He let the headless dummy fall away from him and swiveled back to face the battle proper. Men were doubling back now, from the car and from the house, alerted by the sudden firing on their flank. Bullets were sweeping the darkness, seeking targets, most of them going wild but a few coming dangerously close. He found a palm and hugged it, his Trooper up and tracking, spitting death first at one target, then at another.
Hog was in his element, his glory. And with the possible exception of a certain whorehouse in L.A., he wouldn't have been elsewhere for the world.
Terrance Loughlin sighted through the drifting smoke and squeezed the trigger of his Browning Hi-Power auto-loading pistol. A single Parabellum slug went screaming into darkness, and the scream at once became a human one, already dwindling into liquid silence.
Unlike Hog, the Brit did not love battle for its own sake. He had chosen a profession he was good at, for a multitude of reasons, and when he had been forced into premature retirement, he had marketed the only skills he possessed.
Not that Loughlin was a "simple" soldier, by any means. Behind the handsome face, the mind was active, alert, exceptional. But when confronted with the choice of turning mercenary or of sweating out his life behind a desk, in a flannel suit, there was—for him—no choice at all.
And maybe he was not so different from Hog, after all. A gliding shadow in the darkness, Loughlin chose his targets carefully, selectively, attempting to fire only when the other guns were roaring, hoping-to disguise his presence as long as possible. So far the enemy had not detected him—or else had not survived the brief and brutal meeting.
He was halfway to the house and closing fast when an explosion rocked the second story, flinging tiles and shingles skyward. Something very like a burning human form was catapulted from a second-story window, to land on the lawn and writhe there for several moments before death arrived to quench the flames.
He was about to call the house a write-off when the double doors in front burst open and a group of six or seven gunners hit the marble steps in a stampede. The Brit could see a young woman struggling in their grasp as they bee-lined it for the waiting cars. An instant later, another little clutch of gunners came sprinting from the house, one pausing long enough to throw a burst of submachine-gunfire behind him through the doorway.
They were scattering, the nine or ten of them together with their hostage, fanning out among the waiting vehicles. Loughlin snapped his automatic up and sighted on the final straggler first, squeezing off a single round that picked him up and punched him around into a sloppy pirouette before it dropped him, lifeless, on the flagstone walkway.
They were at the cars, and piling in now, and he had no time to note which vehicle contained the woman. Never mind, the task was simple: to stop them—or as many of them as he could—from leaving the estate alive and with their hostage.
The lead car was rolling now, and veering in his general direction on the curving drive. Loughlin moved to meet it, his Browning up and ready in the classic duelist's stance, one arm outstretched, the other swung behind him to help balance him and hold him steady.
The car was about twenty yards away when the hostile driver saw and recognized his mortal danger. Loughlin put the Parabellum manglers out in rapid-fire, spent shell casings spinning, glinting in the firelight, tumbling through space.
A marching line of holes appeared across the car's windshield, milky spider webs of cracks now fanning out from each hole, obscuring the driver's view—which didn't matter anyhow, because the driver was dead behind the wheel, almost decapitated by the storm of lead and fractured glass that flayed him in his seat.
Without a hand upon the wheel, the car was turning, skidding, running straight at Loughlin as it jumped the curb and picked up speed. A dead foot held the pedal down, and the car was roaring now, caroming on across the lawn, on a collision course for the nearest row of palms.
Loughlin rolled aside and found his feet again in time to witness the collision. Irresistible force met immovable object with a rending crash, and the palm tree was virtually uprooted by the jarring impact. It teetered, rootless, for a moment, then collapsed—directly on top of the car that had struck it.
The crushing weight of the tree crumpled steel and pinned the screaming passengers inside. One of them was firing wildly with a submachine gun, perhaps in fear or reflex action, and an instant later his rounds found their target. A spark flashed in the general location of the trunk, a bright flame licking upward for a heartbeat just before it found the fuel.
