It didn't take long. They rushed the building at a dead run, whooping and screaming like a phalanx of John Waynes.
I led her through the bushes to where the walkway turned to block us. We paralleled the steps and hotfooted it into the parking lot, using what weeds grew there for cover. I kept my automatic ready.
The Auberge guards, in control of the high ground, seemed to be turning back the assault. The Wells Fargo building blocked our view as we ran past. We crossed Flower toward the hotel entrance.
Two kids sped around a corner, saw us, and whipped their rifles up to aim. They were too slow. I had already dropped to a kneeling, twohanded shooting stance. Ann crouched behind me. I had a sneaking suspicion she was fumbling for her knife.
I sighted in on the boy to my left-a sandy-haired teenager who looked like the lead in a high school production of
The other-a lanky Panarabian-divided his aim between my head and Ann's.
'Neither of you wants to shoot us!' I yelled. 'One of you will be dead before I drop!'
'Th-that w-would just mean one m-more soul for Y-Yahveh,' the sandy one said. He stuttered like a motorboat, and it wasn't from fear: the hands holding his rifle never wavered.
'One more soul for Allah,' the darker boy corrected.
Sandy glanced at the Panarab.
A wisp of smoke from the burning complex drifted between us. It carried a smell of things dead and dying. The Panarabian kid paid it no mind. He'd probably been raised during the Pax Israelia ten years before.
Sandy wrinkled his nose. I took a chance.
'Allah or Yahveh. Which God will get your soul? Which God is supreme?' I split my aim between the two without dropping my guard.
'Allah,' said the dark one.
'Yahveh,' insisted the light one.
Something whooshed through the air behind me.
'Knock it off with the shiv,' I hissed.
Ann muttered something and stopped waving the blade around. The two boys didn't even notice. They were involved in a theological discussion.
'Yahveh.'
'Allah.'
They glowered, slowly turning their rifles toward each other.
'Allah,' the Panarabian said with a low growl.
'Yahveh,' Sandy Hair retorted, racking the action on his M-16.
'
' a voice screamed from the nearby underpass.
The boys spun about to look toward the source of the sound. Had they lived long enough, each would have seen a bullet hit him in the chest. Two rifles clattered to the pavement. Two young men followed them shortly.
I jumped up, gave Ann a shove in the direction of the Bonaventure, and commandeered one of the rifles. I sped up to match Ann's athletic pace.
Footsteps raced behind me. I whipped about, a .45 in one hand and an M-16 in the other.
