On the far side of the fence she immediately tripped over a hunched ceramic bunny. She went sprawling with a yelp of alarm. Then she jumped up and was off again. Her right ankle hurt ferociously but nothing seemed broken. The leg held, in any event.
Bullets cracked past her. She heard more glass breaking. A motion-sensor light came on from the porch to her right and was instantly shattered, most likely by a stray shot.
She vaulted another low fence. The block sloped slowly upward before her. With her long legs and natural speed she was quickly distancing her pursuers.
There was no question of charging this much firepower, sword or no. Her only hope was to make herself as poor a target as possible while pulling away from the cursing, puffing gangbangers. She continued running at top speed, dodging garden gnomes and plaster Virgin of Guadalupe shrines and jumping fences and hedges.
It finally occurred to somebody that she couldn't outrun a car any more than she could bullets. A second vehicle snarled around the corner and whipped past her, a pimped little Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution with a huge spoiler and pointy tribal-tattoo decals on the sides. It skidded to a stop a couple of houses ahead of her. Three more thugs leaped out.
The driver leveled another sawed-back pump gun at her from the hip. At that range the pellet spread gave him a chance to hit her even with lousy aim. She immediately launched herself in a long, low dive, past a front porch and between a garage door and the front of an old Ford Taurus.
Annja scraped elbows and knees on concrete. She was grateful for long pants and a jacket. Her left knee banged painfully on the pavement but didn't buckle when she came up to a crouch with a juniper hedge right in front of her, separating the drive from the next yard.
She called forth the sword. A banger appeared at the end of the driveway. He fired a MAC-10 at her. Bullets skipped off concrete and punched through the metal garage door as she ducked down in front of the Taurus. By chance she was in the safest location possible in the immediate circumstances. The little pointy 9 mm slugs would never make it through the big car's engine block.
Her attacker still tried. He held the piece up above his head two-handed, firing downward at a shallow slant. Bullets went into the car body through the roof, sent the windshield cascading away in glittering particles, thumped through the hood to clang into the engine. None came close to the crouching Annja.
The gunfire broke off as the magazine emptied. With no notion where his two buddies were, but certain the rest of the pack was catching up quick, Annja moved fast. She darted around the driver's side of the sedan and charged straight back just as the banger hopped out on the same side into a straddle-legged stance, screaming and firing his reloaded machine pistol from the hip.
She dived beneath his bullets. She smelled burned propellant and lubricant. Oddly she heard nothing. She rolled up with the yellow muzzle flare dazzling her eyes and fast-flung primer fragments stinging her cheeks. She swung the sword down.
The blade caught the chattering machine pistol and split it open. The gunman's screams went up an octave as the chamber opened up just as a cartridge went off, causing a bubble of blue-and-yellow fire to scorch his hands and scraggly beard. The powerful blade carried on downward, scarcely impeded by cutting the gun in two, slicing his left hand transversely across the palm.
She found herself sitting right in front of the man as his seared right forefinger continued to pump the trigger of his ruined weapon uselessly. With no better option in view, she jabbed the sword up, fast and short. The tip took him under the chin, cleaved his tongue, pierced the roof of his mouth and went straight into his brain.
His howls abruptly stopped. As he collapsed lifelessly, pithed like a lab frog, she tore the sword free with a desperate full-swing wrench of both hands. She was already looking right to where she heard thudding footsteps, glad not to have to see what that did to his face...
One of his comrades loomed up over the hedge. He was almost on top of her. This one had a full-on AK-47. He raised it to his shoulder.
She knocked the broken-nosed barrel up with the flat of her sword. The gun went off, a full-auto snarl, flame stabbing four feet into the night sky. The weapon's considerable recoil at such an unwieldy angle drove the gunner back, off balance.
Annja was over the hedge and on him like a leopard. She slashed at his winged-out right elbow. His arm parted to her blade. A final shot torqued the heavy rifle from the hand that still held the foregrip. He sat down shrieking horribly until Annja silenced him with a slash across the face.
A white-painted metal yard lamp exploded right in front of her. She screamed in surprise and terror, then dropped straight down as a second charge of buckshot moaned over her head to take out most of what the first blast had left of the front window of the house.
The assault rifle lay on the lawn right beside her. She sent the sword away and grabbed the rifle.
Blasting away from his hip, the shotgunner ran forward from the middle of the street. Annja yanked the Kalashnikov into firing position, pointed it at him and squeezed off a 4-round burst.
At least one shot struck home. The man reeled, stopped and went to one knee just on the other side of the short block wall at the front of the little yard. He raised the shotgun. Annja got the hooded front sight in front of her eyes. The first part of him it bore on was his head, with a ball cap turned sideways. She squeezed off a single shot. He fell.
She put the steel buttplate to her shoulder as she aimed back the way she had come. A pursuer came into view in a flying leap across the far fence of the yard she'd just escaped, a shotgun in his right hand. She fired a short burst across the hood of the shot-up Taurus. It caught him in the center of his chest. His legs flew up before him, and he landed heavily on his back.
The first car that had tried the drive-by peeled out after her. She fired an aimed burst into the driver's side of the windshield. To her gratification the car veered left and slammed into the front of a parked pickup.
Then she realized the Kalashnikov's charging handle was locked back. She'd fired the banana magazine dry.
A wild burst from somebody running up the street cracked against the stone front of the house beside her like hail. She threw down the empty AK-47 and ran for all she was worth.
Two blocks east of Broadway a green park opened up to the right, climbing a hill covered with turf grass that, well watered by the city, was still mostly green. Paths graveled in crushed pumice from the Jemez Mountains wound through it. Halfway up the hill sturdy playground equipment, a slide and swing set rose out of a little depression. At the hill's crest stood some kind of a statue. Gloom and the shine of the streetlight by the play set hid details from Annja's eyes.
Her pursuers had quit shooting to concentrate on running. There were at least half a dozen of them left. They were obviously out of shape for the chase but kept after her regardless of tongues hanging out – and regardless of the casualties she had already laid on them.
Why are they after me?she wondered. Matters had gone far past the point she could pretend this was some random act of violence against a chance victim. They wanted Annja Creed. And they wanted her badly enough to die.
As she came upon the park a pair of headlights appeared over the top of the long slope that continued a block past the park. They came fast. She knew that her tormentors had just received reinforcements.
She raced up the gravel path into the park's interior. The folds in the ground, the landscaping, the swing set bolted together from heavy railroad ties would provide some concealment and more importantly cover from bullets.