Karim al-Zib - Wild in the country book four

Sam felt his leg give beneath him and the unbearable pain of the virtual amputation, and he returned fire. Clete loosed a shot at Priscilla, missing with most of the pellets, though some hit her face and blew out one of her eyes. His next shot cut Sandy in half.

Priscilla was still shooting and her next bullet, fired one-eyed, caught Sam in the chest, and another made a hole perfectly in the center of his forehead. He toppled back, his last sight that of DesirЋe as she scrambled stark naked away with Tanya into the bushes, followed by the dogpack leader. They huddled behind a boulder while Lobo, still aroused, sniffed at their dripping cunts.

Tanya turned to the dog, grabbed his face between her hands, and said, "Go, Lobo! Get out of here!" And she gave him a slap to get him moving, while DesirЋe watched her in horror. She had helped the raping animal escape! It was unbelievable!

In the clearing, Billy saw his friend die, and opened up with both pistols, riddling Priscilla's dancing body as she stood there. Clete pivoted and let the wild young man have the next one, splitting his vitals with a perfectly-placed shot to the lower belly. One of Priscilla's last bullets struck him in the neck, shattering his spine to shrapnel and removing his head in a bloody spray.

But still Priscilla was operating. She used a speed loader to recharge her weapon while Clete turned to fire at one of the dogs, hitting Dusty with a well-placed shot. He used his pistol to quickly finish that fallen dog, and then turned toward Bruno. He had two skins now, and a third would make him rich.

Clete felt a burning pain in his thigh and he felt the strength going from his stance. He dropped to one knee, feeling the blood soak his jeans from a severed artery. He looked up and saw Priscilla coming at him, her face torn on the right side and her eyeball hanging in tatters on her cheek. Her blouse was holed in places and she was covered in blood spouting from half a dozen wounds. With peripheral vision he saw Bruno bounding into the undergrowth while he brought up his shotgun and fired his last two shells in Bruno's direction. Then, bringing out his pistol, he punched two bullets straight into Priscilla's heart, ripping it to shreds on the way through her body and out the other side in a spray of blood and flesh. But not before one of her bullets had punched into his upper chest.

DesirЋe saw Priscilla crumple like a house of cards while Clete toppled back, clutching one hand to his chest and one to the torn flesh, bleeding severely at the back of his thigh. He lay there, staring up at the sky. Rodney stood there, frozen to his spot at the edge of the clearing, taking picture after picture.

When the shooting stopped, the silence was shocking. DesirЋe and her friend carefully, timidly raised their heads and looked at the scene of carnage. Two dogs lay dead and unmoving, as also the headless corpse of Billy. Sam's sightless eyes stared up at the sky. Priscilla was a bloody mass gasping her last in the midst of a crimson pool, her beauty destroyed by her own acts.

Seeing Clete, DesirЋe cried out and ran to him, cradling his dark head and kissing his lips. "My darling Clete," she sobbed. "You saved my life."

Tanya was behind her, fitting DesirЋe's dress over the girl's shoulders as she wept into the black man's face. "Here, baby, let's get you dressed."

DesirЋe shook her hair out of the dress. "Not important. He's dying, Tanya. You must get help."

"Will you be all right?"

"There's nothing here that can hurt me," DesirЋe answered. "Not now. Please! Go!"

Tanya turned and ran into the forest. She hadn't gone far before she ran into Mark, struggling along blindly. She hurled herself into his arms. "Mark! Mark! Clete's been shot. Everybody's been shot."

"DesirЋe?" Mark screamed.

"No, she's okay. She's with Clete. He's been shot. You must get an ambulance."

Mark nodded. "I did. I called for help on my portable when I heard the shots. It shouldn't be long now." He took the panic-stricken girl by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. "Tanya! Take me to DesirЋe."

When he arrived at the clearing with Tanya, he found DesirЋe, disheveled, holding Clete's head, her rumpled dress covered with blood. She looked up at him, and took his hand.

"Mark," she said, "please call an ambulance. Clete's hurt badly."

The young politician looked around the clearing at the carnage, the bodies of the two drug pushers, two of the dogs, and Priscilla's blood-soaked heap of flesh. "What a scene! But, DesirЋe, are you all right?"

The lovely girl turned her blood- and dirt-streaked face up to his and said in a strong voice, "My love, I'm just fine. They didn't touch me."

Sid Buchanan listened wearily to Reg Fields' screaming protests as he paced up and down in the study where they had taken turns with DesirЋe's body just days before. Fields was sweating freely, his pudgy hands trembling as he ran them over his dripping jowls. His wooly eyebrows worked up and down like the wings of an ostrich and his belly shook with each step he took, while above it his obese heart could be seen as it pounded, stirring the flab of his chest.

"I'm ruined, Sid," he whined. "Ruined. My clients will have me prosecuted. At best. Some of it was Mafia money. They don't forgive." He covered his face with his hands. "What about Khalid? Can't he cover our margins until we find a way out of this?"

Sid shook his head. PLO dissatisfaction with Khalid al-Mazkum had been quickly vented, and his body had been found in his own office this morning. "A few million we could sweep under the carpet. But not a few billion. Khalid won't be covering anything more than a three-by-six foot plot ever again."

Fields stopped, his puffy eyes wide. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, they took him out. The PLO. They don't forgive either."

Reg Fields' trembling increased. He was essentially bankrupt and he feared the retribution of the people who had trusted him. And his wife…

Buchanan wasn't feeling very well himself. He had been destroyed in a matter of twenty-four hours. The stock exchanges had executed on his assets, frozen his accounts, and he was expecting auditors and lawyers from the SEC. He was trapped no matter which way he turned. Harry Wickes had been trying to avert this when he called, but Sid had not listened, being too wrapped up in DesirЋe's sweet palace of pleasure. Now, as he stared at the computer screen at the email he had sent to the broker, he wondered how it could have gone so wrong. The volatility list had replaced his selected buy list somehow, and he wondered how it had happened. He could not have been so scatterbrained as to do that himself. So the only answer to the question of how was who. The computers were not networked and could not have been accessed from outside. The files would have had to have been altered from right here in the study, the night of the party, most probably, most certainly, after he had shown them to Khalid and Reg, after he had used his password to access the computer. Sometime between the time when they had left the room at eleven-twenty and when he had sent the email ten hours later.

That was a fairly big window, but who could have done it? Who could have even known, or want to alter the files? As far as he knew, of the people at the party, only the three men in the study, who had taken turns with DesirЋe's sweet body, had known of the plan. Of his jackals all over the world, none had known of the whole picture, only their separate functions.

But the email he had sent was exactly the opposite of what it should have been, numbers randomly altered in a way that didn't even add up, as Harry had said. Only the three of them present could have known enough of the project to sabotage the file. Buchanan knew that he hadn't done it, and Reg Fields would have done it only if he knew he would profit somehow. But here he was, sweating and greasy, and it was plainly no act. The fat man had taken a bath, that was plain to see, nor was there any way he could have profited by having Sid sink his money into volatilities.