The detonation, when it came, was full of hollow thunder, rolling out across the lawn to flatten Loughlin where he stood. The heat was searing, even at that range, and there was not a hope in hell of anyone surviving in the heart of it. A single scream erupted from the boxed inferno, and was just as swiftly silenced by the hot, devouring flames.
Loughlin took himself away from there, his face a mask of timeless fury as he tracked the other cars. It was high time for him to chase the war.
Stone had seen the gunners leave the house with their young female hostage, but he had a different vantage point from Loughlin's. While the two surviving cars were pulling off and leaving the Brit behind them, they were actually running straight for Stone, and he was determined to be ready for them.
She was in the second remaining car, he knew that much, and he had to stop the lead vehicle if he hoped to pen her and her captors up inside the wall of old An Khom's estate. For that, he would be needing something with more bite to it than the Beretta had, and a heartbeat later Stone hit upon the answer.
Several yards away, his latest kill was stretched across the drive, an Uzi submachine gun inches from his lifeless hand. Stone made his move and plucked the weapon up perhaps a second or two after he saw the two surviving cars begin to roll his way.
And they were bearing down on him already, closing fast, the lead vehicle with three gunners in the front seat.
Behind them in the other car, there would be two or three more, with the hostage that he hoped to free, but first he had to see about surviving on his own.
The Uzi was a favored weapon of guerrillas everywhere, light and compact, capable of spewing out the Parabellum man-breakers at a cyclic rate of 750 rounds per minute with L practiced finger on the trigger. Stone was practiced, but he had no way of knowing just how many rounds were left inside the captured weapon's magazine—and there was certainly no time to stop and look.
He put his trust in fate and held the trigger down, hosing the grill and windshield of the lead car as it barreled into his effective range. The deadly little slugs chewed through the grill and radiator, marching up across the hood and drilling through the safety glass to find flesh inside, and devour it.
His target started weaving at a range of fifty yards, and it was skidding broadside when the dying driver finally lost control completely. Stone saw it going over and into its death roll, and he knew that it would take him with it if he stood his ground much longer.
And he moved, departing from the line of fire perhaps a heartbeat before the rolling car thundered past. A door flopped open on the roll, disgorging a boneless body like so much discarded rubbish, and the car tumbled on, smoking now, with flames already licking the interior.
Behind it, the second driver saw his comrades die, and he reacted with exemplary control. A hard left twist, and he was speeding up to put the ruined car between himself and the anonymous machine gunner who so clearly meant to kill them all. He gunned the accelerator, tires smoking, chewing up grass and sod as he left the drive, running flat-out and hell-for-leather right across the open lawn.
His gunner had the window down and was lining up an AK-51 for the kill when Mark Stone saw it coming. A sideways leap was all that saved him as the deadly steel-jacketed rounds sliced air where he had stood but seconds earlier.
And then the car was past him, roaring to the gate with gunners and their hostage all intact, escaping. Stone came up to one knee, the Uzi tracking, and he squeezed the trigger
and was instantly rewarded by a triple burst—and then nothing. It was empty, slide locked open on the vacant, smoking chamber. His three rounds cut the last car's rear fender, flaking paint and gouging metal, then it was gone and running free, already out of sight.
Stone dropped the useless Uzi and retrieved his pistol from its shoulder harness. Silently he waited, listening to the sound of tortured tires on pavement as the car escaped, and hearing the closer crackling of the flames as they devoured the manor house behind him.
There was no more gunfire, no more shouting and screaming. Alone with the dead, Mark Stone stood up and went to find the living.
Chapter Eight
Stone should have known better.
This firefight at An Khom's wasn't over. Not yet. Not by a damn sight.
A heartbeat after the surviving limo had disappeared from Stone's sight into the gaping maw of darkness beyond the flickering illumination from An Khom's flaming house; Stone heard the roaring approach of another car. He turned to see the vehicle in which he and his company had arrived, with Hog Wiley at the wheel.
