by Victor Milán
"Fuck that noise!" she screamed in English. "Fuck it!" She mashed the trigger down.
Buddy saw her finger tighten. He laughed. He had nothing to worry about unless the barrel climbed and sprayed his face, and he was already charging forward with that startling rhino speed....
The 7mm expansion jackets on the rounds flattened harmlessly against the vest. The Teflon-coated tool-steel penetrators slid with savage oily ease through Kevlar, laminated ceramic and steel, Kevlar again, and finally flesh.
Buddy shrieked. The force of the bullets smashing through his lungs and entrails squirted blood black from his mouth.
Through heartbeat thunder and the carpet-beating sound of his feet in sand, Fast Eddie heard a familiar female voice screaming a very familiar phrase. "Jesus," he gasped, "Shih'." He turned and ran toward the sound as gunfire and a whistling bellow tore the air.
What he might actually be able to do to help her, he had no clue. But that was Eddie.
Tex had just crossed the wadi southeast of the verti when he heard his brother's death-scream. The blood drained form his exertion-reddened face. "Buddy," he murmured. He changed course to run toward the cry and the shooting.
Despite his size, he could move quietly at speed. He dodged around a clump of brush and ran straight into a turbaned man fully tall as himself.
Distracted by the commotion not a hundred meters off, Sher Khan had not heard the big man bearing down on him. At the last heartbeat he sensed approach, started to spin, but by then it was far too late. The monstrous man collided with him, his black American machine gun stunning his left arm with a funny-bone blow.
Sher Khan reached for his Khyber knife. With an instant's more forewarning, Tex Lynko was quicker. He snatched his saw-backed Randall survival knife from its hilt-down harness before his left shoulder, slashed across.
Blood from the tall man's slashed throat washed across him in a wave. A red-dyed beard twisted, and the man fell.
"Dushman motherfucker," Tex ran on, leaving the Afghan to bleed.
Two more rebels in his path, dark skullcaps, baggy-sleeved white shirts, turning from a crouch to face him with parodic surprise on their bearded nigger faces. He fired the M60 from the hip as though it were a submachine gun. They sprayed blood and screams and fell. He ran.
Disoriented by the horrible noise still echoing in her ears and the nausea surging in her belly like the Yellow Sea in a typhoon, Shih ran south as fast as she could. She had to get away from what she had made of the giant gweilu, from the guilt of inflicting that much damage and suffering on another human being. At the same time, she was seized by the irrational fear that despite the punctured, sodden-mattress look of him, despite the purple tissue bulging from his mouth and nose, the huge man would rise up laughing to come for her with his garrote and cock in hand.
A spatter of desperate running steps, and the nightmare came true.
He stood before her, his face great as a harvest moon, his round glasses silvered with sun. But no, he was intact, and instead of a garrote he held a monstrous black gun.
Both stopped. He looked at the rifle in her hands. He looked at her face.
It had worked before. She had found the courage to use it before, and in spite of everything, it had worked. She pointed the rotary at the middle of his chest and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened. She had fired the entire magazine at Buddy.
Tex smiled. He swung his Maremont to bear on the tiny girl in the blood-soaked T-shirt and jeans.
A catamount weight landed on his back. He went to his knees. The Maremont roared, firing wide of the mark. The force of the muzzle blasts buffeted Shih like fists. She threw herself to the ground and covered her ears with her hands.
Scalding blood and breath were pulsing down the back of Tex's neck. Pushto curses chuffed in his ear like animal grunts. He struggled to draw his big knife, but the M60 was in the way. The point of the long Khyber knife slammed into his assault vest with sledgehammer force.
The composite armor was enough to turn the blade, even with the Tiger Lord's brawny arm driving it. Then Sher Khan found an armpit, and his knife drank deep.
Tex roared.
He got his Randall out then, stabbed backward over his shoulder. He felt it bite. The curse-chant never broke rhythm.
Tex grunted as the Afghan's knife sank into his right buttock. It withdrew, thrust again, and this time Tex screamed full-throat as it sank into his bowels. He stabbed wildly, blindly, not noticing that he severed his own right ear.
