Before the rain, p.26
Before the Rain, page 26
If Jessie had seen or heard Hollywood, she didn’t care. Her priority was firing that automatic cannon at Congressman King, and she only had seconds to pull the trigger before King left the stage.
Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
“Sunny! Catch.”
She glanced at Hollywood, saw whatever he’d thrown at her sailing up high into that cobalt heaven. She followed the black, irregular shape across the blue canvas, no clue at first what the arriving missile could be.
Her focus sharpened when she recognized her Smith & Wesson.
She had to catch it. She couldn’t imagine how her internal glands had any supply left, but a distinct surge of new adrenaline hit her bloodstream. The pain in her leg eased a little.
As heard Jessie above her on the trailer, she eyed her target’s direction and distance. Would the weapon arrive before Jessie started shooting? No numbers existed for Sunny to calculate, no maps to hunt locations, no pieces to assemble, no related information she could analyze. All she had to compute and solve the puzzle of catching that weapon was instinct and a mental image of the twisting, spinning shape.
Hollywood’s toss appeared long, as in over her head.
Maybe if she reached up higher on one side, with one hand, her longest fingers could touch or even snag the two-pound semiautomatic. Drop that odd-shaped, high-flying steel object within her catching range.
Maybe. Sunny’s outstretched hand fanned the air like a parading queen, her gaze focused on the weapon. The grip hit two of her fingers, but she missed holding on, the weapon landing behind her in the dirt beneath the trailer.
And down below, on the microphone, the congressman’s voice was saying goodbye, thanking the crowd. She realized she didn’t have time. Even if she’d snagged that semiautomatic in midair, she couldn’t shoot Jessie from here, flat on the ground, and she couldn’t stand up. She’d waste precious time looking for her back-up weapon now.
Only one thing to do. A sudden idea that had to work.
Jessie raised her binoculars.
She wished she could aim the powerful cannon while firing, but she’d have to see where the first burst of shells landed, then stop to shift left or right, maybe raise or lower the cannon’s reach again by adjusting the floor jack. Her skin glowed with exhilaration, a sign of emotion she fought to control. Hurry. The governor was walking offstage.
Too bad she’d had to kill that Air Force agent, Sunny Hicks. Jessie had liked her.
She let the binoculars slip to her chest and reached for the cannon’s improvised trigger. She’d killed four men and one woman to get this far. Hollywood’s death would make it six in all, but each killing had been necessary to the cause, each helping position her for this chance to murder the son-of-a-bitch pedophile, Randall King. To make those deaths count, she had to fire and blow up King’s ass.
She flicked a switch and tugged back on the trigger.
At the same instant, as roaring sound and smoke covered the platform with instant pandemonium, the floor sank beneath her—the trailer’s rear end sitting down fast and hard. Her five-ton floor jack must have failed or slipped, and the smoking, hissing cannon’s burning shells overshot the stadium. A handful landed behind the stadium, where King’s SUVs took a hit or two. But many more explosions blossomed on the back road.
Jessie stopped firing.
Sunny had twisted the floor jack’s release valve, dropping the autocannon’s rear end closer to the ground and within inches of her own head. The sudden collapse would have scared her if she weren’t already juiced to the max.
The shade beneath the trailer had filled instantly with smoke. The ground shook as the trailer above her twisted and torqued to one side. A sound like a screaming dragon rattled her brains.
But then the autocannon stopped. Maybe her idea worked, although she could hear hundreds of people howling in the distance.
The autocannon’s sound and fury rubbed acid on her already challenged nerves. Though she’d cutoff the autocannon’s fire, in reality she’d failed. For a second, the terrible weapon had been unleashed. The question of how many casualties needed to be forced from her thoughts.
So did the fire in her leg.
No matter what happened, she had the same job as before—prevent another burst. She rolled out from underneath the trailer on the same side she’d entered, away from the bales of alfalfa and toward Hollywood. The hay could be great cover if she wanted to hide, but first, she needed her weapon.
More crowd noise reached her ears, now thousands of frightened concert-goers as the explosion had continued.
Block them out, Sunny. Do your job. The intense pressure, maybe desperation, felt like a hand inside her ribcage, squeezing her heart and lungs, telling her how urgent her actions had become. The bleeding in her thigh had slowed, but the pain and muscle revolt kept her from standing up or walking.
