Deathlands 117: Desolation Angels (14 page)

But despite his sudden terror, neither sentry so much as flinched. They’d heard it all before.

A shadow rose from the weeds a short distance from the house. It was a curious shadow, dark in body and legs but as pale as the moon in head and hands. Making no more noise than you’d expect a shadow to make, it stole up to the front of the house.

Ricky drew in a deep breath. He let half of it out, caught it, held it. His finger exerted gentle but definite pressure on the trigger.

Suddenly Jak Lauren rose behind the man walking closer to the wall. Ricky saw a flash of white as his hand slipped under the guard’s chin from behind to yank his head up and back, readying the man’s throat to receive the blade.

Ricky focused his vision, his entire being, on the other sentry. The man stopped as he realized his partner was no longer keeping pace with him. Possibly he’d heard a noise, as Jak punched his trench-knife blade through the first man’s neck from side to side.

Or maybe drops of blood, scalding in their unexpectedness, had sprayed him as Jak pushed the blade outward, cutting the sentry’s throat and drowning his cry of pain and alarm in a gush of jugular blood down the airway.

The sentry started to turn. It was the instant Ricky had been waiting for. His finger tightened. Decisively, but not jerking.

The DeLisle bucked. Not much; it was a chunky, hefty little piece and designed to shoot a high-powered rifle bullet. The pistol cartridge barely registered against its mass.

The 230-grain copper-jacketed .45 round had a trajectory at this range approximating that of a thrown rock. But it was a predictable trajectory. And Ricky knew it well.

He saw his target jerk as the bullet hit him in the back. His legs folded instantly beneath him. Ricky already had cranked the bolt action and chambered another stubby round.

When the guard hit his knees and paused, Ricky gave him a second bullet through the back of the head. Just to make sure. Immediately he switched his aim to the door. The two guards there showed no awareness of anything unusual. They seemed to be conversing as they shared a cigarette. Smoking and joking, J.B. would have called that—in tones of stern disapproval.

But now their slack habits were good for Ricky and his friends. And for them. If they just kept hanging out, oblivious, they might get through this night alive.

He heard a chirp like a night bird’s cry.

Instantly the two ends of a length of rope came snaking out the window and slithered down to the ground. Almost at once a dark, compact shape appeared, half climbing down, half sliding, using gloves to protect his hands against rope burns. Even without the shotgun strapped across the jacketed back and the trademark fedora, Ricky would have recognized his mentor, J. B. Dix.

Jak had quickly and professionally shaken down the two chills. Now he crouched in the weeds with his trench knife in his hand, scanning the surroundings. He didn’t draw his Python, Ricky suspected, because if trouble started and it wasn’t finished silently, it would likely end up finishing
them.

J.B. hit the ground. He gave another birdcall. If the door guards heard it over the party racket from inside, it evidently didn’t strike them as unusual.

Which meant no unexpected 230-grain messengers from the darkness struck
them.
Ryan had impressed on Ricky he wanted to leave as small a footprint as possible. Not because the Dragons wouldn’t find out what happened, but to delay that inevitable moment until, hopefully, they and their prize were long gone from their range.

Now it appeared as if a sack were exiting the window, but a sack with long, pale legs protruding from its bottom. They began to kick back and forth—together, since they seemed to be joined at the ankles.

Then they stopped. Ricky wasn’t sure how Ryan, unseen inside the room lowering what Ricky had to surmise was the Dragon leader by a rope tied under his arms, had got the message across to keep the nuke still. But he knew Ryan had his ways. And in this case they were probably even less gentle than usual.

His heart in his throat, the young sniper watched the hooded captive bump his way down the ivy-covered wall. Fortunately the party noises were getting louder, as the partiers got, presumably, drunker. So they covered whatever sounds their hapless leader may have caused on his way to the ground.

J.B. grabbed hold of the man’s bare legs and helped ease him to the ground. Not, of course, to make things easier on him. But to make sure things stayed quiet.

Another shape appeared in the window. To Ricky’s surprise it wasn’t Ryan, but the dark-skinned girl with the pigtails he’d seen earlier through the longeyes—one of Tommy Ten-Inch’s unwilling companions for the night. Without hesitation she climbed down the rope. Her blonde companion did show some fear but quickly overcame it and started down behind her.

