by Jerry Ahern
Hitting a rock she hadn’t quite gauged properly, Ellen’s vehicle bounced so hard that her head actually struck the headliner. Murmuring “Shit!” under her breath, Ellen corrected her steering wheel and rode her brakes a little more heavily.
Dangerously close, but not in any position to fire yet, as best she could tell, were the two tanks aligned with the Lakewood Industries forces. Looking ahead, Ellen reminded herself that in—thankfully—only a few more moments, she would be abandoning her vehicle and running for cover.
Ellen started braking, knowing that the preset spot where the Suburban was to be abandoned lay just ahead, around the next bend. She couldn’t help glancing up into the rocks. Did she catch a glimpse of some of the personnel from the Seventh at the highest point along the bulge of ridgeline? Would the men operating the Lakewood Industries tanks see the men of the Seventh, realize what was about to transpire, what lay in store for them and their heavily armored anachronisms?
The spot where Ellen was to abandon her Suburban came upon her more quickly than she’d realized that it would, and she slammed on the brakes and skidded on the sand and gravel.
Grabbing her gear, Ellen was out of the vehicle and running. She glanced over her right shoulder and up toward the ridgeline. She heard the roar of the tanks behind her. One of the tanks plowed into the Suburban, the massive vehicle slowing the Russian tanks just enough. Ellen heard the explosion, looked back and right again. Up in the rocks, there was a puff of smoke, then another and another and another, in series. The entire face of the ridgeline began slipping away, tons of rock raining down upon what had been the road, hammering against the tanks, massive boulders striking them, bouncing off the armor—at least some of them bouncing. Ellen was running faster than she’d run in her adult life.
Ellen could barely see, the dust so thick, and she coughed, her throat dry, her mouth filled with the foul tasting pulverized rock and sand. Tears streaming from her eyes, her breathing labored, Ellen kept running . . .
Clarence stopped his tank’s forward movement so precipitously that Lieutenant Easley struck his head on one of the gauges mounted to the control panel. “Watch out!” Clarence cautioned tardily, working the pedals and turning the Russian vehicle a full one hundred eighty degrees, the machine groaning in complaint, but responding. “Jack told me about that son of a bitch,” Clarence declared, “the guy on the Hummer. Not the driver, but the other guy. He’s the Lakewood guy who tried killing Alan. Alan told me himself how that guy—his name’s Lester Matthews—had a lot of fun beating him. Look out, Easley!”
The Humvee’s .50 Browning Machine gun began chattering, and the clanging of projectiles off the tank’s armor was seriously unsettling because the .50 round was serious ordnance. Clarence solved the problem by aiming the nose of the tank dead on at the Humvee’s hood and smashing the tank’s left tread down and over it. The Humvee’s rear end snapped upward several feet, the driver throwing himself from behind the wheel, Lester Matthews quitting the .50 caliber machine gun and diving for the dirt.
As soon as the tank’s track cleared the Humvee, Clarence stopped the machine and started for the hatch. “I haven’t been in a good fistfight in a long time—since about 1984, maybe ‘85.”
Lieutenant Easley’s face seamed with an almost ear-toear grin. “Enjoy yourself, Clarence.”
“I intend to.”
Clambering out of the hatchway, Clarence oriented himself on the half-crushed Humvee. The driver was stirring. Matthews was already starting to stand. As Clarence jumped down off the turret, he heard Lieutenant Easley behind him. “I’ll take the driver, if need be. You go ahead with the other fellow.”
“Thanks,” Clarence told him, nodding, and flung himself to the ground. The gravel was a little slippery and Clarence made a mental note to remember that. He began walking toward Lester Matthews. Matthews was reaching for a gun, but Clarence already had one of the MP-5s in his hands. “Touch your pistol, and I’ll fucking cut you in half, cocksucker.”
Mathews’ fingers twitched, but his hands didn’t move.
Clarence stopped, unbuckled his gun belt and put it beside the Browning .50 in the back of the Humvee. “Ditch the pistol belt, Matthews.”
Lester Matthews wore a GI-style pistol belt with some sort of modern semiautomatic in a military flap holster.
