slightly. He couldn't get it free to reach for the Detonics under his right arm. He started to grab for the handle of the Sting IA black chrome.
He clawed outward with his right hand— the Detonics was too far.
He twisted his right hand back, trying to get it under his bomber jacket to the second Detonics under his right arm, his left unable to reach it. But his left hand had the handle of the Sting IA. He wrenched it free of the leather, ramming it back, feeling it drag as it bit flesh, hearing the scream, the pressure of the teeth on his left thigh easing, his right fist closing on the butt of the Detonics under his right armpit, tearing at the holster to break the gun free of the trigger guard break.
He heard it, felt it, the snap opening. He pulled the second Detonics out, thumbed back the hammer and jabbed the muzzle around toward the head of the wildman, the muzzle less than two inches from the head. He averted his eyes— blood would spray, and so would razor-sharp bone fragments— and pulled the trigger once, then once again, the body rocking over him.
The man had to weigh close to four hundred pounds, Rourke figured, the head split wide and all but dissolved at the rear of the skull, but the body— in death— still pinned him.
He twisted his left hand free, shoving at the chest, then moved his right hand against the wildman's left shoulder, the muzzle of the Detonics nearly flush against it. He pumped the trigger twice, fast, his wrist aching with the pressure, the body lurching over him, his left hand pushing up against it, the body rolling clear.
Rourke staggered up to his feet, reaching for the first Detonics.
The wildman with the machete was making a lunge for Natalia, her Bali-Song flashing out and catching the glint of moonlight, the machete dropping from the man's right hand as did two of the fingers.
But a revolver was coming up in the left hand.
Both pistols in Rourke's fist, he fired, the pistol in his left hand— the first gun— barking twice, the one in his right barking two times as well, the slides locking back, the pistols empty, the wildman with the revolver in his left hand and blood gushing from the severed fingers of his right falling back, sprawling onto the ground.
Rourke wheeled, buttoning out the magazines in his pistols and letting them drop, ramming the pistol from his left hand into his belt, snatching at a fresh magazine then with his left hand, driving it up the beveled well of the stainless .45, his right thumb dropping the slide stop, the gun leaving his hand, sailing cross— body into his left, his right moving down for the Metalifed and Mag-Na-Ported Colt Python .357 at his hip. His fingers closed over the butt as he popped away the flap, his hand rolling the gun over and around on his trigger finger as he broke it from the leather. He wheeled half-right. "Natalia!"
He set the pistol sailing across the air space separating them, the woman making the Bali-Song slide from her right to her left hand, catching the Python in midair, her fist grasping around the cylinder, then the gun seeming to fly up, spin, settling into her right fist. She half-turned, the Python's six-inch barrel snaking forward, dully gleaming in the moonlight, a tongue of orange fire licking from the muzzle, another wildman rushing her, dropping.
Rourke turned, starting to run toward Rubenstein and O'Neal, the two men pinned down by gunfire coming from the rocks above.
Rourke dove toward the shelter of a rock outcropping, snapping off two shots into the rocks. He heard the boom of the Python again, then silence, then suddenly the crack of three-shot bursts from an M-16.
He looked behind him as he reloaded his second pistol. Natalia— an M-16 spitting fire in her hands— was running toward him.
Rourke thumbed down the slide stop of the pistol in his left hand, sliding his thumb back around the tang, gripping the pistol, then pumping a fast two-round semiautomatic burst up into the rocks.
He still couldn't see Rubenstein and O'Neal, both men pinned by a heavy concentration of assault rifle fire. He heard Natalia's M-16 again, then her voice, breathless, beside him.
"How many do you think?"
"Two or three or they would have made a rush— remember, they're crazies."
"Here," and she stuffed the Python back into the flap holster on his right hip. He heard the snap of the flap closing shut. "Two rounds left in it if you started with a full six."
"Yeah," he nodded, realizing that he too was breathless.
"There could be more of them in the valley, going for the helicopter."
"To destroy it— yeah," he nodded, watching her face for an instant in the moonlight, in the instant forgetting where he was, what he was doing— she was incredibly, unreally beautiful, he thought.
Another burst of assault rifle fire from the rocks. "Gotta nail those suckers," he rasped, finding one of his thin, dark tobacco cigars, biting off the end and clamping it between his teeth.
"I've never seen you do that before."
"Usually trim the ends with a knife at the beginning of the day," he told her. "You keep 'em pinned down— don't try getting over in the rocks to Paul and O'Neal— I'll get up there after those suckers." He reached his left hand to his musette bag, reaching inside, removing four AR15 thirties. "Here," and he looked at her for an instant as he handed her the magazines.
"I love you, too," she smiled.
"Shut up," he whispered, leaning across in the rocks, kissing her forehead.
Rourke pushed himself to his feet, starting to run— there were three men still to kill, he judged.
Chapter Seventeen
Rourke worked his way through the rocks, the partially spent magazines in the twin stainless Detonics pistols replaced with full ones, giving him seven rounds now in each gun, the full magazine plus the round chambered. He had emptied the Python of the two remaining rounds, worked one of the Safariland speedloaders against the ejector star and loaded six into the cylinder, the Python nestled in the flap holster on his right hip.
There were sporadic bursts of gunfire from the rocks, poorly controlled bursts that ate up large quantities of ammo and had little effect on a target except by accident.
There were occasional bursts from the rocks below as well— Natalia's M-16, three-round bursts which made sparks as they hit the rocks pinning down the wildmen. Bursts from Rubenstein's sub-gun too, neat bursts— two or three rounds each, long bursts— accurate but too long— from O'Neal. Rourke kept moving, seeing the three wildmen clearly now.
There was no other way for it.
He holstered the cocked and locked Detonics pistols and secured the guns in the leather, working the trigger guard breaks closed with the thumb and first finger of the opposite hand.
He reached to the Python.
He carried it for one reason only— long-range accuracy.
There were no custom parts in the gun— with some fitting he had taught himself to do, he could replace anything. It was one of the very few out of the box revolvers which could be used perfectly well without action tuning. The action was sometimes criticized as being too sensitive, too prone to fouling with dirt or debris. He had never found it so. And the strength of construction made it perhaps the most solid of .357 Magnum double actions.
He thumbed back the hammer as he extended the pistol in both clenched fists, resting his forearms on the rock in front of him but not the gun itself.
He sighted on the furthest of the three heads, then barely touched the trigger, launching the 158grain semi-jacketed soft point load, the gun barely moving in his hands, his right thumb cocking back the hammer, the other two wildmen starting to turn.
Rourke fired again, taking out the man to his left, the man's face seeming to disintegrate in the moonlight.
The third man, the last of the wildmen there, was raising the muzzle of the assault rifle.