Meanwhile J.B. had the captive pulled to one side and lying on his sack-covered face in the weeds. The Armorer had his hat at a jaunty angle, his M4000 shotgun in his hands and his right boot planted firmly beneath the Dragon lord’s shoulder blades. He seemed quietly pleased with a job well done.

Though he was not complacent. J. B. Dix did not do complacent.

The girl with the pigtails helped the other one, and they made it down without visible trouble or any fuss Ricky could detect. Neither J.B. nor Jak moved to help them. They were too busy keeping watch for trouble. The girls seemed to be doing remarkably well, considering what they’d been through.

Which was lucky for them. Had they started raising any ruckus Jak would have cut their throats without hesitation. Jak was a good man and Ricky’s closest friend. But in some ways, deep down, he was still the ruthless predator who’d grown up wild in the Gulf Coast bayous, chilling men and animals as needed to survive. He could be cold-blooded, even by Ryan’s exacting standards.

Ryan came down last, sliding fast, barely bothering to brake his descent with occasional clutches of his leather-gloved hands.

But not fast enough that he was down before something alerted the two men guarding the mansion’s front door.

Ricky was watching them over the sights of his longblaster. The one nearer to him, a skinny guy with a brush of blond or light brown hair, actually jumped and looked around. He said something to his companion, who was fat and struck Ricky as younger, despite the dark beard fringing his moon-pie face. Then, clutching their own longblasters in both hands, they set off at a determined pace toward the corner of the building nearest Ricky.

His mind instantly went to war with itself. He had a clear shot at either man, and though both were moving, they were moving toward him—not straight, but the angle cut down the effects of their forward motion on his aim. He was as confident he could chill one with one shot, even with a pistol round and open sights, as he was of making any shot ever. He was good with the DeLisle, and he knew it. Though he might doubt everything else about himself—and frequently did—he knew that.

But he’d had some tactical sense beaten into his head in the months since Ryan Cawdor and his companions had taken him from the burning ruin of his home ville, which had been ravaged by the coldheart minions of the self-proclaimed general El Guapo. And it urgently reminded him of two things now.

First, although the Enfield the DeLisle was built from had a notably fast and easy action, and Ricky could throw it with a smooth mechanical precision that even impressed J.B., it was still a bolt-action blaster. There was a chance the second guard would be so stunned or confused by his partner’s sudden collapse that he would just stand there and not start yelling his fool head off or blazing away at random into the night with his AR-15.

Yeah, right.

Ricky wasn’t inclined to risk the lives of his friends to that distant possibility.

The other problem was that the absence of the door guards would probably not cause any immediate alarm when it got noticed. Although he was sure the penalties for straying from your appointed post were pretty tough and possibly awful in a stoneheart crew like the Dragons—he’d spent much of the afternoon biting his lip as he watched Dragon overseers beat workers down into the very soil they were working with brutal blows of hardwood clubs on apparently any provocation at all, and probably sometimes just for the fun of it—he doubted it was a rare occurrence. The Dragons were scum, bullies, and he couldn’t imagine the sort of dogged persistence the Angels had displayed in their pursuit of the companions coming from them. Lax guard discipline was only to be expected.

But if somebody glanced out a window and noticed a chill sprawled in the weeds—that would give the whole hornet’s nest a hearty kick.

All those thoughts flashed through Ricky’s head, almost between one beat of his hammering heart and the next.

And—he waited. He had to trust his and his friends’ reflexes and their razor-keen senses.

The two guards clearly didn’t expect any serious threat. They were the Dragons, undisputed masters of this part of Corktown. Who’d dare challenge them? They walked right around the corner without a pause or even a preliminary glance.

Ricky promptly put a bullet into the hole of the fat dude’s ear, as if he’d placed it there with thumb and forefinger. He was like Doc that way; no matter how doubtful he might be any other time, when the shit hammer came down, he was as steady as an anvil.

So was Jak, who had somehow heard the two sentries start to move above the festive racket from inside. Or maybe his hunter’s instincts had warned him.

