Two more missiles hit, each destroying its target with a blast intended to gut purpose-built armored vehicles. A shockwave flipped the provisions truck onto its back; Lamartiere didn't see what had happened to Sergeant Heth.
Even before the third warhead exploded, automatic cannons firing from the hills west of the shrine began to rake Maury's other vehicles. Three kilometers was well within their accurate range.
Maury's air-cushion vehicles disintegrated like tissue paper in a storm. The steel armor of some wheeled trucks wasn't thick enough to stop the shells, and the concrete slabs protecting the others fractured at the first impact. Following shells passed through unhindered, igniting cataclysms of fuel and stored ammunition.
"Let me down!" Lamartiere said as he jumped into the basket. He should have waited. Marie had to struggle with the locking pin because Lamartiere's weight was already on the winch, but she jerked it loose before he realized the problem. The basket wobbled downward.
Still shooting, the attacking vehicles drove out of the hills where they'd waited in ambush. There were three of them, air-cushion armored personnel carriers of the type used by government forces.
Each thirty-tonne APC could carry a platoon of troops behind armor thick enough to stop small-arms projectiles. The small turret near the bow carried a light electromotive cannon as well as a launching rail on the left side for an antitank missile. The hatches on the APCs' back decks opened. Troops leaned out, aiming rifles and submachine guns.
The men in the APCs wore government uniforms, though with cut-off sleeves and flourishes of metal and bright fabrics. Maury had played his card; now de Laburat's Ralliers were trumping the hand.
The gangs' alliance of convenience had broken down under the weight of loot that couldn't be shared and which gave the party owning it an overwhelming advantage over the other. In this at least, Hoodoo's presence had benefited the other inhabitants of the Boukasset.
Most of Maury's men had thrown themselves to the ground or were running toward the rocks behind the shrine, the only available cover. Their leader stood and emptied his submachine gun at the oncoming vehicles.
The APCs' turrets were stabilized to fire accurately on the move. Two of the automatic cannon shot back simultaneously. Maury's head and torso disintegrated in white flashes. An arm flew skyward; the legs below the knees remained upright for an instant before toppling onto the sand.
Lamartiere was halfway to the ground when a Rallier noticed the mob gun and took him for one of Maury's gang. Chips of sandstone flew from the wall close enough to cut Lamartiere's arm: the shooter was either lucky or better than any man had a right to be when firing from a moving platform.
Lamartiere saw a cannon tracking toward him. The ground was still five meters below but there was no choice. Cradling the mob gun to his belly and hoping it wouldn't go off when he hit, he jumped. A burst of shells devoured the basket as he left it, stinging his back with fragments of casing and stone.
He knew to flex his knees as he hit, but his feet flew backward and he slapped the ground hard enough to knock his breath out and bloody his chin. He'd dropped the mob gun. He snatched it up again, then staggered toward Hoodoo with knife-blade pains jetting from two lower ribs.
The APCs closed to within thirty meters of the burning vehicles and flared broadside to a halt. The Ralliers wanted to stay beyond range of a hand-thrown bomb as they finished off the survivors of Maury's band. Bullets sparkled on the APCs' sides; a Rallier sprawled, bleeding down the sloping armor. Gunfire from the vehicles was twenty to one compared to what they received.
Lamartiere grabbed a headlight bracket with his left hand. Behind him a woman's voice shrilled, "Stop him, Pietro!" through the roar of gunfire.
Lamartiere swung his right leg up. Pietro closed a hand like a bear trap on his ankle and jerked him back. With the muzzle of the mob gun tight against the giant's body, Lamartiere pulled the trigger.
Recoil bashed the gun butt hard against Lamartiere's ribs. He doubled up. Pietro stepped back with a look of blank incomprehension on his face. There was a hole two centimeters in diameter just above his navel. His tunic was smoldering.
Pietro pivoted and fell on his face. The cavity in his back was bigger than a man's head. Sections of purple-veined intestine squirmed out of the general red mass.
Louise stood behind her brother's body. "You bastard!" she cried and drew a small pistol from the bosom of her blouse.
Lamartiere hesitated a heartbeat, but there was no choice. Louise and her brother were combatants, agents working for de Laburat just as Rasile had worked for Maury—and she was about to kill him.
He pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Excessive chamber pressure when he'd fired with the muzzle against Pietro's chest had ruptured the cartridge case. The mob gun was jammed.
Sergeant Heth grabbed the woman's wrist from behind, spun her, and broke her elbow neatly over his knee. The mercenary had lost the loose robe he'd worn for a disguise, and his left arm and shoulder were black with oil or soot.
"You drive, kid!" he shouted. He used Hoodoo's toolbox as a handhold and a patch welded on the side skirt for a step to lift himself up the tank's side. "I'll take care of the rest!"
Lamartiere climbed the bow slope and dropped into the driver's compartment. He switched the fans on and closed the hatch above him.
De Laburat must have ordered his troops not to fire at the tank since its capture undamaged was the whole purpose of the attack, but now a dozen shells exploded against the side of the turret. They were as harmless as so many raindrops.
Fan speed built smoothly; only the ragged line of Number 7's readout reminded Lamartiere that there was a problem. Hoodoo's systems were coming alive all around him. There were hums and purrs and the demanding whine of a hydraulic accumulator building pressure.
Some of the sounds were unfamiliar. With a sudden leap of his heart, Lamartiere realized that the rhythmic shoop-shoop-shoop from deep in the hull must be ammunition rising from the storage magazines.
Out of nervousness he coarsened blade pitch too fast. The fans threatened to bog, but Lamartiere rolled back on the adjustment in time. Adding power with his right handgrip and pitch with the left, he brought Hoodoo to hover in place.
The driver's compartment felt more comfortable to him without a gunnery display in the center of the lower screen. He'd regularly driven tanks during the months he'd worked as one of the Slammers' Local Service Personnel, but he'd never seen a gunnery display until Dr. Clargue went over Hoodoo's systems in Pamiers.
Dozens of Ralliers were blazing away at Hoodoo with rifles and submachine guns, a dangerous waste of ammunition. Somebody with a better notion of utility jumped down from his APC and ran forward, swinging a satchel charge for a side-armed throw. A bullet ricocheting from the tank tore his face away as he released the satchel.
The bomb flew toward Hoodoo in a high arc. A section of self-defense strip fired, making the tank ring. Tungsten pellets shredded the satchel into tatters of cloth and explosive, flinging it back the way it had come. It didn't detonate.
Lamartiere eased his control yoke forward and twisted left to move the tank away from the shrine. There were too many civilians nearby. Shots that couldn't damage Hoodoo would kill and maim people who'd only looked for peace.
The APCs were driving away. Ralliers who'd gotten out to finish off Maury's men on foot ran along behind the vehicles, shouting and waving their arms. One of the gunners depressed his cannon as his APC turned, intending to rake Hoodoo's skirts. If the plenum chamber was holed badly enough, the tank's fans couldn't build enough pressure to lift her off the ground.