Ryan worked them, not giving them a chance to recover. He managed to hit three more before they pulled back. Two of them were out of the action, but he was certain he’d only winged the other man.
Jak and Krysty added their firepower to his, and for a moment broke the rhythm of their attackers’ response.
“Ryan!”
Looking up the mountainside to the cave, Ryan saw the Armorer briefly wave his fedora out the entrance. “J.B.,” he acknowledged.
“Bit of a tight spot,” the Armorer said.
“Been there before.”
“You want to join us, or do we join you?”
“We go with them,” Krysty said. “The place where I found the pool?”
Ryan nodded.
“The fissure goes on through the other side. It’ll put us on the other side of the mountain, give us some running room for a while.”
“Okay.” Ryan glanced back at the skirmish line waiting farther down the mountain. For all they knew, reinforcements had been sent for. Staying in one place could get them dead. Alive, they had a chance to return for Mildred. “J.B.”
“Here.”
“We’re coming.”
“Come ahead. Say when.”
Ryan looked back at Jak and Krysty. Both of them nodded. “When!” Ryan yelled.
J.B. opened up with the full-throated snarl of the Uzi, raking a blistering line of death across the Celts’ positions.
Without hesitation Ryan slung the Steyr over his shoulder and broke cover. Jak and Krysty ran ahead of him, staggered so they didn’t overlap to present a single target. Ryan had the SIG-Sauer in his left fist, firing steadily at the Celts as he drove his legs hard against the ground. He felt every single heartbeat it took to get from the tree line to the cave thudding in his chest. He threw himself through the entrance and went skidding on his stomach into the burned-down coals of the camp fire.
The embers singed the coat he wore, and he felt some of the heat through the padding before he brushed the clinging bits away as he got to his feet. J.B. and Doc had already gotten their gear squared away, and it sat in packs against the wall.
“Where’s Mildred?” the Armorer asked. His eyes were flint and his voice noncommittal.
“We think she’s alive,” Ryan replied, “but they’ve got her.”
J.B. reached up and settled his hat more firmly on his head. Gunfire continued to pelt the front of the cave, but their attackers didn’t try to gain any ground. For the moment the companions had a stand-off working.
“So what’s the plan?” the Armorer asked.
“We get away,” Ryan said. “Then we figure out who these bastard coldhearts are and come back for her.”
“Could be they’ll kill her while we’re gone,” J.B. said stonily.
“Mebbe,” Ryan replied, knowing his old friend had a war going on inside himself at the moment. J.B. wasn’t going to stand idly by and let any harm befall the woman he loved. “If we buy the farm, there’s no way we’re coming back for her.”
J.B. gazed out the entrance of the cave, then nodded slowly. “Know that to be true.”
“Something else to think about,” Ryan said, shrugging a pack over his shoulder. “Give them long enough, somebody’s going to get the bright idea to trot Mildred out of wherever they’ve got her and use her against us. Then we got no options at all. We surrender and probably die. Or we put a bullet through her brain to save her some misery.”
J.B. grabbed a pack up by the straps. “Let’s move.”
KRYSTY TOOK THE LEAD with a torch. In places the natural light streaming into the fissure from the cave and the hole at the top of the second chamber was enough for than to navigate by. But in other areas it was darker than night.
Beyond the chamber containing the cistern, the fissure narrowed and shortened almost enough to make Ryan walk stooped over. The smell of bat guano made it hard to breathe even with cloths tied over their lower faces. Several times they brushed against the brown-furred bodies clinging upside down on the ceiling, sending some of the creatures into a flapping frenzy.
Ryan estimated they were sixty yards or better into the second leg of the fissure when they came across the boy.