Lives depended on her breaking Jessie’s attack. She scrambled on her belly, searching the sand and dirt for the Smith & Weapon she hadn’t caught. It had to be close—and there it was, just underneath the trailer bed. Half hidden by the trailer’s tire. She had a chance.
She checked her weapon, then dragged herself higher on the slope where she could see some of the frantic scene below. Smoke streaked the sky above the shell-shaped stage of the emptying amphitheater. Fires burned near the theater’s back road and the bottle bushes she’d driven past with Congressman King. Another blaze burned nearer the amphitheater. A vehicle.
Maybe part of the King’s SUV caravan.
She had to change positions, drag her wounded body somewhere. She’d kept fighting longer and harder than she’d expected, doing okay for a rookie. But she had to do better than okay.
She glanced at the bales of alfalfa, made up her mind, and crawled toward the closest stack.
33
Though a klick away, the autocannon’s one-of-a-kind, hissing dragon imitation had filled the morning air with a buzz of incoming rounds, and for Ray, the world stopped. Frozen to acknowledge Sunny’s failure and her odds-on death. Then the earth rotated again, jerking forward, the new moments trembling with a dozen nearby detonations and hundreds more fiery explosions on the exit road.
The smell of exploding shells and burning gasoline filled his nose, became a taste and coated his throat. Old, locked-up memories flooded his head. Even as the shells stopped erupting, his senses staggered with detailed information about this new combat setting. The brigadier general had been launched back into war, back to a place where sudden death loitered openly or snaked behind cover. His blood surged with adrenaline, his fight-or-flight fuel.
But there was no choice for Ray.
Marines don’t run.
Two of the congressman’s three lined-up black SUVs had been hit, and before he could formulate action, the first of those struck exploded in flames. The searing blast knocked Ray and others off their feet. On his butt, he watched the driver of the flaming second car tumble onto the ground and smack at the back of his burning coat.
The guy not winning against the flames. Gasoline.
Ray reached the younger man in three long strides to peel back the flaming coat. His palms ignored the heat as he ripped the material straight down and off the guy’s arms. The man looked as if he’d been too shocked or frightened to do the obvious. Probably a security guard soon to consider new occupations.
Ray checked his surroundings.
Two of the congressman’s three cars were out of commission, with King inside the undamaged third SUV. Dunn and his men climbed back on their feet after being knocked down by the blast. The burning man whom had Ray de-coated now jogged toward the theater office, leaving his clothes smoldering on the asphalt.
Maybe it was the adrenaline, but he sensed opportunity in the chaos.
If he wanted to risk his career, not to mention his brother-in-law’s, he knew there was a chance to avenge the murder of Alissa. No guarantees. But maybe. He’d might have known it all along. Maybe that instinct was the reason he’d let Sunny go after Jessie Maris, a proven gunfighter.
The abused child Jessie had grown into a woman as deadly as Lucrezia Borgia.
But he sent the rookie nervous with guns.
Clouds of black and gray smoke soared two stories over the tennis-court-size rear parking area and the black caravan of Escalades, two of them burning. One wrecked. Bushes, cars, and sidewalks covered in fuel flamed high. Three house-size blazes burned fifty yards away, along the rear and unoccupied exit road—where most of the cannon’s shells landed.
Running people screamed or shouted in a thousand voices, the crowd noise uniting in his ears as one panicked cry of humanity. The theater behind him, the air overhead, and the men with Dunn all buzzed with fear.
His gaze on Ray, King’s security chief, Dunn, waved two arms at his men, gathering them close. “Let’s get the congressman back inside the theater. Now.”
Ray pulled in a breath. Time was up.
Make up your mind. Commit.
When the smoke cleared, Jessie used her binoculars.
She’d cut a long swath, but missed everything but the far road gate at one extreme, and two of Randall King’s three Escalades at the other, lined up behind the amphitheater. One had been blown to pieces, another set afire. Everything landed past her target of King on stage. Her first few shells must have fired before the cannon’s platform dropped in back.
She ground her teeth when Randall King let himself be helped from the third SUV’s shotgun seat, the cowboy hat easy to spot. He looked frightened maybe, unstable on his feet, but King found balance and support inside a tight circle of his men. The quarterback in a football huddle. Such a lucky SOB, sitting in the only Escalade she’d missed.
Looked like his men were walking him toward the theater.
Out of her kill-zone.
Ray wasn’t going to murder the guy, but he had choices.
