Ryan jerked a thumb toward the woods behind them. The gesture was urgent and emphatic. And to the companions the meaning was obvious.
They’d been foxed.
J.B.’s jaw dropped in disbelief, but he recovered at once, grimacing as he thumbed his wire-rimmed glasses back up the bridge of his nose. Ryan pointed across the road, toward Krysty and Mildred’s position. J.B. and Jak nodded in agreement. The ambush was scrapped. They had to rejoin their forces, and quickly.
Ryan gathered up his extra mags and tucked them inside his waistband. As he started to reach back to grab the Steyr, a branch cracked ten feet away. No way was he going to leave his precious sniper rifle behind. He caught hold of the longblaster by its shoulder sling and jerked it away from the tree, using his momentum to roll up onto his knees.
A fraction of a second later someone shouted, “Get ’em!” Then all the chillers were yelling as they crashed through the brush. Ryan brought up the SIG. He couldn’t make out any targets, but as gunshots barked and bullets thudded into the trunks all around him, he returned fire, spraying a line of 9 mm death in front of him at waist height.
Behind him, the rocking boom of J.B.’s scattergun was followed by the roar of Jak’s .357 Magnum blaster.
The yelling abruptly stopped. The attackers broke off their charge and took cover.
Ryan waved for Jak, J.B. and Doc to beat feet. He caught up to them as they reached the road. As they started to cross, three rousties appeared around the bend and, dropping to kneeling positions, opened fire on them.
“Go!” Ryan said as bullets whined overhead. “Go!”
He and the others returned fire on the run.
The roustie on the far right took a slug very low in the chest. From the way it blew him off his pins, it had to be one of Jak’s .357 Mags. It lifted and slammed the man onto his back. Screaming, kicking, he clawed at his guts as the companions dived into the cover of the trees.
Blasterfire from Krysty, Dean and Mildred sent the two survivors scurrying back around the bend.
Ryan cupped his hand and shouted to them, “Frog it!”
It was their signal for a full-out, fighting retreat, which meant the two groups would retreat by leapfrogging each other, one group defending the bend while the other ran up the straightaway to take up a firing position at the next turn.
They were already in high gear up the road by the time the chillers got themselves reorganized. As they withdrew, the companions used sparse blasterfire to keep the opposition back at least a hundred feet. They weren’t trying to make perfect shots. The gloom of the forest made pinpoint accuracy next to impossible. The idea was to stall the enemy until the companions could reach a place they could successfully defend. And they were trying to use up as little ammo as possible in getting there. J.B. didn’t shoot at all, but concentrated on keeping Doc moving uphill; there was no point in wasting his scattergun rounds on a long distance delaying action.
As Ryan raced past Mildred, she knelt at the side of the road and fired her Czech-made target pistol from a braced stance. Her skillful potshotting brought a shrill yelp from the shadows far downslope. Then a wail filtered through the forest She had nailed one of the chillers with a .38 slug. Nailed him good, from the racket he was making.
The flurry of answering gunshots echoed off the trees. As Ryan made for the next bend in the road, bullets spanged into the surrounding trunks and clipped off branches. The road above them continued to wind back and forth among the dark trunks. There was no choice but to keep on running until they reached the summit. Which, he knew, couldn’t be far away now. Then the opposition shooting slowed. Two possibilities occurred to Ryan as he knelt, the SIG’s sights aimed downhill. Mebbe the chillers had realized that the running gun battle was burning up ammo that they were going to need when they caught up to their quarry. Or mebbe they had finally figured out that if the companions made the summit they might have a defensive position too strong to overcome no matter how much ammo they had.