The sec boss nearly fell over himself trying to get away, then glared at the misshapen chunk of lead hanging in front of him.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Ethan Perry demanded. He pushed himself off the wall and came at Dean.
Shifting the blaster to cover Perry, Dean said, “Don’t.” One word, delivered hard, gave the implicit understanding there’d be no negotiations.
“Back off,” Louis ordered, moving into position beside Dean, his pistol in both hands but not pointed at anyone.
Perry made a move to pull his own blaster.
“No,” Louis said to Perry. “You do it and I’ll put you down myself.”
“Stupe fucker’s going to set off the gasoline shooting that damn gun,” Perry complained.
“He does, they do,” Louis said, “you really give a shit which way it goes?”
Connrad’s sec boss laughed. “You little boys got more sand in you than I’d have thought. Mebbe the baron did have the right idea.”
“Ceiling up there is made of metal and concrete,” Dean whispered to Louis. “Bullets’ll bounce pretty damn good. Figure the angles right, that bulletproof glass won’t do dick for them.”
Louis gave him a tight nod. “Better than dying in here with nothing done.” He raised his voice.
“Moxen?”
“Yeah?”
“Cover Perry. He moves, tries to pull his blaster, gun him down and be done with it.”
“You got it.” Moxen lifted his .45 and pointed it at Perry’s chest. An evil grin tightened the big youth’s round face.
Dean went one way, his boots slapping through the gasoline, leaving Louis circling around the other. When he had the angle he wanted, Dean fired the Browning rapidly, zipping rounds past the empty space not covered by the heavy bulletproof plas.
The sec man laughed, pointing down at the boys. That stopped when one of the sec men caught a flattened and slowed bullet that cored through the side of his head and tore his jaw off. The others were in shock, watching as the dying man collapsed against the plas with blood spraying from his ruined face. The man tore the plas sheet from the grips of the men who were struggling to hold it stable. Released, the plas came crashing down into the lower room, sending up geysers from the inch-deep gasoline pool that had gathered across the floor.
Dean continued firing, driving the sec men back, taking down two more of them. The other boys joined them in blasting the sec team.
Curses and screams of pain rewarded their combined efforts, the blasting and the voices almost covering over the shrill buzz of the siren. The double doors abruptly jerked open just as Vinge Connrad appeared behind the single remaining plas sheet. He had his blaster in hand and was scowling down into the room. His eyes locked with Dean’s.
“You arrogant little whelp!” the baron snarled. “I might have known you’d be ringleading this!”
Dean exchanged his empty clip for a fresh one, careful to place the expended one in his pants pocket. His dad had been a stickler about saving anything that could be used again. Especially if it was hard to come by. He thumbed the slide release and stripped the first round into the chamber.
The double doors gaped completely open. Gasoline dripped over the edge, then began a cascade even though the drum had emptied.
Raising his blaster, Dean put three rounds into the plas sheet in front of Connrad’s face.
The baron grinned, not worried at all that the bullets might penetrate. “You do me proud, boy. Truly you do. Now you haul ass out there and kill everything you can. Don’t let your guard down even for a moment, because they’re all going to be out to kill you.”
Dean sidestepped, keeping up the Hi-Power, finding a new angle to bounce bullets. He started firing as soon as the muzzle cleared the plas sheet. Bullets skidded from the walls and whizzed through the ranks of the sec men, driving them to the ground again. Out of his peripheral vision, Dean watched the hot brass drop into the gasoline, make the liquid sizzle just a second, then sink.
“That’s it, boy,” Connrad said. “Keep that spirit.” He took out a self-light, scratched it to life on his jeans, then applied it to a torch he got from one of his sec men. “Get moving. Fly or fry.”