No one said Salvadore Alisdare was in his right mind.
“Shut that damn door, Milo,” he insisted, and Milo the Gimp reached out, grabbed the handle, and attempted slamming the basement door. The resultant increased tension on the bungy cord, amplified in its resistance at the point of near closure, was more than Milo could control.
Had Milo insisted on retaining his grip, he would have been pulled off his one good foot and sent face first into the gold shag carpet several feet below. The handle, however, jerked from his sweaty hand and the door swung back open with a bang. Aggravated, and unaware of the bungy cord, Alisdare took angry control of the effort, pulling furiously at the recalcitrant introgression at the same moment that Dan and Ian crawled out the basement window.
The Saint was directly behind them atop the unsteady cabinet when he heard Alisdare tugging and swearing, his plump shadow elongated and animated on the stairwell wall. Before Simon pulled himself through the jagged exit, he fired one well-aimed parting shot. The bullet smashed into the railing bracket exactly where the Saint intended. Although Simon couldn’t see the predictable result, his imagination provided appropriate mental illustrations to accompany the cacophony created by Alisdare’s rear-first crash into the accessory closet of brooms, dustpans, detergents, and an exceptionally noisy ironing board. One of Salvadore’s shed-dwelling auxiliary immediately retaliated by firing two slugs from a .45 through the basement door, but they served only to alert the Saint that there was more to dodge than scrawny Ungodly and unlicensed chemists.
Outside in the dark, Dan and Ian raced towards the Volvo wagon as two shadowy forms exploded out the back door and attempted interception. Alisdare was immediately behind them, waving his arms wildly and screeching like an agitated parrot.
“Stop them, stop them all!”
Had a professional football scout been in attendance, the boys’ abilities to deftly elude their pursuers would have earned them lucrative offers from several major league teams. The thugs, unimpressed by such agility, resorted to weaponry. A shotgun blast of blue fire racked the darkness and the left rear window of the Saintmobile shattered in crystalline fragments.
Ian dove in the dirt, seeking cover by crawling under the station wagon, while Daniel threw himself behind a tree. The Saint, moving at full speed, pulled the .38’s trigger while his adversary’s first shot was still vibrating his tympanum. The shadow behind the shotgun screamed, his right arm pierced by the invading projectile, and fell backward as his smoking weapon vanished behind him in the brush.
“Don’t kill them!” screamed Alisdare, but as Simon was unsure to whom the entreaty was addressed, he ignored it. So did the second assailant who, perhaps more motivated by self-defense than a desire to halt the trio’s progress, fired three wild rounds in rapid succession. Two bullets screamed into the dirt by Simon’s heels, and the third sent bark splintering from the tree behind which Daniel hid. Ian, still stretched out under the Volvo, clasped his hands over his ears and prayed for deliverance.
The Saint vaulted in the brush, grabbed Daniel by the shoulder, and threw him behind the Volvo’s right side before the ungodly could fire another round. With Ian under the car, and Simon and Dan behind it, they were either on the verge of entrapment or escape.
Simon thrust a strong arm beneath the auto’s chassis and gripped Ian by the sleeve, dragging him hurriedly from under the vehicle.
“The keys!” insisted Simon, and Ian fumbled out an indistinguishable handful. The Saint pulled open the passenger door and the dome light splashed illumination, alerting the ungodly as to their exact location. Simon dove into the front seat as fresh round from the .45 blasted through the windshield and slammed into the Volvo’s headrest.
“Damn!” exclaimed Ian, and he suddenly bolted from cover.
Intermittent lunar luminance and the yellow 100 watt bulb above Alisadare’s back porch streaked through an atmosphere of gun smoke and outcries. The wounded assailant’s moans merging with the oaths and expletives uttered by his unsavory compatriots convinced the local crickets and bullfrogs to keep their croaks to themselves and their hind legs immobile. A new element entered the auditory mix — an angry outburst of taunt and derision from a short young man with sheep-dog hair. It was Ian, loudly shouting crude and creative insults as he dashed out of the clearing in a daring desperate and unexpectedly heroic act of effective distraction. All manic movement and furious noise, he leaped stump to shrub, weaving erratically towards the stacked cord wood on the other side of the vehicles.
“Get the little bastard!” ordered Alisdare, scurrying down the back steps as if moving three feet closer to the action would somehow increase his odds of success.
Milo hobbled stupidly in Ian’s general direction while the shadow with the .45 automatic instinctively swung his sloppy aim away from the Volvo.
The fuel injected pride of Sweden burst to life with a horrendous roar, a blaze of headlights, and the clamor of inadequate tread on loose gravel. The Saint was behind the wheel, in control, and ramming the accelerator to the floor.
“Hang on, kiddo,” advised Simon, and Daniel’s fingers dug into the brown plastic dash as the right passenger door banged back on its hinges.
The Saint rode the clutch and manipulated the shift knob with gear grinding abandon. Now, for the first time, he could clearly see every detail of the night’s madness — Alisdare yapping and scuttling like an inbred Pomeranian, Milo limping about aimlessly, a lump of humanity adorned by bedraggled beard and bib overalls clutching a blood soaked arm, and what could only be described as a generic skinhead from central casting wielding a .45 doing his best to corner the wild and wily Ian.
Simon pulled hard on the steering wheel, gunned the engine, and spun the Volvo to create more chaos and increase the dust factor. Skinhead turned from Ian and angrily let loose another burst of gunfire at the Saint. The shot blew away the black AM radio antenna, sending it ricocheting off the luggage rack.
“The radio didn’t work good anyway,” commented Daniel conversationally, and the Saint knew he was in good company. Simon aimed the Volvo’s brights directly at the armed man who could not decide between pursuing Ian or taking another shot at the Saint. His indecision was his undoing. As he turned his eyes away from the Saintmobile’s headlights, the wrong end of a ladder banged him directly across the bridge of his nose. On the other end of the ladder, swinging it like a mighty staff, was Ian.
“Eat wood, scumbag,” he shouted, and whacked the blinded skinhead resolutely alongside his hairless noggin. The thug’s fingers jerked in painful reflex, blasting the last round in his clip through the toe of his boot. He thudded to the ground in disoriented agony, yelling and kicking his smoking foot in the air.
Simon leaned on the horn; Ian tossed aside the ladder and began his dash for the open passenger door. To the Saint’s surprise, Ian skid to a stop and turned back as if remembering an important errand.
“What’s he doing now?” asked the Saint in obvious wonderment.
“He gets like this sometimes,” answered Daniel, doing his best to sound nonchalant despite the pounding of his heart, “I think it’s an unresolved anger issue.”
Ian raced back to the woodpile, grabbed the hatchet, and began swinging it above his head while unleashing a torrid stream of unseemly obscenities at Salvadore Alisdare. The hatchet was accordingly launched as a sharp-edged exclamatory punctuation, smashing into the light bulb over Alisdare’s head and imbedding itself point-first above the porch.