Destroyer 118 - Killer Watts

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Destroyer 118: Killer Watts
By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir
Chapter 1
He couldn't stand up without hitting his head. He couldn't lie down-at least not to stretch out. The way a real human being
stretches out to sleep.
Awake, he would sit. Asleep, he would curl in the fetal position on the rubberized floor of the box.
He had been this way for several weeks, isolated in his madness since the experiments had ended in failure.
They kept him like an animal.
An animal. That was what they'd called him when they found out what he'd done. Animal. He had heard that countless times. It
was a control mechanism, he knew. And that was not all they had said.
"You're going to die, boy," the MPs who arrested him had promised Private Elizu Roote. Hardly a dispassionate statement from a
couple of trained professionals. But Private Roote couldn't blame them. They'd seen the body.
She was a girl from town he had picked up in a bar. Barflies were always the best. They never asked many questions and they were
hardly ever missed.
This one had allowed him to lead her out behind a U-shaped cinder-block garbage area in the empty parking lot of an abandoned
restaurant. It was just on the civilian side of the chain-link fence near the officers' quarters. That had been his first mistake: doing it
too close to the base.
The MPs had spotted him as they toured the perimeter of Fort Joy Army Base, near the border of New Mexico and Texas. They
caught his frightened-rabbit eyes in the small yellow searchlight mounted on the side of their drab military jeep. Captured in the
blaze of lurid, uncompromising light, Elizu did the only thing he could. He bolted. Mistake number two.
As he fled, the MPs spotted his bloody clothes, then traced his path back to the body.
At the gruesome discovery, alarms had went off immediately.
They caught him, of course. After a helicopter search of nearby Alamogordo.
He'd had too much time to work on this one, which was a mark against him. If he hadn't had so much time, maybe he could have
claimed that she was one of those women who liked to be choked when aroused. That it was just some rough sex that had gotten a
little out of hand.
But try as he might, Roote knew he could never make this a sex-related case. No one, but no one, liked to have their head cut off
while doing it.
It wasn't long after his capture before the authorities began linking him to the other bodies. One in Maine. Three in Oregon. They
even suspected him of a few others around his home state of West Virginia, but they could never be sure of those. He didn't
decapitate his victims back then.
But even without those confirmed murders, there was enough evidence to convict him of at least one capital offense. Private Elizu
Roote was headed for a military discharge, a civilian trial and a likely death sentence. At least that's where he thought he was
heading.
But at the point when execution seemed inevitable, Private Elizu Roote had found a savior. And it wasn't any of that jailhouse-
religion crap. His personal savior appeared before him in an olivegreen army uniform with colored bars over his breast pocket and a
couple of shining stars on his shoulders.
He was a general, about sixty years old. He carried a gleaming mahogany riding crop with a leather strap at one end. The stick was
pressed so far up in his armpit he looked like the victim of an Indian attack in an old western. He weighed three hundred pounds if
he weighed an ounce and stood just over six-feet, six-inches tall. His head was as crimson as a sunburn as he stood framed in the
cell doorway.
With tiny black eyes that looked to have been chiseled from coal, the general regarded Private Roote. Roote, sprawled on the bare
metal bed of the military prison, never moved. The general's eyes darted back to the two men who had trailed after him into the
room.
"Dismissed!" he boomed in a gravelly voice. The soldiers who had been standing guard at the door knew enough not to hesitate.
Though it was against their better judgment, they left the general alone with the prisoner.
Once the guards were gone, the general closed the steel cell door gently behind him. He turned back to Roote, a smile cracking his
bright red face.
"You're in a bit of trouble, eh, son?" the general asked. He toyed with the leather strap on his riding crop.
From his bunk, Roote shrugged. "Guess so." Eyes narrowed below the general's close-cut white hair, heavy red lids squeezing a
pair of shiny black olives.
"What was that, soldier?"
Roote was at a loss. After the night he had just been through, the last thing on his mind was military protocol. He shrugged his
round shoulders again in helpless confusion.
The general seemed to accept Roote's befuddlement for a moment. He stepped farther into the cell, massive chin jutting forward
pensively. When he was close enough to Roote he drew his riding crop from beneath his arm with the speed of a striking serpent. It
was up, around and down in a shiny blur, striking the private in the meaty part of his thighs. The blow brought the younger man
to his feet.
