He prayed he wasn't too late. He leaned over, seized the PPsH machine gun with its absurdly swollen drum, pulled it out.
They were still shooting as he began to move through the trees, toward the site of the ambush.
The car slowly picked its way around the bend. Ahead lay nothing but straight road.
'Is okay, senor,' said Pepe.
'Is fine, Pepe,' said Lane Brodgins. 'Let's get the hell out of here.'
Pepe's foot went to caress the gas pedal but exactly in that moment Earl jabbed his foot over and crushed the brake to the floor.
'BACK!' he commanded and possibly there was a moment, even two, of ridiculous silence, as a sense of unreal confusion filled the automobile, the bodyguard ripping at the gear shift to find reverse, the driver stunned by his sudden action, trying to respond, the two men in back themselves stunned, aware that something unplanned and unwanted was happening, unsure entirely about the bodyguard's sudden speed of movement. Then the windshield shattered into a quicksilver smear of webbing and punctures as glass bits spewed at painful velocity into the car, and the interior was suddenly full of the presence of alien things among them, hard and cruel and without interest in them except as targets. The car shuddered as gunfire thudded against it, and the sound of metal banging loud arrived in the same second, to overload all senses and drive them toward stupefaction. A bullet struck Pepe in the head, like a fastball, and the sound of that-missile striking and tearing into bone-filled the car with horror, accompanied by the pink steam that blew outward from the horrible wound and the instant sense of destruction as the ruined head slid forward.
But Earl had the car finally in reverse, and moved his foot to the gas, pushing Pepe's dead one-the man was by this time a sack of sloppy weight, his broken head pitched forward-aside. He hammered the pedal and the car shot backwards perhaps twenty-five yards, even as more gunfire came after it, tearing up hood, punching out more glass, ripping tires and engine to shreds. Riding the last gasp of engine power, Earl jacked the car's wheel left, depositing it at an angle in a gully. He slithered out, came up over the hood, pulled his Super.38 from the shoulder holster, thumbed the hammer back from half cock as he did so, and punched out six fast two-handed shots, at a line of gully across the road and fifty yards or so down, where the accumulation of gunsmoke and suspended dust announced the presence of the shooters. The pistol recovered fast with its lessened kick and when he was done shooting he knew he had four rounds left. But still, while he had the chance, he yanked a magazine from his pocket and reloaded another nine. With the round in the chamber, he had ten.
Even as he did this, a tree fell lazily across the road. It was a tree meant to trap them, but it hadn't. They were behind the kill-zone.
Earl swung around and saw the woodchopper bound forward from the tree for cover, but Earl got a shot off fast at the deflection, finding an instinctive lead, knowing to pin the trigger on the stroke, and heard the sound that can only be bullet on meat, knew that he had hit the man.
He slid along the body of the twisted automobile, pulled open the back door. Inside, on the floor, Lane and the congressman lay in a terrified embrace.
'Oh, Jesus, what is?'
'God, why are they?'
Earl grabbed the nearest, Boss Harry, and yanked him brutally out of the car, dumping him hard in the gully. He paused as another fusillade of fire tore into the car, but by the weird physics of the situation, the car was tilted up in such a way that most of it blocked the men from the shooters.
Earl next reached in and pulled out the gibbering assistant.
'You crouch here, goddammit. Behind the wheel well. That is where it is safer.'
'How many are there?' Harry was finally cogent enough to ask.
'I have no fucking idea, but they do mean business, that I guarantee you.'
The sergeant cursed. No language has more pathways for blasphemy than Spanish and this was a construction of such horror it would have made even Odudua ashamed, and perhaps disappointed in him, even if he was one of her most favored facilitators, having seen and done so many terrible, evil things.
Why had the car stopped short? What on earth impelled whoever was inside to make such a decision? Had the killers been betrayed?