From the sand scant meters away Shih watched as the two fought like prehistoric monsters in some Hollywood epic. The pain of wanting to help Sher Khan was like the bite of one of those huge horrible knives. But if she tried to intervene, those flailing massive limbs would break her in half.
She expected that part of her, hidden deep till now, that had pulled the trigger on Buddy to force her forward to destruction. Instead it whispered, Stay. You can do nothing to help.
Another facet of the jewel strength , she had discovered within her, she knew then, was recognizing when you were truly helpless, and acting accordingly. But whatever she did or did not do, the scene before her—the horrible masculine orgy of blood and anger and agony and thrashing, thrusting violence—would live in her nightmares as long as she herself lived.
However long that might prove to be.
Jesus Christ, what's that noise? Eddie wondered. It sounds like a tiger killing a water buffalo.
He was heading what he took to be north now at a rubber-kneed trot. He thought he was getting close to where Shih's shout had come from, but his internal direction-finding equipment was all screwed up.
"Hey, amigo," a voice said from his left. "You wanta hold it right there, man."
He stopped and just stood, sweat running down his face, angry frustrated ironic bile running down his throat. "All right, Delgado," he said, not even looking. "You got me. Why don't you just go ahead and kill me?"
"No, Aleksandr Pavlovich," another voice said from behind him. "He won't do that at all."
Eddie wheeled, sat down hard, and stared up into the blindingly perfect features of Mr. P.
"Because I'm going to."
Chapter FORTY- EIGHT
Eddie had nicknamed his second-in-command after star pitcher Ron Darling of the Mets, whom teammates called Mr. Perfect for his habit of trying to put every pitch over the corner of the plate.
Eddie hated the Mets.
Shih, honey, he thought, if you're anywhere around here, this is as good a time as any for a miraculous rescue.
He stood up, swayed, and said, "Let's do it. Kill me." He squinted up at the sun. "I got nothin' better to do."
Mr. P looked at him and sighed. Then he knelt and carefully leaned his CAR-203 into the center of a clump of camel' s-hair.
"What's that?" Eddie demanded. "What do you think you're doing?"
"I don't need a gun to dispose of a filthy Jew like you." He stepped forward and backhanded Eddie across the face. "I think it'll be more fun to beat you to death."
Eddie sat down hard. He felt blood running from his nose and lips. Not exactly a new experience today.
"Now this is what I call a fair fight," he said. "You never could resist a challenge, huh, Pete?"
Pete grinned and leaned forward. With all his might Eddie kicked him in the crotch. Pete grunted, then grabbed the front of Eddie's shirt and hauled him to his feet.
"Just what I always thought," Eddie said. "No balls."
Mr. P buried a fist in Eddie's stomach. Eddie bent over and hoped the air would come back eventually.
When it did, he said, "This is going to be fun. I caa tell."
Pete took him by the hair, hauled him up. He punched Eddie in the face.
Eddie backpedaled, managed to keep his feet. " Wha' vuh hell's wrong wif you?" he demanded, numbed smashed Sips deranging his speech. "You been seeing too many American movies? You never hit someone inna face wiv your fist."
"I know precisely
how hard I can hit you without damaging myself," Pete said. Eddie noticed him waving his hand all but imperceptibly, as if trying to shake the sting. "I think of this as experimentation. Testing the human mechanism to destruction."
"Yeah?" Eddie started to topple forward. Pete closed.
Eddie planted his left foot and "wheeled, bringing his right foot back and around and out. A spinning back kick is the most powerful blow a human body can deliver, which is helpful to know when you're as small as Fast Eddie.
Under most circumstances he wouldn't use one in a real fight: takes too long to develop, too easy to read. But Mr. Perfect was suckered perfectly, moving forward off balance and expecting anything in the whole world before an attack from his well-drubbed victim.
The heel of Eddie's sneaker caught Pete square in the sternum. The Second Chance vest kept the blow from squashing his rib cage into his heart, but impact seat him flying. He landed in a huge cloud of dust.
With a scream of savage joy Eddie skipped forward. He had killed Georgie with a sloppy-ass kick from flat on his back. If Mr, P raised his head trying to stand up, Eddie was going to kick his perfect blond Aryan head right fucking off.
