“Watch the rest of the crowd, in case there’s any folks want to turn into a dead hero.”
The two teenagers turned away so that Ryan could see only their backs. They dropped hands to holsters in a parody of a menacing gunslinger.
Gordy had also turned away for a moment, checking out the other tables.
That moment was the moment.
Ryan had kept hold of the three-pronged fork that he’d used to finish off the delicious cobbler. Now he swung to his right, slapping the Llama away from him with his free hand, lunging with the fork at Gordy’s astonished face.
His target had been the right eye, but the man reacted more quickly than Ryan had expected, starting to turn and pull his head back.
But the fork still caught him, gouging a deep wound beneath his right eye, burying itself in the side of his nose, near the top. Blood gushed down over his mouth onto the floor, and he began to yell.
Ryan left the fork where it was, jammed into the cartilaginous flesh. At the same time as he’d begun the offensive, he’d pushed back, shouldering the two teenagers hard away from him, using his own chair to knock them both off-balance.
The place was instant bedlam, with everyone yelling and starting to try to escape the fight, tables going over and glasses and crockery smashing.
Ryan was totally oblivious to all that, his mind focusing coldly on what he had to do.
His right hand already had the SIG-Sauer clear of leather as he spun, now facing all three of the enemy.
Gordy had pulled the trigger on the Llama, firing wildly, the bullet splintering the mirror behind Ryan, missing him by a couple of feet at point-blank range.
He never got a chance to fire a second time.
The SIG-Sauer boomed, deafening in the low-ceilinged room, the 9 mm round catching the man through the upper chest, exiting in a welter of torn flesh and splinters of bone. It bit a fat man behind him in the right shoulder, sending him down, as well, screaming like a stuck pig.
Gordy took two staggering steps backward, dropping the blaster, hands clutching at the mortal wound.
“Burns like ice,” he said in a normal, conversational voice, the fork wobbling grotesquely from his nose. Then his knees went, and he folded up on the floor.
Ryan wasn’t listening or looking.
Knowing that it had been a perfect killing shot, he was concentrating now on taking out the two teenagers, neither of whom had yet managed to draw his blaster.
Carl was moving in behind one of them, reaching out to grab at the boy.
“Leave him and get down!” Ryan yelled, leveling the SIG-Sauer. He shot the lad through the side of the head, the powerful full-metal-jacket round bursting the skull like a ripe melon, showering walls, ceiling and customers with a thick gray-pink grue of brains, bone and blood.
The other youth had just recovered his balance, his right hand snatching desperately at the butt of his pistol. His gaze was fixed on Ryan’s face, reading his own doom there.
“Don’t.” was all he managed to say. Then the 9 mm bullet hit him through the mouth, smashing teeth and ripping his tongue to flapping rags of bloodied flesh, burying itself in the core of his brain.
In less than six seconds, all three men lay dead on the restaurant floor.
“It’s over!” Ryan shouted at the top of his voice, overriding the panic. “Hold it, folks. The chilling’s done.”
Gradually the hubbub abated, the customers who remained standing still, their faces white with shock, many of them dappled with blood. The wounded man had fallen to his knees, crying quietly, tears streaming down his chubby cheeks.
“You took them all,” Carl said, breaking the silence.
“Had to. They were going to take me.”
“Sure,” Carl agreed, nodding like a porcelain Buddha. “We all saw that. I tried to”
Ryan holstered the automatic. “I know you did. And I truly appreciate it. Just sorry for all the mess in here.”
Carl waved his hands. “Don’t worry. Soon get it cleaned. And folks’ll come packing in once word gets around.”