“Kids who ought to know better,” said True, though he could remember climbing over plenty of barbed wire and locked gates when he was one of those who ought to know better. He started walking again, his black wingtips stirring up puffs of red dust. “They moving on?”
“Still in place, sir. Looks like…checking with the glasses…looks like they’re smoking some pot now.”
“Prime, this is Signet,” another voice came in. “Fly on the wall. Do you copy?”
True felt his face tighten. All joviality at pot-smoking unidentifiables vanished in the fraction of an instant. “Copy that,” True said. “Got a distance?” He was already turning toward the northwest. The music was thundering from that direction. The fly was coming up from the opposite side of the mountain, and would seek a clear shot at the stage.
“Three hundred and twenty-seven yards.”
That distance, calculated by a range-finder, would put the fly more than five hundred yards off the stage. Still climbing up, unable to get a shot yet until he reached Signet team’s height. True said, “Give me some details.”
“Definitely carrying a rifle,” said the Signet leader.
True wasted only the time to swallow. “Go get him. You know what I want. Logic, you’re on standby. Copy?”
“Copy that,” said the Logic leader.
True kept walking. After a few minutes he realized he was going in circles. He checked his wristwatch. He checked the sun. He walked past a nearly-naked guy with long brown hair and a topless, scrawny girl sprawled together in the water of a small blue inflatable baby pool. He brought the Walkie-Talkie to his mouth.
“Signet, you copy?”
No answer. They might be a little busy right now.
“Signet, this is Prime. Copy, please.”
He heard a sound from the amphitheater. The sound of wailing guitars, the driving drums, the fiery keyboard and the raw voice of John Charles, yes, but something else too. It was a sound like the wings of a thousand birds. When True looked up he saw only a sky of white fire.
John Charles abruptly stopped singing. There was an explosive boom and feedback shrieked. Something made a horrendous crash and twang.
True heard the next two noises and knew exactly what they were.
Crack. Crack.
Gunshots.
He ran for the stage.
< >
Ariel had seen the goose-steppers. There were six of them, bald-headed and pale, wearing white T-shirts, black jeans and shiny black boots. They were going back and forth through the crowd at full-speed, doing their Nazi salutes as they jammed into other people and fought through the crowd like battering-rams. No one was listening anymore; no one in her range of sight was actually paying them any attention, but they were hearing the music like escaping prisoners hear the sirens at their backs, and all they wanted to do was smash through every obstacle in front of them.
She was playing rhythm guitar to ‘Desperate Ain’t Pretty’ and trying to keep up with Berke’s frenetic beat. Terry sounded like he was playing the Hammond with his fists, and even John had started to miss notes. He had his mouth right up on the microphone, he was bellowing it out like a hundred-year old field hand scarred by a Georgia bullwhip.
“Some fine woman you made yourself out to be,
If you had your evil way they could hang me from a tree.
You take my money and then you spit in my face,
Somebody ought to take you from this human race.
Won’t be me, not today, not me,
’Cause I want you to live to see me go free,
Want you to live to see your pretty face fall,
Want you to cry before that mirror in the hall.
’Cause desperate ain’t pretty, baby, you’re gonna know that’s true,
Desperate ain’t pretty, baby, ugly’s gonna show on you.”
Nomad stepped back from the microphone while Terry went into his organ solo. The hard, heavy vibrato was full of glittering golden pain. Nomad looked out at the audience, at the figures who slammed into each other and, snarling, twisted away again. He saw at the very edge of the stage a few people who had ceased their warfare for the moment and were staring at him with glazed eyes. When they saw him looking, they reached out to him their tattooed hands and arms, and the inked figures and shapes moved on their necks and shoulders and shifted on their naked chests as if a multitude of souls were confined in each body and trying to climb out by using him as their ladder. He saw a big burly dude with close-cropped black hair staggering around, clipping people left and right with dangerous elbows. His red T-shirt read Nug Nug Nug. Another formidable guy with a goatee and Celtic tattoos blackening his throat ran head-on into one of the Nazi freaks and knocked the goose-stepper on his ass. Nomad thought of something his mother used to say: It’s all fun until somebody starts to cry. In this case, starts swinging fists.
As Terry ended his solo and Ariel picked up her rhythm part again, Nomad stepped up to his mike. He caught sight of a slim kid with neatly-trimmed blonde hair pushing through the crowd to the front of the stage, moving slowly but avoiding elbows, knees and skulls with the grace of a dancer. The guy was wearing jeans and a loose-fitting gray T-shirt with a color travel picture screened on the front and the green legend Vietnam Golf Vacations.com. He had his eyes fixed on Nomad, who got his mouth right on the mike once more.
“This part you’ve been playin’, you know it has to end,
Nothing worse in the world than the murder of a friend.
Could’ve been so much to you, been the steady one,
But what I have to say to you won’t be spoken from a—”
Gun.
The sun sparked off metal.
The wind rustled through the black canopy overhead. Nomad stopped singing.
He saw it in the blonde kid’s hand. It was a small pistol. It had come up from underneath the T-shirt. The barrel’s eye looked at him.
Then the kid blinked, his eyelids maybe freighted with drugs, and he turned the pistol toward Ariel.
Nomad had no time to think; he just jumped.
He knocked the mike stand over and carried with him the guitar on its strap around his shoulder. There was a hollow reverberating boom as the mike slammed down, followed by a squeal of feedback. An effects box or something crashed to the stage and made a noise through the speakers like a Strat in its death agony.
His guitar hit the kid first, and then Nomad. From the pistol in the outstretched hand came two shots, but the shooter was already going down to the dirt. Nomad was on top of him and fighting for control of the dude’s arm, which snaked this way and that and then suddenly the kid’s head came up and slammed against Nomad’s right eye. Sizzling lights and pain zigzagged through his head; he thought his skull had been fractured, but he had to get that fucking gun. He just started beating the kid, started whamming at him with both fists, every damned thing he had.
Somebody grabbed him under the arms and pulled him up and somebody fell on the shooter like a blanket. The blanket was wearing a red T-shirt, and as he pinned the kid’s gunhand to the ground with one knee, he looked up at Nomad and the guy holding him and said tersely, “Get him on the stage! Now!” His T-shirt read Nug Nug Nug. Another figure knelt down and started twisting the kid’s white fingers off the pistol’s grip. He had a spiderweb tattooed—painted?—on one side of his face and hexagonal steel gauges—definitely real—in his ears.