Bullets from Ryan’s Steyr slammed into the rock beside the sniper’s position, stone splinters raining in a sudden hail.
Jak narrowed his eyes against it and kept moving. When the Sharps thundered again, he was ready. As the big .50-caliber rifle pulled back and the breech opened, the albino shoved himself onto the ledge. He caught Ryan’s sudden breakneck run from the corner of his eye.
Then Jak could see nothing but the bottom of the ledge as he pushed himself up with both hands. Saliva leaked down over his chin from carrying the knife, cool in the winds that rushed over the chimney top.
The man with the Sharps rifle spotted him first.
“Bernsen!” The man with the Sharps was a scraggly old man who looked as if he’d been worn whipcord tough by a hard, adventurous life. His gray beard was tangled, cut square at the bottom only a few inches below his chin. His silver hair was pulled back in a single stand that hung on his bony shoulder like the tail of a dead animal. He wore hiking boots, jeans and a black-and-red-checked flannel shirt that had the sleeves rolled up enough to reveal the same orange-and-blue tattoo on his inner forearm that had been on the dead man. He fumbled, trying to insert another cartridge into the Sharps.
“Get down, Hoyle!” Bernsen yelled. He was a few years younger than his companion, broader built and softer by the look of him. A paunch settled gracelessly into his lap, and he didn’t seem certain of the long-barreled Dan Wesson .41 Magnum blaster he held in both hands. However, he brought the weapon around quick enough.
Jak slipped the leaf-bladed knife from his teeth and flipped it at the man, deliberately missing the man’s head only by inches. Ryan wanted them alive if it could be managed.
Bernsen ducked, rolling with a lack of coordination to another area behind his partner’s position, and yelped in fear.
Still in motion, Jak leaped at Hoyle. The old man had the cartridge in the breech and was pulling the lever closed. Fisting another knife from the top of his boot, Jak batted away the barrel of the Sharps with his free arm. The rifle exploded as the hammer fell, sending the bullet ricocheting from the rock behind the ledge.
Closing on the man, Jak shouldered Hoyle in the stomach hard enough to knock him off balance. Before his opponent could recover, Jak stepped in behind him and seized his ponytail.
Bernsen tracked them with the .41 Magnum blaster. “Get down, Hoyle! You’re in the way! Give me a clean shot!”
Hoyle struggled to get away, throwing his weight to one side and swinging back with the butt of the Sharps.
Already expecting the move, Jak shifted with the man, staying behind him and avoiding the rifle butt. Jak brought the knife to the man’s throat, yanking back on the ponytail to bare it even further. The keen edge lay over the jugular.
Bernsen fired anyway, the bullet whizzing less than a foot from Jak’s head. Awkwardly the heavy man thumbed back the hammer.
“Stop,” Jak ordered in a harsh voice, “or die!” He nicked Hoyle’s neck with the blade to emphasize his point. Three bloody tears wept from the small incision and trickled down the man’s sweaty neck.
Instead, eyes wide and round with fear, Bernsen leveled the blaster to fire again.
Chapter Eighteen
Ryan found the trail behind the chimney rock and threw himself into an assault on the steep downgrade at the same time the big rifle roared from above. He didn’t hear J.B.’s Uzi chatter into life, so he knew the Armorer hadn’t had a shot.
Keeping the Steyr across his chest, his attention divided between the loose stones under his feet and the narrow corkscrew leading up into the chimney rock, he ran as hard as he could. Spots danced crazily in his vision.
A blastersome large caliberboomed only a few paces ahead of him.
Ryan came around the corner in time to see the heavy man taking up slack on the weapon’s trigger a second time. Jak was covered by the man standing in front of him, the guy pressed into service by the knife blade held at his throat, but there was every possibility that the bullets would pass through the human shield and hit Jak.