Chapter Eight
Shards of splintered basin and slicing lengths of broken glass cascaded all around Ryan, cutting at him. He wriggled a little to one side, out of sight, covered by the central row of basins. The air was rank with the stink of gunfire.
Despite the racketing noise, the ricocheting bullets and screeches of delight from Titus and Mervyn, Ryan’s combat mind was working like a well-oiled machine, calculating movement and action and time.
Obviously J.B., Jak and the others would hear the thunder of shooting and be out there to help him, but that was going to take at least several seconds.
Way too long.
The nickel-finished revolvers each held six .44-caliber Magnum rounds.
One of the things that Ryan did as second nature in a firefight was to count bullets. Titus and Mervyn had already fired eight shots between them, in that first crazed crescendo of flying lead. But Ryan had no way at all of knowing which of the psychopathic brothers had fired how many rounds.
Four bullets each?
Five and three?
Even six and two?
“Go that way!” It was impossible for the one-eyed man to tell which of them had called out.
A bullet missed his curled-up legs by a few inches, burying itself in the wall, gouging a huge hole from the crumbling concrete.
Five and four?
Six and three?
There hadn’t yet been a pause long enough for either of them to reload.
The unsheathed panga was still no use against the pair of matched Smith amp; Wessons. Ryan reached out quickly with his left hand and scrabbled together a fistful of the larger splinters of broken glass, some of them several inches long, edged like razored steel.
A tenth round passed so close to Ryan’s face that he felt its burning breath on his skin.
Five and five?
Six and four?
He came up into a fighting crouch, trying to watch both ways at once. This kind of combat situation was the one time that the loss of his left eye became a serious handicap. It sliced down his peripheral vision, making it immeasurably hard to look out for the brothers.
He tried to guess which of them would come at him first, be it from left or right.
The answer arrived a second later.
Titus from the left.
He appeared in a half-crouch, holding the revolver in both hands, pointing it at Ryan, his lips peeling back from rotting teeth.
“Got yer” Titus gloated.
Ryan didn’t waste time or breath on a reply. He hurled the handful of shattered glass into the man’s face from close range, aiming at Titus’s eyes, seeing the sparkling shards find their targets.
The twin staggered back, mouth sagging, pulped eyes carved open, blood bursting from his pale, unhealthy skin and dappling his shirt. “Fuckin'” he began, squeezing the trigger of the Smith amp; Wesson, the gun bucking in his hand, the bullet ripping into the ceiling.
That made eleven rounds fired by the brothers.
One left.
Ryan wasn’t sitting back admiring the partial success of his plan.
The instant the jagged splinters left his hand, he was moving after them, powering himself from the crouched position, jabbing with the sharpened point of the eighteen-inch panga, aiming at his adversary’s thorax.
Titus screamed at the realization that he was blinded, waving his hands desperately to try to prevent the attack that he knew was coming.
It was easy for Ryan to dodge the flailing fists and thrust the panga home, a little to the left of the breastbone, twisting his wrist with savage power as the honed steel pierced both heart and lungs.
There was a great gushing torrent of bright crimson blood, which spouted over Ryan’s hand and arm, pouring onto the floor among the broken fragments of the basins. Some of the copper water pipes had also been broken by the gunfire, and water flooded around Ryan’s bare feet.
Titus staggered away, pulling himself off the panga, stumbling backward. Just as Ryan started to turn to face Mervyn, he found the other brother was already aiming his revolver at him, grinning wolfishly, seeming oblivious to his dying sibling, now on his knees.
“Guards win!” he crowed.