Sitting this close to Congressman King was tough. When Ray looked at his stupid hat and the jowly face, what he mentally pictured was everything the monster had done. The loser’s characteristic features turned Angie’s stories into related images. The red lipstick. A family court judge holding down a child for sex.
A lightning bolt of anger flashed and went.
But the loser was flesh and blood. Another human. An evil guy, sure. But who was Ray to judge. That’s why America had courts and juries. The law. Even Ray’s personal laws got in the way of judgement. Treat others like you’d want to be treated. Arrest and a trial would be what he’d want.
In his gut, he knew everybody should get back inside the building. Out of the line of fire. Yet the books on VIP security he’d seen suggested the client should always be herded off premises. Away from the gunfire or otherwise violent scene.
He had a choice with his recommendation.
His heartbeat at a firm, steady pace. Ready for action, but not racing. He’d been through worse, and he was thinking how he might let King’s personal higher power do the judging. He kept coming back to his gut. Like instinct. Nature. Genetics. What evolutionary purpose was the male of a species if not to protect, defend, and fight for his female? Yeah, maybe you could name creatures which didn’t work that way. Some spiders. A Praying Mantis. But they were exceptions, not the rule.
On average, males were bigger, stronger, and less sociable for a reason.
Strength for battle and to kill for food. Drive off the beasts and rogue men who wanted your family as sustenance. Stand in the enemy’s path to die protecting the family’s retreat.
That’s what men were designed for.
Most of the world had changed. Women fought most of their own battles now because that’s the way they wanted it. Independence. Courage. His wife Alissa had been a victim. Someone in a gang of railroad thieves had killed her. The muscle in his heart ripped again, and he remembered the pain he’d been through. His temper, his drinking, his lost sense of being human. Alissa had meant everything, and he hadn’t been there to protect.
But maybe he could force Mr. Lipstick to stand before his higher power.
Ray went after three of Claude Dunn’s men at the same time, side-kicking the first guy into a second. Their heads hitting and knocking them down was pure luck.
Catching the third man’s punch in mid-air was something he practiced, as was using that same man’s momentum to crash his arm against the open SUV door. His bone cracked loudly, and his scream sent a current of doubt through Ray.
But the shadow passed.
Dunn stuck a large revolver in Ray’s face. Figured the little man would carry a .357 magnum. The weapon was close enough for his nose to smell the gun oil.
“Get out of our way, Hauser,” Dunn said. “I’m taking the congressman inside. I warned King about you.”
He snatched Dunn’s wrist to the side, slamming the revolver and Dunn’s hand against the Escalade. Again, all in a single motion. His quick, strong action the result of two decades instruction, training, practice and repetition. Same way anybody got proficient at anything.
The .357 dropped to the ground.
He kicked the gun beneath the SUV, then picked up Dunn by his coat and slammed his head and shoulders against the door frame. Dunn’s eyes rolled back to the whites. Extra pain for using the word broad to describe his partner Sunny.
Special Agent Hicks was likely dead. Although there’d been no more cannon fire. Maybe…
The two guys who butted heads from his first kick scrambled to their hands and knees, but all they could do was rub their heads. He disarmed them without protest, picked up the semi-conscious Dunn, and lifted him into the third SUV.
He buckled him into the passenger seat, then chased the dazed congressman a few steps and seized his flabby arm. “Looks like you’re driving, Representative.”
Ray felt committed now.
Jessie grinned. What a break. Maybe she didn’t need to hop down again and reset the floor jack. Looked like the big man kicked ass on the congressman’s entire security staff. He was forcing King to drive out.
She could leave the cannon right where that dragon aimed now, nail the bastard pedophile with a repeat.
She wrapped her fingers around the trigger mechanism.
Watching and waiting, her coolness evaporated. Her breathing was fast and shallow. Worlds and lives hung in the balance, dancing on her skin. This was her one chance for serious cosmic revenge, her golden opportunity to reach and teach millions of abused women everywhere. They would read her notes and ask for help.
This was her last prospect for a meaningful life.
Ray leaned through the open driver’s door open to buckle up Congressman Randall King. The turkey still had on his cowboy hat. He wanted to make him eat it.
“Start the engine,” Ray said.
King’s eyes lifted from the dashboard. Like little frozen pizzas. “Hauser? Claude thinks you might be related to that insurance investigator who went missing a couple of years ago. That what this is all about? The woman was your sister or your wife?”
