Ahern, Jerry - The Web

She didn't think so.

She beard noise again; this time, not the noise of speech, but the bolt of a weapon—assault rifle or submachine gun, she couldn't tell which—being opened.

Perhaps it was Paul with the gun he insisted on calling a Schmeisser, his MP-.

But the sound had been from the wrong direction.

She bunched her fists around the finger-grooved Goncalo Alves wood grips of the matched Smith & Wessons, then stepped away from the bridge support.

She walked, slowly but evenly, toward the edge of the support. She looked around it—she could see the glow of the fire from beyond the far side of the ground-cloth windbreak.

And she could see four men—men or women she wasn't really sure. She had shot both in her lifetime.

They were closing in on the windbreak, in a narrowing circle, assault rifles in their hands. She imagined there were others, behind her, coming up on Paul from the rear. He would have to look out for them—his instincts were good. She would be otherwise engaged.

She stepped away from the bridge support, the glow of the fire glinting off the polished stainless-steel revolvers in her fists.

"What do you want?" $he shouted.

One of the nearer assault rifle-armed figures turned toward her.

"Ever'thin' you got, li'l gal." He laughed.

"You shouldn't laugh," she said calmly. The man wheeled the muzzle of his rifle toward her, and both pistols bucked at once in her hands. The man's body hammered backward into the snow. The assault rifle discharged, its muzzle flashes lighting up the night, as the second nearer man started to turn, to fire. She caught the sight of hair; it wasn't a man, but a woman.

Natalia fired the pistol in her left hand, then the one in her right. The body of the woman twisted and contorted as it fell, her assault rifle impacting into the snow beside her.

Gunfire was coming from the other two and Natalia dove for cover behind a pile of discarded sewer pipes to her left. Bullets whined in the frigid air as they ricocheted off the concrete. Natalia's right hand flashed up, snapping off one shot, then another.

Dumping the empties and the two unfired rounds from the right-hand revolver into her right palm as she stroked the ejector rod, she huddled behind the pipes; the gunfire coming more steadily now. In a pocket of her coat she had a half-dozen Safariland Speed Loaders. She snatched them, ramming the bullets into the charging holes, the center of the loader actuating against the ejector star, the cases freed and spilling into the charging holes. She slammed the cylinder shut, fired the gun in her left hand—four shots, a scream.

There was more gunfire.

Then from her far right, she heard the small-caliber, high-pitched belching of the Schmeisser. "Paul," she said.

She speed-loaded the revolver for her left hand, then holstered it, the gun in her right hand firing as she

pushed herself up, running from the concrete sewer pipes toward the bridge support, firing at the nearer of the two assault rifle-armed figures. The body went down, its gun still firing. "Wounded," she murmured. Whoever Paul had been shooting at was on the far side of the bridge support. And Paul's gun had stopped firing.

She reached the lean-to. Rubenstein was locked in combat with three men.

She heard Paul's subgun discharge though" she couldn't see it; one of the men fell back, stumbling into the fire, his body and clothes now aflame.

Natalia fired her revolver once into the man's head to put him out of his agony. Then having taken two steps closer to Paul, she half-turned, balancing in the snow on her right foot. Her left foot snaked out, giving a double savate kick to th# head of the nearest of the two remaining men.

The man fell back against the bridge support, and she could see Paul now, his right arm bound up in the sling for his subgun, his left hand holding back the knife of his opponent, clutched around the man's right wrist.

The subgun fell away; Paul's right fist hammered up, into the midsection of the vastly larger man.

Natalia's instincts told her something.

She wheeled, emptying the revolver in her right hand into two men charging for her. She wheeled again. No time for the revolver in her left hand, she dropped the Metalife Custom L-Frame from her right fist, snatching in the same motion for the Bali-Song knife in the right side hip pocket of her jump suit.

Her thumb flicked open the lock as her right arm hauled back. The closed knife sailed from her grip as she threw her arm forward. From beyond the windbreak, a man advanced against her with an assault rifle. The

stainless-steel Bali-Song glinted in the firelight as it rotated in the air, the handle halves splitting open.

The man with the assault rifle stopped in his tracks, both hands out at his sides, the rifle falling from his grip. The handle slabs of her knife were flat against the front of his coat, making a horizontal line. The body sagged, then fell forward, into the fire, and Natalia, as she snatched the revolver from her left holster, could smell his flesh burning on the wind.

Rubenstein! She could see him, his left hand still locked on the knife wrist of the man he fought. Suddenly his right arm hauled back, then flashed forward, his bunched-together right fist smashing into the nose of the larger man. The man's knife hand went limp; the knife fell.

As the man fell.back, Rubenstein snatched at the pistol from his belt, firing the High Power almost point-blank into the man's midsection as the body stumbled, then collapsed.

"Two outside, maybe," she snapped, the revolver sailing from her left hand into her right as she rounded the edge of the bridge support.

She ran hard, reaching the far side, making the corner. An assault rifle at the shoulder of one of the two men there started opening up, its flashes blinding against the snowy darkness. She stabbed the revolver forward in her hands and double-actioned it twice. The man's head shuddered under the impact of the slugs, his body falling, as the assault rifle fired uselessly up into the night sky.

She wheeled. Firing the L-Frame again at the last of the two, she heard the chattering of Paul's submachine gun as well. The body of the last of the attackers rolled, twisted, lurched under the impact of the slugs hammer

ing at it; then it was still. "Too bad," she said.

She heard Paul's voice. "Yeah—what a waste of human life."

"That, too," she told him. "But with all the bullet holes, none of their coats will do us much good for added warmth." She started back toward the windbreak, saying, "Check that they're all dead while I get my other gun and the knife." She felt very cold, and realized Paul probably thought her colder. "If any of them aren't dead—tell me," she added.

She sat down, picking up her gun, not yet ready mentally to retrieve the Bali-Song knife. The gun was undamaged. Automatically, she emptied the revolver of the spent cases, then reloaded it with one of the remaining Speedloaders. She loaded the second revolver as well, holstering both guns; then, her hands trembling, she lit a cigarette.

"Tired!" she screamed.

John Rourke looked at the Rolex; the exterior of the crystal was steamed so he smudged it away with his right Јlove, then studied the time. It was eight-thirty. A good time for a party, he thought—the shank of the evening.

He leaned against the pine trunk, staring down into the valley, the wind behind him now) the sweater pulled down from covering his head, his leather jacket unzipped and wide open. The Bushnell Armored Xs focused under his hands as he swept them across the valley floor. A town—a perfect town, nothing changed. A blue-grass band was playing in the town square, strains of the music barely audible in the distance; children played behind a crowd of spectators surrounding the band; a car moved along the far side of the town, its lights setting a pattern of zigzags in the shadows where the streetlights didn't hit.