The Sam Gunn Omnibus (89 page)

Beneath my anger at Sam I was
pretty scared. These Daughters of the Mother looked like religious fanatics to
me, the kind who were willing to die for their cause—and therefore perfectly
willing to kill anybody else for their cause. They were out to get Sam, and
they had grabbed me and the other two as well. We were hostages. Bargaining
chips for the inevitable moment when the Peacekeepers came at them with
everything in their arsenal.

And Sam was spending his time
talking to Josella, trying to ease her fears, trying to impress her with his
own courage.

“Don’t worry,” he told her. “It’s me
they want. They’ll let you and the others loose as soon as they turn me over to
their leader, whoever that might be.”

And the others.
I seethed. As far as
Sam was concerned, I was just one of the others. Josella was the one he was
interested in, tall and willowy and elegant. I was just a sawed-off runt with
as much glamour as a fire hydrant, and pretty much the same figure.

Dawn was just starting to tinge the
sky when we started to descend. I had been watching out the window during the
flight, trying to puzzle out where we were heading from the position of the moon
and the few stars I could see. Eastward, I was pretty certain. East and south.
That was the best I could determine.

As the plane slowed down for its
vertical landing, I mentally checked out the possibilities. East and south for
six hours or so could put us somewhere in the Mediterranean. Italy, Spain—or
North Africa.

“Where in the world have they taken
us?” I half-whispered, more to myself than anyone who might answer me.

“Transylvania,” Sam answered.

I
gave him a killer
stare. “This is no time to be funny.”

“Look at my wristwatch,” he
whispered back at me, totally serious.

I
ts
face showed latitude and longitude coordinates in digital readout. Sam pressed
one of the studs on the watch’s outer rim, and the readout spelled
Rumania
.
Another touch of the stud:
Transylvania
.
Another:
nearest major city, Varsag.

I
showed him my
wristwatch. “It’s got an ultrahigh-frequency transponder in it. The
Peacekeepers have been tracking us ever since we left The Hague. I hope.”

Sam nodded glumly. “These
Mother-lovers aren’t afraid of the Peacekeepers as long as they’ve got you for
a hostage.”

“There’s going to be a showdown,
sooner or later,” I said.

Just then the plane touched down
with a thump.

“Welcome,” said Sam, in a Hollywood
vampire accent, “to Castle Dracula.”

It wasn’t a castle that they took
us to. It was a mine shaft.

Lord knows how long it had been
abandoned. The elevator didn’t work; we had to climb down, single file, on
rickety wooden steps that creaked and shook with every step we took. And it was
dark
down there. And cold, the kind of damp cold that chills you to the bone. I kept
glancing up at the dwindling little slice of blue sky as the Daughters coaxed
us with their gun muzzles down those groaning, shuddering stairs all the way to
the very bottom.

There were some dim lanterns
hanging from the rough stone ceiling of the bottom gallery. We walked along in
gloomy silence until we came to a steel door
.
It took two of the Daughters to swing it open.

The bright light made my eyes
water. They pushed us into a chamber that had been turned into a rough-hewn
office of sorts. At least it was warm. A big, beefy redheaded woman sat
scowling at us from behind a steel desk.

“You can take their wristwatches
from then now,” she said to the blonde. Then she smiled at the surprise on my
face. “Yes, Justice Meyers, we know all about your transponders and positioning
indicators. We’re not fools.”

Sam stepped forward. “All right,
you’re a bunch of geniuses. You’ve captured the most-wanted man on Earth—me.
Now you can let the others go and the Peacekeepers won’t bother you.”

“You think not?” the redhead asked,
suspiciously.

“Of course not!” Sam smiled his
sincerest smile. “Their job is to protect Senator Meyers, who’s a judge on the
World Court. They don’t give a damn about me.”

“You’re the blasphemer, Sam Gunn?”

“I’ve done a lot of things in a
long and eventful life,” Sam said, still smiling, “but blasphemy isn’t one of
them.”

“You don’t think that what you’ve
done is blasphemy?” The redhead’s voice rose ominously. I realized that her
temper was just as fiery as her hair.

“I’ve always treated God with
respect,” Sam insisted. “I respect Her so much that I expect Her to honor her
debts. Unfortunately, the man in the Vatican who claims to be Her special
representative doesn’t think She has any sense of responsibility.”

“The man in the Vatican.” The
redhead’s lips curled into a sneer. “What does he know of the Mother?”

“That’s what I say,” Sam agreed
fervently. “That’s why I’m suing him, really.”

For a moment the redhead almost
bought it. She looked at Sam with eyes that were almost admiring. Then her
expression hardened. “You
are
a conniving little
sneak, aren’t you?”

Sam frowned at her. “Little. Is
everybody in the world worried about my height?”

“And fast with your tongue, too,”
the redhead went on. “I think that’s the first part of you that we’ll cut off.”
Then she smiled viciously. “But only the first part.”

Sam swallowed hard, but recovered
his wits almost immediately. “Okay, okay. But let the others go. They can’t
hurt you and if you let them go the Peacekeepers will get out of your hair.”

“Liar.”

