“You don’t know what this fucker did,” Lonnie replied without taking his eyes off Jem.
“You’re right, I don’t,” Mik said softly. “And guess what? I don’t fucking care. I just want us to get this mission accomplished and get back to Papa Joe, okay?”
“Uh, I think it may be too late,” Tilly murmured as one of the drinkers, holding a remade snub-nosed .38, wandered closer to them.
“There a problem here, Jem?” he asked in a lazy drawl.
“Could say that,” the fat barman replied in a voice choked by Lonnie’s grip.
The disheveled drunk held the Smith & Wesson up to Lonnie’s head. Considering how drunk he was, and the fact that he looked to be a physical wreck, his arm was highly muscled under the strip lighting of the bar, and his hand was rock steady.
“Let him go,” he said slowly and gently.
“Make me, shithead,” Lonnie replied, the veins bulging at his temples.
Danny leaned over to Dean, keeping an eye on the rest of the bar. Even the gaudy slut had stopped, and was looking up from her position, the semiconscious man’s limp member in her hand while the customer behind her had withdrawn and was doing up his pants and trying to fumble his blaster from its holster.
“It’s gonna go up,” Danny said, “and I think we should get the fuck out before we all get chilled.”
“What about Lonnie?” Dean replied.
“Leave him,” Jak interjected. “All have job, right?”
Tilly, turning, nodded. “Scatter, and try to assemble later,” she agreed.
Jak nodded. “Take Doc with me.”
“Obliged,” Doc said, his LeMat firmly grasped in his fist.
“You come with me,” Danny said to Dean. “While they check the convoy, I think there’s something else you should see.”
Dean was about to ask what that might be, but was forestalled by what happened at the bar.
Mik had a Walther PPK handblaster in his fist, and it was pointed at the head of the disheveled drank who still had his Smith & Wesson at Lonnie’s head.
“You chill him, and you’re on the last train west, too, fucker,” Mik said steadily.
“New Mexican standoff, eh?” the drunk said. Then, louder, “What y’all say to that?”
The words had barely escaped his mouth before the first blaster went off. The gaudy slut had a small derringer of her own, which she kept tucked into her dress between her breasts. The recce party wouldn’t know this, but the disheveled drunk was one of her best customers, and she wasn’t about to lose that source of income. Fortunately, she was a lousy shot, and the small caliber slugs took out the strip lighting above the bar.
It was the signal for chaos to descend. Blasters were raised and shots fired off with absolutely no sense of direction. In the heat and dark of the bar, there were shouts and screams of pain from those of the customers who were hit by stray or badly aimed slugs. The only ones not to fire were the members of the recce party. Jak and Doc had already hit the floor and were threading their way toward the exit as the firefight began. Behind them, Dean and Danny had also hit the ground, but as the young Cawdor made to follow Jak and Doc, Danny grabbed him by the arm.
“This way,” he whispered with urgency. “We’ll take the back way.”
Dean turned and followed Danny, figuring that they could catch up with Jak and Doc back at the rendezvous. As for Mik, Tilly and Lonnie—anything could be happening to them, for all that he could see or hear in the dark, dense atmosphere of the bar, which now stank of cordite, blood and fear.
In fact, the disheveled drunk who had been aiming his blaster at Lonnie’s head had been distracted by the slut’s loose shooting to such an extent that he had turned his head away for a fraction of a second, his arm slackening just enough to alert Mik to an opening. The rat-faced recce man had raised the blaster he had aimed at the drunk’s head and brought it down again butt-first, the force of his wrist and fist driving the heavy stock into the drunk’s skull, parting his greasy hair with a force that cleaved an open wound in the flesh and left him with blood coursing down his forehead. The drunk crumpled under the blow and fell away. At the same moment, Lonnie slammed Jem’s head onto the bar with a force that drove it down through the chicken wire and the glass; the bartender’s face suddenly opened up into a thousand tiny and painful wounds by the wire and the shards of glass that were driven into his eyes, blinding him with blood and pain.