“As you remove that belt, if you feel like going for the gun, hey, I’ll shoot you dead.”
Matthews had the belt open, held it by the buckle end, the holstered pistol, two pouches of spare magazines and a sheathed fighting knife suspended from it.
“Put the whole thing in the back of the Hummer and step away.” Out of the corner of his eye, Clarence saw Easley walk up to the driver, and toss the man a revolver. The driver started to turn away, then wheeled toward Lieutenant Easley and stabbed the revolver at him. Lieutenant Easley, his service revolver in his right hand, fired, then fired again. The driver was pitched backward, on to the gravel-and-sand track, dead.
Matthews said to Clarence, “You aren’t taking any prisoners, right?”
“You got it.”
“I figured. Let’s do it, hotshot.”
“Where you made your mistake, asshole,” Clarence responded evenly, “was to mess with my cousin. Nobody fucks with my cousins and gets away with it. This way, you’ve got a chance. Do your best, motherfucker.”
Matthews lost it, which kind of surprised Clarence, Matthews being a professional. But sometimes one could hit just the right epithet that would trigger somebody into an irrational move. Head low, hands like rigid claws, Matthews charged. Clarence sidestepped, made to trip Matthews. Matthews had faked it, wheeling right in a roundhouse kick that glanced off Clarence’s right rib-cage. Clarence got a piece of the kick, catching a fistful of Matthews’ bloused right trouser leg, jerking back on it. Matthews fell, hard. Clarence came in and went out fast, putting a kick to the side of Matthews’ head. Matthews slowed for a split second, then tried a leg sweep, but Clarence was already safely out of range.
Clarence took another step back, letting Matthews up to his feet. “Bar fighter, right?” Matthews inquired.
“From Omaha, Nebraska, to Athens, Greece, with Athens, Georgia, somewhere in the middle, you’d better believe it.”
“Are you good at it, kid?”
“Ask yourself—later, if you’re able.”
Matthews laughed, jerked a small pistol from inside his black battle dress utilities and fired.
R R R
“Testosterone,” Lizzie murmured.
“Yes, ma’am. What is tess, tesstoss—what you said, ma’am?” the private soldier beside her asked.
“What it might be convenient to have sometimes, Private Hargrave. But, as a girl, I just have to make up for it with inspiration. Follow me!”
They were afoot, Lizzie, Lieutenant Castle, Hargrave and a second private soldier named Butler, their horses left with the third enlisted member of their detail at the summit of the defile. The helicopter had broken off when the series of explosions came from the ridgeline and the avalanche there had begun. Lizzie had no idea who or what was behind the occurrences, but whatever the cause, the incident had bought her several precious minutes in which to formulate a plan and get ready to see it to fruition, while Major Davis reformed his skirmish line and made a second charge toward the pavilions.
She’d viewed everybody from Connery to Mike Connors do it on big and small screens: run across a broad, open expanse, the bad guy in the helicopter in hot pursuit, trying to use the machine to knock down the hapless person he pursued. The usual thing was that the quarry got a moment’s chance to bring his firearm into play and fired, either somehow or other hitting some vital portion of the helicopter’s moving parts or striking the pilot himself.
Lizzie’s variation on the more conventional scenario consisted of two principal points: The actual shooting at the helicopter would be performed by persons other than the party whom the helicopter pilot pursued, and the guy dodging the helicopter, li
ke some sort of ball bearing in a pinball machine, would be a girl instead.
Lieutenant Castle veered off left, Hargrave and Butler angling right. The two enlisted men, .30-40 Krag rifles in hand, practically flung themselves beneath an overhang a scant three yards to the side of the defile. Lieutenant Castle went flat against a rocky outcropping. He would be easily visible from the air if the helicopter came that far.
It was coming along the lip of the dry lake bed, firing short bursts from its gun as if it were some sort of angry beast, snorting in contempt for its intended prey.
Lizzie poured on as much speed as she could, hoping that she’d reach the lake bed in time, before the helicopter pilot spotted Lieutenant Castle and the others. She also hoped—prayed, actually—that the pilot of the helicopter would not stop to ask himself why she was suddenly afoot rather than on horseback.