The general grabbed Roote by the front of his pale green T-shirt. "As long as you are in this man's army, you will address a
superior officer as 'sir,' is that clear, soldier?"
Roote nodded, the light of understanding suddenly sparking in his sleep-deprived brown eyes. "Yes, sir!" he shouted. His legs
smarted where they'd been struck. At attention now, he dared not rub them.
"See this hand, soldier?" the general queried. He held the side of his hand-fingers extended crisply-against his huge bobbing
Adam's apple. "Yes, sir!"
"This hand is shit and you're this deep in it." Roote didn't know what else to say.
"Yes, sir!" The general lowered his hand to his chest.
"What would you do to be only this deep, soldier?" he asked slyly. The hand strayed down to his broad paunch. "Or this deep?"
Roote blinked. He wasn't certain what to say, but he dared not remain silent. "Sir?" he asked, confused.
The general sighed impatiently. "I'm offering you a choice, son," he said. "A choice you probably don't deserve, from what I've
heard about your extracurricular activities. How'd you like me to reach over and yank you right out of that neckdeep pile of shit,
soldier?"
Roote hesitated only a second. The general could be pulling his leg, but what did he have to lose?
"Yes, sir!" The words echoed up the dank cinder-block hallway of the dingy military prison. General Delbert Xavier Chesterfield
smiled broadly.
"I had an inkling you might say that," he said proudly.
I HAD AN INKLING you might say that.
General Chesterfield's voice echoed in the dark recesses of Roote's mind, mingling with the other voices.
He'd been so damned smug. He knew Private Roote had no other choice. It was either join or hang.
There were times during the ensuing months when Roote wished he had allowed the authorities to prosecute him. The pain was
sometimes more intense than he could bear. And then, when the surgeries were all over and the scientists had created their miracle,
Roote had stepped over the line once more.
She was just a nurse. No big deal. They were a dime a dozen. And it wasn't like his keepers couldn't cover up his crime as they'd
done with the others. But Roote had been stupid. He realized too late that he was merely the prototype, and the scientists could
repeat the procedure with others. A rational man might have known that he had become expendable. For Roote, however, that
revelation came as a surprise.
After the nurse's charred body had been found, his food was drugged. When he awoke, Roote was trapped in the box.
And here he sat. For weeks on end. No company save the endless, deafening chorus of voices inside his head.
They knew now what they had done.
Roote picked at the corner of the box, where he'd found a weak spot in the caulking that sealed the wall to the floor.
They had created a monster.
The tattered material came loose in chunks. A monster.
Fingers worked independently of conscious thought as Roote picked at the thin line of flexible caulking. Pick, pick, pick. He
rocked back and forth on his naked haunches.
Him. Elizu Roote. A monster.
The caulking came away with ease.
They had confined him here with his demons. Not even granting a merciful death to end his torment.
A yard-long section of caulking pulled up between his fingertips. Roote spun around on the cool rubber floor of the cage. In the
darkness he now faced the damaged section of floor. Bracing his knuckles against the rubber matting, he brought the bare soles of
his feet down sharply.
Thump!
Muted. It wouldn't even register to their ears. Thump!
A monster in a cage. Again! Thump!
He leaned forward, feeling with his fingertips. Dry. Leaned back again, bracing against the cold far wall. Again.
Thump!
He felt once more. Groping fingertips in the darkness. Did that do it?
Yes. Yes! He could feel it now. He brought his hand up to his face, touching beneath his nose. Definitely. It was on his fingertips.
Water.
In the pitch-black center of his private rubber cage, Elizu Roote smiled, The chorus of voices screamed with evil joy, all focused on
a single, silent thought.
Monsters sometimes escaped.
When he brought his feet down for the last time, a surge of pressurized water flooded the small cage.
THE SENSORS WERE CONNECTED to the feeding and communications tubes at the top of the submerged chamber that housed
Elizu Roote. The green light had been lit for so long that Corporal Elber didn't notice right away that it had gone to red. Bored, he
had been staring at the blinking lights on a phone on the other side of the monitoring bank when he gazed back at his own station.