Thank the Lord, King hadn’t mentioned Alissa by name. As it was, his hands instinctively shot out for King’s neck, but stopped before contact. He made himself breathe as trained. In the nose. Out the mouth. Block the smell of war and the license to kill. The screaming of people. The chaos. His violence needed containment.
Besides, he’d already made his choice. “Start the engine.”
King stared, frozen, his hands in his lap. One held the SUV’s key fob.
Ray grabbed his shoulder, applied the slightest of pressure. “Start the engine.”
King fired up the SUV. His face flushed red. Sweat beads formed and rolled off his forehead. Ray almost experienced sympathy, but the emptiness which had been Alissa sucked up the congressman’s fear like a black hole.
“Leave as quickly as you can,” Ray said. “Floor it, straight out the back.”
King stared straight ahead. “Claude said we should go back inside the theater.”
Ray considered pulling his weapon, shooting this murderer and the raper of children. But he couldn’t. Best he could do, force the gods to say yay or nay.
“The theater is under attack, Congressman. You need to leave.”
The Escalade burned rubber, heading out the back. Jessie figured when to fire, fought the urge not to hurry. At the third red tree, she tugged back the trigger, then held on for her life as the autocannon and the floor of the trailer merged, the two separate bulks melding into a spitting, screaming, flame-breathing, mechanical monster, a bigger-than-life steel beast filling the world with hot gray smoke and burning metal.
The dragon warped and writhed with effort, the cannon shrieking, hissing, and twisting the flatbed beneath her feet. Knees bent, riding the incredible energy, she held on as fire and smoke erupted fifteen yards in front of the congressman’s fast-moving Escalade. Two nearby red flowered trees toppled in flames.
Flames and black clouds billowed across the pavement. The SUV tried to stop, blue smoke coming from the wheels. But the congressman’s steel coach skidded straight into a burning rain of hell.
The fire expanded as the congressman’s vehicle disappeared inside, the flames popping and billowing into a three-story inferno a full second before the sound of the secondary explosion reached her ears. Maybe the gas tank.
Jessie released the trigger, but shells landed on the fire for seconds more. Maybe fifty. The fire soared as high as the theater grandstands.
A perfect and fearsome rain of hell.
Her spirits soaring like the black smoke behind the amphitheater. Tears flooded her eyes. She fist-pumped the air. She was as happy as she’d ever been about anything. Maybe even proud. She’d never been proud before.
Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
“Sunny! Catch.”
She glanced at Hollywood, saw whatever he’d thrown at her sailing up high into that cobalt heaven. She followed the black, irregular shape across the blue canvas, no clue at first what the arriving missile could be.
Her focus sharpened when she recognized her Smith & Wesson.
She had to catch it. She couldn’t imagine how her internal glands had any supply left, but a distinct surge of new adrenaline hit her bloodstream. The pain in her leg eased a little.
As heard Jessie above her on the trailer, she eyed her target’s direction and distance. Would the weapon arrive before Jessie started shooting? No numbers existed for Sunny to calculate, no maps to hunt locations, no pieces to assemble, no related information she could analyze. All she had to compute and solve the puzzle of catching that weapon was instinct and a mental image of the twisting, spinning shape.
Hollywood’s toss appeared long, as in over her head.
Maybe if she reached up higher on one side, with one hand, her longest fingers could touch or even snag the two-pound semiautomatic. Drop that odd-shaped, high-flying steel object within her catching range.
Maybe. Sunny’s outstretched hand fanned the air like a parading queen, her gaze focused on the weapon. The grip hit two of her fingers, but she missed holding on, the weapon landing behind her in the dirt beneath the trailer.
And down below, on the microphone, the congressman’s voice was saying goodbye, thanking the crowd. She realized she didn’t have time. Even if she’d snagged that semiautomatic in midair, she couldn’t shoot Jessie from here, flat on the ground, and she couldn’t stand up. She’d waste precious time looking for her back-up weapon now.
Only one thing to do. A sudden idea that had to work.
Jessie raised her binoculars.
She wished she could aim the powerful cannon while firing, but she’d have to see where the first burst of shells landed, then stop to shift left or right, maybe raise or lower the cannon’s reach again by adjusting the floor jack. Her skin glowed with exhilaration, a sign of emotion she fought to control. Hurry. The governor was walking offstage.
Too bad she’d had to kill that Air Force agent, Sunny Hicks. Jessie had liked her.
