked bunkhouse and drew his sawed-off shotgun, keeping the internal door covered while Adam rousted the rest of the women out of there.
Sure enough, within a minute he heard somebody scrabbling at the lock on the other side, and within seconds the door flew inward and a road agent stood there, still groggy and half naked. He registered the presence of Miguel, and his bleary eyes had just enough time to go wide as they took in the huge, yawning muzzle of the Lupara, before the cowboy pulled the trigger and all but cut him in two. In the stark white flash of the muzzle blast Miguel caught a glimpse of a corridor behind the agent, stacked with boxes. The man's body jackknifed around the molten comet of lead shot and flew backward, slamming into a tower of crates that toppled to the floor with the crashing tinkle of broken glass. Immediately Miguel smelled alcohol.
'Out now!' he roared, no longer concerned with stealth. He holstered the Lupara, with one chamber still loaded, and pointed his Winchester down the end of the hallway. 'Is that all of them, Adam? Are all of your women out?'
The uproar of the gunfight was now so great, so overwhelming, that he wondered if he had missed the boy's reply, but turning around, he saw he had not. Adam was frantically checking and rechecking his small frightened group of women, shaking his head ever more frantically.
'No! No!' he cried helplessly.
'Adam,' Pieraro yelled. 'How many are missing?'
'It's Sally, Mister Pieraro. Sally Gray.' And the raw anguish in his voice told Miguel that this Sally Gray was not just another captive. She was someone special to the boy.
Sofia would be disappointed.
'Take them out the way we came in,' he ordered. 'Run and do not stop to look back or wait. We shall meet up again at the clearing. Go. Go! I will find your Sally.'
'Sir!' called out the woman he knew as Jenny. 'I think she was in the storeroom. One of those men took her there not fifteen minutes ago.'
'Thank you, Jenny. Now go!'
He waved them off with a fierce gesture and took a moment to compose himself. Battle raged elsewhere in the building, a savage din of staccato weapons fire. Machine guns. Single shots. Men and women crying in fear and outrage. He checked the load on his Winchester. It was still good. He had not yet fired a shot with it. Crossing himself and imploring the help of the Blessed Virgin, he swallowed his fear, which was considerable, and swung into the hallway, covering its length with his rifle. He stepped over the ruptured body of the man he had slain and hastened down the corridor. It was poorly lit, with only a few shafts of lamplight poking in through gaps in the walls to illuminate his way. A door stood locked halfway up, and he considered how best to approach it for all of half a second before kicking it in and jumping out of the way of any return fire. None came, which was a small disappointment. He had been hoping not to have to push farther into the club. Another check of the room confirmed that it was little more than a closet filled with cleaning implements: brooms, mops, buckets, and so on.
Miguel ducked from the knees as a burst of gunfire suddenly tore through the wooden slats of the wall just ahead of him, allowing more light to spill through.
His legs quivering from the adrenaline rush, he cautiously edged up to the hole and took a peek. He seemed to be looking into what must have been the main bar area. It was chaos in there, with a small fire burning out of control in one corner where an oil lamp had been smashed or shot to pieces and had spilled its fuel onto the wooden floor, where spilled liquor and bedclothes had quickly caught alight. Bodies lay everywhere, some still, some twitching or trying to drag themselves away from the carnage, But he also counted at least five road agents still standing and able to give a good accounting for themselves. They were all hunkered down at the front of the building, firing out into the street. The shots that punched through the wall in front of him must have come from Aronson's men out there.
Miguel furrowed his brow as he took in the scene.
There was no sign of any woman who might be Sally Gray. Jenny had said she was in a storeroom, but there was no such area off this corridor. He could see three camp whores from his vantage point, easily discerned by their sluttish mode of dress. Two were dead, and one was firing a carbine out into the street. Indeed, the agents were putting out such a volume of fire that he had to worry about Aronson and the others. Had they found cover before coming under fire?
How many were alive?
Was it even worth continuing the search for Miss Gray? Papa should be out of there by now, Sofia thought. She had given up any pretense of hiding at the edge of the battle, crossing the street a block up from the Hy Top. Rifle fire popped around her, but she did not pay it any mind. The adrenaline was flowing through her, giving her a rush that was far more intense than the flush of deer hunting. She worked around to the back of the Hy Top.
'Don't shoot me, please!'
The Mormon girl, about the same age as Sofia, fell down in front of her. She ran up to the young woman and knelt down. Adam caught up with them seconds later, his weapon leveled on Sofia until realization took hold.
'Holy hell, Sofia! Your father is going to be furious with you,' he said.
'Where is he?' she asked. 'He should be out by now.'
'Still in the Hy Top,' Adam said, bringing her up to speed.
'Anything left in that rifle?' she asked, pointing at the M16 Adam carried.
'Sure,' he said. 'I've not even fired it yet.'
'Give it to me,' she said.
'I think not,' he said, trying to summon up all the dignity his few months of added maturity might lend him- without any luck. 'Your father-'
Adam didn't complete the sentence. She butt swiped him across the face with the flat of her rifle stock. It made a pretty good club.
'Here.' Sofia handed her Remington to the crying woman. 'What's your name?'
'Jenny,' she said.
'I'm not going to kill you. Do you know how to use this?'
Jenny nodded.