The solitary red light flashed like a warning beacon.
The color instantly drained from the Army corporal's face. Grabbing, fumbling, he dragged the nearby long-stemmed microphone to
his mouth. His shouts echoed down the sealed hallways of the Special Projects Unit.
"We've got a red light on the board! Repeat! Red light on the board!"
Even as he screamed the words, his chair was toppling over backward. While he ran to the unmarked steel door near his station, he
frantically yanked his semiautomatic pistol free from his hip holster. Before he'd even punched in the proper code, civilian men in
white coats were swarming in behind him.
Questions were shouted and ignored as Elber's shaking hands entered the final digits into the touch pad. The red light above the
door turned green, and the men piled into the inner room, careful to stay behind Elber and his pistol.
The dimly lit inner room was as big as a gymnasium. A huge water-filled tank-large enough for a school of dolphins-rested in a
metal-and-concrete base in the center of the floor. Suspended in the tank was the black rubberized box connected umbilically to the
surface via a few simple tubes that were lashed together with waterproof tape. Some of the lines from these tubes ran to
computerized stations at the periphery of the room.
They hadn't been monitoring in earnest for quite some time. They saw now that they probably should have been.
The seam at the bottom of the box had been broken open.
The pale, naked body of Elizu Roote bobbed at the surface of the tank. From the angle of the men in the room, he was looking
down at them. He made not a move as they cautiously approached the tank, bunched up behind the corporal and his gun.
Roote's pinkish eyes were open, staring at nothing. The mouth was an empty black cavern. No bubbles escaped from between the
pale, slack lips.
"Is he dead?" asked one of the five civilian scientists.
"He looks it," offered another in a whisper.
"Could I have some quiet, sir?" asked Corporal Elber of the last man who had spoken.
The corporal's breathing came with difficulty. His heart pounded as he crossed over to the side of the tank. A metal ladder scaled
the high plastic wall. Gun in hand, Elber began climbing. Below him, the nervous scientists began whispering among themselves
once more.
"We should have drugged the water," said one. He bit the already chewed skin around the remnants of his thumbnail.
"I suggested that," said a voice from the rear of the crowd. He was ignored.
"They said he wasn't supposed to get out," challenged yet another. He was referring to the Army Corps of Engineers, who had
constructed the tank.
"They didn't even know what we were putting in there."
At this they fell silent.
Corporal Elber was at the top of the ladder by now. High above the floor, he stepped over the upper lip of the tank, placing a boot
on the plastic platform connected to the interior wall. One hand trained his semiautomatic pistol squarely between Roote's shoulder
blades. The fingertips of the corporal's free hand snaked slowly out to the floating body, brushing the ghostly white back.
The skin was cold and clammy. Like touching a corpse.
"He's dead!" Elber called down to the scientists. Exhaling his anxiety, the corporal holstered his gun.
Reaching, somewhat off balance, he grabbed Roote by the right bicep and tugged the limp body toward the platform.
The relief below was palpable. Two of the scientists scurried up the ladder. They joined Corporal Elber on the platform just as he
was hauling Roote up from the water. He dumped the lifeless body onto its back.
"Are you going to try to revive him?" Elber asked.
The two scientists who had climbed the tank looked at one another. Their hesitation spoke volumes.
Elber paused, as well. Ordinarily he would never have let someone slip away like this without at least attempting mouth-to-mouth,
but Elizu Roote was different. Elber had seen with his own two eyes the horrors the private was capable of.
After an awkward moment punctuated only by the lapping water at the edge of the big tank, one of the scientists cleared his throat.
"We, um. Ahem. We should think about an autopsy."
"Mechanical failure, you think?" asked the other, as if they were discussing a defective computer sound card and not a human
being.
"Could be," said the first man seriously. "I'll have to let the general know. We'll autopsy as soon as we call in the rest of the
team."
"Don't I get a say?"
The three men on the platform froze. The voice had come from below them. As one, they looked down.
Elizu Roote's eyes were open, alert. Smiling. Corporal Elber was first to react. Twisting, he grabbed desperately for his gun.
