Card Sharks

'Angel One, what the hell are you talking about? Roosevelt Avenue is full of angry mob. We've got one man down. We need the streets swept. Over.'

'Stud Six, I say again: you're gonna have to wait, over.'

'Archangel, we have no time.'

'Orders, Stud Six. They had an accident back at Desert One. Chopper crashed into a C-130. Be advised we can take no action without clearing it through the man upstairs.'

For some reason I was very particularly struck by the fact that our line to the President ran through Battle and Brzezinski. I had little time to ponder the thought, because just then a vehicle cruised past the end of the alley. A light-colored Volkswagen Thing. At the wheel sat a tall man in a Panama hat and tropical suit.

He turned his big head to stare at me. He still wore his sunglasses, like a traffic cop. He drove on.

A moment later the pack came swarming around the corner. I dropped the microphone and grabbed for my AKM.

'You were right!' I yelled to Ackroyd. 'We're screwed, blued, and tattooed.'

Not many of the charging Iranians had guns — just a mob, not the Guard yet, thank God. But they had clubs and fists and stones and — yes — swords. And numbers, of course. We can't forget those.

I had too many of my own people between me and the mob to fire effectively. I switched the selector to single shot and poised, waiting for a shot.

Chance put Ray and Ackroyd at the front. The detective reacted more coolly than I imagined he could. He just started aiming that finger and picking off the rushing rioters, pop-pop-pop. Every time he pointed, one vanished.

Unfortunately, he didn't have a full-auto teleport. They swarmed us.

That was where young Billy came into his own. He caught the first man to reach him by the face. Bones crunched, blood flowed. Billy hurled him back against his buddies.

The youthful Wolverine became a whirling dervish of fists and feet. He stove in skulls against the brick walls, ripped limbs from sockets, popped out eyes. He rammed his hand into a big bearded man's chest, pulled his heart out, and showed it to him, like something from a bad chop-socky flick. Ackroyd, who'd fallen back, overwhelmed, turned away and puked.

Someone swung a length of pipe overhand at Billy's head. He threw up an arm to block. His ulna cracked with a sound like a gunshot.

He grabbed the pipe-wielder by the loose front of his shirt and head-butted him. When he let the Iranian go the man's eyes were rolled up as if to stare at the deep dent in his own head.

I stepped forward past the indisposed Ackroyd, jammed my Kalashnikov into the gut of the next man up, blew him down. Then I hosed the alley.

The survivors of Ray's fury turned and fled. As they departed the alley, their better-armed and smarter — or luckier — comrades leaned around the wall and began to rip fire at us.

Billy Ray said, 'Fuck,' and stepped back. Blood started from his shoulder where a round had taken him.

'I can handle this,' Chung said.

'Paul, they're too far away to punch,' I called over my shoulder. I was busting caps desperately now, not concerned with hitting anything, just trying to get the bad guys to pull their heads back.

'I've gone beyond that, now,' he said. 'She's made me a new man.'

'Paul, what are you talking about?' Lady Black asked.

'Watch.' And he raised a few inches off the ground, and took off down the alley like an F-4 on afterburner.

Now, keep in mind, he couldn't do this. 1t would be like me suddenly discovering that I could dead lift a tank, or shoot fire from my fingertips. He'd had his ace for years; all he could do was get lighter than air and float, or glide slowly down. He had no powered flight.

You couldn't tell that to him. He hit the gunmen as if he'd been fired from a cannon and knocked them flying in all directions. Then he began to swoop back and forth, driving back the mob like a flying hammer.

Damsel held clasped hands before her face. 'My Hero,' she breathed.

Billy looked at me. What the fuck? he mouthed.

I shrugged. The Librarian was the one with all the answers, and he was gone.

Lady Black was at Ray's side. 'You're hurt,' she said.

He had a bullet through one shoulder and a bad break in the other arm, and I noticed he'd taken a good shot to the face with a rock or some such, that had pushed his right cheekbone in pretty well. He shrugged her off. 'I'm fine,' he said, and the words were only slightly distorted.

There was no rear door in the next building, and I could hear voices inside the one we'd last vacated. 'We need to get moving down the alley,' I said. 'Paul! Paul, come on!'

I don't know if he heard me. He was swooping back and forth, enjoying a power he'd never known, having the time of his life.

I saw him fly back into view at the head of the alley. He paused a moment, hanging in midair, to flash us a V-for-victory.

From out of sight down the street a heavy machinegun hammered. Paul Chung came apart in midair like a melon dropped from a skyscraper.

'Paul!' Damsel shrieked. She started to throw herself toward the place where the bloody bits of her Hero were raining from the sky. Ackroyd caught her arm.

'Come on,' he said, 'let's get out of here!'

We ran. Into the alley stormed the mob, heartened by the arrival of heavy support. Shots cracked.

One caught Amy Mears in the calf. She screamed and went down. Her wrist came out of Ackroyd's grip.

The crowd flowed over her like surf.

Ackroyd started popping frantically, dancing, trying to get a line of sight to her. The mob formed a writhing impenetrable wall between them. I caught a glimpse of Damsel as her headrag came free, revealing her unmistakably Western and feminine mass of curls. The crowd howled in outrage mixed with lust. There's nothing like old-time puritanical religion to give a mob the taste for rape.

'Help me! Oh, God, help me!' Amy screamed, as her clothes were wrenched away. The mob closed in between us, forcing the rest of us back like incoming tide.

Billy Ray waded back into the crowd. Somebody hit him in the chest with a fire axe. He rocked back, busted the hardwood handle with a hammerfist blow, then plucked the sharp stub from the wielder's hands and jabbed it through his belly.

For the moment the mob had lost interest in chasing us, but they hadn't forgotten us. Guns flashed. Billy Ray grunted again as more bullets hit him.

I grabbed Ackroyd by the arm. 'In the name of God, come on! There's nothing we can do!'

'They'll rape her!'

'They'll do worse to us if they catch us. Run, you idiot.'

He flailed at me with his arms. I slapped his face. Then I took my own advice. He followed, weeping.

Lady Black was helping support Ray. The pain and sheer structural damage were taking toll. Another man would've been dead long since. He was still on his feet, if barely.

Yeah, he had his ace, that gave him strength and endurance and the power to regenerate damage — if that system hadn't been overloaded by what was done to him. What kept him going now had nothing to do with the wild card. It was guts.

Lady Black had them too. If I'd been her, and seen what was happening to my fellow female up the alley, I'd have taken off in huge bounds like a gazelle.

Oh, yes, we were a gutty bunch. Even Ackroyd, who'd stood his ground as long as any man ever did in the face of odds like that. The problem was those odds. Comes a time when they beat guts, every time.

— The pack was holding itself up in the narrow alley, fighting like hyenas over the spoils. Rape was gone from even their reptile brains by now — I hope. I saw one wave something white and slim above his head, brandishing it like a trophy. Damsel's right leg, I think it was….

Around the building, out onto the street. And after all we'd survived and sacrificed, we weren't home free: here came a fresh bunch around the next corner back from the alley, waving swords and clubs and cheering as if Tehran had just won the World Series.