Lizzie reached the comparatively flat surface of the lake bed—she almost tripped and fell, which would have been too much the usual thing that girls in movies did, anyway—and ran as fast as she could. If she could get the helicopter safely between her back and the muzzles of the soldiers’ guns, she’d have a chance. If she only had twentieth-century track shoes on instead of high-button, high heeled, hard-soled shoes. She had to maneuver the helicopter to follow her, not cut her off. Otherwise, either the helicopter’s fuselage would bowl her over or its gun— it was an electric minigun—would riddle her with bullets. Either way, she’d be just as dead, and the helicopter would still be a factor in the affray.
Glancing back over her left shoulder once, she spotted the helicopter banking, vectoring toward her.
Lizzie was already running so fast that her lungs ached; she tried running faster . . .
The pistol in Lester Matthews’ hand was one of the few that Clarence Jones could recognize by sight, a Beretta .25—he forgot the model designation. His aunt, Ellen, had carried one in her purse for close to twenty years, back in their own time.
As Lester Matthews pulled the trigger and there was the flash of yellow-orange light at the muzzle, Clarence remembered once bragging that it would take more than a bullet from a handgun to stop him if he was intent upon beating the crap out of somebody. The bullet struck, and Clarence’s right side just under his ribcage was on fire with pain. Clarence staggered back.
This was his chance to live up to his boast.
Matthews seemed about to fire again. Clarence straight-armed Matthews in the chest with his right palm and swatted aside the little pistol with his left in the very instant the gun discharged again. Clarence felt no additional pain or numbness—there was some numbness already started by his right kidney—and his hand closed over Matthews’ gun hand, twisting it clockwise, first a single quarter turn, then another. Drawing his right hand back, closing it into a fist, he punched into the center of Lester Matthews’ pain-contorted face. Clarence felt his knuckles split against teeth—punching someone when there could be an interchange of blood was dangerous with someone from the twentieth century—and, in the next microsecond, blood sprayed everywhere, Matthews’ torn upper lip and crushed nose spurting.
Clarence still grasped Matthews’ gun hand. Abruptly, Clarence twisted it a few extra degrees and locked his own arm to maximum extension, forcing Matthews’ arm upward like the hand of a clock closing in on eleven. Clarence turned a full one hundred eighty degrees, the pain in his right side entrance wound and the numbness by his kidney almost making him lose balance and stumble. But Clarence kept himself standing, his right hand flashing upward, outward, grasping Matthews’ gun arm elbow. As Clarence pressured the elbow upward with his right hand, Clarence jerked the gun hand downward, hard and fast. The sharp sound of the bone snapping—actually, more like several bones—was clearly audible, and Matthews shrieked with pain.
The .25 fell from Matthews’ grasp as Clarence let go of the hand and wrist but kept his arc of motion going, burying his left elbow into Matthews’ solar plexus. There was a gush of breath that smelled of fear, and Clarence snarled as he told Matthews, “I learned that one in a bar fight in Greece when a guy came at me with a knife. Like it?”
Clarence didn’t wait for a response, wheeling one hundred eighty degrees once again. He was inside Matthews’ guard.
And Clarence did something for which he knew he would never forgive himself. He murdered Lester Matthews by smashing the heel of his right hand upward against the base of Matthews’ bloody pulp of a nose, driving the ethmoid bone up into Matthews’ brain, killing him instantly.
Bethany, skirts billowing wildly about her, rode low over her black horse, rode as if all the demons of Hell were suddenly chasing her. But it was only David and his father who pursued her. She might have had better luck with the demons.
A man in a German officer’s uniform, a Broomhandle Mauser pistol in his left hand, rode beside her. The horse was, quite evidently, not his own, fitted with a western stock saddle rather than a military one. Yet the German rode his mount perfectly, commandingly upright in the saddle.
There was a sharp report from the Broomhandle Mauser, like the sound of lightning striking a tree limb. Instinctively, David ducked, realizing nonetheless that the German’s chance of hitting anything from the back of a galloping horse was less than negligible.
“He could get a lucky shot, son! Keep low,” David’s father warned, himself low over the neck of his mount, the animal’s reins in his left hand, his long-barreled special Colt revolver in his right hand.
