…
In the meantime, while Vogelsang did his thing, she'd be doing hers, just fitting in with her new Jam Pony family.
Funny… in her brief time on the planet, Max had been part of… and lost… three different families. First the Manticore sibs, then the Barretts, and finally the Chinese Clan.
She'd been separated from her siblings by a strange confluence of force and circumstance; and fleeing Mr. Barrett had been self-defense.
Still, sometimes late at night… and tonight would be one of those… she felt a twinge of guilt for abandoning Lucy, and for running out on Moody and Fresca and the others.
She wondered if the Jam Pony bunch would be just as impermanent.
Chapter Seven
THEATER PARTY
THE CHINESE THEATRE
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, 2019
Two days ago, it had begun.
A quartet of Moody's kids— ranging in age between fourteen and eighteen— had been cut down by sniper fire from the half-standing structure of the former Roosevelt Hotel. Two boys, two girls, shaken like the naughty children they were, were dropped in a mist of blood to the cracked cement squares where hands and feet of forgotten celebrities remained on pointless display.
Every attempt to leave the building, through whatever exit, had resulted in a hail of slugs flinging Moody's people to the pavement in a sprawl of death. Pinned down like this— based upon the food and ammunition on hand— Moody and his crew couldn't last longer than a week. But should be time enough to plan, to react effectively, even to wait for support from the city or the feds.
The youth of his clan, however, was a problem— even in a cavernous auditorium like that of the Chinese Theatre, a sense of claustrophobia could descend… that is, when you knew that stepping outside the building would end your life in echoing gunfire. Sandbags, furniture, crates, old theater seats, and anything else not nailed down had been arranged throughout the theater as little aboveground bunkers. Moody would move among them— floating like a silver-ponytailed shadow, a flowing black bathrobe loose over black T-shirt and jeans, for melodramatic effect— calming them with words and gestures, assuring them their fortress was impregnable.
“The world beyond will take note of our plight,” he would tell them. “We are not forgotten— be strong till help arrives.”
And his kids believed him; if only Moody could believe himself…
Right now, as he looked through the glass doors of the lobby, toward the nighttime street where those four bodies were still asprawl on the patio, pools of blood dried into terrible brown scabs on the cement, the bodies grotesquely attracting flies after fifty-some hours, the charismatic leader of the Chinese Clan feared help would never come.
Outside, still unseen, their enemy had them paralyzed, as if the Clan were bluecoat soldiers in a frontier fort, facing endless Indian hordes. But as of yet their attackers hadn't shown the colors of their war paint. Attempts to send out heavily armed scouting teams— no matter which exit— had resulted in the groups getting gunned down within five feet.
The enemy knew about the building's secret exits, too, the basement catacombs that led to the sewer system, and the tunnel under the block up into the adjacent building. Pairs of kids had been directed to slip out those passages, and were eliminated to a man. That is, to a boy…
Moody knew who had to be doing this: the Brood, of course. He had expected retaliation for the theft of the museum plans, and for snatching the Heart of the Ocean from their Russian leader's fingers. Such a vicious, all-out assault, however, was a surprise… he would never had guessed the Brood would attempt a full-on siege…
After all, despite their youth, the Chinese Clan had the Brood (whose members were admittedly older) outnumbered by perhaps a third, and they were possessed of superior firepower, chiefly handguns and rifles from that Orange County armory they'd looted last year; further, their rivals would probably not be aware that the awesome fighting machine, Max, was no longer a part of the Clan…
But the kind of armament the Brood had deployed in the last two days— sniperscopes, automatic weapons— made Moody wonder… guns like that weren't easily come by…
For all his tactical skills— commando training in his distant past had stayed with him— Moody simply did not know how to stop this slaughter.
And as for the “help” he assured his kids would be on the way, Moody could gather from the lack of police response so far that the Brood had bribed the cops to keep their blue noses out of the conflict. Such was not uncommon in LA gang wars: the police collected money, sometimes from both sides, and let the “real” bad guys… the street gangs… fight it out. It was an old refrain: who the hell cared if this rabble killed each other?
But what really struck Moody as disturbing, and dangerous beyond comprehension, was the lack of any federal response. In a case of carnage like this, uncontrolled by the local cops, the National Guard should be stepping in.
How could the Brood have influence on a federal level? Such a thing took more bribe money… and better connections… than that Russian scumbag Kafelnikov would ever have access to. And unless the LAPD was directly involved— cordoning off the area for the Brood, effecting a press blackout, actively cooperating with the Russian— the feds
to be aware that blood was running on Hollywood Boulevard.
hell
In a gray T-shirt and chinos, the lanky yet lithely muscular Gabriel— an Uzi in his hands, an ammo belt around his waist— watched Moody's back as the Clan leader peered out into the street.
Heavily armed Clan members— older, more seasoned ones, mostly male— took up their position to either side of the glass doors, as Moody nodded to Gabriel, motioning him to the concession stand, where they spoke quietly, so the nearby sentries would not hear.
“Unless they plan to starve us out,” Moody told his second-in-command, “they'll strike in force— storm our battlements.”
“We lost a few people,” Gabriel said, and shook his head. “I seen better morale.”
“Our troops will come through for us, and themselves.”
Moody glanced at the half a dozen kids— none older than eighteen— in T-shirts and jeans and tennies, caps on backward, semiautomatic weapons in hand. Freckle-faced Fresca, with the new girl Niner at his side, stood with the group nearest Moody and Gabe.
“Even with the hits we've taken,” Moody said, a hand on Gabriel's shoulder, “we outnumber these bastards.”
“Their average age is twenty-two— ours is sixteen.”
“We still have the numbers. And that gives them only two choices— mount a commando raid, send in their best people, armed to the teeth… and hope to outfight us. Or… ”
“Or,” Gabe finished, “they come in in force.”
“In which case,” Moody said, “they can't have every exit pinned down to the degree we've been suffering these last two days. With a building this size, covering every way out would drain a third of their manpower.”
“So,” Gabe said, thinking it through, “if we see a damn horde of these suckers stormin' in, we head for the exits.”
