Deadly Force by Keith Douglass

head. “I know this sort of thing happens in the Orient. I’ve never heard of it here. Oh, it’s going to happen, all right. With all that betting there would be a bloody riot if the event wasn’t concluded.”
    The music blared again, and the girl took the revolver and spun the cylinder. She kept spinning it for a complete rotation of the stage. Again the music stopped. A gentle, sympathetic voice came over speakers, and the girl turned toward the red carpet listening. The voice crooned stronger and more hypnotic, and Adams wished desperately that he could understand the Wolof words.
    Slowly the naked girl lifted the weapon and put the muzzle over her heart. Screams and yells erupted from the audience, then trailed off when she moved the gun. She held it easily in her right hand, lifted it, and put the muzzle against the side of her head. The voice continued as if directing her. The screams came from the audience. She moved the weapon again, staring hard at the black hole of the muzzle. Then she opened her mouth and pushed the barrel two inches inside.
    Silence throbbed through the arena. The girl reached up with her left hand and spun the cylinder again. Then she closed her eyes. The voice came strongly, ending in a scream.
    Adams couldn’t see the girl pull the trigger, but she must have. A second after the scream the weapon went off and the bullet exploded out of the back of the naked girl’s skull. Her head flopped over the back of the chair and the audience stared in agonizing silence. Then the screaming exploded in earnest as the bettors who had won charged the clerks, who had appeared around the stage, which had stopped rotating.
    â€œWe leave now,” the interpreter said. They stood, and were escorted quickly out a side stage-level door they hadn’t seen. Two men had to help President Kolda. Adams saw that the man was so drunk he couldn’t walk.
    Wally touched the interpreter’s shoulder. “Take us to ourhotel at once. The Vice President isn’t feeling well. Can you get us back to the hotel quickly?”
    The interpreter smiled. “Is he ill, or is it just his soft-hearted feelings for the girl? Those girls get paid well. One pulled the trigger fifteen times and was never scratched. She retired with more than four million of your dollars. Some like the girl tonight lose the bet on their first try.” He nodded. “It is show business. Entertainment, no? Now I will get you back to your hotel.”
    Twenty minutes later Vice President Adams sat heavily on the bed in the Presidential Suite in the Engaffe Hotel, the best in Sierra City, and tried to relax.
    â€œI still can’t believe it. Those men bet whether she would live or die. She killed herself, and it was sanctioned by the highest elected official in this backward nation. There must have been three hundred people there screaming at the spectacle. That their President could know about such a terrible event is criminal. That he was there slopping down drink after drink and enjoying the thrill of seeing a young girl in a life-or-death exhibition is totally disgusting. How can we ever deal with these people again?”
    Wally held a sheaf of papers he had picked up when they arrived at the hotel. He had started to speak, but let the Vice President have his say. Now he took his turn. “Some more bad news about President Kolda and his regime here. Our ambassador says that the country is in a shambles. That the President and every official the ambassador has investigated is hip deep in graft, corruption, and shows a cavalier abuse of power. One small item. Earlier this year we sent them twelve million dollars of hard currency, which was to be used to build houses and upgrade the buildings and farming technique in one area a half hour outside the capital with rich fertile land.
    â€œThe ambassador tells me that only one small building has been constructed and that the Farm Fund, as it was called,