He saw no sign of Terrance Loughlin.
Hog braked the vehicle to a gravel-spewing sideways stop. He looked happier than a guy on his wedding night. "Hop in, dude. Let's nail their asses!"
It sounded like a damn good idea to Mark Stone. He grabbed the open passenger door on the run as Hog fed the heap some gas, and lodged himself into the front seat. The rental sedan barreled down the driveway and through the front gates of An Khom's property.
Bare seconds had elapsed since the limo carrying the surviving gunmen and their hostage had withdrawn.
Hog emitted a piercing rebel yell and twirled the steering wheel in front of him to send their vehicle into a wide half-turn that took in the opposite shoulder of the road fronting An Khom's before he piloted the sedan into a fishtailing screech that straightened out and sent them rocketing into the night away from Loughlin and whatever was still happening back there on the property of the old black marketeer.
"Some party," Hog growled.
The road and the ride were rough and curvy. Wiley kept the gas pedal floored. The steering wheel bucked in his fists, trying to tear loose, but it was not difficult for the experienced racing driver to keep the vehicle under tight control as they sped along.
No sight yet of taillights.
Damn! thought Stone. We couldn't have lost them!
"Any word on the stuff we paid for?" he asked Hog.
Wiley shook his shaggy head without taking his eyes off the road.
They took another curve on two wheels, but the vehicle straightened under Hog's expertise.
"I was hoping you'd know about that," Hog muttered. "I was too busy blowing jerks away who were trying to blow me away. Any idea what the hell we walked into back there?"
"Had to be a falling-out between An Khom and his associates, or a competitor moving in."
"Reminded me of the Silver Spur Diner back home on a Saturday night."
"I suppose you didn't have time, either, to get a make on the young lady we're busting our behinds to rescue." Hog grunted.
"Uh-uh. Too damn busy killing."
Hog brought them around another curve. Stone rode the momentum of the turn to the sound of steady curses from Wiley, as he fought to hold control of the vehicle, and the whine of tortured rubber during the turn. Then Mark saw the heartbeat-length glint of their headlights on chrome not fully camouflaged by trees and deeper shadows across the road.
"Brake," Stone snarled. "Trap."
At that moment a woman's scream pierced the night air. Then her scream stopped abruptly, cut off.
"Shit," Hog hissed with feeling.
He braked and jerked the steering wheel sharply to the right.
From across the night-shrouded road, automatic weapons opened fire, pencils of spitting flame stitching the night with meat-seeking projectiles.
Stone heard rounds spang into the rear end of the car, but without serious effect. Hog cut his headlights and braked to a stop across the road, almost opposite the limo. Stone and Hog now had the same cover of night working for them as did the gunmen.
Stone and Wiley clambered from the passenger side of their vehicle away from the gunfire, covered from the incoming rounds by the car's bulk.
The bursts of gunfire continued. The windshield shattered. More rounds punched at the other side of the car, but none of the dozens of slugs found Stone or Wiley, who unlimbered their own weapons and moved, keeping down low, to opposite ends of their car.
Stone and Wiley returned a couple of shots, Stone with his Beretta, Hog with the booming Colt Trooper, then both men pulled their heads down again as answering fire riddled the night.
"I count four of 'em," growled Mark under his breath.
"Five, if one is holding the hostage," added Wiley.
"Four or five, then. They'll spread out in another minute or less, unless we do it first."
"Maybe they'll pull out."
Stone chuckled, ice-cold.
"What an unexpected strain of Pollyanna you've suddenly developed, Hog."
"Huh?"
"They wanted us bad enough to stick around and try again," said Stone, noting that the gunfire had crackled to nothing across the road. He tossed his Beretta to Hog. "Here. Give me a two-count to get clear, then toss a few rounds with each gun. They'll figure we're both answering their fire."
Hog caught the Beretta easily in his left hand.
"What the hell are you up to?"
"I'm going to circle them and close in first."