She let the binoculars slip to her chest and reached for the cannon’s improvised trigger. She’d killed four men and one woman to get this far. Hollywood’s death would make it six in all, but each killing had been necessary to the cause, each helping position her for this chance to murder the son-of-a-bitch pedophile, Randall King. To make those deaths count, she had to fire and blow up King’s ass.
She flicked a switch and tugged back on the trigger.
At the same instant, as roaring sound and smoke covered the platform with instant pandemonium, the floor sank beneath her—the trailer’s rear end sitting down fast and hard. Her five-ton floor jack must have failed or slipped, and the smoking, hissing cannon’s burning shells overshot the stadium. A handful landed behind the stadium, where King’s SUVs took a hit or two. But many more explosions blossomed on the back road.
Jessie stopped firing.
Sunny had twisted the floor jack’s release valve, dropping the autocannon’s rear end closer to the ground and within inches of her own head. The sudden collapse would have scared her if she weren’t already juiced to the max.
The shade beneath the trailer had filled instantly with smoke. The ground shook as the trailer above her twisted and torqued to one side. A sound like a screaming dragon rattled her brains.
But then the autocannon stopped. Maybe her idea worked, although she could hear hundreds of people howling in the distance.
The autocannon’s sound and fury rubbed acid on her already challenged nerves. Though she’d cutoff the autocannon’s fire, in reality she’d failed. For a second, the terrible weapon had been unleashed. The question of how many casualties needed to be forced from her thoughts.
So did the fire in her leg.
No matter what happened, she had the same job as before—prevent another burst. She rolled out from underneath the trailer on the same side she’d entered, away from the bales of alfalfa and toward Hollywood. The hay could be great cover if she wanted to hide, but first, she needed her weapon.
More crowd noise reached her ears, now thousands of frightened concert-goers as the explosion had continued.
Block them out, Sunny. Do your job. The intense pressure, maybe desperation, felt like a hand inside her ribcage, squeezing her heart and lungs, telling her how urgent her actions had become. The bleeding in her thigh had slowed, but the pain and muscle revolt kept her from standing up or walking.
Lives depended on her breaking Jessie’s attack. She scrambled on her belly, searching the sand and dirt for the Smith & Weapon she hadn’t caught. It had to be close—and there it was, just underneath the trailer bed. Half hidden by the trailer’s tire. She had a chance.
She checked her weapon, then dragged herself higher on the slope where she could see some of the frantic scene below. Smoke streaked the sky above the shell-shaped stage of the emptying amphitheater. Fires burned near the theater’s back road and the bottle bushes she’d driven past with Congressman King. Another blaze burned nearer the amphitheater. A vehicle.
Maybe part of the King’s SUV caravan.
She had to change positions, drag her wounded body somewhere. She’d kept fighting longer and harder than she’d expected, doing okay for a rookie. But she had to do better than okay.
She glanced at the bales of alfalfa, made up her mind, and crawled toward the closest stack.
33
Though a klick away, the autocannon’s one-of-a-kind, hissing dragon imitation had filled the morning air with a buzz of incoming rounds, and for Ray, the world stopped. Frozen to acknowledge Sunny’s failure and her odds-on death. Then the earth rotated again, jerking forward, the new moments trembling with a dozen nearby detonations and hundreds more fiery explosions on the exit road.
The smell of exploding shells and burning gasoline filled his nose, became a taste and coated his throat. Old, locked-up memories flooded his head. Even as the shells stopped erupting, his senses staggered with detailed information about this new combat setting. The brigadier general had been launched back into war, back to a place where sudden death loitered openly or snaked behind cover. His blood surged with adrenaline, his fight-or-flight fuel.
But there was no choice for Ray.
Marines don’t run.
Two of the congressman’s three lined-up black SUVs had been hit, and before he could formulate action, the first of those struck exploded in flames. The searing blast knocked Ray and others off their feet. On his butt, he watched the driver of the flaming second car tumble onto the ground and smack at the back of his burning coat.
The guy not winning against the flames. Gasoline.
Ray reached the younger man in three long strides to peel back the flaming coat. His palms ignored the heat as he ripped the material straight down and off the guy’s arms. The man looked as if he’d been too shocked or frightened to do the obvious. Probably a security guard soon to consider new occupations.
Ray checked his surroundings.
Two of the congressman’s three cars were out of commission, with King inside the undamaged third SUV. Dunn and his men climbed back on their feet after being knocked down by the blast. The burning man whom had Ray de-coated now jogged toward the theater office, leaving his clothes smoldering on the asphalt.
