A yell from behind showed that their pursuers had finally gotten around the grand canyon. As Matt glanced back, a head appeared over the back fence, and the flat crack! of a shot rang out.
Matt had a second to be glad that the gang didn’t have the time or ammunition for target practice. A bullet whirred past him like an angry hornet, shattering a window in the house ahead.
Using his forearm, Matt smashed away the jagged fragments still left in the window frame and swung Cat up.
“See what’s ahead,” he told the girl, sticking out a hand to Luc. He had to get the French boy in quickly. More Buzzards were appearing at the fence and clambering over.
Matt half hauled Luc into the room, which was filled with bundles of newspapers. Matt stared in disbelief. How long had it been since the Washington Post came out on paper? The newsprint was brittle, flaky, and dry as tinder.
Through the window, Matt saw another Buzzard hop down from the top of the fence. This one held a rifle.
Matt squinted. The body of the weapon seemed too bulky….
“Run!” he suddenly snapped to Luc. “That idiot’s got a grenade launcher!”
They tumbled along a twisting pathway among chest-high piles of paper, getting out of the room just as a dull fwoomp! announced the firing of the launcher.
A spitting canister spewed a cloud of what Matt figured was tear gas.
The guy is a double idiot, he thought, slamming the door. Tear gas might be useful in the Gardens at Carrollsburg, against people who try to hunker down in their homes. But we’re not trying to stay here. We’re trying to get out. And a cloud of tear gas will just slow up the pursuit.
But then he heard something more than the hiss of gas. Was that the crackle of flames?
Matt swore. The blasted grenade had set the piled papers on fire!
He ran at top speed for the front rooms.
This is a wooden house, a nervous voice chattered inside his skull. The whole place could go up!
Black smoke was already trailing him as he pounded along. Matt caught up with Caitlin and Luc, who were peeking out the front door.
“Fire!” Matt announced in a breathless voice. “Out! Now!”
“But—” Caitlin began.
Matt wasn’t about to argue. He threw the door open and stumbled out onto a rickety porch.
Then he saw what the others had been trying to warn him about. A quartet of searchers stood at the far end of the block.
He should have been shot down, but the Buzzards were too distracted.
He ducked back, standing flat against the wall of the old house. The back of the house they’d just emerged from was completely engulfed in flames, which shot into the sky, smearing a pillar of smoke across the red sky of sunset. Here, on the front porch, hidden in shadows, they should be invisible to the searchers.
But their safety was only temporary. Inside the house, the flames were encroaching — getting closer to them every second.
The escapees couldn’t stay there much longer. Matt hoped it was dark enough — there weren’t any streetlights in this desolate part of town. It was time to take action — even desperate action. He took a deep breath. Maybe they wouldn’t notice he wasn’t wearing the gang’s colors.
“Yo!” Matt yelled to the gangbangers. “We got ’em trapped out back. Come on!” He waved toward the back of the house.
Yelling their heads off, the four heavily armed youths charged back around the corner.
Matt turned back to the doorway. Heat was pouring out of the house — along with corrosive smoke. Cat and Luc were coughing as they stumbled out, their hands smearing black stains across their mouths and chins.
Got to get out of here, Matt thought. This fire will act like a beacon for every Buzzard in the area.
He set off at a determined jog-trot, the others reeling after him. This was an east-west street. Just a few blocks, a quarter of a mile at most, and they’d reach the safety of the Navy Yard….
A furious shout erupted behind them. “There he is!”
The searchers he’d scammed were back, and they’d brought plenty of friends. Matt risked a look over his shoulder. Perhaps three quarters of a block stretched between the escapees and the gang hunting them.
They’re not great shots, Matt told himself. But there are enough of them back there, and some have automatic weapons. If we don’t get out of the way, they could get lucky really fast.
“Move!” The word came out more as a croak as he pushed his pace into a run. At least if they got around the corner….
Then, ahead, he saw dark, wiry figures rounding the street corners.
Matt swerved, leading his companions to the shelter of a stone stairway. He swallowed, tasting the bile flavor of blackest despair. They were cut off, pinned front and rear by two groups of gang members who’d be delighted to kill them. They’d have been better off back in the belfry!
Chapter 20
A shouted command rang out, and all of a sudden, brilliant lights lanced through the early evening dimness. The gangbangers ahead scuttled aside like roaches caught on the kitchen floor. The lights advanced at a walking pace. Matt made out the shapes of four Humvees, accompanied by figures on foot toting heavy rifles.
Matt caught a flash of green from the newcomers’ clothing. But these weren’t Buzzard reinforcements. The green came from the fatigues of U.S. Marines.
Behind the guard detail, lights flashing, was a fire truck! The driver honked his horn, eager to get on with the job of dousing the flames.
Matt suddenly found himself blessing the idiot who’d launched the grenade and set the house on fire. True, it had acted like a gigantic signal flare, drawing in all the Buzzards searching for them.
But it had also drawn the firefighting team from the Navy Yard!
And since the fire was in a supposedly derelict area, the powers that be had sent a Marine escort in case there might be trouble.
The Buzzards had been temporarily taken by surprise. Still, they outnumbered the Marines by a good ten to one. They could try to overrun the troopers and still attempt their big knockover.
But the Humvees had to have radios. If they could warn the Marines — get the word out….
Matt turned to Luc and Caitlin. “Come on. We’ve got to tell them what they’re stepping into. What’s going on.”
He stepped away from the feeble refuge of the steps and walked into the gleam of the headlights, his hands up.
Marine rifles snapped in his direction, but Matt kept walking forward, making sure his empty hands were visible. “You’ve got about two hundred gang members ahead of you,” he warned. “They’ve massed here—”
“For an attack on the Gardens at Carrollsburg,” Cat Corrigan interrupted, stepping past him. She, too, kept her hands in the air. “They kidnapped my friends and me. I’m Caitlin Corrigan, the Senator’s daughter.”
“Smart girl,” Luc muttered.
Matt glanced at the other boy.
“Word of the kidnapping must be out by now,” Luc said. “The soldiers will have to take her seriously.”
Matt was about to explain that they were Marines, not soldiers, when he caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye.
As the standoff developed, Rob Falk must have crept up through the shadows to the steps of the row house that the escapees had just left. Now he rose up out of his hiding place, the old M9 pistol he’d taken from Serge Woronov in his hand, his eyes glittering.
“Oh, no, bitch,” he gritted. “You’re not wrecking everything I’ve worked for.”
At the same time, a Marine yelled, “Get down, you young idiot!”