Unfortunately, they didn't call him Mr. Perfect just to blow air. He knew better than to try to stand into an attack. He rolled away. Eddie chased him, aimed a kick for the kidneys—armored too, but what the hell, he could get lucky.
The millisecond Eddie fired the kick, Pete reversed back into him and cut his down leg right out from under him with a neat sweep kick.
Eddie fell across his antagonist. He butted him with his head, laid his brow open further on a Kevlar-covered insert edge. Pete started short-punching him in the spareribs.
Great, he thought as Pete roiled him onto his back so he could sit up and punch him. At least things can't possibly get worse than this—
"Hold that pose."
Mr. P and Eddie both froze, then turned to look in unison. Jacqui Gendron stood there grinning with that little gargoyle cam on her shoulder. She was a bit dusty, and a few strands of hair had blown loose from her bun and were shining like strands of bronze wire in the sun, but it was only beer-commercial dishevelment, not serious down-and-dirfy disarray. Both men hated her for it.
"This is a World-Historical event," she said, making you feel those capital letters. "The dreary end of the doomed, romantic Red Sands rebellion. The world deserves to see it ali. You too, child; don't bother hiding there in that bush. It is not appropriate behavior for a professor."
Shih Tai-Yu stood up. Her face was smudged and bruised. Her black hair was wild and had little bits of dried desert vegetation clinging to it. If Mattel made a Viet Cong Girl Doll, it would look just like her.
"Ed-die," she said, "I wanted to help. But I do not know how." She hung her head. "I am useless after all."
A light came on in the red and black chaos that was Eddie's head. "That noise back there wouldn't have been you waxing old Buddy, would it?"
Her tongue peeked out and her throat worked as though trying to hold back vomit. Bingo.
"I'd say that makes you a hero, babe. If nothing else, it means I can die happy."
And having distracted Mr. P with a bit of happy horseshit, he bucked him into the air and tried to lay a scissors on him.
Pete wasn't Georgie or the Swinging Richard. He was Mr. P. The instant he felt himself going up, he dove clear of Eddie, hit, rolled, came up dusting himself off and laughing.
He raised a hand to ward off Delgado, who had come up close to see if he needed to intervene. "Are you getting good footage of this, telecunt?" he asked Jacqui. "You think your viewers will enjoy the spectacle of this little kike getting hammered to death?"
"It will be good for a four hundred share at least," she said, letting the epithet roll off her like spittle off a mylar dropsheet. "Maybe a clean billion. It's what TV news is all about."
"Well, it's time for the grand finale." Pete advanced on Eddie. On his feet again, Eddie kicked at him. Pete rode the first with his hip, blocked the secondhand closed, pistoning punches into Eddie's face and body.
Eddie tried to keep dancing back, maintain ma'a, engagement range. It was hopeless. Mr. P was damned near as good as he was—to save a shred of ego—and he'd had a much better day. Pete kept on him, pounding him, punishing him.
Running was starting to rankle. Eddie put his head down and charged. Anything to keep Pete from picking him to pieces with those precise blows.
Pete caught him, let him slam into his armored chest. He was laughing hugely. He caught Eddie around the small of the back and squeezed.
"I think I'll break your spine, you little shit," he said.
"Yeah?" Eddie said, which was the wittiest rejoinder he had in him at that moment. He brought up a knee with desperate power. Maybe his earlier nut-shot had hit off true.
Maybe it had. Pete swiveled, took the blow on the point of his hip. It popped Eddie's Glock out of Pete's belt to the sand at their feet.
Both men watched the handgun fall. "Too bad it can't help you," Pete taunted. He locked hand on wrist and squeezed, pulling Eddie's feet clear of the ground. "And / don't need it."
Eddie felt his backbone give, felt the awful leg-watering weakness as bone pressed spinal cord with a creak.
He reached his face forward and bit off Mr. Perfect's nose with a single weasel snap.
Mr. P shrieked and shoved him away hard. Blood arced from the middle of his face, like a smooth red elephant trunk.
Eddie fetched up against the grenade-lumpy chest of Delgado, who had sensed things going wrong and lunged forward to help his new boss. Delgado caught Eddie under the arms and just stood there holding him, staring at Mr. P as he reeled around screaming and hosing blood.