Another hand was already on his holster. He felt the metal pads at the fingertips.
Elber struggled, but he was fighting the strength of a madman. The hand didn't budge.
Roote sat up. "You look shocked," he said, grinning.
As he spoke, Roote swung his other hand around.
More metal pads. Elber saw them recessed into the puckered white flesh at Roote's fingertips. They took the place of fingerprints.
The fight for the gun became more frantic. As Elber struggled to remove Roote's hand from his holster, Roote placed his free hand
over the corporal's chest. He looked for all the world like a faith healer at a revival meeting. The image couldn't have been further
removed from reality.
As the three terrified men on the platform watched, Elizu Roote's hand jumped. What happened next would have stunned anyone
outside that room.
Five blue arcs of electricity launched from each metal fingertip. The surge of raw power punched Corporal Elber solidly in the
chest.
His skin had little time to singe as the powerful shock overloaded the soldier's suddenly frail heart. The pumping muscle was
jolted into a burst of frenetic activity.
Elber's eyes sprang wide in terror as the gripping pain in his chest intensified. The blue arcs continued to flow from Roote's
ngertips until the corporal's heart could no longer take the strain. Bursting all at once, the ragged muscle exploded a river of blood
into the soldier's chest cavity.
Roote cut the power.
Eyes already glazing over, a stream of sticky crimson flooding from his mouth, Corporal Elber toppled sideways onto the platform.
It had all happened in a matter of seconds. Only as the body fell did the reality of the horror seem to sink in for the other two
sickly fascinated men on the platform.
The scientists panicked.
One bounded frantically for the ladder, shoving his colleague aside. The trailing scientist lost his balance, tumbling into the tank
with a helpless splash.
Roote was across the platform before the man on the ladder had a chance to climb a single rung. Grabbing the scientist by the white
coat, he dragged him back onto the platform. With a grunt, he flung the man into the pool.
Up until now, the platform had blocked the view of the men below. But at the appearance of Roote's naked torso, the reaction from
the others was immediate. They screamed and ran. They were across the cold floor and out the open door in seconds.
Roote let them go, turning his attention to the men in the tank.
They were splashing madly, like panicked children who had not yet learned how to swim. One had nearly made it back to the
platform when he saw Roote's bare legs. In terror, he ducked below the water. Bobbing up, spitting water, he began splashing back
in the other direction.
Roote crouched down on his haunches at the edge of the churning pool. Tipping his head, he ran a lazy index finger through the
cold water.
The second man had swum blindly up to the edge. He snorted mucus-filled water from his mouth and nose as he scrabbled at the
plastic platform. His hand recoiled when he brushed against Elizu Roote's foot.
Skittering sideways, the scientist blinked chlorinated water from his eyes as he looked pleadingly up at the man who had been his
test subject. He panted in fear.
"Do you want to beg for your life now?" Roote asked. His soft Southern drawl was mockingly soothing.
Halfway across the tank, the other scientist had made it to the submerged isolation box. He grabbed at the feeding tubes, trying to
pull himself from the water. He slipped on the first attempt, splashing back into the big tank.
"Elizu, be reasonable," the nearer scientist begged.
"I don't think I can do that," Roote replied calmly. "That's why you all picked me. You shoulda kilt me. Shoulda kilt me when
you had the chance. That box weren't no way to leave me."
"Think, Elizu, think. Try." Hot tears mingled with cold tank water on the scientist's face. "You were uncontrollable. What would
you have done if you were us?"
Roote had to think for only a moment. As he rose to his full height, his eyes clearly registered his conclusion. Without another
moment's hesitation, he aimed all ten fingers at the choppy surface of the wide pool.
In the water, the scientist shook his head in horror. "No!" the man screamed.
The power surge from Roote's fingers was incredible. It coursed through the water in an instant. The man across the pool had been
halfway out of the water and up the rubberized monitor line. The blue electrical surge seemed to reach up from the surface of the
tank and tug him back in. He struck water with a fat splash.
In the tank, both men jumped and crackled like batter-coated fish in a deep fryer.
