by Jon Land
“We should leave, Jackie. We should go.” Mary tugged at him, pulling in the direction of the path she had found that led down here.
“I thought you said we were close.”
“We are.”
“Then what—”
A second burst of gunshots sent Jack diving to the ground, taking Mary down under him.
Buck had aimed this time at the sounds of muttering drifting out from the darkness, four irreplaceable bullets expended toward very uncertain results. He had burrowed under the dirt and debris to get closer to the grouping of voices, stifling his urge to cough and contriving to leave himself the widest possible escape route.
The walls and the ceiling were shedding veils of dust and dirt. He could feel it stinging his eyes and lodging in his scalp before he started pulling himself through the camouflage.
Buck remembered the tunnels of Vietnam, remembered the way scout teams known as “tunnel rats” described how it looked like nothing was holding those tunnels up and the feeling when small-arms fire made one collapse. The dirt piling up, burying you alive.
He continued to move slowly, barely ruffling even the dirt beneath him when the anguished scream pierced the silence of the cave.
“Othell!” Jack Tyrell wailed. “Othell, where the fuck are you?”
Unable to still his shaking, Othell Vance shuffled out from behind the dirt mound he was using for cover and moved toward the flashlight that had suddenly switched on.
“Mary’s hurt, Othell! Mary’s hurt bad!”
Othell wanted to ask him what he was supposed to do, since all he knew about medicine came from a couple of biology courses way back in college. But that would be pointless now, and Jack in his panicked state might well kill him if he said anything at all.
Othell Vance reached Tyrell as he lowered Mary gingerly to the ground. Even in the near darkness Othell could see the desperate plea in his eyes.
“Do something! You’ve got to do something!”
Othell lowered his ear against the woman’s chest. There was no movement, no breath sounds.
“Give me your flashlight.”
Jack Tyrell handed it over. “She wanted to leave. She told me we should go. She must have seen this.”
Othell was cocking Mary’s head upward to check her pupils when he felt the thin ooze of blood near her temple.
Tyrell had sunk to his knees, as helpless as a baby. “Why didn’t I listen to her? Why didn’t I goddamn listen!”
“There’s nothing we can do, Jackie,” Othell said, trying to sound more compassionate than terrified.
But Jack Tyrell had already gotten that mad look in his eyes, brushing the long stringy hair from his face as if to clear a path for his stare to reach outward in the darkness. Jackie Terror.
“Yes, there is.”
Buck Torrey figured one of the rounds he got off had been fatal, and that was enough to make him stop and rethink what he was doing, sensing the sudden advantage that had swung his way. Chaos had replaced the certainty of the enemy’s stand. They would be expecting him to flee now, figured they could buy themselves some time. Buck decided to cross them up. Circle round the enemy’s rear flank and take out the man farthest out at the earliest possible opportunity. Then appropriate his weapon to change the odds. Defense to offense. When in doubt, attack.
But Buck didn’t rush things. Even as the chaos continued, he clung to the darkness, closing ever so slowly. The circuitous route took him briefly out of view of the enemy camp, and when it returned to eyeshot, he couldn’t tell how many of the small group remained.
A shape moved briefly nearby, the target he had been waiting for. He glimpsed it again and resisted the temptation to fire, the target too obscure for him to risk any shot with only four bullets left.
Buck crawled away on his stomach, pulling himself past the piles of rocks and dirt that looked to have fallen in on themselves. He could almost reach out and touch the shape’s ankle, gazed up to see a face whiter than death itself, oblivious to his presence. He could take this one with his knife, save himself the bullet.
Something crunched behind him.
Buck knew then he had crawled straight into a trap, the other rail-thin ghost closing while this one served as bait. Buck spun onto his back and clacked off two of his last bullets. He hauled himself to his feet, ignoring the searing pain in the leg that had hobbled him.
