Return to Skull Island by Ron Miller, Darrell Funk Read Free Book Online Page A

the sound of my voice. They were mighty nervous, which might be a good thing so long as they kept their fingers off their triggers. “What do you boys want here?”
    “Non of yor beeziness, hombre,” was the surly reply. “An eef you know wha iss good for you, you’ll shot up an go bock to sleep.”
    “How can I, with all the noise you’re making?”
    “You con go bock to sleep or be put bock to sleep . . . permanently, if you geet my dreeft, señor.”
    I did and shut up.
    “Good God,” I heard Pat say, truculently, “how’s a girl going to get any sleep around here with a lot of halfwits arguing all night?”
    Two or three of the men were in her cell by this time and had pulled down her blanket. I was relieved to see that she’d chosen to sleep fully dressed. I didn’t want to think of what those men might have done had they found her any other way. As it was, one let out a long low wolf whistle.
    “Shut it up, Pablo!” said the one who so far had done all the talking. “You hombres geet th’ frail out a here an remember: El Jefe don wan any off yor dirty feengerpreents on her.”
    I didn’t like the sound of that and neither, evidently, did Pat.
    “Tell the General thanks for the kind invitation,” she said, “but no thanks. I’d be delighted to see him in the morning, however. Would you ask him if he’d care to join me for breakfast?”
    “Shot op.”
    Two of the goons had her arms pinned and I could see by the grimace on her face that their grip was none too gentle.
    “Hey!” she said through gritted teeth. “Not so rough, boys. I’m a delicate little butterfly.”
    Whereupon she stamped with all her weight on the instep of the foot of the man on her right. He shrieked like a girl and as his grip on her loosened, she wrenched free and jammed the palm of her right hand into the nose of her other captor. That organ burst like a ripe tomato, the man’s eyes crossed and he fell like a poleaxed ox. I could see by the way he hit the floor—like a sack of grain—that he was dead before he landed, probably with splinters of bone driven deep into his brain by Pat’s powerful blow. The first thug had only just had time to react to what she’d done before she chopped the edge of her hand squarely across his Adam’s apple. He went to the floor, too, but not dead—just coughing up blood as he tried to breathe through his crushed windpipe. Pat, who had not stopped moving since stomping on the first man’s foot, kicked out behind her, popping the third guy’s kneecap with the sound of a broomstick being snapped. The fourth went down beneath her, her knee jammed up under his sternum and her thumbs headed for his eyes. The fifth and last man, the one who so far had done all the talking, had watched all this violence with remarkable calmness. Now he drew his gun, reversed it and cracked Pat over the head with the butt. It sounded like two billiard balls colliding. She dropped like a marionette that’d just had its strings cut.
    “Get th’ hellcat out off here,” he ordered.
    “Wha about heem?” asked one of the only others who was still able to speak, pointing at the dead man.
    “Wha about heem? He ain’t goin anywhere. You can com back for heem later.”
    “Where are you taking her?” I demanded.
    “I said that was non off yor business. Now shot up because you start to annoy me.”
    Well, God knew I didn’t want to do that. I watched as Pat was half carried, half dragged out of the room. There was a trickle of blood bisecting her pale face. The leader took a long black look at me that I didn’t like at all, then followed his men, shutting the door behind him.
    “We’ve got to get out of here.”
    “Well, good luck,” said the Russian from the cot behind me.
    “We can’t let Pat be, be . . .”
    “What do you mean we’? She’s nothing to me. Besides, if I try anything it won’t do her the least bit of good and will just serve to make things worse for all of us. I don’t plan to