"Goddamn, guy, you're not carrying a gun!"
"Can't have everything," Stone grunted.
He bolted from the cover of the car in a sideways dive, his dark clothing camouflaging him in the darkness. Stone came out of the loose roll and hustled in a low jog away from the car.
Hog began pulling off rounds right on the numbers, the heavy detonations of the Colt Trooper alternating with a couple of nasty spits from the Beretta before Wiley dodged himself back down behind cover like a jack-in-the-box in reverse, with barely a blink to spare.
More gunfire came from across the road, but by that time Stone was well out of the line of fire, and already moving into position to come in on these gunmen behind the limo from a flank-he hoped they had left unprotected. He suddenly wondered if maybe he shouldn't have told Hog to hold his fire after that first burst, but Hog held his fire on his own. Unless he had been hit. Mark did not think about that.
He glided soundlessly through the night and came in on the four behind the limo, in the moment after they had again ceased firing.
The air back here was sharp with the stench of cordite, and spent shell casings littered the ground.
Stone saw the captive even as he moved in from behind on the nearest guy, who was toting an AK.
The young woman was Asian and unconscious, a delicate bundle of femininity in Western-style slacks and blouse. Her clothes and the lady herself were in disarray, but at least she was out of the line of Stone's silent attack.
He descended on these goons one-two-three, with martial-arts precision. He delivered the hard edge of his right hand in a slashing descent across the back of the neck of the nearest man. He heard that guy's neck snap like a dry twig, lifted his left arm up and out, and smashed the elbow into the right temple of the second man. The gunman died without making a sound. The two deadmen to either side of Stone collapsed, their weapons clattering to the ground, and that was the first sound to alert the other two, who had been aiming AK's across the limo to take out their pursuers.
Both of these gunmen fell back at their first shock of awareness, but in that second Stone moved in on the one to his right. The guy fell back like his buddy, pulling up his AK to target this new threat. Stone's right foot kicked up and out, and the AK flew from the man's stunned fingers. The guy grunted and reached for a concealed piece, but by that time Stone had pivoted on his left foot, bringing his right foot punching out in an arc that caught the
guy under the jaw with enough power to snap his neck. As another standing corpse went toppling backward, Stone crouched and picked up the AK-47 the man had dropped. He swung the rifle around to take out the remaining gunman.
Before that could happen, there came another blast from Hog Wiley's Colt Trooper, and the last of these punks pitched forward with the back of his skull blown into bloody pulp.
Stone held onto the AK. He stood up and approached the unconscious figure of the young woman.
Hog Wiley trotted over and glanced admiringly at the young Asian.
"Looks like you won the prize."
Stone lifted her and carried her easily toward the limo. "Get behind the wheel," he instructed Hog. "Get us back to An Khom's. Fast."
"Roger."
They hustled into the gunmen's limo. Stone propped the young woman in a sitting position on the seat between himself and Wiley. She had about her the subtle fragrance of jasmine and that singular small-boned beauty of the Asian woman, every curve right in place, too.
The limo began moving.
The young woman's eyes snapped open and she looked first to the bearlike profile of Hog, then to Mark Stone. When she recognized that these were not Oriental faces to either side of her, she calmed appreciably.
"Thank you, gentlemen," she said evenly, only because the shock had not set in yet. "I believe . . . you have saved my life."
"Who are you?" Stone asked, point-blank.
"I am An Ling, daughter of An Khom."
Stone sensed that this young woman, no more than seventeen or eighteen, was made of strong stuff, but was vulnerable right now, just the same, after what she'd been through. He felt strong vibrations from An Ling, with uncertainty dominating. He could only hope that once this young woman was on her own, she would be able to come to terms with what had happened to her tonight. If she couldn't . . .
He put the thought away as Hog brought their vehicle over the ridge and toward An Khom's.
Chapter Nine
Less than five minutes had passed since the brief chase and ambush, it had all happened that fast.
M.I.A. Hunter Page 6
