Trex, still bending Mary's arm up behind her back, stayed where he was, while the other two men fanned out across the room, one stopping in the center and the other going to the opposite wall; it would make for a hell of a cross fire.
"It doesn't make any difference who gave you the orders, Gregory," I said, tightening my grip on the gun, "because it's obvious that somebody did. You didn't get those weapons on your own."
"Stop there!" the gunman in the center of the room commanded.
We stopped. The figures of the three men blurred in and out of focus, and I squinted to try to keep the ghostly double images away. Sweat was now running into my good left eye, stinging it, and that didn't help at all. If Garth and I were going to die, the man I most wanted to take with us was Gregory Trex, but Trex was still holding Mary close to him. Even if I weren't suffering from double vision, I couldn't be sure of missing the woman if I fired at him.
Almost as if she had been reading my mind, Mary suddenly twisted in Trex's grip, then spat in his face. "Let me go, Gregory! Don't be a fool! You'll never-!"
Trex abruptly released his grip on her arm, spun her around, and drove his fist into her stomach. She cried out, doubled over, and slowly sank to her knees.
"Enough of this bullshit!" the man in the center of the room shouted, and abruptly stripped off his mask. It was the Vietnam vet with the ponytail I'd seen at the art exhibition Friday evening. "We don't need masks! We came here to clean out this nest of communist faggots, so let's get on with it!"
The other two gunmen slowly removed their masks. Trex leered at me, bloodlust gleaming in his milky green eyes. His mouth was half open, and saliva glistened on his small, gapped teeth. I hadn't seen the third gunman before.
It was time, and I began to slowly pull the gun from Garth's waistband. I knew I had no chance of killing all three men before they killed Garth and me, but I was damned well determined to kill Trex.
A balding, middle-aged man abruptly stepped away from the wall and moved toward Trex. "Listen, you-!"
"Don't!" I shouted-too late.
The man with the ponytail leveled his automatic pistol on the other man's stomach, pulled the trigger. The bullets caught the middle-aged man in the stomach and torso, ripping him open and hurling him backward. Blood spurted, misted in the air, sprayed over the rest of the shocked, screaming members of the Community of Conciliation.
I grabbed the Colt from Garth's waistband at almost the precise moment when my brother lunged forward, hit the floor, and rolled at the legs of the ponytailed gunman. I crouched down, squinted, and squeezed off a shot at the blurred figure that was Gregory Trex. I heard him scream, saw him grab at his right shoulder as he spun around and fell to the floor. I cursed my poor markmanship and knew there was no time for a second shot. I leaped to my left, hit the floor, and rolled as a hail of bullets tore through the space where I had just been standing. I had no plan; there was absolutely no cover in the stripped ballroom, and there was no way I could make it out through the archway into the foyer before I was riddled with bullets. It was all instinct now, reflex; I knew I was going to die and was simply determined to elude death until the last possible moment. I was sorry I hadn't had time to say a proper goodbye to my brother.
Then, mixed with the cacophony of screams and automatic weapons fire, there was another sound-the higher-pitched chatter of another, heavier automatic weapon, muffled somewhat, as if the fire was coming from outside the mansion. An instant later there erupted a booming cascade of sound like an explosion of glass, as if the bank of windows at the east end was collapsing. The Colt slipped from my grasp. I stopped rolling, curled up in an instinctive attempt to make myself as small a target as possible; I clamped my arms over my head and waited for bullets to rip into me.
And then the gunfire stopped abruptly, leaving in its wake an echo that reverberated throughout the huge chamber, a hideous counterpoint to the continued screaming of the Community members. Hands gripped my shoulders, and I recognized the touch of my brother.
"Mongo! Mongo, are you hit?!"
I opened my left eye, found myself looking into Garth's face through a film of blood that I knew was coming from the reopened gash over my right eye. But the wound didn't hurt. My head didn't hurt; nothing hurt. Astonishment at finding the Frederickson brothers still alive seemed to be working like a powerful general anesthesia. I wiped the blood away with my shirt sleeve, sat up.
"No," I said. "You?"
"No."
"What the hell happened?"
"We've got a visitor, brother," Garth said in a tone of voice that I thought sounded somewhat cryptic.
"Who?"
"See for yourself," he replied, and moved to one side.
I took Garth's hand and hauled myself to my feet, looked out over the room, and squinted in an effort to focus my vision. The dawn light streaming in through the open space where the windows had been was mixed now with swirling dust and gunsmoke that danced and spun and drifted on the gentle breezes flowing into the ballroom from off the Hudson. A figure moved in the backlit dust and smoke, but I couldn't see who it was. Off to my right, Mary and other Community members were attending to the men and women who had been wounded. The Vietnam veteran with the ponytail was missing not only his ponytail but the half of his head to which it had been attached; he was quite dead, lying in a spreading pool of blood in the center of the room. The third gunman was dead also. Of the death squad members, only Gregory Trex remained alive- thanks to me. The pig-faced young man with the bandaged nose and forehead was writhing on the floor, yelping in pain, clawing at his bullet-ravaged right shoulder. By attempting to kill him but only winging him and sending him to the floor, I had inadvertently saved Gregory Trex's life, protected him from the fate that had befallen his two comrades at the hands of our mysterious rescuer.
This did not please me. Suddenly the identity of the shadowy figure moving in the smoky light was nowhere near as important to me as the rage I felt toward Trex. I pushed Garth's supporting hand away, staggered over to where the wide-eyed Trex was thrashing on the floor, and sat down hard on his chest. There was a strong odor of feces; with the tables turned, with somebody shooting at him, the young killer had lost control of his sphincter.
"Who sent you?!” I screamed into his battered face.
Trex, saliva streaming from his mouth, moved his lips in an effort to speak, but he wasn't making enough progress to suit me. I punched his wounded shoulder, and he screamed; I raised my fist, threatening to punch him again, and he stopped.
"Who ordered you to do this, Trex? Was it Jay Acton?"
He shook his head back and forth, bubbled up some more saliva, and tried to reach across his body to grip his damaged shoulder. I stopped him.
"Who?! You'd better find your voice fast, kiddo, or I'm going to rip your fucking shoulder off! Who sent you?! Who gave you those weapons?!"
". . hane," he finally managed to croak. "Mr. Culhane. We've been. . helping him clean the trash off the streets and fight the communists. He said it was the only way left, because the leftists had taken over the government and the courts. He said what we needed was a death squad like they have in other countries. When he found out you were gone, he called me. He said I should get the other two and go after you. He said that you were probably hiding out here and that we should kill everyone because it was time to get serious about what we wanted to do. He said that you two and these people were just like the communists and that the only way to deal with you was to kill you."
"He gave you the guns?"
Trex nodded, then reached up with his left hand and wiped spittle off his chin. "He gave them to us a few weeks ago. He said first we'd kill some of the scum on the streets, like drug dealers, and then we'd go after communists."