“Here!” he shouted to J.B., as he tossed the Steyr longblaster to him.
With the companions scattering out of the way and the RV bearing down, Ryan just stood there like a mutie jackrabbit frozen in headlights.
He couldn’t see the driver because of the armored screen that completely covered the windshield. Of course, that meant the driver couldn’t see him that well, either, trying to steer while peeping out of the narrow ob port. At a glance, from the size and position of the slit, Ryan figured it had to have a blind spot to objects up close. At least that was what he was hoping for.
When the RV was ten feet away, he dived to his right, beyond the reach of the front bumper, rolling and coming up in a crouch. As the Winnebago rushed straight past him, he leaped for the driver’s-side mirror strut. His left hand closed on the steel tubing, and the Winnebago’s momentum whipped him around. His body weight broke the grip of the adjustment nut and the entire mirror assembly swung back, slamming him so hard into the outside of the driver’s door that he concaved it.
Somehow he held on.
As the wag picked up speed, Ryan managed to get a toehold on the narrow step below the bottom of the door frame. In the middle of the louvers over the side window was a round hole, about two inches across. He yanked the SIG-Sauer P-226 from its holster and rammed its blunt nose through the blaster-port. As fast as he could pull the trigger, Ryan fired into the driver’s compartment, swinging the weapon’s muzzle in a narrow arc. The driver started to swerve wildly back and forth to try to throw him off.
Ryan held on and kept shooting.
Because of the angle of the louvers he couldn’t see if he was hitting anything. He could hear the sickly whine of ricochets zigzagging inside the armored box. The RV suddenly swung even more crazily, first to the left, then the right. It glanced off the end of a plant bed, tearing away twenty feet of corrugated chem rain awning and tipping over onto two wheels for an instant before slamming back down.
The impact almost threw Ryan off the door. It forced him to stop firing. Before he could resume, the Winnebago started to slow down, as if the driver had taken his foot off the gas.
After ten yards, the heavy RV was barely crawling along, which allowed the companions to catch up to it. It was still rolling as they rushed the open rear door. There was no hesitation on their part. They knew it was all or nothing, that the wag was their only hope of getting out of Bullard ville alive.
As the furious, close-range shootout raged at the back of the RV, Ryan tried to get the driver’s door open, but it was locked from the inside.
He heard J.B.’s scattergun boom, and the sharp reports of Mildred’s and Krysty’s handblasters. The trapped rousties returned fire with their autopistols. With blasterfire pouring in through the open door, the steel plate that lined the box was a big negative. Buckshot and .38-caliber slugs cat’s-cradled back and forth between the side walls.
After mebbe fifteen seconds, the shooting stopped.
“We got ’em,” J.B. shouted to Ryan from inside the driver’s compartment. The one-eyed man hopped down from the door’s step.
After a moment, the driver’s door opened and Ryan stared up at the Armorer’s sweaty face and smeared glasses.
He climbed into the RV, and he and his old friend dragged the driver out from between the seats. The head roustie was paralyzed but alive, his spine shattered, the wounds in his hairy back leaking red. They dragged him out of the Winnebago like a roll of old carpet and dumped him on the ground, leaving him there to stare up at the sky, his mouth moving and the weakest of sounds coming out.
If Furlong had some famous last words, nobody was interested in hearing them.
Ryan climbed behind the steering wheel, which was no longer circular, having been almost half blown off by a load of buckshot, it was more a U shape. He glanced to the rear to see that everyone was okay. Mildred and Krysty nodded to him. Doc sat with his back against the crudely welded, quarter-inch steel plate that lined the lower third of the interior wall. His chin sagged to his chest, his eyes were closed, but he was breathing. Above Doc, the wall of the RV had so many bullet holes in it, it looked like a cheese grater. The wag had been completely stripped on the inside to make room for stolen cargo. The rear door was another crude bit of customizing; it was wide enough to get really big things inside. From the looks of things, the built-in bins contained more dead carny chillers than Bullard ville loot.