Maybe it was the adrenaline, but he sensed opportunity in the chaos.
If he wanted to risk his career, not to mention his brother-in-law’s, he knew there was a chance to avenge the murder of Alissa. No guarantees. But maybe. He’d might have known it all along. Maybe that instinct was the reason he’d let Sunny go after Jessie Maris, a proven gunfighter.
The abused child Jessie had grown into a woman as deadly as Lucrezia Borgia.
But he sent the rookie nervous with guns.
Clouds of black and gray smoke soared two stories over the tennis-court-size rear parking area and the black caravan of Escalades, two of them burning. One wrecked. Bushes, cars, and sidewalks covered in fuel flamed high. Three house-size blazes burned fifty yards away, along the rear and unoccupied exit road—where most of the cannon’s shells landed.
Running people screamed or shouted in a thousand voices, the crowd noise uniting in his ears as one panicked cry of humanity. The theater behind him, the air overhead, and the men with Dunn all buzzed with fear.
His gaze on Ray, King’s security chief, Dunn, waved two arms at his men, gathering them close. “Let’s get the congressman back inside the theater. Now.”
Ray pulled in a breath. Time was up.
Make up your mind. Commit.
When the smoke cleared, Jessie used her binoculars.
She’d cut a long swath, but missed everything but the far road gate at one extreme, and two of Randall King’s three Escalades at the other, lined up behind the amphitheater. One had been blown to pieces, another set afire. Everything landed past her target of King on stage. Her first few shells must have fired before the cannon’s platform dropped in back.
She ground her teeth when Randall King let himself be helped from the third SUV’s shotgun seat, the cowboy hat easy to spot. He looked frightened maybe, unstable on his feet, but King found balance and support inside a tight circle of his men. The quarterback in a football huddle. Such a lucky SOB, sitting in the only Escalade she’d missed.
Looked like his men were walking him toward the theater.
Out of her kill-zone.
Ray wasn’t going to murder the guy, but he had choices.
Sitting this close to Congressman King was tough. When Ray looked at his stupid hat and the jowly face, what he mentally pictured was everything the monster had done. The loser’s characteristic features turned Angie’s stories into related images. The red lipstick. A family court judge holding down a child for sex.
A lightning bolt of anger flashed and went.
But the loser was flesh and blood. Another human. An evil guy, sure. But who was Ray to judge. That’s why America had courts and juries. The law. Even Ray’s personal laws got in the way of judgement. Treat others like you’d want to be treated. Arrest and a trial would be what he’d want.
In his gut, he knew everybody should get back inside the building. Out of the line of fire. Yet the books on VIP security he’d seen suggested the client should always be herded off premises. Away from the gunfire or otherwise violent scene.
He had a choice with his recommendation.
His heartbeat at a firm, steady pace. Ready for action, but not racing. He’d been through worse, and he was thinking how he might let King’s personal higher power do the judging. He kept coming back to his gut. Like instinct. Nature. Genetics. What evolutionary purpose was the male of a species if not to protect, defend, and fight for his female? Yeah, maybe you could name creatures which didn’t work that way. Some spiders. A Praying Mantis. But they were exceptions, not the rule.
On average, males were bigger, stronger, and less sociable for a reason.
Strength for battle and to kill for food. Drive off the beasts and rogue men who wanted your family as sustenance. Stand in the enemy’s path to die protecting the family’s retreat.
That’s what men were designed for.
Most of the world had changed. Women fought most of their own battles now because that’s the way they wanted it. Independence. Courage. His wife Alissa had been a victim. Someone in a gang of railroad thieves had killed her. The muscle in his heart ripped again, and he remembered the pain he’d been through. His temper, his drinking, his lost sense of being human. Alissa had meant everything, and he hadn’t been there to protect.
But maybe he could force Mr. Lipstick to stand before his higher power.
Ray went after three of Claude Dunn’s men at the same time, side-kicking the first guy into a second. Their heads hitting and knocking them down was pure luck.
Catching the third man’s punch in mid-air was something he practiced, as was using that same man’s momentum to crash his arm against the open SUV door. His bone cracked loudly, and his scream sent a current of doubt through Ray.
But the shadow passed.
Dunn stuck a large revolver in Ray’s face. Figured the little man would carry a .357 magnum. The weapon was close enough for his nose to smell the gun oil.