Eddie gagged, spat out blood and Mr. P's perfect nose. His fingers, held cruelly tight behind his back, had only pins-and-needle feeling and the responsiveness of a rubber glove filled with sand. He willed them to work, blind and desperate.
The Cat came back to himself. He pushed Eddie down in the dirt, unslung his CAR-203, and started to bring it up.
He wore his vest-o'-grenades for the M-203 launcher. Like the other members of Texas Team he also carried several hand grenades slung to his web harness, for up-close-and-personal work.
The CS hand grenade whose pin Eddie's numb fingers had found blew. Thick white smoke wreathed the Cuban.
Screaming "Shih! Get down!" Eddie sprang up and ran away from the Cat as fast as he could. Which wasn't very.
A tear-gas grenade does not explode. But it does burn, at a fairly high temperature, as the Symbionese Liberation Army found out to its terminal dismay one warm May morning in Watts.
The first grenade to cook off was a multiple projectile round. Delgado's armor managed to deflect most of the force of the explosion and the shotgun-spray of pellets away from him, but a spike of hot gas laid open the right side of his face like a razor.
The next grenade to go was good old Willy Peter. It had a lot more powerful bursting charge than the MP round, but the Second Chance armor still preserved Delgado's life. Which was unfortunate, because he was now covered in flakes of metal that clung like soldier ants and burned like hell. He began to shriek and spin around and around like a dervish at the Loud Zikr. Little threads of white smoke trailed from his face and arms and legs and spiraled about him in an intricate pattern. His flesh burned with a pale flame and much greasy smoke.
Then the rest of the grenades cooked off with a rippling thunder crash, tearing his head off, plucking his armored torso to pieces like petulant giant fingers.
Eddie had thrown himself behind a bush when the MP round went. Fortune had sent the Cat spinning away from him in his final fire dance, so the rapidly expanding tentacles of white smoke, each tipped with a flake of hell, did not find him.
Then he was laughing, and weeping, and someone was behind his back, fiddling with his bonds. He jerked away, though he didn't stop laughing.
A Chinese exclamation, and then, "Calm yourself
, Eddie. It is I."
He quit trying to squirm free, but bounced up and down on the hot hard earth like a kid who needed to take a whiz. "You always said I was nuts for watching Raising Arizona seven times," he screamed at the smoke-shrouded wreckage of the Cat. "Who's crazy now, you Cuban son of a bitch?"
Shih finally solved the fasteners on the restraints. As they fell away, she leapt back, as if fearing Eddie's madness was topical, carried by a touch.
Then she grabbed his shoulder. "Ed-die, look. It's that man!"
Mr. Perfect, no longer so, emerged from the swirling stranded white phosphorus smoke at a run. Eddie knew at once where he was going.
He launched himself off the ground with more strength than he thought he had left. Momentum carried him a few steps, and then his knees buckled. He dropped to his knees, pitched forward, caught himself on his hands.
Yes, my hands. My hands are back. Hello, hands.
He knew his arms would never support him, so he kicked his way upright again, slogged forward in a desperate lumbering dash.
Pete passed him on an oblique to the left. The time for this bare-knuckle kung-fu movie shit was past. Man is the tool-using animal.
Pete reached his tool first. He caught his CAR-203 by the sling and whipped it around as Eddie dove for his Glock.
A burst went over Eddie with a sound like a sheet tearing. His left hand closed around the squat black polymer grip of his Glock. A fleck of white phosphorus had fallen on it. He screamed as it stung his hand like a scorpion.
He did not let go, though he felt the searing metal welding his flesh to melted polymer. Inertia carried Mm on in a long dive as a second burst raked earth where the pistol had lain.
Eddie flew through a wormwood bush, landed; muscle memory kept his shoulder down, guided him through a roll. He came out of it supine, the Glock burning in his palm, braced by the right hand, forefinger locked around the scooped front of the trigger guard. The stink of his own meat cooking inflated his head like a circus balloon.
A life expressed as a fat white dot nestled in a square U. An elongated shape beyond, light winking from its side. Earth fountains about his face, squirting up, feathering at the top, falling away in khaki plumes as the wind had their way with them. Getting closer. It wasn't like Mr. P to keep missing at this range, but then again, his day had gotten worse.
