“C’mon, motherfucker. You’re about to take a beating from one of life’s big losers,” I said.
Mitchell circled me with his hands in a karate pose. I had my guard up in a boxing stance and ready.
Mitchell skipped in to throw a front kick to my groin. I pivoted left and took it on the muscle of my thigh like I did every day when Al lunged at my nuts. I used the pivot for leverage and drilled a left hand straight down the pipe onto Mitchell’s nose. I heard the familiar crackle of cartilage and he instinctively reached up to hold it. As the blood poured out him, I drilled him with a body combination.
He came back with an elbow to my temple that wobbled me a bit, and he stepped in with a chop aimed at my neck. I recovered in time and stopped him with a jab to his broken nose that I could tell hurt him. I finished with a straight left that he was able to block, and he countered me with his own hook.
This time my recoil was perfectly in place and I blocked it with my left and immediately drilled him on the point of the jaw with that same left. His head snapped around and he was out before he hit the ground.
Smitty would’ve been proud.
41
I told Billy to cut Howard loose and to tape Mitchell up to the tree, then we all got in the SUV and headed across the brush. Howard looked like he was in shock and he didn’t say a word while Billy was talking nonstop. I didn’t hear any of it because all I could think about was that pit bull’s jaws tearing poor Al to death.
Harter’s cell phone was fastened to the dashboard and I used it to call AJ’s. Kelley wasn’t going to be happy, but this went way beyond pissing him off. The SUV banged and bumped across the muddy field and it didn’t handle the terrain anything like it did on the TV commercials. It was a fifteen-minute ride and my heart was racing faster than the engine was.
I skidded the SUV to a stop in time to hear the fit of barking. I instructed Billy to drive toward town and look for the police. Harter had the lights on and the meditation garden was all lit up. From the distance, I could see that Al was running around and around with Seagal chasing him, growling and showing his teeth the whole way. I ran to the fence and took a running leap onto it and scaled it as fast as I could. I got toward the top and saw the layers upon layers of razor wire that would shred my hands and arms if I went through it.
I heard myself yell “Shit!” and Al stopped to look up at me while the pit charged him with its jaws wide open. At the last split second Al started to run again and for whatever reason, maybe his own sense of flight or fight, he started running all crazy zigzagging around the stone garden. The pit bull was athletic and mean but it didn’t have Al’s ability to change direction and Al had him baffled with his open-field maneuvers. Unfortunately, this just fueled the pit’s anger.
I knew there was no way Al could keep this pace up for long and I struggled to the razor wire, slicing my index finger pretty good in the process. Al was barking and his ears were flapping as he barely evaded the pit’s charges. I looked close at Al as the razors got caught in my jeans, and it dawned on me that Al didn’t look scared and he didn’t look angry. The crazy-ass hound looked like he was playing a game.
Al stopped suddenly and skidded on the stones with the pit bull dead straight ahead of him at a distance of less than ten feet. Al barked, almost baiting him, and waited for his charge. I screamed to Al to run and he waited to the last second, taking off with the pit literally right behind him. Al was heaving for air as he switched directions, and the pit bit the very end of his tail. He was closing ground on Al and snapping his jaws when Al ran around the Buddha.
It appeared Al was losing his breath and starting to slow down on his third trip around the Buddha. I pulled hard to free a leg and the razors cut through one leg of my jeans. It cut me but I had one leg free. My heart felt like it was in the back of my throat as Al started another trip around the Buddha at a much slower speed. He was tiring out.
The pit bull wasn’t and he got past Al’s tail and jumped toward Al’s shoulders to bring him down. There was no way Al could survive a dogfight with this animal. The pit bull jumped to tackle Al and Al leaped too, but as he did, he took a mid-air, ninety-degree turn like he would in the Moody Blue. The pit bull tried to follow but as Al ducked his low-flying frame under one of the stone benches in front of the Buddha, the pit bull came in high.
The pit bull’s head cracked just like my shin on a coffee table, except he was flying from a distance of ten feet and the bench was made of solid granite.
The pit bull’s head split open and the dog collapsed a few feet from the bench that Al was now safely tucked under. I pulled my second leg through the razor and I was now cut all up and down my legs and over my hands, but I pulled myself through and fell the fifteen feet down to the stones, landing on my back. I got up and charged the door to the steel building to find Harter. The door flew open before I could get there, and there stood Harter in front of what looked like some very sophisticated lab equipment.
He was holding a gun and had it pointed at my head.
42
“I have to admit, Duffy, you impress me,” Harter said. “Of course, now I’m going to kill you.”
“The thing I want to know is how much you knew about Gunner,” I said.
“Gunner?”
“Abadon. He went by the name Gunner when he was doing this in other places. Did you know he was the slayer and didn’t care, or was he able to keep that from you?”
“That’s not for you to know, Duffy-man you’re an inquisitive pain in the ass.”
“As long as you got your steroids.”
“Shut up-I’m tired of listening to you. Move!” With his gun, he motioned me inside the steel building and shut the door. I could hear Al barking from outside.
“Your dog doesn’t ever fucking shut up, does he? After I take care of you, I’ll quiet him down forever,” he said.
“Al’s got more balls than you’d ever dream of having-you fucking pussy,” I said.
Al kept barking and barking and barking.
Behind Harter there were blinking lights, heaters, refrigerators, and all sorts of equipment. This wasn’t your average bathtub crank lab. Gunner had thrown some cash into his operation.
Harter moved over to a beaker filled with a cloudy liquid.
“You know, Duff, this is hydriodic acid, and it burns skin all the way down to the bone.” He paused to smile. “It will give your face a distinctive look in the casket.”
He carefully placed the gun down on the counter and picked up some long rubber gloves. He picked up the beaker of acid and smiled again. Then, with the gun in the other hand, he walked toward me.
I scanned the room and saw the door that led to the meditation garden and the single smoked window on the other side of the building. To get to the window I’d have to somehow get past Harter, the gun, and the acid. To make it to the door I’d have to outrun a bullet.
Through it all, Al kept barking outside and it kept annoying Harter.
“I hate that fucking dog. I’m going to enjoy pouring acid on him,” he said.
Then a loud bang rocked the other side of the building. Harter’s head snapped around and he put down the beaker but held on to his gun. A few seconds passed and another bang came on the same side of the building… then another.
“Don’t move,” Harter said, and he headed to the window.
Another metallic bang slammed the side of the building.
Harter raised his gun in his right hand as he waited by the window.
Another bang.
Harter’s attention was on the banging, and it gave me a second to think. He cocked his right arm and readied it to fire. He unlocked the window just as another bang slammed the building.
Harter threw open the window with his gun drawn but was startled by another face staring straight at him
