Tremaine came up first; Josh, holding his bloody shoulder, was slower to rise. Tremaine pulled a knife from his belt. In the background the machine gun stopped firing. Josh yelled out as Tremaine lunged into him and both men hit the wall of the shack, shaking the primitive structure right down to its wooden joints. Josh managed to block Tremaine’s arm with his forearm. His whole side hurt like hell. Whatever piece of ordnance was in him had gone beyond his shoulder to explore other parts of his body. He managed to kick at Tremaine and caught him once in the belly, but the man was up and was on Josh again in an instant. Josh felt the knife cut through his shirt and into his side, and he started to lose consciousness. The pain from this fresh wound was barely felt, so overwhelmed was it by the first. He could hardly make out the image of Tremaine pulling the knife free from his body and rearing his arm back for a final thrust. Probably at his throat, Josh dimly thought, as his brain started to shut down. The throat was quick and always fatal. That’s what he would do, he thought, as the darkness started to close around him.
The knife never made its downward plunge. It stopped at its highest point and moved no closer to Josh Harms. Tremaine kicked and jerked as he was torn off the wounded man. Rufus was directly behind him. One hand gripped the wrist holding the knife. He smashed it against the shack until Tremaine’s finger lock was finally broken and the knife dropped to the ground. Tremaine was solid muscle and superbly trained in hand-to-hand combat. But he was half Rufus’s size. One on one, there were few men who could match Rufus. The big man was like a grizzly bear once he got hold of somebody. And he had a good hold of Vic Tremaine, the man who had made his life a nightmare he’d thought would never end.
As Tremaine tried to wedge a forearm against Rufus’s windpipe, Rufus changed his tactic and lifted Tremaine completely off the ground, slamming his face again and again into the wall until Tremaine was groggy from the impacts, his face bloody. Finally Rufus put Tremaine’s head right through the window, the jagged glass cutting deeply into the man’s face. Then Josh screamed in pain from his wounds, and Rufus looked at him, his grip loosening a bit. Tremaine, sensing this, kicked out Rufus’s knee and whip-sawed an elbow into his kidney, dropping the big man to the ground. Tremaine rolled free, gripped his knife and lunged toward the defenseless man. The bullet hit him smack in the back of the head and dropped him on the spot.
Rufus heaved upward and looked at his brother, wisps of smoke still seeping from the barrel of the 9mm Josh held. Then he put the pistol down and lay back in the dirt. Rufus raced over and knelt next to him. “Josh! Josh?”
Josh opened his eyes and looked over at Tremaine’s twisted body, both relieved and sickened by what he had done. Even the worst enemy in the world didn’t look so terrifying dead. He looked back at Rufus. “You done good, little brother. Shit, better’n me.”
“I’d be dead if you hadn’t killed him.”
“Ain’t gonna let him get you. Ain’t gonna let him . . .”
Rufus ripped open his brother’s shirt and looked at the wounds. The knife had only cut a slice in his side. Probably hadn’t hit anything vital, Rufus concluded, but it was bleeding like a bitch. The bullet, though, was something else. He saw the blood dripping from his brother’s mouth, the rising glaze to his eyes. Rufus could stop the bleeding on the outside, but he could do nothing about what was going on inside. And that’s what could kill him. Rufus took off his shirt and put it over his brother, who was now shivering despite the heat.
“Hold on, Josh.” Rufus ran over to the Jeep and quickly looked through it. He found the first-aid kit and hustled back over to his brother. Josh’s eyes were now closed and he didn’t seem to be breathing.