“How bad?” Blade asked.
“It creased my side,” Geronimo said. “I can manage. Let’s move!”
Blade raced for a door at the far end of the hallway. He could hear his companions pounding after him. They wound past the bodies of the dead mobsters, past unattached, ruptured limbs and contorted torsos. Once he almost slipped in a puddle of gore. Some of the trigger men were groaning piteously.
One of the soldiers, a man with a gaping hole in his abdomen, clutched at Helen’s legs. She tripped, righted herself, and shot him in the mouth.
Blade was beginning to believe they would reach the door without further incident, but he was wrong. They were less than 15 feet from their goal when gunfire broke out to their rear.
The Warriors whirled, dropping to their knees.
Seven mobsters from the casino were in hot pursuit, firing as they ran.
Geronimo went prone, sighting the Browning and squeezing the trigger with a practiced economy of movement, the BAR thundering.
The leader of the pursuing pack dropped.
Helen lifted the Armalite and aimed at the next mobster. His life was momentarily spared when the carbine clicked instead of discharging.
“Empty!” she cried, discarding the Armalite and drawing her .45-caliber Caspians. She fired both automatics simultaneously, and her original target tumbled to the floor.
Blade removed his third grenade, slipping it from his left front pocket and yanking on the pin. He spied one of the mobsters doing the same thing, and he tossed his before Giorgio’s man could let fly. “Grenade!” he yelled, and sprawled onto his stomach.
The five remaining gangsters were virtually obliterated. They were packed together when both grenades exploded, one after the other. The corridor heaved and shook, plaster falling from the ceiling, dust permeating the air and obscuring the grisly remnants of the mobsters.
Blade was up and jogging to the door before the dust could settle. He distinctly heard shots from the casino, and he wondered if Don Pucci’s men were assaulting the Palace. He reached the door and wrenched it wide, finding a stairwell on the other side.
Geronimo and Helen ran to the door. Geronimo was reloading the Browning. Helen had replaced the Caspians and was slapping a fresh clip into the Armalite.
“Ready?” Blade queried.
They nodded grimly.
Blade darted into the stairwell without bothering to establish whether Giorgio’s men were already there, and he immediately regretted his foolhardiness.
Six well-armed trigger men were rounding a bend in the stairs above, halfway between the doorway and the next landing. They opened up the second they saw him.
Blade hit the floor and rolled alongside the stairs, effectively screening his body from view from above.
Geronimo and Helen, still in the corridor, provided covering fire.
The mobsters were compelled to retreat up the stairs to the landing.
All firing abruptly stopped.
Blade risked a hasty glance upward. The trigger men were not in sight.
Were they hiding on the landing, waiting for the Warriors to ascend, or had they fled? Giorgio’s men did not impress him as the craven type.
A minute elapsed.
Blade rose to a crouch and moved to the base of the stairs, his eyes on the landing.
Nothing.
Geronimo and Helen were waiting at the doorway, one on either side.
With his Commando angled upward, Blade cautiously advanced to the halfway point.
Still nothing.
Blade hesitated, chafing at the delay. Reaching the third floor swiftly was imperative. Don Giorgio’s termination was essential if Don Pucci was to triumph. Every second the Warriors dallied increased the likelihood of Giorgio escaping.
Giorgio must not get away!
His lips a compressed line. Blade moved higher. In four strides he could see the landing clearly.
The mobsters were gone.
Geronimo and Helen were waiting at the bottom of the steps.
Blade motioned for them to join him, and while they climbed the steps he inserted a new magazine into the Commando, even though the one he replaced still con-lained over a dozen rounds.
“Where did they go?” Geronimo whispered.
“Beats me,” Blade replied quietly.
“Do you hear all the gunshots coming from the casino?” Helen inquired.
Blade nodded. “Don Pucci’s men, I bet. Which means Giorgio’s soldiers in the casino will be preoccupied for a while. There could be more of his trigger men scattered throughout the building. If there are any on this next floor, I don’t care. We’ll leave them for Pucci’s men to mop up. I say we’re going directly to the third floor. Odds are, that’s where we’ll find Giorgio.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Helen asked sharply. “I want to get my hands on that bastard!”
“Let’s go.” Blade took off up the stairwell, alertly scanning the stairs overhead for any sign of the six trigger men. They passed the landing and kept going, and only when they were almost to the next bend did he realize his blatant error.
The six mobsters had not fled. They had gone into the corridor and crouched low against the walls, waiting for their foes to open the landing door so they could gun the giant and the other two down. Their ambush was thwarted when the three continued upward, but the mobsters were equally pleased. They simply waited for the giant, the woman, and the Indian to climb a little higher, and without any warning the trigger men spilled onto the landing and blasted away.
Blade heard the landing door opening, and he tried to spin, knowing he had committed a grave mistake. Geronimo and Helen were also in motion, but they were all too late.
All three Warriors were hit.
Blade felt a searing, burning sensation in his right side. He winced, forcing his mind to disregard the pain as he returned the mobsters’ fire.
Geronimo took a slug in the left thigh. He stumbled backwards and fell, landing on his right side. Twisting, he brought the Browning to bear and squeezed the trigger.
Helen, her body at an angle, trying to reach the cover of the bend as she sighted on the trigger men, was struck twice. The first shot dug a bloody furrow in her right cheek. The second shot tore through her right shoulder just under the bone. She was bowled over by the impact, stunned for several seconds.
Blade saw two of the trigger men go down. The remainder ducked into the corridor. He could guess their strategy; they would regroup and reload, and in a minute or so they would try another sneak attack. With Geronimo and Helen both down, he couldn’t afford to wage a running firefight. He couldn’t allow the trigger men to harass them. With the realization came action, a maneuver the mobsters would not be expecting.
Instead of assisting Geronimo and Helen, instead of helping them to reach the bend, he opted for, as Hickok would say, the direct approach.
He charged the landing.
One of the trigger men was at the slightly open landing door, and he shouted a warning to his fellows as the giant bounded down the steps four at a leap. He poked his shotgun through the opening.
Blade saw the shotgun barrel and fired from the hip, his burst striking the edge of the landing door, splintering and chipping the wood.
There was a gurgling screech from the far side, and the shotgun barrel disappeared.
Blade never missed a beat. He vaulted onto the landing and grabbed the doorknob, flinging the door wide.
The trigger man with the shotgun was on the floor, writhing and convulsing, miniature crimson geysers spouting from his neck and chest, the shotgun lying across his legs.
Three mobsters were left. One, on his knees, was coolly reloading a Marlin. The other two were armed with machine guns, and they automatically swung their weapons toward the doorway as the giant materialized.