Three were dead and one dying, within the first twenty yards of the corridor. The overhead lighting was good enough for Ryan to be able to see immediately that they’d all been whacked with a large-caliber blaster. It didn’t need much deductive genius to work out that it was likely to be Jak’s satin-finish Colt Python.
One of the dead was a woman, slender with short-cropped hair. The rest were male. One had been hit from behind, through the small of the back, ripping a hole out of his belly that you could have driven a semi through. He was leaning against the side wall, both hands clutched to the scarlet loops of intestine that gaped from the monstrous wound.
” Por favor ,” he whispered, his eyes already looking into the unknowable distance.
“Don’t have the time,” Ryan said, hardly pausing, running on, Krysty at his heels.
“General said he had nine of his people left with him, lover. If he’s telling the truth, then he’s down to five, including that giant woman, the one who looked like her elevator didn’t go all the way to the penthouse.”
Ryan laughed. “Nice line, Krysty,” he said over his shoulder. “You make it up?”
“Uncle Tyas McCann used to say it. Said he read it in an old book way back when.”
The passage was running straight and the air was fresher, though it was overlaid with the smell of gunfire and the too-familiar scent of death.
There were two more corpses a little farther on. One had been shot, but the other had a neat little knife wound in the side of the throat, into the artery. Blood was still pumping, slow and feeble, from the gash.
“Three left,” Krysty said. “So General claims.”
“I wouldn’t believe that bastard crazie if he told me the sea was wet.” Ryan slowed down. “Light ahead.”
DEAN DREAMED that he’d been driving a chrome-plated predark wag, but the front of it had mysteriously broken away and gone rolling down a steep hill, crashing into an eatery, leaving him in the rear half. The mechanic who was helping him with the repairs was a woman of eighteen, with blond hair all the way to her cute little ass, a cute little ass that was hardly contained by the shortest, tightest cutoffs that Dean had ever seen. She was smiling a lot.
It was a good dream.
“Little fuck won’t know what hits him,” Carlos breathed, looking at the sleeping boy, less than a dozen yards away from them. The child had a big handblaster at his side, but there was no way he was going to get time to use it.
Despite its hostile appearance, the mule didn’t seem to mind the two men standing right beside it. It was even letting Jesus pat it affectionately on the side of the neck, pushing its long head against the man.
“Ready?” Carlos asked.
“Sure. Fun time, here we come.”
J.B. HAD CLIMBED into the turret of the wag, checking carefully first that there wasn’t one of the General’s men or women skulking inside. While Doc and Mildred followed him, he checked the controls, finding that the LAV was fully gassed and ready to roll.
“Are we about to bid a fond farewell to this abode of Pluto?” Doc asked, a little breathless from the scramble. “I would not wish to encounter Cerberus or any of the other followers of this dark lord.”
“Said ten minutes. Only four so far. Give Ryan the time we agreed.”
RYAN STOPPED, and Krysty slipped in a patch of dampness and nearly fell.
“Gaia! What did you do that for?”
“Listen.”
“Can’t hear anything. Oh, I get it. Why can’t we hear anything?”
“We figure there’s three or four more of the hostiles around. The big woman. And the General himself. Jak’s doing good work in the shadows. So, where the fuck are they all?”
The caverns were as silent as the tomb that they had bloodily become.
Ryan checked his wrist chron. “Six minutes done. All goes well, then J.B.’ll fire up the wag and head for the back door in four from now.”
“We go on?” Krysty was holding her snub-nosed Smith amp; Wesson .38, looking all around her.
“Sure. Not over till it’s over.”
A large red vending machine stood to the right of the tunnel, with white lettering emblazoned across it, proclaiming “Coke.”
Opposite was a half-open doorway. Ryan pointed to it with the SIG-Sauer. Krysty nodded, moving forward slowly on the right-hand side of the passage, Ryan keeping level with her on the left.
They both heard a scuffling noise far off, like someone quietly moving a heavy piece of furniture. In the maze of passages and tunnels, it was impossible to tell where it had come from, but Ryan’s guess was from behind the door.
Krysty took a few cautious steps, her back against the wall, reaching the Coke machine, flattening herself against it, while Ryan readied himself to dive for the doorway.
There was a thunderous crash, and the vending machine toppled forward, knocking Krysty over beneath it. Ryan started to turn, seeing the figure of the tall woman behind it, her Kalashnikov ready at the hip.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The blond mechanic had fallen to her knees, her thick-lipped, pouting mouth opening, the tip of her tongue glistening between pearly teeth.
Dean reached down and
A terrifying, harsh noise shattered the stillness, jerking the boy from the heart of his languorously erotic dream. The noise was overlaid by another sound, someone screaming in terror, pain and blinding shock.
Dean’s eyes opened abruptly and he sat up, part of him scared and angry with himself for having dropped off to sleep when his father had trusted him with the job of watching over the horses, their lifeline out of the desert hills.
There was a mantwo menboth in the black uniform of the General.
Dean struggled to make sense of what he was seeing, only a few yards away.
The horses and the Navaho ponies were all spooked, tugging at their bridles, trying to break free. One of the men was on his knees, mouth open in a gasping shriek of agony, blood pouring in a gouting cascade from the side of his face. His left arm was jammed between the teeth of Doc’s mule, Judas, who was rearing back, blood splattering its chest and forelegs.
There was an assault rifle lying in the puddled, trampled dirt by the kneeling man’s feet.
The second man was limping sideways, hopping on his left foot, cursing in Spanish. He was holding an identical automatic rifle, but firing it was obviously a long way from the focus of his attention.
Dean fumbled for his Browning Hi-Power, nearly dropping it at his first attempt, grabbing it and thumbing back the hammer. The man who seemed to have been kicked by Judas had finally realized the potential danger of his position and was trying to get his balance and bring the blaster to his shoulder. His comrade was still preoccupied with the fight to wrench his arm from the mule’s savage jaws, shaking his head in an attempt to shake away the blinding veil of blood from his eyes.
“Look out, Jesus!” The Kalashnikov was finally finding an aim in the vague direction of the sitting boy.
“Bastards!” Dean shouted at the top of his voice, ignoring the way it cracked and soared out of his control. He was angry, confused and frightened.
But the Browning was steady. He braced one hand with the other, like his father and J.B. had drilled into hint.
“Bastards,” he repeated, but much quieter, the word drowned out by the boom of the 9 mm automatic.
The jolt ran clear to Dean’s shoulder as he squeezed the trigger, the force of the recoil coming close to spilling him flat on his back.
A puff of gray dust erupted from the standing man’s chest, about the center of the fourth rib, halfway across on the right side.
He yelled, staggering back several paces, narrowly avoiding a vicious sideways kick from the enraged and murderous mule. The rifle was pointing at the dirt and his finger tightened on the trigger, pouring a futile stream of lead around his own feet, kicking up a hail of pebbles and sand.
Dean shot him again, this time the bullet smashing the man’s left elbow, sending the rifle spinning away.
“We wanna be your friend, kid!” Jesus yelled. “Don’t you killing me no more.”
“Bastard.” Dean stood and walked a few steps toward the wounded man, leveling the Browning and shooting him twice more through the chest, the second bullet going high and opening up the front of his throat, exiting through the cervical vertebrae and nearly severing the head from his shoulders.
Jesus dropped dead, and Dean turned his attention to the other one of the General’s men.
Carlos was demented with his suffering. One moment he’d been pushing the mule away, ready to rape the pretty curly-haired Anglo boy.