On the plastic platform, Roote gently closed his eyes, rhapsodic, as the energy poured out of him. He let it run for a full minute,
until he sensed the drain within his hips and shoulders. Only when he knew his internal supply was too low to continue did he cut
off the power supply. By then, the men in the pool were long dead.
The crackling continued for a few moments afterward. The pair of white-coated backs bobbed lifelessly on the surface of the
churning, steaming water. The material of their lab coats was tinted slightly brown.
Roote left them to bob in the waves. He stepped over the upper lip of the tank and climbed down the ladder.
Walking, not running, he crossed the big room toward the open door. His wet feet left a fading trail of prints on the concrete floor.
A moment later, he was gone.
The monster had escaped.
Chapter 2
His name was Remo and he was fighting gravity. And winning.
Actually, as he strolled along the thin wire eight stories above the dark alley in Providence, Rhode Island, Remo realized that
"fight" was not the proper term for what he was doing. Tightrope walkers and trapeze artists fought gravity. Every step or swing
they took flouted the simplest law of nature. Remo was no mere circus performer. For him it was not so much a fight as it was a
stalemate.
Gravity was there. Remo was there. Both knew it, but each pretty much ignored the other.
The cool breeze brought the scent of the Providence River in from the east. The slight shift in wind would have caught a mountain
goat by surprise, flinging it into the black abyss below. Remo merely shifted his weight and he continued to balance delicately as
he stepped, one foot casually over the other, toward the distant wall.
To fight gravity would be to lose, Remo knew. One might just as well have tried to wrestle the sun from the heavens. If he taunted
nature, he would plummet like Icarus to the hard, unforgiving ground. Instead, Remo became a force of nature unto himself.
Remo was a Master of Sinanju. The latest in a long line of heroes stretching back into the mists of prehistory. To be a Sinanju
master was to be in total control of one's physical and mental abilities.
Feats that seemed extraordinary to normal mortals were second nature to the men of Sinanju. Dodging bullets, scaling sheer walls,
the ability to lift many times their own weight all came easy to those in harmony with the forces of the cosmos.
But Sinanju was not just a philosophy. The name derived from the poor North Korean fishing village from which the first master
had come more than five millennia ago. Remo was the pupil of the Reigning Master, the last in the original pure bloodline.
Remo had not expected to become a Sinanju master. In fact, Remo-like most people-had never even heard of the most deadly of all
the martial arts.
A lifetime before, Remo had been a Newark beat cop. One night a pusher had been found beaten to death, Remo's badge clutched in
a hand tight with rigor mortis.
The trial had been incredibly, suspiciously, fast. Remo lost. He was executed for a crime he had not committed. When the electric
chair didn't work, Remo awoke to find his old life was over and a new one just beginning. Technically dead, but still very much
alive, Remo was placed in the skillful hands of the Master of Sinanju. From that moment on, Remo had been taught how to
become all that he could be.
"Be all that you can be," Remo sang lightly as he stepped along the clothesline-thick insulated cord.
He wasn't aware he had spoken in more than a whisper until he heard the surprised voice before him.
"Hey! Whoa, hey, what the crap?"
The voice came from the flat roof. When he looked, Remo saw a broad, puzzled face peering from the deep shadows just above the
upper roof ledge. It turned quickly away, calling into the darkest shadows in a husky rasp.
"Gino, get over here. You gotta see this." Another face joined the first. This new face, presumably Gino's, grew as surprised as the
rst when it spied Remo standing on the impossibly thin wire out in the middle of nothing. The alley below lurked dark and
menacing.
The cable swung gently in the breeze. Remo swung with it.
"You know dat guy, Ennio?" Gino asked his partner.
"What, do I look like I know him?" Ennio scoffed. He smacked Gino in the side of the head.
They turned their attention back to the man on the wire, Gino rubbing his smarting head.
Remo was of average height and build. His only unusual features, besides his obvious ability to root to a swaying cable in defiance
of gravity, were his abnormally thick wrists. They were as thick around as coffee cans. Though it was cool, he wore a black cotton
T-shirt and matching chinos. A pair of expensive Italian loafers were the only things between the wire and the soles of his feet.
"What are you doin' out there?" Ennio demanded.
