The shooting from both sides stopped.
The head roustie expected the counter attackers to show themselves then, to stand up and wave the all-clear. When that didn’t happen, he was again at a loss to explain it.
Then three things happened almost simultaneously: a hollow thunk came from the left front bumper, a mist of red sprayed through the Winnebago’s windshield louvers and a heavy-caliber roar erupted from the far side of the plant beds.
Furlong jerked back from the gun port, choking on the coppery smell of blood mixed with cordite. When he glanced down at himself, the gunshot still echoing through the compound, he saw the dense black hairs on his forearm were beaded with tiny drops of blood.
Not his.
Longblaster, Furlong thought at once. From the sound of it, a 7.62 mm. Firing from the cover of the beds, the rifle had picked off one of his guys with surgical precision, which meant there had been no carny counterattack on the dirt farmers. Furlong could remember seeing only one rifle like that in Bullard ville, and it had belonged to Ryan Cawdor. Only someone who’d practiced long and hard with a scoped longblaster could put the first slug in the ten ring. Furlong knew instinctively, deep in his guts that the one-eyed man wasn’t only alive, but had also caused the disaster that was unfolding.
Even as that realization hit him, bullets started slamming into his wag from the other direction. Furlong hopped into the passenger chair to look out the louvers on that side. Whatever slim hope he still had of things working out evaporated in that instant.
There had to be a hundred ville shooters. They had the wags completely flanked and were massing their fire from the hard cover of the Taco Town building. Meanwhile, Furlong’s crews were dumping their booty and returning wild fire as they ran for their lives.
Bullets rained down on his rousties in a hellstorm. They had no chance against so many blasters. Those caught out in the narrow lanes between the huts were hit by dozens of slugs. Those ducking into the huts in search of cover found none. The dirt farmers shot through the flimsy walls of their own cabins, nailing the looters crouching there. The Bullard ville sec men knew exactly what they were doing. Under the barrage of blasterfire, they pushed forward to the edge of the rows of shanties and the back side of the Burger Stravaganza.
As far as Furlong was concerned, the handwriting was on the wall. The opposition was too strong, and they were too well armed and trained. As he flipped up the driver’s ob port and cranked over the engine, a pair of ashen-faced rousties jumped in the back of the RV. He didn’t wait for them to shut the rear doors. Revving the engine, he cut the steering wheel hard over, then dropped it into gear. With a roar, the Winnebago lurched around the end of the wag in front. There was a jolting hop on the right side as the big wag’s front wheel crunched over a fallen man, then Furlong accelerated, heading for the tent and the circled wags.
The first row of plant beds came up in a hurry.
Through louvered shade’s ob port, Furlong caught a blur of movement to his right as people standing there scattered. He glimpsed the scoped longblaster first, then the black eye patch and dark curly hair. At the very last instant, he swerved the Winnebago at Ryan Cawdor, who was caught flatfooted in the open, with nowhere to run.
The look on the about-to-be-dead-man’s face burned into Furlong’s brain. There was no fear in it. No panic.
Nothing but calm.
The head roustie didn’t give a damn how Cawdor took being squashed to a pulp.
“You’re mine now!” he cried, pinning the gas pedal to the floor. “You one-eyed, fucking bastard!”
WHEN RYAN SAW the middle wag pull out of line and start heading their way, he knew it was a golden opportunity, and that it might be their last. It all depended on the driver seeing a way to rack up an easy last chill while he beat feet. “Spread out and take cover!” he ordered to the others.