A heartbeat after the sharp crack of the Armalite, Ryan heard the boom of a black-powder musket. But by then he was already moving, diving to his left. He felt the hot breath of buckshot close by his cheek.
Out of the corner of his eye he watched as the teenager shot by Trader took a few staggering steps backward, slipped on the frosty ground and went down on his back, sliding and leaving a smear of bright blood on the ice.
The second youth was alert enough to snap off a return shot at Trader, but not quick enough to allow for the speed of the gaunt figure. The hunting rifle snapped, but the bullet went a good yard wide.
J.B. had been ready for the attack as well, but he skidded as he moved to his right, falling badly and knocking the Uzi out of his grasp.
Abe was slowest to react. But he rolled forward, coming up in a crouch, realizing that nobody was actually shooting at him. He took his time with his Magnum and carefully placed a .357 bullet into the small of the back of the standing teenager, the powerful round exiting a handbreadth above the left hip in a fountain of dark blood and ribbons of torn flesh.
The youth screamed, his arms thrown wide, his blaster spinning from his fingers into the frozen ditch at the side of the old highway. His leg gave way under him and he stumbled, falling heavily onto his left side.
“Someone’s behind us,” Trader called, swiveling around to peer in the direction that the ambush had come from.
“Mine,” Ryan said.
The shot had barely missed him, and it had given him a good idea of the angle. An antique billboard stood twenty yards away, with a pile of rubble behind it. His combat instinct told him that the attack had come from there.
He scuttled sideways, the SIG-Sauer pistol in his right hand, keeping low. His guess was a single-shot musket of some sort. The idea behind the ambush would have seen him blown away, while the other two opened up with their rifles. If it had worked, it was likely that all four of them would have been down and done for.
But Trader had gotten there firstest and fastest.
As he left the blacktop, Ryan heard the sound of hasty movement ahead of him, in the shadows behind the wreckage of the billboard. He glimpsed a dark shape and snapped off a quick shot at it, seeing a burst of icy mud just to the left. He adjusted his aim and fired a second round. This time he heard the unforgettable sound of a full-metal jacket striking flesha strangely wet yet solid noisea gasp of pain and then a body falling.
Stillness.
Two spaced shots rang out behind him, as Trader and Abe propelled the wounded young men into the next world.
“Got him?” J.B. called.
“Yeah. Not sure if he’s bought the farm yet.”
“Go find out, Ryan!” Trader shouted with the old, familiar rasp of command in his voice.
For a moment he hesitated, feeling an odd mix of emotions. But there wasn’t time to stop and analyze them. He went on, keeping low, ready for a second shot.
But the man was dead. A clean head shot had blown away most of the left side of his face, leaving him lying in a steaming puddle of his own brains. From the matted white hair, it looked like he could’ve been the father of the two teenagers. And he was wearing the same coat that Ryan had spotted up on the ridge. A single-shot smoothbore musket lay close by his corpse. There was no sign of the dog.
Ryan noticed that the dead man had been crippled, and wore a built-up boot on his left leg.
There was nothing worth taking off the body, so he turned on his heel and rejoined the others, finding Trader quickly going through the pockets of the teenagers.
“Was it the man off the ridge, Ryan?” Abe asked, reloading his Colt Python.
“Reckon so. Must’ve shown himself as a decoy. Set our minds at ease, then looped around behind us under the cover of the old interstate. Nice plan. It could’ve worked.”