“I don’t have that on me,” Tauber said. “You’ll have to wait twenty minutes until this shuts down.”
“The meter’s running, amigo. Double fare, remember?”
“If you take a seat and shut up, I’ll pay you a thousand.”
“Cash, right?”
“Cash.”
“Sure,” the driver said and sat down on a bench against one wall. “It’s nice and cool in here, anyway.”
15
World Of Hurt
Dwayne came awake, still fighting.
His arms and legs were weighted down and immobilized. His mouth tasted like copper. With each breath his nostrils filled with a shithouse stink. His head was a ball of agony, and each beat of his pulse turned up the pain dial.
He opened his eyes to find his entire field of vision filled with the grinning faces of his captors, backlit by the flames of a roaring pyre.
In their large eyes, he saw only deep longing and delight. They pressed down on his arms, and a pile of barking and chirruping brats lay across his legs, their amusement stoked by his struggles to free himself. They were like kids on a pony ride, giggling and whooping. His clothes were torn away. Only his boots and boxers remained.
An adult bastard with a milky walleye sat down heavily on his chest. This guy had red paint smeared on his face. Or maybe it was blood. Walleye lifted a handful of ash and spread it on Dwayne’s bare chest over the tattoo there; a garish skull over crossed rifles and the legend: Mess With The Best, Die Like The Rest. He got it one drunken three-day leave in San Diego. He’d always regretted it but never more than now. One of these assholes would be wearing it soon.
The mob crowded all around and grew hushed. They leaned in as Walleye raised a long-bladed flint knife in his fist. Dwayne jerked and bucked, but the fingers gripping him only increased their painful pressure.
Walleye uttered a series of glottal chants and reared back high, both hands overlapped on the knife handle held above his head. His good eye spun in his skull. His muscles tensed for the plunge.
From somewhere high above, there was a whistling sound followed by a pop. The sky turned a brilliant white that washed all shadow and color away in an instant.
The crowd, including Walleye, craned to look upwards. Night had turned to day over the village, and they all gazed transfixed at a single point of light slowly descending toward them. More whistles and pops and the newly-created star was joined by two more. The villagers turned away to shield their eyes, their inhumanly large pupils shrunk to dots.
All around him, hands released Dwayne’s arms and legs. The dogpile of brats atop him melted away, and Walleye stood with the others to gaze at the trio of lights drifting down in wobbly progress far above the huts.
Flares on ’chutes. Chaz was back. Dwayne prayed he brought Hell, in the form of Lee Hammond, with him.
Dwayne drove the heel of his foot deep up into Walleye’s crotch with all the force he could muster. Walleye sucked in a lungful of air and folded in two. Dwayne snatched the flint knife from Walleye’s nerveless fingers. The Ranger was trying to stand and finding it was hard work. The crowd’s fascination with the light show waned, and they turned back to their midnight snack. He fought down the urge to retch since standing turned up the pain in his head.
Skinnies closed from all around, feinting and dodging as he whirled all about thrusting with the knife. He was weak from blood loss or head trauma or both. It was only a matter of time before one of them slipped through his feeble defense or he passed out. His Ranger training in knife fighting kicked in and kept him moving.
A few paces from him, he could now see Jimbo lying motionless. He was stripped to boxers as well. He was filthy and covered in blood drying black on his skin. Dwayne had no way of knowing if it was Jimbo’s blood or not. The man wasn’t moving. Dwayne made his way to Jimbo’s side, jabbing the point of the knife in sudden thrusts to back the skinnies off. They bared teeth at him and hissed. The crowd was seconds from picking up rocks to pelt him and Jimbo to jelly.
A row of skinnies nearest Dwayne crumpled to the ground. The sand and ash all around them kicked up into the air in a sudden storm. Bits of bone and blood spattered the mob. They fell back more in confusion than fear. It was a What-The-Fuck moment for them and wouldn’t last long.
Another spray and Walleye was flung to the ground, a lifeless sack of bones. A spray of black blood exploded from his mouth.
Dwayne heard the burr of automatic fire from somewhere out in the dark. More skinnies crashed kicking to the ground, and more spun away missing limbs and trailing innards. Dwayne crouched low. Someone was expertly working an automatic weapon in close fire support. He wanted to make himself as small as he could until he knew it was clear. He covered Jimbo’s body with his own.
Another long burst brushed the packed mob of skinnies back farther. The flares were dying, and in the returning gloom, Dwayne could clearly see the path of white tracers as they strobed out from the dark in shallow arcs.
A second and heavier weapon opened up closer to Dwayne. The ring of skinnies faded back, leaving a number of them writhing on the ground bleeding out. The crowd broke up then and ran in full wailing panic for the protection of the surrounding huts.
“On your feet, Rangers!” Chaz shouted as he trotted out of the gloom, two green-glowing discs where his eyes should be.
Chaz pumped rounds toward the huts from the M-4 rifle in his fists. He unslung a second rifle from his shoulder and