No sooner had the two Dragons appeared around the corner of the building than he sprang, knife first, at the light-haired man nearer the limestone wall. His aim was as unerring as his instincts. The trench knife stabbed its point straight through the man’s Adam’s apple. Ricky saw the albino hand savagely twist it, literally cutting off any warning scream, as Ryan stepped up to grab the stricken man and help guide him down to the weeds, where he could stare at the stars without troubling anyone at all.

Ricky watched, almost trembling with reaction, trying not to holding his blaster in a drowner’s grip. But no more threats appeared from inside the Dragon mansion.

The party just rolled on.

* * *

“
R
IGHT,”
R
YAN SAID,
as J.B. helped him haul the kidnapped Dragon chieftain to his bare, white feet.

J.B. had just cut the rope that held his ankles together to keep him from kicking too much on his way out the window and down. “Best power out of here before somebody notices the bastard’s missing.”

He turned to Cassie and Allisun. The girls stood clinging to each other and shivering. Their bare legs showed goose bumps despite the fact it was a warm night.

“You two best get back to your families,” he said firmly but not unkindly. “You’ll be all right.”

“No way,” the blonde girl, Allisun, said.

“We’re coming with you,” Cassie added.

“No way,” Ryan responded.

“Way,” Allisun said.

He frowned. “Listen. We’ve got to move, right now and fast. We can’t wait up for you. And we can’t have you slowing us down.”

“Watch us,” Allisun said, raising herself to her full height.

“Bet we run faster than you.”

“Ryan,” J.B. said, holding up his hand. “Wait. Hear them out.”

Ryan was so surprised that he did. If anything, his best friend and right-hand man was usually more ruthlessly efficient than he was. If he thought the two girls, innocent victims though they were, posed the least threat he’d chill them himself and lose no sleep.

“We can’t stay,” Cassie said. “They know who we are, and they’ll blame us for all this.”

“That doesn’t even make—”

J.B. gave his old friend a look. Ryan shut up. Of course the Dragons would blame the girls. And their families. Or at least take their fury out on them. They were handy.

“Yeah,” Allisun said. “Look, thanks and everything, but we can’t stay. You have to take us with you.”

“We can show you where the lookouts are and everything,” Cassie added.

“We know,” Ryan said. “But thanks.”

“Back to Hizzoner?” J.B. asked.

The freed captives looked at each other.

“I know!” Allisun said. “Get us to Angel territory. We’ll, like, throw ourselves on their mercy!”

“Seriously?” Ryan said.

“Well—Leto’s mercy.”

“Yeah!”

“Who’s Leto?” Ryan asked.

“Red Wings’s son,” Cassie said.

“Everybody in downtown loves him,” Allisun said. “Even his enemies. He’ll take care of us.”

“He’s dreamy,” Cassie said. “Not like Tommy Two-Inch here.” Cassie spit on the Dragon leader’s bare feet.

Ryan looked to J.B. The Armorer just grinned.

“Right,” Ryan said. “Enough talk. We go. And don’t cause us problems, or we’ll all regret it.”

Chapter Fourteen

Sitting in the partially ruined apartment building like a spider waiting on a fly, J.B. watched the street outside through shabby, makeshift curtains stirring feebly over a glassless window. He was content, happy even.

He paid so little mind to feelings, he wasn’t sure he remembered what happy was anymore. But he had a sense of a job well done, like any craftsman.

Twenty men swaggered into the morning sunshine. These were no ordinary gangbangers, these were the Felonious Monks, the downtown rubble’s second most-feared gang after the Desolation Angels.

They were all dressed in homemade blue-gray jackets over black T-shirts, black trousers, black shoes and dark shades. The leader wore expensive scavvy. J.B. wondered where they got the shoes—if they were all scavvied, or if the Monks had unusually skilled cobblers.

They walked with arrogant assurance. Most carried long hardwood sticks or truncheons in their hands. A couple carried longblasters. Most of the rest showed the telltale bulges of handblasters holstered beneath their natty duds.

More unusual than their near-uniform clothing and disciplined manner was the fact that every one was black. That sort of racial selection wasn’t common these days, although Mildred had pointed out that a large part of Detroit’s population predark had been black.