“I’m very comfortable the way I am, thank you.”
“You hear me, you asshole!” Jake roared.
“Yes, I hear you, fatso!” Ben yelled. “No deals.”
Some of Campo’s men giggled and Jake frosted them silent with a hard look.
“I’m gonna skin that son of a bitch alive!” Jake growled. “After I make him watch while I fuck his woman and all them kids, right in front of his eyes. Boys and girls.”
“Jesus, Jake!” one of his men yelled. “Them ain’t sandbags he’s got piled around the house. Them’s dead bodies.”
West lifted his binoculars and looked, as did Texas Red and Cowboy Vic. The three of them exchanged uneasy glances.
Even Jake swallowed hard after viewing the scene through field glasses. He shook his head. “Some people just ain’t got no class at all,” he said. “That’s unholy. He’ll go to hell for that.”
Even Crazy Cowboy Vic looked at Jake oddly after that remark.
Many of the outlaws standing in the circle around the house shuffled their feet and exchanged glances of indecision. It would not take much for some of them to split the scene and say to hell with Ben Raines.
“Your life for them kids and the woman!” Jake lied.
Ben looked at Rani. “I wish I had a 81-mm mortar,” he said. “I’d give that lardass an answer he’d never forget.”
“Without taking anything away from your request, Ben,” Rani replied. “I’d like to see that platoon of your Rebels come riding up.”
“Well, yes. I suppose I’d settle for that.”
Those Rebels of Ben’s were on the way, but about half of them were in no condition for a fight.
Using a range-finder, Ben plotted the distance at nine hundred yards. He picked up his bolt-action rifle and thumbed it off safety, adjusting the huge scope. Campo stood with an open van door in front of him. At this range, a head shot would be nearly impossible to make.
But one outlaw, with more guts than sense-or maybe he was just plain stupid, that was probably it-was standing on top of the cab of a pickup truck. Ben sighted him in.
“If you make that shot, Ben,” Rani said, “I’ll give you a present.”
Ben looked at her and waggled his eyebrows. “Oh?”
She grinned and patted him on the arm. “Calm yourself, old man. Heavy breathing will throw off your aim. Besides, are you sure you can handle me?”
Ben gave her his best lewd grin.
“Uh-huh,” she said.
Ben propped the rifle on the sill for support, took aim, and gently squeezed the trigger. The outlaw flew off the top of the cab, a bloody hole in the center of his chest.
“Now come and get us,” Jordy yelled from the top floor. “You fat-ass!”
Chapter 23
The circle of outlaws moved as if controlled by one mind. The outlaws were growling and snarling like the animals they were. They were shouting obscenities at the house and its occupants.
“Hold your fire!” Ben called just loud enough for the kids to hear.
The bolts of the twin M-16’s were pulled. The kids gripped the pistol grips, pressing the stocks against young shoulders, getting ready for the jar and slam of double-16’s on full auto.
The circle drew nearer.
Ben noticed that Campo, West, Texas Red, and Cowboy Vic had stayed back, well out of conventional rifle range.
“True leaders of men,” Ben muttered.
He picked up his .30-06 and clicked it off safety, lifting the stock to his shoulder and sighting in one particularly ugly outlaw.
The part of the circle that had gathered at the rear of the old town had vanished into the ruins of the ghost town.
Ben smiled, thinking: Only a few more seconds before one of them takes that one last long step.
A hideous scream cut the air as an outlaw stepped into a mine shaft and went tumbling into eternity, howling as he fell.
Ben pulled the trigger and blew off a man’s jaw. The man was flung backward, landing on his ass in the sand.
“Fire!” Ben yelled.
Twelve M-16’s, all older models, all fully automatic, began singing their death songs, yammering and spitting out lead.
Ben was firing an AK-47 on full auto, the 7.62 ammo cutting great holes in the now-broken circle of outlaws.
A man stepped into a punji trap, the sharpened stake driven through his foot, trapping him on the sands. He howled and beat his fists on the ground, all the fight gone from him.
Ben let him howl.
Behind Ben, on the other end of the first floor, Rani was manning her twin 16’s, the 16’s jumping in their harness, the floor around her twinkling with brass.
Over the rattling and cracking of gunfire, the pinging of brass bouncing off the floor, Ben heard the faint screams of another man as he stepped onto the thin covering over a deep shaft. The man went howling into his frightened death.
The circle of outlaws broke, splintering like an egg shell, leaving a half-dozen men trapped on the porch, their hands slick with the gore from the bodies they were forced to climb over getting to the porch.
Ben dropped the empty AK and jerked up a sawed-off shotgun, an automatic that held nine three-inch magnums.
Ben cleared the porch of all living things, the shotgun roaring in his hands.
“Cease fire!” Ben yelled.
The house fell silent. Now, only the moaning and crying and cursing and screaming of the wounded outlaws could be heard.
“Sound off!” Ben called.
A couple of the kids had scratches and splinters from the wood barricades in front of them; all had sore shoulders from the pounding of the twin 16’s, but again, against all odds, no one was seriously hurt.
The area surrounding the house was littered with the dead and dying. The screaming from men caught in the punji traps was now hoarse, more animal than human.
“Take the upstairs, Rani,” Ben said. “Tell the kids to go to the bathroom, get some water and food in them, and then you do the same. I’ll look after things down here.”
Ben reloaded clips and checked his AK. He reloaded the sawed-off shotgun and then, with one eye toward the outside, he checked Rani’s twin M-16’s and reloaded some clips for her. When Rani returned from the upstairs, Ben went up and checked out the weapons, patting each young person on the shoulder, speaking calmly to them, complimenting them, and assuring them that it was almost over. Just hang in there, he told them.
“Will we get to go back to your people when this is over, Mr. Raines?” Kathy asked.
“You sure will, kids,” Ben told them. “And when you’re there, you’ll never have to be afraid again. And that’s a promise.”
Jake Campo didn’t want to admit it, but the first tentative fingers of fear were lightly touching him. It was not a feeling he liked. Fear was almost unknown to the man. He had had his way all his life; even back in grade school, he had taken whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it. The laws of a liberal society being what they were-when there was a government, with laws (as silly as many of them were), many of them catering to the punk, the lawless, the bully-boys like Jake had a field day with other kids less inclined to bully.
Even when Jake had received three to five in prison for rape, he ran the joint (back when joint was jail and not something to smoke). Jake did that time (he was out in eighteen months) with ease. When he was charged with almost killing a man with his fists-he never did go to jail for that crime, the jails, at that time, being too