“Get out of our way, Hauser,” Dunn said. “I’m taking the congressman inside. I warned King about you.”
He snatched Dunn’s wrist to the side, slamming the revolver and Dunn’s hand against the Escalade. Again, all in a single motion. His quick, strong action the result of two decades instruction, training, practice and repetition. Same way anybody got proficient at anything.
The .357 dropped to the ground.
He kicked the gun beneath the SUV, then picked up Dunn by his coat and slammed his head and shoulders against the door frame. Dunn’s eyes rolled back to the whites. Extra pain for using the word broad to describe his partner Sunny.
Special Agent Hicks was likely dead. Although there’d been no more cannon fire. Maybe…
The two guys who butted heads from his first kick scrambled to their hands and knees, but all they could do was rub their heads. He disarmed them without protest, picked up the semi-conscious Dunn, and lifted him into the third SUV.
He buckled him into the passenger seat, then chased the dazed congressman a few steps and seized his flabby arm. “Looks like you’re driving, Representative.”
Ray felt committed now.
Jessie grinned. What a break. Maybe she didn’t need to hop down again and reset the floor jack. Looked like the big man kicked ass on the congressman’s entire security staff. He was forcing King to drive out.
She could leave the cannon right where that dragon aimed now, nail the bastard pedophile with a repeat.
She wrapped her fingers around the trigger mechanism.
Watching and waiting, her coolness evaporated. Her breathing was fast and shallow. Worlds and lives hung in the balance, dancing on her skin. This was her one chance for serious cosmic revenge, her golden opportunity to reach and teach millions of abused women everywhere. They would read her notes and ask for help.
This was her last prospect for a meaningful life.
Ray leaned through the open driver’s door open to buckle up Congressman Randall King. The turkey still had on his cowboy hat. He wanted to make him eat it.
“Start the engine,” Ray said.
King’s eyes lifted from the dashboard. Like little frozen pizzas. “Hauser? Claude thinks you might be related to that insurance investigator who went missing a couple of years ago. That what this is all about? The woman was your sister or your wife?”
Thank the Lord, King hadn’t mentioned Alissa by name. As it was, his hands instinctively shot out for King’s neck, but stopped before contact. He made himself breathe as trained. In the nose. Out the mouth. Block the smell of war and the license to kill. The screaming of people. The chaos. His violence needed containment.
Besides, he’d already made his choice. “Start the engine.”
King stared, frozen, his hands in his lap. One held the SUV’s key fob.
Ray grabbed his shoulder, applied the slightest of pressure. “Start the engine.”
King fired up the SUV. His face flushed red. Sweat beads formed and rolled off his forehead. Ray almost experienced sympathy, but the emptiness which had been Alissa sucked up the congressman’s fear like a black hole.
“Leave as quickly as you can,” Ray said. “Floor it, straight out the back.”
King stared straight ahead. “Claude said we should go back inside the theater.”
Ray considered pulling his weapon, shooting this murderer and the raper of children. But he couldn’t. Best he could do, force the gods to say yay or nay.
“The theater is under attack, Congressman. You need to leave.”
The Escalade burned rubber, heading out the back. Jessie figured when to fire, fought the urge not to hurry. At the third red tree, she tugged back the trigger, then held on for her life as the autocannon and the floor of the trailer merged, the two separate bulks melding into a spitting, screaming, flame-breathing, mechanical monster, a bigger-than-life steel beast filling the world with hot gray smoke and burning metal.
The dragon warped and writhed with effort, the cannon shrieking, hissing, and twisting the flatbed beneath her feet. Knees bent, riding the incredible energy, she held on as fire and smoke erupted fifteen yards in front of the congressman’s fast-moving Escalade. Two nearby red flowered trees toppled in flames.
Flames and black clouds billowed across the pavement. The SUV tried to stop, blue smoke coming from the wheels. But the congressman’s steel coach skidded straight into a burning rain of hell.
The fire expanded as the congressman’s vehicle disappeared inside, the flames popping and billowing into a three-story inferno a full second before the sound of the secondary explosion reached her ears. Maybe the gas tank.
Jessie released the trigger, but shells landed on the fire for seconds more. Maybe fifty. The fire soared as high as the theater grandstands.
A perfect and fearsome rain of hell.
Her spirits soaring like the black smoke behind the amphitheater. Tears flooded her eyes. She fist-pumped the air. She was as happy as she’d ever been about anything. Maybe even proud. She’d never been proud before.
