Ray didn't even try to suppress his scream. Yelling like a maniac, he hurled himself at Puckett. The dead ace waited with open arms, wanting, no doubt, to enfold Ray to his massive bosom where he could alternately crush him with his inhuman strength and fry him with the toxicity of his flesh.
Ray knew that he couldn't out-strength Puckett. He had to out-think and out-quick him.
At the last second he went down, hitting the floor and kicking out with a leg-whip that smashed Crypt Kicker's knees, Puckett toppled like a falling redwood. Ray leapt to his feet and stomped hard on Puckett's throat. Puckett clutched at his legs, but Ray pulled away. He stomped again, then again, and he heard a sickening crunching sound as cartilage and flesh collapsed. Puckett clutched at his throat, wheezing like an organ with a broken bellows.
Ray stepped away from him, shaking his head. "Stupid fucking redneck," he said, then he turned and ran down the hall after Johnson.
He activated his throat mike as he ran and screamed, "Come in, come on in! They're bolting like fucking rats! Don't let anyone get away!"
He saw no one as he ran through the manor and burst outside. The government cutter he'd called was bearing down on the island at full speed, lights flashing and clarions blaring. Amphibious helicopters were swooping in like birds of prey, guarding the sky in case the Sharks tried an aerial escape.
Ray went around the back of the manor to the small airstrip where something was taxiing out of a hangar. He put on a burst of speed. He wanted to reach it before the choppers did. He wanted to tear Johnson and whoever was with him to pieces.
But Johnson's aircraft suddenly rose straight up. It hung there insouciantly for a moment, as if daring the choppers to try to tag it. Then it was gone with a scream of jet turbines, leaving the choppers far behind like the fat, clumsy children they were. Ray's sprint stumbled to a halt and he stared in disbelief.
"A Harrier," Ray swore under his breath. "A fucking vertical take-off fucking jet." He sat down on the edge of the runway, suddenly very tired. "Where the fuck did Johnson get a fucking Harrier?"
He sat with his head in his hands for a long moment, a pose very uncharacteristic for Billy Ray. Then he stood, and strode around the manor to where the assault team had gathered on the beach. The choppers bumbled around like angry, uncertain bees. They knew they had missed their target, but they had no idea what their target was.
Ray knew. He knew it was the Black Trump, death to all things born from the wild card.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
By tradition, the muezzin called when he could distinguish a black thread from a white. In the dim dawn light, the faithful hurried to prayers, dodging their way past vendors who brought polished vegetables down from rooftop gardens. Silent jokers carried plastic coolers on their shoulders, hurrying toward the City Gate where traders would fill them with crushed ice and eggs and farm-raised fish from pens in the Sea of Galilee. Soon, boys would begin their morning rounds, carrying brass trays hung from swinging chains. The trays would be loaded with cups of thick coffee and steaming tea and cans of trademarked, guaranteed genuine Coca-Cola It never tasted right to Zoe, in spite of the logo.
The air smelled of cucumbers and orange blossoms, of compost and last night's cooking. Zoe followed the vendors toward the souk, the area outside the City Gate where an uneasy truce held, the city's denizens usually kept at peace by the necessities of trade. She stayed in the shadows and walked as quietly as she could. If she found Needles following her, she planned to send him right back home. He would follow, she was sure of it, thinking to protect her, or to protect himself. She watched and listened, but she couldn't see him.
She hadn't gone half a block before she picked up a tail, a hunched figure in a black cloak. Needles? The figure vanished behind her.
The street angled sharply. Upper stories overhung the cobblestones in this section, so close that neighbors could borrow a cup of sugar through the opened windows. Or, more likely, exchange insults. The night's shadows lingered here and made the street seem even narrower than it was. Zoe heard heavy breathing behind her and caught a glimpse of a figure in a black cloak. She forced herself not to run. The black cloak brushed against the wall beside her in a passageway narrow enough that Zoe's hand touched a doorway on the opposite side of the street.
"You look nat." Not Needles, the joker's voice came from the folds of his hood, a cultured British accent, a fine tenor. He spoke in quiet, conversational cadence. A giant snail's foot showed beneath swirling folds of black cotton. The joker's cowled head bobbed at the level of her elbow and something was wrong with the shape of his back and shoulders. "Are you a whore?"
This man wouldn't kill a joker, not in the quarter. But a nat might die here, and vanish from the street in some narrow doorway. "No," Zoe said.
"Are you, perhaps, a customer? My equipment is both adequate and unique."
"Not a customer," Zoe said.
"Pity," the joker said. "It is my duty, then, to escort you out of the Quarter."
"I'm going to the City Gate," Zoe said.
"That is fortunate," the joker said.
They walked in silence for a while.
"I'm going to the City Gate because I know it's guarded - by the Twisted Fists."
She heard his indrawn breath. "A shadow organization. A myth," the joker said.
His dismissal was too casual, too offhand. He was a Fist, or he knew them. "Bullshit," Zoe said. "They've enlisted five of my kids."
"Five? You look rather less maternal than that. My compliments."
"Wards. Foster kids. Whatever. You're a Fist, aren't you? Isn't everyone around here?"
"You are a fool," the joker said "Go home."
"No," Zoe said. What could she do to get shuttled up the chain of command? Offer to screw someone? Use her ace? She hated to do that, wouldn't unless she was forced, didn't want to be known in the streets as an ace, for aces were feared here almost as much as nats. Maybe more so.
Zoe and her one-footed companion turned a corner into a wider street where small signs printed in three or more languages hung above barricaded doorways. Above them, the massive bulk of the gate loomed black against a cloudless violet sky.
Jokers came from the night's shadows to set up their wares in the little square, some yawning, most silent. One looked at her and hissed. Another spat in her direction and made a sign to ward off the evil eye. A breeze brought a scent of hot fat and charcoal, of garlic and coriander and frying dough.
Zoe clenched her folded robe in her left hand and walked to the center of the souk. The stone ramparts of the gate looked empty, but there were men with rifles hiding in shadows. She knew it.
The snail-footed joker accompanied her to the middle of the square. "You can't leave yet," he said. "The gates won't open for another half hour."
"I know," Zoe said.
The joker backed away from her. In a moment, he had vanished.
Zoe picked out an area of the wall where the shadows were deepest, where a cul-de-sac cut into the stone bulk of the gate. She walked toward it with all the bravado she could muster, her ears listening for the click of a safety. The cul-de-sac hid a passageway that seemed to end in a blank stone wall. A hooded figure waited there, his rifle pointed at her belly.
"Good morning!" Zoe said.
The swathed black figure wore a veil. She looked like a Halloween depiction of death.
"Are you in charge here?" Zoe asked. She smiled brightly and tried to look innocent and confused.
Eyes don't have much expression, Zoe knew. The mouth does. She couldn't see this joker's mouth or gauge her facial language. The guard's rifle barrel drew a small circle in the air, still pointed at Zoe's belly.
"The Gate opens at six," the guard said. A man, not a woman. "You go home then, nat."
He had a local accent, the melodic lilt of the Mideast. The man was tall, almost skeletal beneath that swirling robe.