The staccato burst of submachine-gun fire traced him as he stumbled away. He dove toward the ground to avoid the spray, but something like hot metal touched his side, a match flame against the skin. Buck fell, instantly dizzy and disoriented, yet he maintained the sense to pull himself on. He knew he’d been hit, the warm soak of blood already creeping through his shirt. But his legs and arms were still working, and that was the best he could hope for.
He turned onto his side in the hope of bettering his pace, the angle allowing a glimpse of one of the two ghosts darting through the darkness. Buck pulled the trigger twice more before he heard the click. He watched the ghost spin viciously around, howling in agony as he collapsed. The second ghost-man rushed up and grabbed the first, dragging him backward.
If only I had another bullet …
Disgusted, he abandoned his pistol and pushed himself on. Still moving silently and ceaselessly, he was able to pick up speed as wild shots trailed him through the darkness. He’d been here before, at least a place much like it.
Medic!
Buck had to stop himself from shouting the word as he collapsed, imagining he was back in the jungle, rolling through the mud with an M-16 hot against his chest. He took a deep easy breath and closed his eyes, hearing the distant whine of a chopper coming to haul him out.
Come on, he urged them, hurry up … .
He raised his head when they didn’t show, found a huge black hulk fashioned from steel, and crawled toward the cover it promised.
Weeb was the twin who’d been shot, a mean wound that had left a bullet high in his shoulder amidst ruined shards of bone. It was bleeding profusely.
“Jackie,” Othell Vance pleaded, having no idea how to bandage it or even stanch the blood, “we got to get ourselves outta here.”
Tyrell was still cradling Mary in his lap, Tremble hovering protectively nearby, watching the air like a guard dog. “And leave that bastard free to escape?”
“I got him,” Earl insisted from his brother’s side. “I’m telling you I got him.”
“Sure about that, are you?”
“I saw him go down. Put a stitch right in his spine. I don’t need to see the body to know the man’s dead out there.”
“Man shot your brother, killed my Mary.”
Earl snarled, something like a low growl rising in his throat. “Don’t you think I know that?”
“Takes a lot to kill a man like that. He’s not some state trooper or FBI agent. Man like this you gotta drive a stake through his heart before turning your back.” Jackie Terror got to his feet. “Now Tremble and I are going after him. Finish this, one way or another. You come or not, I don’t really give a shit.”
Buck Torrey knew they would be coming. Crawling under the huge black tanker truck that had appeared out of nowhere wouldn’t do him any good at all; not without a weapon anyway. Best thing he could do was hunker low, bury himself, and strike with his knife when they drew close enough.
Unless …
Buck stayed low and ducked under the truck, after all. Felt his way about until he found the gas tank. His knife was made to puncture steel, but it had trouble with the tank, ultimately bending under the strain of poking a decent-size hole. The gasoline spilled out and soaked the ground, splashing everywhere.
Buck pulled himself under the tanker, toward the cab. He could feel his wounded side stiffening, to add to the problem of his hobbled leg. He’d have to stand up when he reached the cab, and the prospect of that scared him as much as anything until he heard the enemy approaching.
“Othell!” yelled Tyrell. “Othell, get the fuck up here!
”
“Holy shit,” Vance muttered when he drew even with Tyrell, finding himself facing the tanker of Devil’s Brew that had been missing for seven months now.
“This is it, isn’t it?”
Vance couldn’t believe his eyes. “I don’t believe …”
“Mary found it. She was right all along, right up until the end.”
Tyrell moved on ahead, Tremble and Othell Vance just behind him. Suddenly Othell stopped, sniffing the air.
“Jesus, Jackie, I think I smell—”
A figure shifted in the darkness on the far side of the tanker, its faint outline just out of range of Tyrell’s flashlight. A glimpse was all he needed to raise his pistol and aim. In that instant he wanted more than anything to kill the man who had shot his Mary, so much so that he failed to hear Othell’s desperate shout of warning.
“Nooooooooooooooooo!”