Remo paused in midstep. "Just out for a quiet little walk." He stuffed his hands in his pockets and glanced around. His dark
features grew puzzled. "Hmm. Guess I must have taken a wrong turn in Albuquerque."
"Oh, a smart guy," Ennio mocked. "Hey, we got a smart guy standin' eight friggin' stories in the air."
"How you doin' that?" Gino pressed, ignoring Ennio.
"You boys ever hear of gravity?" Remo questioned.
"What are we, morons?" Ennio demanded. "Dat's what makes things fall."
"Close enough for government work," Remo said. "How about super-conductivity?"
Ennio and Gino looked at one another, each apparently unwilling to admit he didn't know. They looked relieved when the floating
stranger let them off the hook.
"No matter," Remo said. "That's a tough one. What I do, see, is I meet the force of gravity with an equal repulsive force. It only
looks like I'm walking on the wire. In point of fact, I'm a fraction of a millimeter above it."
There was a spark of genuine curiosity in Gino's eyes. He opened his mouth to speak but was suddenly interrupted.
"What the hell is dat?"
A new voice. This one came from behind Remo. He glanced over his shoulder, back to the neighboring building. Three new angry
faces peered over at him from just above the spot where the cable snaked into the old brick building.
"He was just tellin' us!" Gino hollered across the alley to his compatriots. "Somethin' about supercondominiums or somethin' !"
Remo rolled his eyes. "Could you yell a little louder? I don't think they can hear you in East Providence."
Gino wasn't paying attention to the others. He was staring at Remo's feet. They seemed anchored to the swaying line as firmly as if
it were a broad concrete sidewalk.
"So it's like wit two magnets," Gino ventured.
"Sort of," Remo admitted, tearing his eyes away from the new arrivals. "But the repulsion isn't that intense. It's equal parts repel
and attract."
Gino was clearly fascinated. Ennio, less so. With the appearance of the other three men, he had taken on a more authoritarian
demeanor.
As Remo watched, a lightweight SMG swung into view, its collapsible skeleton stock already locked in place. Ennio aimed the
barrel of the gun at Remo.
"I don't care about no supercondominiums or any of dat gravity bullshit."
At Ennio's lead, the three men opposite raised their weapons. Remo felt the telltale pressure waves of the three barrels aimed at his
back. Before him, Gino reluctantly aimed his gun as well. All five of them were a hair away from firing.
In both directions, the men were too far away for Remo to reach before they fired. In the cross fire, with the added difficulty of
having to stay balanced on the wire, Remo was at a minor disadvantage. There was only one alternative.
As five hairy fingers tightened against five separate triggers, Remo was already flashing forward. Bending double, he gripped the
cable with his right hand, slashing downward with the left.
Bullets sang into the vacant air where his chest had been a split second before. Even as the sheets of hot lead soared in either
direction, Remo's hand sliced through the cable. Holding one smoothly cut end, he swung dramatically to the nearest building. For
added flair, he let loose his best Tarzan yell as he slapped into the grimy brick facade.
Using a variation on his wire-walking technique, Remo scrambled up and over the side of the building. The gunfire was rattling to
a stop even before he crested the wall. He saw why the instant he hit the sheet of black tar.
The gunmen were dead. All three of them. "Oops," said Remo.
Looking away from the bodies that had been mowed down accidentally, he glanced over to the adjacent building-the building he
was supposed to be on. Ennio's startled face stared back at him. Gino was nowhere to be seen.
"What the frig!" Ennio snarled across the vacant alley space.
"Wrong building," Remo called back sheepishly. "Don't move."
Scampering back over the ledge, Remo climbed, spiderlike, down two stories. As Remo moved, Ennio took frequent potshots at
his speeding form. He missed every time.
Puffs of brick and mortar dust burped into the fetid alley air.
Remo found the fire escape. Landing on the rusted upper platform, he raced down the remaining six flights of crisscrossing stairs to
the street.
Ennio stopped shooting at him by the time he'd reached the fifth floor. All was silence by the time Remo broke into the alley. He
crossed over to the next building and began climbing rapidly up the grimy wall.
He should have gone up this building to begin with. He had used the elevator in the first building so that no one would see him in
the second. Now everyone had seen him. This was what he thought as he climbed. If his employer wasn't always so damned
concerned with security, he would have just gone in, done his job and got out.
