A moment was all Hatcher needed. One hand wrested the blaster from Ryan’s suddenly slack fingers, and the other, clenched in a fist, sent him staggering half a score of feet away. His foot caught in a fissure, and he fell on his right side.
Hatcher aimed the SIG-Sauer at him. “I want the map and my gold, you one-eyed thief,” he said hoarsely.
From below rose the sound of strifegunshots, shouts and the blaring notes of the “Deguello.”
Hatcher smiled. “Hear that, Cawdor? It’s just about over, but me and you ain’t done yet. Before we’re through, you’ll give me exactly what I want.”
Ryan’s hand made a motion toward the panga knife at his hip. Hatcher stepped in and delivered a kick to the side of his head, flipping him over on his back.
Grunting with exertion and pleasure, Hatcher kicked him three more times, once in the belly and twice in the head.
“Try it again, Cawdor,” Hatcher said, affecting a wheedling note. “I ain’t had much fun today, but then the day’s still young.”
Ryan tried to rise, but his strength was gone, as if his muscles had been drained through a sieve. Blood streamed over his good eye from a laceration in his forehead, and a ringing pain echoed within the walls of his skull.
Raising his head, he blinked back blood and tried to collect enough saliva in his mouth so he could spit at the coldheart chief of the Red Cadre. A light breeze whispered across the hilltop. Its touch was soft, a caress on Ryan’s throbbing face. The breeze helped his senses return to him.
“You cost me, Cawdor,” Hatcher grated. “Cost me more than I can ever get back, and I mean to cost you plenty.”
Suddenly Hatcher’s body twitched, as if he had received a blow in the back. His deerskin shirtfront acquired a ragged hole, and a splash of crimson spread across it in an artless pattern. He grunted in pain and surprise.
Neither man heard the shot, but both of them saw Felicity struggling over the lip of the hill, a blaster in her right hand, a tendril of pale smoke curling from the barrel. The left side of her face was completely covered with a sliding flow of blood, gushing from a bullet wound in her scalp.
Hatcher swayed, gasping out a curse. He fired the SIG-Sauer, and the 9 mm round caught her in the chest, between her breasts, smashing her sternum and ripping her lungs asunder.
The woman didn’t cry out, but her body was jolted backward and to one side. The shock waves of the bullet’s impact traveled down her arm and sent the blaster twirling from her fingers. In one sweeping, red-tinted glance, Ryan saw the blaster lying only three feet from his right hand, the cache of gunpowder and the two-foot length of fuse that ran from it.
His weakness and pain gave a great surge and faded. He shot out one arm for the blaster, but as his fingers closed over it, Hatcher spun toward him and lunged. He cursed, but only a crimson spray came from his lips.
Ryan fell onto his back, and, unable to check his plummet, Hatcher met his adversary’s uplifted boots with his stomach. As those legs straightened, the pirate stumbled backward, his arms windmilling. He grabbed at the mesquite bush to regain his balance and dropped the SIG-Sauer. But one foot slipped into the crack where the jugs of gunpowder were placed. He sat down atop them with a grunt of forcefully expelled air.
Ryan dived forward, thumbing back the blaster’s lock. Hitting the ground, he aimed the weapon toward the fuse. Hatcher struggled to his feet at the same time Ryan squeezed the trigger. The lock fell, striking the flint, and a spark jumped and touched the powder-treated fuse. Sizzling, the spark smoked its way along the fuse.
Ryan had just enough time to roll away from the edge before the spark flashed its way along the fuse to the jugs of powder.
The explosion dazzled him, deafened him, coated him with a fine layer of dust, and the concussion rolled him over and over. Through the tongues of flame, the upflung clouds of smoke and grit, he glimpsed a dark shape flying overhead, limbs flailing.