Jackie Terror’s bullets ignited the gasoline still soaking into the ground, and instantly raging flames surrounded him. Tremble screamed, lurching back from the same kind of fire that had stolen his face. Still wailing, he whirled wildly through the mine, slapping at himself to make sure none of the flames had gotten him this time.
Jack Tyrell could feel their heat licking at his skin, trapped in the middle and not caring in the least, because Mary’s killer was burning up before him. Snared by one of his bullets and now turning into a charred husk on the mine floor as Jackie watched.
It didn’t bother him that he himself was going to die. He was ready, certain Mary would be waiting on the other side.
Then, suddenly, the tanker rumbled, and a white frosty mist sprayed out from nozzles hidden all along its sides. Tyrell stood stark still and the mist enveloped him, chasing the flames away with its cold, smothering them. It felt like ocean spray on his skin, and he watched while the raging fire shrank away to nothing.
“Jackie!” Othell Vance called, advancing toward him tentatively across the scorched ground. “Jackie, you all right?”
Tyrell’s eyes were locked on the tanker. The fire-extinguishing spray coated it in a thin blanket of white. Made it look so pristine, he could almost forget the tanker was carrying the deadliest explosive known to man.
He turned to Vance. “We got work to do, Othell.”
THIRTY-THREE
Liz held the wheeled carriage called a limber steady while Blaine worked the doubled-over bobby pin into place, attaching the crank to the Gatling gun’s shaft. This time, when he turned the handle crank on the gun’s right-hand side, an audible click sounded, indicating it was now ready to fire. Prior to being exhibited, the gun had obviously been restored to prime condition. Now, once he began turning the handle again, gravity would feed the bullets into the firing chamber, the gun firing as fast as he could churn. Its weight was balanced in the rear by a long wooden trail attached to the limber. The quickest way to rotate the gun would be to hoist the trail up, and Liz positioned herself behind Blaine in case that became necessary.
They were ready when the first of the gunmen crashed through the double doors. Blaine started turning the handle, and the Gatling’s six barrels spun in a smooth rhythm, belching smoke and fire with each shell, clacking in a loud staccato. The first two gunmen through the door never knew what hit them, while the next pair managed to slide belly-down across the floor, searching futilely for cover as they tried to steady their weapons.
Blaine rotated the limber slightly to trace them with the Gatling’s fire, his hand never leaving the handle. Wax dummies, glass display cases, and their contents fell to his onslaught as he sought a bead on the remaining gunmen by shifting the heavy gun to the right with Liz’s help behind him. The two who had scampered off that way opened up with submachine guns. Without sufficient cover, though, they were no match for the old rimfire cartridges, which spilled the men over one at a time. And none too soon, as Blaine’s next churn coughed the jerry-rigged bobby pin out of the shaft, the crank going limp in his grasp.
McCracken took his hand off the crank and was turning toward Liz when a man shaped like a fireplug hurtled over the escalator rail and grabbed her in a single motion. He yanked her brutally backward and pressed a pistol against her head.
“Don’t!” Blaine ordered, turning the Gatling on the man and thrusting his hand back onto the crank, hoping the ruse would work. He still had a third of the magazine showing, enough to be intimidating.
The man smiled and drew Liz closer against him. She looked weightless in his bulky arms. “I been waiting for this kind of opportunity for a long time. Something certain to drive my price up.”
“I know you?”
“No, but I know you.” The man’s squat, muscular shape was further exaggerated by his bulbous neck and military crew cut. “Name’s Dobbler.”
“You working for Rentz?”
“He pays pretty well.”
Blaine kept his hand steady. “He pay you enough to die?”
“I see that crank start to move again, I’ll kill her, McCracken.”
“Let her go, Dobbler, and you can spend what you’ve earned so far.”
“Step away from the gun, and I let her go, McCracken. Leave this between just you and me.”
Blaine met Liz’s gaze and for an instant saw Buck Torrey’s eyes look back, telling him she was ready.
“You said you knew me.”
“That’s right.”
“Not very well, apparently.” And Blaine made sure Dobbler could see his hand tighten on the Gatling’s handle.
