Beside him, the other companions opened fire, the din of the simultaneous shooting making his head reel. Dean had the little girl standing behind his back. She clung to his narrow hips as he blasted away, scattering the masked rousties. Jak bowled over one of the running men with his .357, sending him flying end over end.
The rousties were more disciplined than Ryan had figured. They didn’t try to make a beeline for the exit, spraying random fire to clear the way. With their blasters out, they dashed behind the cover of the tarped trailer.
The plan was obvious: release the gas, chill the opposition and everyone else in the tent.
Ryan couldn’t let that happen. He turned and shouted to the astonished audience, “Everybody out! Everybody out, now!”
J.B.’s scattergun roared, drowning out the one-eyed man’s words before he could repeat them.
It didn’t matter.
Bullets from the concealed roustabouts whined over his head. From the back of the crowd came a high, shrill cry of pain.
In seconds, the 150 or so residents of Bullard ville were madly stampeding for the exit.
Ryan signaled for Jak to circle wide, while he charged the near corner of the cage. J.B. kept blasting the dirt under the front of the trailer’s frame, with his scattergun, keeping the rousties from firing at them from beneath its undercarriage. Dean likewise provided steady covering fire as Ryan closed on his targets.
If there hadn’t been poison gas in the tarped cage, Ryan would’ve shot right through it to hit the men on the other side. But as it was, he couldn’t risk blind fire. He had to wait until he rounded the end of the trailer.
One of the rousties was hoping he’d do just that.
As Ryan neared, the man stepped out, his KG-99 barking. The stick mag held a lot of rounds, and the roustie was trying to burn them all. He took wild, barely aimed shots that sailed high over Ryan’s head or skimmed the dirt at his feet. The one-eyed man didn’t slow, didn’t blink.
Sometimes the first shot didn’t win the contest.
Sometimes not even the tenth shot.
Ryan put a single slug from the P-226 into the middle of the black mask. The roustie crashed to his back and stayed there.
The other gas-masked men crouching behind the cage had thrown up the tarp in back. They couldn’t get inside the barred box because the cage door was on the other side, and exposed to J.B.’s and Dean’s fire. As Ryan cleared the corner of the trailer, he saw two of the men frantically trying to pull around the nozzle ends of the pile of long, gray canisters so they could open them.
Before Ryan could fire, one of the two men took a ricochet hit off the dirt from a load of double-aught buckshot. The blast shattered both his shins. Howling in pain, he fell away from the cage and tried to crawl away. The other man had his arm through the bars. His hand was on a nozzle, and he was turning it.
Jak’s Colt boomed twice from the other end of the cage. Two of the rousties jerked as if flicked by a giant finger, and were slammed sideways and down. Ryan drew a bead on the man who had his hand inside the cage. Hand in the cookie jar. Hand drawing back. Ryan couldn’t see the roustabout’s smile because of the mask, but he knew the chiller was smiling. He couldn’t hear the hiss of the deadly gas escaping from the canister, or see it in the air, but he knew that’s what was happening. Both he and Jak shot the last roustie at the same instant, their shots angled so no matter how the bullets deflected off bone, neither of them would be hit by friendly fire. The combined impact ripped the man off his feet and sent him crashing to his face on the ground. His legs were still kicking as Ryan closed the gap to the canisters.
“No!” he shouted at Jak. “Stay back! The poison is loose! Get out! Get everybody out!”
The albino stopped, and for a moment it looked as if he were going to protest or defy the order, but he thought better of it. He turned and ran back the way he’d come.