“Me?” Sam protested.

The redhead got to her feet. She
was huge, built like a football player. She started to say something but the words
froze in her throat. Her gaze shifted from Sam to the door behind us.

I
turned my head
and saw half a dozen men in khaki uniforms, laser rifles in their hands. The
Peacekeepers, I thought, then instantly realized that their uniforms weren’t
right.

“Thank you so much for bringing
this devil’s spawn to our hands,” said one of the men. He was tall and slim,
with a trim mustache and an olive complexion.

“Who
in hell are you?” the redhead demanded.

“We
are the Warriors of the Faith, and we have come to take this son of a dog to
his just reward.”

“Gee,
I’m so popular,” Sam said.

“He’s
ours!” bellowed the redhead. “We snatched him from The Hague.”

“And
we are taking him from you. It is our holy mission to attend to this pig.”

“You
can’t!” the redhead insisted. “I won’t let you!”

“We’ll
send you a videotape of his execution,” said the leader of the Warriors.

“No,
no!
We’ve
got to kill him!”

“I
am so sorry to disagree, but it is our sacred duty to execute him. If we must
kill you also, that is the will of God.”

They
argued for half an hour or more, but the Warriors outnumbered and outgunned the
Daughters. So we were marched out of that underground office, down the mine
gallery and through another set of steel doors that looked an awful lot like
the hatches of airlocks.

The
underground corridors we walked through didn’t look like parts of a mine
anymore. The walls were smoothly finished and lined with modern doors that had
numbers on them, like a hotel’s rooms.

Sam
nodded knowingly as we tramped along under the watchful eyes of the six
Warriors.

“This
is the old shelter complex for the top Rumanian government officials,” he told
me as we walked. “From back in the Cold War days, when they were afraid of
nuclear attack.”

“But
that was almost a century ago,” Josella said.

Sam
answered, “Yeah, but the president of Rumania and his cronies kept the complex
going for years afterward. Sort of an underground pleasure dome for the big
shots in the government. Wasn’t discovered by their taxpayers until one of the
bureaucrats fell in love with one of the call girls and spilled the beans to
the media so he could run off with her.”

“How
do you know?” I asked him.

“The
happy couple works for me up in Selene City. He’s my chief bookkeeper now and
she supervises guest services at the hotel.”

“What
kind of hotel are you running up there in Selene?” Greg asked.

Sam
answered his question with a grin. Then he turned back to me and said, “This
complex has several exits, all connected to old mine shafts.”

Lowering my voice, I asked, “Can we
get away from these Warriors and get out of here?”

Sam made a small shrug. “There’s
six of them and they’ve all got guns. All we’ve got is trickery and deceit.”

“So what—”

“When I say ‘beans,’“ Sam
whispered, “shut your eyes tight, stop walking, and count to ten slowly.”

“Why...?”

“Tell Greg,” he said. Then he edged
away from me to whisper in Josella’s ear. I felt my face burning.

“What are you saying?” one of the
Warriors demanded.

Sam put on a leering grin. “I’m
asking her if she’s willing to grant the condemned man his last request.”

The Warrior laughed. “We have
requests to make also.”

“Fool!” their leader snapped. “We
are consecrated to the Faith. We have foresworn the comforts of women.”

“Only until we have executed the
dog.”

“Yes,” chimed another Warrior. “Once
the pig is slain, we are free of our vows.”

A third added, “Then we can have
the prisoners.” He smiled at Greg.

“Now wait,” Sam said. He stopped
walking. “Let me get one thing straight. Am I supposed to be a pig or a dog?”

The leader stepped up to him. “You
are a pig, a dog, and a piece of camel shit.”

The man loomed a good foot over Sam’s
stubby form. Sam shrugged good-naturedly and said, “I guess you’re entitled to
your opinion.”

“Now walk,” said the leader.

“Why should I?” Sam stuffed his
hands into the pockets of his slacks.

A slow smile wormed across the
leader’s lean face. “Because if you don’t walk I will break every bone in your
face.”

They were all gathered around us
now, all grinning, all waiting for the chance to start beating up on Sam. I realized
we were only a few feet away from another airlock hatch.

“You just don’t know beans about me,
do you?” Sam asked sweetly.

I
squeezed my eyes
shut but the glare still burned through my closed lids so brightly that I thought
I’d go blind. I remembered to count... six, seven. . .

“Come on!” Sam grabbed at my arm. “Let’s
get going!”

I
opened my eyes
and still saw a burning afterimage, as if I had stared

directly
into the sun. The six Warriors were down on their knees, whimpering, pawing madly
at their eyes, their rifles strewn across the floor.

Sam
had Josella by the wrist with one hand. With the other he was pulling me along.

“Let’s
move!” he commanded. “They won’t be down for more than a few minutes.”

Greg
stooped down and took one of the laser rifles.

“Do
you know how to use that?” Sam asked.

Greg
shook his head. “I feel better with it, though.”

We
raced to the hatch, pushed it open, squeezed through it, and then swung it shut
again. Sam spun the control wheel as tightly as he could.

“That
won’t hold them for more than a minute,” he muttered.