When he awoke in RY7/INLET 20 he was ravenously hungry and wolfed down the four cold tacos remaining from the two dozen he'd picked up the night before. He crammed the food into his mouth, devouring the congealed, greasy meat and cheese, bits of lettuce and broken shell and juice dripping from his whiskery chin, and washed it all down with tepid water from a half-gallon milk jug. His huge, obvoluted gut made a gurgling noise as it accepted the appetizer and he promised himself a big breakfast soon. But first he had the cold feeling inside and there was work he must do.
He checked his arsenal and supplies methodically but somewhere inside his head he was still inside the dream. The ambush was as vivid in his mind as if it had actually taken place last night and he could still taste the salty, mouth-watering richness of the hearts, and smell the smoky, hot copper aroma of cordite, pepsin, freshly spilled intestines, the tastes and the smells of unspeakable carnage so pleasurable to him now.
But it was more than sweet memories for Daniel. The ambush had been dreamed for a reason. And as he checked the arsenal it was with a sense of urgency and a perception of shadows drawing near. There were only five of the stolen claymores left. No matter. He would make do with four, he needed one for another plan he was about to spring, but with the dynamite he'd taken from a construction site it would suffice for what he wanted to do. Between the firecrackers and the pies he'd be able to arrange a suitable surprise party for the guests he was expecting.
It was not that Daniel was consciously aware of intruders coming. There was no isolated warning that flashed inside his head saying enemy approaching. It was only a sudden necessity for preparedness. An inner signal of some kind that prodded his bulk to move and do it quickly. On some level he sensed the proximity of danger.
As a physical precognate, that rarest of the presentient beings, these paranormal warning signals did something else. They forced him onto a plateau of concentration unknown to normal humans. The fierceness and single-mindedness of his powers of directed attention were beyond the level of understanding. They allowed him to compartmentalize his vision, isolate focus, refine scent, sound, vista. They sharpened his intuition and perception, honed his skills and abilities and tactile senses. The closest thing might be the ninja who would sit with his master in a closed and darkened room, sitting silently for hours waiting for sensei to drop a pin, listening to hear the fall of the tiny pin, concentrating so fiercely on that one sound, eyes closed, waiting for that jarring crashing metallic loudness amplified by sheer will.
As he prepared his ambush for whatever was coming Chaingang concentrated in a scary effluence of laserlike will and awesome power. No human creature on earth was so self-centered, in the true definition of the term, than Daniel was when the warning signals tingled. A doctor in the program at Marion had identified it but mislabeled the phenomenon.
He half jokingly told a colleague, 'When you're that fat; your girth becomes the physical center of the earth and all decisions radiate out geo-centrically.' They laughed because it sounded humorous in the context of their discussion but even as an exaggeration the identification of the core element glittered. The gift of the physical precognate was beyond ordinary identifications. Whatever name you applied to the supernormal power behind Daniel Bunkowski's presentience, you knew there was no joking about the frightening acuteness or the absolute pernicious resolve that guided him on a level where science had only begun to probe.
He was truly his own center. He was a human data-processing tool eating raw fact and observation, storehousing experiences, however deleterious, as a kind of pilot survey for future action, relating all movement and change and occurrence to the position of his own person in that part of the universe that touched his existence, measuring the changing data by an assessment of threat, time and space variables, and factoring all possible predictables. Noxious, hateful, even evil—yes. But brilliantly centered and incandescently deadly.
He sensed the necessity for speed now and he moved with surprising speed and agility. Laying out the rough elements first, propelling his great bulk through the pipes and making sure that his earlier work had been concealed from any prying eyes. Working only with the light of a powerful lantern's beam, he rigged his grenade ambush, a variation from 'field expedient' materials . . . wire, cable, det cord, cannon fuse, stolen blasters, leads, igniters, tucking his traps out of sight in the manner of the best professional hunters. Then, coming down to the crucial time, carefully connecting the detonation devices to the various charges. Hand movements steady, precise, astonishingly sure, the huge cigarlike fingers connecting the explosive with a jeweler's delicacy.
And when the triple trap is in place, after a last quick check of his procedures, a final enumeration of his mental checklist, he is up and gone. But the huge man does not come up out of RY7/INLET 20, he comes up far away from the access catch basin that is his secret escape route because he knows there is danger nearby and he is nothing if not a survivor.
When he comes back, working his way through the alleyway in between an empty storefront and Flawless Laundry and Dry Cleaners, he sees people and he freezes, turns, slowly and carefully eases his way back down the alley and he is gone even as the one called Retard says to Billy:
'Hey, bro, tell Deuce I got the things,' and he goes over to the saddlebags of a huge Hog.
'Deuce.'
'Yo.'
'Retard's got the stuff. You want a piece?'
'I'll get it,' Deuce says moving down the street. 'Don't—hey, hold it,' he yells at the one called Retard. 'Leave 'em in there a minute.'
'Jew get the mother fuckers?'
'Yeah. I got six. That twenty-two ain't worth jack shit but I brought it. Fucking piece of shit.'
'Give it to Larry, he can't hit shit anyway with the sonofabitch.'
'I ain't got a piece,' one of the bikers says, coming up to the men.
'Here.' Deuce picks a revolver out of the bag and puts it in the man's hand.
'Fucker's loaded?'
'Yeah.'
'Who else ain't got a piece? Find out.'
'Huh?'
'Fuck it—never mind,' the busy general. 'Hey, Billy.' The biker approached him. 'Go ask around to see who ain't carrying somethin'. Tell Nitro and Jim come here.'
'Shaddup you fuck,' Deuce stage-whispers, 'go
'Deuce, Earl ain't got nothin' but a knife.'
'Here.' He handed a small foreign automatic to the man and stuck a western-style double-action piece in his belt. Then changed his mind and handed it to the man. 'Give one to Earl and see who else ain't packin'.'
'Earl ain't gonna' be packin' even after I give the motherfucker a piece,' and everyone around close enough to hear began laughing hysterically, Earl having been notoriously short-changed in the masculine-equipment department.
'Where the fuck's Nitro and limbo?'
'They're comin. Jim's movin' the ten-wheeler like you wanted.'
'Oh, yeah?'
'You need sum'pin, pard?' a hideously scarred face whispered in Deuce's ear, causing him to flinch, which made them both laugh. 'Sorry about that.'
'That's cool. Soon as Jim comes over we'll go over the shit. Everybody here?'
'Damn straight. Let's go get the motherfucker.'