But now he watched in helpless rage as the car roared backwards. He prayed to Odudua that the car would not swing around the bend and disappear. And Odudua helped out her humble servant. In her magnificence, she guided the shots of his three machine-gunners and they did a great damage to the automobile, so that finally it jerked off the road and like a broken-backed bull wedged itself at a hideous angle, tilted, one ruined tire uplifted, in the gully.
Its occupants could still be killed.
He watched as fire lashed against it, tearing it, puncturing it, spewing liquids and shards of metal from it, turning what had been such a shiny emblem of power into shabby wreckage in just a few seconds. As theater it was fabulous; as action, it lacked finality, for from his position on this side of the road, he could see the guard emerge, bring fast fire on his shooters, pull the two very important norteamericanos from the vehicle and squish them down where it was safest, and then reload and fire again, with almost astonishing speed.
What an hombre! Oh, this was somebody who knew a thing or two.
For a daffy moment, the sergeant brought up his Star, took a good supported position, and considered firing as he saw the front sight cross the American's solid body. But then he thought better of it, as he was still seventy yards distant from his targets, such a long shot for a man with a pistol, and if he fired, he simply told them where he was.
Instead he saw that he had some advantage still. If the gunners kept their heads, continued to bring fire, didn't lose their nerve, he himself could slither and close the distance and, suddenly, jump out from the rear and kill the guard. The two mewling men, who now crouched behind the wheel well, gripping each other like women, would be easy. He could even kill them with his knife and truly enjoy it, but then that might take too long.
Gripping the pistol, he began to slither ahead through the gully.
Earl dropped back to the rear of the car, behind the tail fin. It was the smart move, for in that second, two of the tommy-gunners opened up, trying to pin him where he wasn't, which was at the front wheel well. Meanwhile, their third member dashed heroically from cover, firing from the hip like a movie marine, and, feeling himself well protected by the oblique raking fire his friends brought to bear on the car, began to advance.
He moved fast yet with courageous purpose, closing steadily, eyes on the move hunting for targets. Earl thought he was a brave man, even as he rose from behind the tail fin, put the front sight of the Super.38 on his throat, figuring the flat-shooting, fast-as-hell little bullet would drop only an inch or two at fifty yards, and p-r-e-s- s-e-d off a shot. The gun smacked crisply against his hand as it operated in super-time, flinging a spent shell off to the right, though in the rage of blood chemicals and dust and total sensory overload he did not notice it. What he saw in the split second before he dove for cover as the fire steered toward him was eminently satisfying: the man, stricken, stumbling drunkenly as the big weapon fell pitifully from his once strong hands. One hand flew to his mouth, which now drooled lakes of blood-that's what a lung shot does-and possibly he sealed some in, but by that time he was on his knees and a second later had toppled sacklike, devoid of dignity, forward into the dust. His tommy gun lay atilt in the road.
Speshnev, at the end of his run, saw almost nothing. These things are never clear. It was all dust and confusion, the noise was terrifying, and no one unifying vision made any sense of it. A man lay ragamuffin-pitiful in the road, in a pool of blood, so bright in a world drained of color. The car, which had come to rest half in, half out of the gully, looked like the Titanic settling into the sea. It was badly torn up, and a puddle of gasoline collected under it from a gas tank so many times punctured. The slightest spark could send a flaming cloud high into the sky.
But he could see no living men. One of those odd moments of gunfight silence prevailed. No one quite knew what to do, all parties were out of communication, blood had been spilled in copious amounts and the terrible thought occluded all minds: When will this be over? This followed close upon: Will I die here? Prayers and curses were mixed in, but the gist is always the same, and the results the same. Luck comes for or avoids bold and meek the same, but still a smart guy, if he's just a little bit lucky, has all the better chance of surviving.
Therefore, Speshnev assumed that somewhere behind the tilted car, the American still breathed. Clearly that was his kill out there in the sun, with that splayed look of beyond-caring the dead always find a way to assume. Possibly men closed in upon him; possibly they were even now about to kill him. Speshnev didn't know; he only knew that he had to get closer still, and do what could be done.
