The clouds pulled away from the serene silver moon, enabling Jim to glimpse what they were up against. There were five or six men, three in dark-blue-and-black camouflage jackets. The others wore brown sweaters, with leather patches on elbows and shoulders. All were carrying Uzi machine pistols.
But the shock of Jim’s lightning response had given the edge to the defenders of the ridge. Nanci had swung around like a scorpion, opening up with her own Port Royale machine pistol, spraying lead at the uniformed attackers.
Carrie’s little .22 popped away at the end of the line, and Steve Romero’s sawed-down shotgun roared, sending a jet of flame into the night.
Jim took careful aim and put down the farthest of the men, who’d already turned to try to run away. In the moonlight he saw a disk of smashed bone torn from the top of the skull, hurtling off into the night like a Frisbee, blood and brains erupting from the shattered head.
“Stop shooting!”
The voice belong to Nanci Simms, cutting through the savage exultation of the firefight. Jeff was last to check himself, another big .45 slug booming out across the sandy wasteland.
“We put them all down,” she called, voice ragged, her tall figure loping toward Jim Hilton at the center of their defensive line.
“Sure?”
“Yeah. But there might still be some living. Come with me. Rest of you cover us. Jeff, you and Kyle watch out for any more coming in from the other side.”
“They’ve still got that machine gun.” Kyle was blowing hard, as though he’d just run five miles across sand dunes.
“Yeah,” agreed Jeff. “They open up with that, and we’re shredded meat.”
“They just lost at least a third of their men. Maybe as much as two-thirds. They’re hardly likely to rush us again, are they? See sense, Jefferson.” Nanci turned to Jim. “Come on.”
The pebbles rolled under his feet, and he had a sudden, irrational fear that he might fall and put his hand onto the face of a corpse. As they walked over the ridge and down the slope, Jim levered three more rounds into the big handgun.
“I counted seven,” said Nanci. “Liked your shooting, Jim. Grace under pressure. You would be very surprised to know how rare that is. Ah, here’s the first of the coolers.”
The moonlight seemed to be getting brighter, and Jim found he was hunching his shoulders in anticipation of a sniper’s bullet splintering his vertebrae into powdered bone.
The man was wearing one of the brown sweaters, patched at elbow and shoulder. His Uzi was a few feet away from him, muzzle down in a patch of soft, dark sand.
He’d been shot in the back, trying to run away, the bullet hitting him below the shoulder on the left side and exiting through the center of the chest, leaving a hole the size of a small plate.
“How d’you make sure they’re really dead?” asked Jim. “I mean… not him. Obvious. But one of them might be faking it.”
Nanci turned to him. “I confess that you choose the oddest moment for your queries. You don’t bend over them and check the pulse beneath the ear, if that’s your idea. That way you get your own throat opened up if they’re ‘faking it,’ as you so appropriately put it.”
Jim tried to ignore the sarcasm. “So how do you make sure?”
“Like this.” She lifted her polished boot and stamped down, aiming the heel at the eye of the corpse. There was a horrible liquid grating sound. The head rocked, but the dead man didn’t move.
“You do that and watch to see if they try to get up. If they don’t, then it means they are no longer dwelling this side of the dark river, Jim.”
All but one of their attackers had been killed outright or had died within a minute or so of being gunned down.
Some of them had several bullet wounds stitched across their chests or backs.
Nanci Simms kicked one of them over, pointing down with the muzzle of her machine pistol. “Haven’t lost my touch,” she said. “Look at that pattern. Trig and trim as an Amish quilt.”