basement and waved his hand. A human form tumbled down the steps, bouncing sickeningly on the steps. Lois Peters. Or what was left of her.
The woman was naked. Her toenails and fingernails had been ripped from her. Her fingers had been broken. Her feet had been burned black-lumps of seared meat. Her teeth had been savagely pulled out. Her breasts had been mutilated. Peggy looked at the woman’s pubic area and was sick at the sight. Lois looked as though she had been raped by some sort of huge monster. Blood streaked her thighs.
She was dead.
Hartline’s eyes were cold and savage-looking. The smile hadn’t left his lips. “Before I’m through with you, sweetmeat, you’ll be begging me to go ahead and kill you.”
Peggy rose to her full height. She spat in Hartline’s face. “I’ll never beg to you, you son of a bitch.”
“Oh, I think you will, pretty thing. I really think you will.”
Two years before, Sam Hartline and his men, backed by FBI agents with warrants charging several newspeople with treason for refusing to cooperate with the congressional mandate to submit all news copy for review and censorship before airing, entered the Richmond offices of NBC. This was to be the test network.
Hartline, carrying an M-10 SMG, shoved the elderly security guard away from the doors, knocking the man sprawling, and marched into the executive offices. Hartline jerked one startled VP of programming to his feet and hit him in the mouth with a leather-gloved right fist. The man slammed against a chair and fell stunned to the floor.
A news commentator rushed into the room. “Here now,” he shouted, ““feu can’t do that.”
One of Hartline’s men socked the man with the butt of his AK. The man’s jaw popped like a firecracker. He was unconscious before he hit the carpet, blood pouring from the sudden gaps in his teeth.
“Where is the bureau chief?” Hartline said. “Or whatever you call the boss. Get him in here, pronto.”
A badly shaken young secretary stammered, “It isn’t a him-it’s a her. Ms. Olivier.”
“Well, now.” Hartline smiled. “That’s even better. Get her for me, will you, darling?”
Before the secretary could turn, a voice, calm and controlled, spoke from the hall. “What is the meaning of this?”
Hartline lifted his eyes, meeting the furious gaze of Sabra Olivier. He let his eyes drift over her, from her eyes to her ankles and back up again. She felt as if she had been violated. “You’re kind of a young cunt to be in charge of all this, aren’t you, honey?” he asked.
“Get out!” Sabra ordered.
The words had just left her mouth when Hartline’s open palm popped against her jaw, staggering her. She stumbled against the door frame, grabbing at the doorknob for support.
“Dear,” Hartline said, “you do not order me about. I will tell you what I want, then you will see to it that my orders are carried out. Is that clear?”
“You’re Sam Hartline,” Sabra said, straightening up, meeting him squarely, no backup in her. “Vice President Lowry’s pet dog.”
Hartline never lost his cold smile. He faced the woman, again taking in her physical charms: black hair, carefully streaked with gray; dark olive complexion; black eyes, now shimmering with anger; nice figure; long legs.
Sabra turned to a man. “Call the police,” she told him.
Hartline laughed at her. “Honey, we are the police.”
Sabra paled slightly.
The man on the floor groaned, trying to sit up, one hand holding his broken and swelling jaw.
“Get him out of here,” Hartline ordered. “Toss him in the lobby and have that old goat down there call for an ambulance to come get him.” He looked at Sabra.
“We can do this easy or hard, lady, it’s all up to you.”
“What do you want?”
“For you to cooperate with the government censorship order. And no more taking the Rebels’ side in this insurrection.”
“No way I’ll submit to censorship,” Sabra said.
“Then you want it hard,” Hartline said, the double meaning not lost on the woman, as he knew it would not be.
Her dark eyes murdered the mercenary a dozen times in a split-second. Her smile was as cold as his. “I never heard of anyone dying from it, Hartline.”
“Oh, I have, Sabra baby. I have.”
Hours later, Sabra Olivier’s spirit shattered. “All right,” she said to Hartline. “Stop it-stop your men. I’ll cooperate.”
The moaning and the screaming of her female employees had finally broken her reserve. As Hartline had known it would. And he had not touched Ms. Olivier-yet.
The students at the University of Virginia, after hearing of the takeover of the NBC offices and studios in Richmond, had marched in protest. But this was not the 1960’s and 70’s, with constitutional guarantees protecting civil disobedience. Now all police were federalized, and the FBI was nothing like that old and solid organization of the past.
The students were met with live ammunition and snarling dogs. Many were killed. Hundreds more were arrested, and in the process, beaten bloody. VP Lowry ordered the university closed.
Hartline smiled and nodded to a man standing by the door to the office. Within seconds, the screaming and sobbing ceased.
“You see.” Hartline smiled at her. “That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”
If looks could kill.
Sabra watched, a curious look in her eyes, as a mini-cam was brought into her office, carried by an agent. She did not understand the smile on Hartline’s lips.
Hartline pointed to a TV set behind her desk. “Turn it on,” he told her.
A naked man appeared on the screen. One of her anchormen. She knew with a sudden start this was live action, not taped. “What is the meaning of this?” she demanded. “I told you I’d cooperate.”
“Insurance, Sabra baby,” Hartline replied. He picked up a phone from her desk and punched a button. “Do it,” he ordered. He looked at Sabra. “Watch, darling.”
She swung reluctant eyes toward the screen. A cattle prod touched the man’s naked buttocks. His scream chilled her. The prod touched his thigh, then his genitals.
“Stop it!” Sabra shouted.
The man screamed and ground his teeth in pain. Several teeth broke off, bloodying his mouth.
“Goddamn you, Hartline!” Sabra yelled. “Stop it.”
“You’ll cooperate with us?”
“I said I would, Hartline.”
“Anything I say?” “Yes!”
“I have your son ready to perform for us. Would you like to see that?” “Goddamn you!”
Hartline laughed. He spoke to the mini-cam operator. “Start rolling it.” He unzipped his pants. His flaccid penis hung out. “Come here, Sabra baby. This one is for VP Lowry. And if you ever fail to obey an order, if you ever let any copy air without government approval, this tape gets played-in its entirety-on the six o’clock news.”
“You goddamn low-life, miserable son of a bitch!” Sabra cursed him.
“Strip, baby. Take it all off while facing the camera. Let’s give Lowry a really good show. That’s it. Play with your puss a little bit. Good, good, now you’re getting into the spirit of things.”
Naked and embarrassed and trembling with anger, Sabra faced the mercenary.
He hefted his penis. “In case you have it in mind to take a bite of me, Sabra baby, bear in mind your son is now bent over a table just down the hall. You get kinky with me, he gets gang-shagged. Understand?”
She nodded.
“Kneel down here, baby. On your pretty dimpled knees. You know what to do. You probably sucked cocks getting to where you are in the network anyway.”
She took him as the camera recorded it all.
Just as Hartline climaxed, the semen splattering the woman’s face, Hartline laughed. “It’s just so fucking