In the next instant, David watched his father bring the six-gun’s barrel on line and snap off a shot. David’s mount edged right, nervously. “Dad! Knock it off with the cowboy movie chase scene bit, will ya!?”
But his father wasn’t listening, even if he heard.
Bethany and the German officer rode at the center of a pack of six men, at least two of the men part of the assemblage of diplomats, two others dressed less richly and likely underlings. Of the remaining two, one was clearly just a hireling, a kid with a brace of six guns and a paint horse under him. The other rider was clearly a Lakewood Industries man, a submachine gun hanging at his side. As of yet, it was unused, the Lakewood man displaying obvious difficulties keeping his mount under control.
Jack fired one more probably useless shot, then holstered and hammer-thonged his Colt. The slipstream around him and his animal was stronger than he had imagined it might be all the times he’d watched his favorite western heroes riding hell for leather after the bad guys; Jack’s Stetson was nearly blown off. He screwed it down tighter and leaned lower over his mount’s neck, the animal’s mane lashing at his face, foam from its lips spraying him. Jack’s eyes were squinted against both.
The horse he rode with the European military saddle and Imperial German crest on the saddle blanket almost certainly belonged to the Mauser-armed German officer riding with the Kaminsky woman. “Come on, girl—we’ll get you reunited with der kapitan or whatever the hell rank he is. Come on!” Jack’s heels pumped against the animal’s flanks, the black’s pace quickening. Aside from the fact that he might get killed and be taken from his wife and family, Jack half-wished for a silver-mounted saddle and a big silvery-white stallion or a golden palomino. Live or die, this was probably the only horseback chase scene-cum-running gun battle he’d ever be in, and there was no sense not doing it right.
All the years of television westerns as a kid colored his perceptions, he thought, affected him to the point that— as surely as if he were listening to one of his daughter’s CD-things through a pair of headphones—the music he’d loved so much as a child, memorized in order to retain it, to possess it, long before the days of videotape, played in his head, with a depth of orchestration he’d never before experienced. It was the music from Stories of the Century and a half-dozen other programs, chase-scene music, frantic, full, resonating through his soul.
The German officer fired a series of quick shots. Jack’s stolen horse took a crease along the left side of its neck. Jack was angry: What kind of man fired at his ow
n horse?
“Gyaagh!” Jack snarled, the music in his head playing louder . . .
Lizzie did it, the movie thing girls did every time a bad guy or a monster—in this case, a helicopter—chased them with evil intentions. She fell, almost flat on her face, her nose suddenly stiff feeling, but her right ankle hurting her more than any pain she could remember, even worse feeling than when she was shot. “Damn!” She tried standing up. If the ankle wasn’t broken, it was doing a great imitation.
Lizzie tried again, the ankle feeling almost worse, if that was possible. She drew a revolver.
The helicopter was closing fast. There would be time for one shot, maybe two. Why weren’t Lieutenant Castle and the two enlisted men firing? As she glanced right, she saw the two enlisted men, Private Butler and Private Hargrave, standing, their rifles to their shoulders. Lizzie craned her neck, spotted Lieutenant Castle. She saw his lips moving, saw a flash of gunfire from his revolver. Even above the whirring roar of the helicopter as it closed with her, Lizzie heard the dual cracks of rifle shots.
The helicopter kept on coming. More rifle shots, and maybe pistol shots, too. Hopelessly—almost—Lizzie stabbed one of her own handguns toward the helicopter. In the same instant that she fired, there was a ragged volley, coming from Hargrave, Butler and Castle.
The helicopter seemed to stop, suspended in mid-air, like a soaring bird of prey could do, its wings motionless against a powerful air current. But the helicopter, of course, had no real wings, merely its powerfully bladed main and tail rotors. These spun, but somehow not as she remembered them moving a split second before.
Her ankle screamed at her, but Lizzie got herself to her feet, started to fall. The dashing Lieutenant Castle was there beside her, catching her, propelling her away from beneath the helicopter, its gun silent, its fuselage spinning on its vertical axis, beginning to auger down toward the dry lake bed and destruction. Lizzie decided that her ankle couldn’t be broken; she hadn’t passed out from the pain.