Remo had worked up a good head of steam by the time he reached the top of the eight-story building eleven seconds later. He
climbed quickly over onto the roof.
As he had expected, Gino lay dead on the black surface. Circles of red kissed his crumpled frame. Killed in the cross fire.
Remo found the stab of weak yellow light from the roof door. He entered the well, climbing down the narrow flight of stairs to the
top floor.
The two buildings he'd visited this night, and indeed most of the structures on the block, were owned by the Patriconne crime
family of Rhode Island. The eighth floor of this particular apartment building was left vacant for Mob use. The man Remo was
looking for was somewhere on this floor.
He stole down the corridor, listening for heartbeats beyond closed doors. He found what he was looking for at the end of the
hallway.
Remo kicked in the second to last door. The steel buckled, exploding into the room amid a hail of plaster dust.
Two goons were waiting in ambush. As the ruined door was bouncing atop the sofa and sliding to the floor, they were already
ring.
Bullets savaged the wall behind him. Remo moved through the storm of leaden missiles as if they were no more than raindrops in
a spring shower.
The anger on both his assailants' faces melted to fear as Remo strode purposefully up to the two men, unfazed by the deafening
blast of auto fire. They continued to target their weapons, hoping that a single shot would drop the seemingly unstoppable man
before them.
Their fingers continued to tense on their triggers even after Remo had reached them. A tactical error. With a final pirouette, Remo
danced between the blazing barrels, slapping both up with either hand.
Bullets ripped through two chins and into two brains, splattering blood and gore on the white plaster ceiling.
Remo spun away from the falling bodies. There was a closed door at the end of a short hallway that ran off the living room. As
Remo was making his way swiftly toward the door, he heard another pop from an autopistol.
He picked up the pace, hitting the door at a run. Remo sailed into the room amid the shattered sections of door.
The body was just slumping to the desk, a single bullet wound to the side of the head. Ennio stood above the dead man. As Remo
strode across the room, the killer swung his pistol in Remo's direction. Remo didn't even look at the weapon.
"Dammit, what did you do that for?" he complained.
"I had my orders," Ennio sneered, the words a challenge.
"So did I," Remo protested. "Did you even stop to think-did you even care that someone other than you might have had orders,
too?"
"..."
"This is just swell," Remo continued, unmindful of Ennio's dumb expression. "That's Hy Solomon, I presume. Or was."
Ennio had actually begun to feel guilty for a moment. He shook away the sensation.
"Hey, it ain't my fault. I was just doin' like I was told, dat's all." He crossed his arms defiantly, but his gun got in the way. He
remembered why he had the gun in the first place and pointed it at Remo.
Remo frowned. "Dammit, dammit, dammit!" he snapped.
His instructions from Upstairs had been explicit. No fuss. Few deaths. Solomon alive. So far, he had a major fuss, bodies up to
his armpits and one dead Mob accountant.
"My boss wanted me to get him out alive," Remo griped as he stared angrily at the corpse.
"He was the top accountant or something for the whole Patriconne crime family. He could have brought down everyone in Rhode
Island."
"My boss told me I should kill him for the same reason," Ennio replied. "Only if there was trouble," he added.
Remo looked at him, face puckering angrily. "How much do you know?" he demanded. Ennio suddenly appeared horrified.
"I don't know nuthin'," he admitted.
"You'd better get an education fast," Remo warned. "Because you're going to turn state's evidence."
"No way," Ennio insisted. "I do what I'm told and I don't rat out nobody. Ain't you never heard of omerta?"
As he spoke, he waggled a finger at Remo. It rattled. Remembering his gun once more, he again aimed it at Remo.
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Destroyer118:KillerWattsByWarrenMurphyandRichardSapirChapter1Hecouldn'tstandupwithouthittinghishead.Hecouldn'tliedown-atleastnottostretchout.Thewayarealhumanbeingstretchesouttosleep.Awake,hewouldsit.Asleep,hewouldcurlinthefetalpositionontherubberizedfloorofthebox.Hehadbeenthiswayforseveralweeks,isola...

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