The Twin had caught the shard and closed his hand around it. Blood oozed from it to the asphalt surface below. Blaine lashed out with his free hand, steel manacle employed as a weapon, but the Twin parried the blow and grabbed hold of the chain dangling from McCracken’s wrist to tie him up. They struggled across the floor, while the other Twin moved warily, choosing his spot, waiting.
The Twin McCracken was locked up with succeeded in driving the glass shard backward. Now it was Blaine’s hand that began to spill blood. Before he could reroute the motion, the Twin had somehow twisted the shard from his grasp and sent it slashing upward behind his own momentum. Blaine tried to deflect it with the manacle that the Twin still held, but the shard sliced a thin gash diagonally across his stomach and chest. The Twin followed with a downward swipe that McCracken managed to block with his other manacle. He fixed his arm on that side into an elbow strike and slammed it into the Twin’s face.
Blaine felt teeth crunch on impact. The Twin recoiled, and McCracken realized that he had lost track of the other just in time to spin to the side. As a result, the second Twin’s blow caught him in the hard part of the skull instead of the temple. The blow stunned him and it was all he could do to deflect the blinding flurry of blows that followed.
His motions brought him right back into the range of the Twin whose front teeth were now missing. A fist slammed into Blaine’s kidney, and then his knee was kicked out. McCracken never hit the floor, though, because the Twin who still had his teeth caught him and drove him headfirst into the wall. Stars exploded before Blaine’s eyes, and he flailed out wildly. He managed to rake the Twin’s face with his manacle, but the bastard caught his next blow at its weakest, and McCracken felt his own momentum joined and used against him.
Blaine had time to actually record the fact that he was airborne and flying toward the hangar’s entrance. It was like diving off the high board, but the surface he was heading for was not nearly as hospitable. He managed to get his hands out, and the manacles clanged against the floor on impact. His chin took the brunt of the rest. He could feel it split and the blood stream outward. He tried to push off with his hands, but his arms were numb and wouldn’t support him. He realized that he was looking at a pair of brown boots that had somehow materialized before him. He feared that one of the Twins had circled round for the kill.
Except that he recalled that the boots the Twins were wearing had been black. McCracken turned his gaze higher.
And Johnny Wareagle looked down at him.
The most glorious, wonderful, perfect sight McCracken had ever seen!
Johnny smiled at Blaine and stepped past him, placing his frame between McCracken and the Twins.
The Twins hesitated briefly before coming at Wareagle. When they attacked, closing from opposite sides, their moves were perfect reflections of each other.
At the last possible instant, in a motion that defied the eye, Johnny twisted from their path. The Twins’ blows slammed into each other. Wareagle grabbed hold of the one with ruined teeth, and this Twin made the mistake of trying to match strength with him. The Indian didn’t give at all. A fist pushed into the muscles layered over the Twin’s solar plexus. His gasp sounded like air pouring out of a spiked tire. The Indian slammed a second blow into his face, and blood exploded from the remnants of his nose.
The second Twin spun toward Johnny and actually leapt over the body of his crumpling brother. Wareagle stretched out his arms and pushed him farther through the air. He landed near McCracken and dropped his hand toward a pistol stowed in a leather ankle holster.
Blaine grabbed the hand before he could reach it.
“Not today,” he said, and twisted the hand sharply to the right, snapping the wrist.
The Twin grasped for the gun with his other hand, and McCracken slammed a blow up under his chin and then rammed his knuckles into the Twin’s strung-out throat. Cartilage crackled. His Adam’s apple snapped free on impact. The Twin keeled over, heaving for air as he fell dying.
The other Twin had gone for his gun as well, managing to free it with an enraged scream as he saw his brother die. Wareagle stopped its progress before the final Twin could aim. A harmless shot flew skyward as the Indian clamped a knee against the man’s elbow and jerked his wrist.
The snap sounded like a door slamming. Johnny looped his free hand around the Twin’s head and twisted it violently. The body stiffened, then crumpled to the floor.
“Blainey,” Wareagle said, turning.
“ ’Bout time you showed up, Indian.”
The monstrous tanker truck had been armored from front to back. Billy Boy Griggs pulled himself into the cab and realized that his biggest problem might be the fact that he could barely see over the dashboard. He placed his pistol on the seat right next to him and propped himself up as high as he could. The tanker was facing the hangar’s front, but there was enough room inside for him to turn it all the way around and slam his way out through the back. Outside the battle was receding, the explosions far less numerous now. The invaders had come with tanks, and there was no way one of those was going to catch up with this baby. If he played his cards right, they might not even notice his departure through the rear of the base until it was too late. The cover of buildings would shield him well enough to ensure his escape.
Billy jammed his key into the ignition and turned it. A click followed, but it came from behind him rather than from the steering column. He felt the cold steel of a gun barrel touch the back of his head. His right hand was already going for his pistol, and he had closed on the handle when a voice found his ear.
“Fuck you,” said Sal Belamo.
And Sal pulled the trigger.
Outside, the tanks had ceased firing. Before them, the remaining members of the Tau had begun scampering out from their positions of cover with flight on their minds. Some searched for still-functional vehicles. Others sought still-workable weapons. Still more simply tried to run.
None of them succeeded.
On cue, the men of No Town swept onto the ravaged, charred air base led by Sheriff Tyrell Loon. There was no real plan to their approach, no complicated pattern to adhere to. But there were enough of them to cover a spread sufficient to prevent the flood of armed and unarmed men from escaping. Loon held his M-16 to the sky and fired off a burst.
“Good idea if all you just stay as you be!” he yelled out to them. When they had obliged, he turned to share a smile with Toothless Jim Jackson.
And the Old One smiled back.
Tyrell Loon rubbed his eyes and held them closed, then opened them slowly.
She was gone. Jackson was standing a yard past where Tyrell thought he had seen her, grinning at him toothlessly, obviously not having seen a thing.
“Let’s round ’em up,” said Sheriff Loon.
Sal Belamo was watching the roundup in amazement, when Blaine and Johnny emerged from the hangar.
“Looks like we missed all the fun, boss.”
“My guess is you had plenty of your own,” Blaine said.
Johnny had helped him wrap some cloth around the neat slice in his palm from the glass shard. It had stopped the blood from dripping, but could do nothing about the throbbing. Sal’s shoulder, meanwhile, was a mess, bloody and shredded, a makeshift tourniquet doing the best it could to stem the flow.
“You find the White Death, Sal?”
“In a tanker big as a house. No sign of Rothstein, though.”
“I didn’t think there would be.”