Something changed in Dobbler’s expression, his focus redirected in the moment before Liz slammed her heel down on the instep of his nearest foot. He howled in pain and lashed her across the head with his pistol. Liz crumpled, as Blaine lifted the trail and shoved the wheeled carriage forward fast across the freshly waxed floor.
The Gatling gun was upon Dobbler before he could resteady his pistol on McCracken. His eyes bulged when Blaine rammed the barrel into his midsection and drove him backwards. Dobbler’s back crashed through a glass display case, sending a host of Civil War saber swords tumbling to the floor. His gun dropped and skittered across the tile, as he fought for his footing and his breath.
The sudden burst of motion, though, had weakened one of the carriage’s wheels enough for impact to strip it off. The entire carriage toppled and the clamoring Gatling staggered McCracken, freeing Dobbler to burst through the jagged remnants of the display case’s glass.
Sneering, Dobbler grabbed a shiny saber off the floor. Blaine snatched a similar sword, which had fallen between the trail and the spilled Gatling, in time to block Dobbler’s furious downward stroke and throw him off balance.
Blaine pushed Dobbler away and shoved him backwards. They faced off against each other blade-to-blade, tips crossed as Dobbler sidestepped. He kept his legs close together, feigning lunge after lunge to gauge McCracken’s reaction.
Blaine missed with a swipe, slicing the head off a mannequin outfitted as a Union sergeant. He darted behind it as Dobbler lurched out with a thrust, the mannequin’s midsection taking the impact instead of Blaine’s own. Dobbler yanked the blade out before Blaine could move on him again, sweeping it around instantly in a long cutting motion. The blow at first appeared lumbering and awkward, but it picked up deadly speed after it crossed the midpoint of its diagonal slice. Blaine just managed to dodge sideways and deflected it with his own blade, trying a counter which Dobbler blocked effortlessly.
The two men pirouetted across the room, twisting and turning. Blaine assumed Dobbler’s men must have disabled the museum’s nighttime security force and disconnected the security system while they’d been waiting upstairs, meaning no help would be coming from either quarter.
Blaine ducked under Dobbler’s next strike, and a painting brilliantly recreating a Northern field hospital was lost to his slice. Dobbler twisted inside Blaine’s retaliatory thrust, toppling a glass display case full of letters home from Southern soldiers. Blaine surged over the shattered glass, feeling it crunch
underfoot, but Dobbler parried a quick pair of McCracken’s blows, which left the two men locked up at the hilt. Eye-to-eye now, both searched for the slightest opening that would end one of their lives.
Dobbler whirled away and Blaine darted sideways to follow him, nearly blinded by one of several spotlights aimed at a collection of interconnected paintings making up a wall mural on the foyer’s western side. He pretended to slip, drawing Dobbler toward him to launch an expected diagonal slice for his throat.
Blaine waited until the last possible instant before knocking it aside, darting in at Dobbler to force him to turn into the spotlight’s spill. Blinded for an instant, the smaller man’s eyes narrowed, and Blaine thrust his saber out low and hard, the blade digging deep into the fleshy part of Dobbler’s thigh.
Dobbler screeched in agony and tried to lash an overhead slice downward, slipping as the blood gushed out from his leg wound. Blaine twisted to avoid the strike and thrust his blade through Dobbler’s shoulder. The razor-sharp tip shredded flesh and muscle. Blaine felt it nick some bone as he pushed harder on the sword and shoved Dobbler backward.
The blade emerged through the back of his shoulder and embedded itself into the wall. Dobbler tried once to pull free and wailed horribly, pinned to the paneling.
His screams were still echoing through the third floor of the museum when Blaine reached Liz.
“Are you all right?” Blaine asked.
She sat up woozily with his help. “I … think so,” she managed. She had a nasty gash across the side of her head, near the temple. Blood dripped from it down her cheek.
Blaine eased her upright, supporting her weight. “Lean against me. We’re getting out of here.”