Outlanders 39 Hydra's Ring, page 19
Everyone recoiled, flinching from the ridgeline as a fine rain of sand, pulverized pebbles and droplets of blood drizzled down. Nausea roiled in Kane's belly when he heard the slippery slap of body parts raining down around him.
The echoes of the explosion continued to quiver in the air, as of a musical note refusing to fade. A mushroom of black smoke floated up from beneath the ridge.
Lakesh whirled on Wei Qiang, teeth bared in fury. "You psychotic bastard! There was no need for that!"
Wei Qiang arched an eyebrow. "Really, Dr. Singh? I thought we needed to communicate with each other. First I administered a lesson...let no insult go unavenged. I trust I made my point?"
Lakesh balled his fists, struggling to rein in his anger, eyes flicking from the gun barrels trained in his direction. Behind him, Grant murmured, "Easy."
"Where is the ninth ring, Dr. Singh?" Qiang asked, a note of impatience entering his voice.
"Why should I tell you anything?"
"You will talk or you will die. All of you will die. Which do you prefer?"
Lakesh turned toward Musgrave. "Is your organization working with this homicidal madman or for him?"
Musgrave's right hand almost automatically went up to touch the scars on his face. "How is that relevant?"
"Because the consortium might find it more profitable to make a bargain with Cerberus."
For an instant, Musgrave seemed interested in the possibility, but after a sideways glare from Wei Qiang, he said sullenly, "Cerberus has cost my organization a great deal of time and materiel. There can be no bargain, The Millennial Consortium is not to be trifled with. Our goals are above the limited perspective of individuals. You need to be taught our solid technocratic values before any kind of agreement can be reached between us."
"Enough," Wei Qiang snapped. He gestured imperiously to Erica. The troopers looked at her with eyes gleaming like rabid animals and hauled her to feet, dragging her forward.
Qiang silently surveyed her as if she were a mildly interesting insect he had found scuttling in his garden. Moving with slow deliberation, he wrested away the golden cone from his thumb, revealing a three-inch-long nail, its edges beveled and curved like the blade of a scimitar, the surface coated heavily with glossy, lacquer.
Lightly he dragged the edge across Erica's left cheek, leaving a vertical line shining pinkly against the smooth alabaster of her complexion. She recoiled, but tried to maintain a composed, defiant expression. In a soft, almost intimate voice, Wei Qiang asked, "Why did you steal my property? Why did you take the rings?"
"The rings are not your property," Erica retorted coldly.
"No?" Qiang's tone acquired a mocking lilt. "And how would you know?"
"I'll tell you what you want to know, Qiang," Lakesh said sharply.
Without taking his eyes from Erica's face, he replied calmly, "Yes... yes, you will."
Wei Qiang slashed with his thumbnail in a swift figure-eight motion. The scream that burst from Erica's lips was ear-shattering. She flailed backward, hand clapped over the raw, bleeding mass of her right eye. A grinning trooper caught her up in her arms, embracing her tightly as she twisted and convulsed in agony and shock.
Brigid murmured wordlessly in horror, her face draining of all color. Kane and Grant remained motionless, their bodies as tense as drawn bowstrings. Reaching under his shirt, Lakesh snatched away the Hydra ring that had been hanging from his neck by a thin chain.
"Here!" he shouted, his voice a strangulated blend of fury and disgust. He tossed it to the ground at Wei Qiang's feet. "Take it! And let her go!"
Wei Qiang favored him with a pitying smile, then he inspected the wet crimson glistening on the razored edge of his thumbnail. The tip of his tongue came out, touched the blood and he turned his head and spit. "Sour...just like I expected."
He took a step toward the struggling Erica, lifting his left hand. Kane prepared himself to leap on the soldier covering him and Grant. Then he caught a brief, almost subliminal blur of movement streaking overhead. With a resonant, meaty thud, a long arrow drove into and through the neck of the trooper standing on Grant's right.
Chapter 22
Kane's battle-trained muscles, tested and refined in a hundred situations where a fraction of a second gave him all the edge he needed in a life-or-death struggle, exploded in a perfect coordination of mind, reflexes and skill.
Before the arrow-impaled man had fallen, Kane hurled himself forward, shoulder rolling between Brigid and Lakesh. He caught a fragmented glimpse of fearful desperation crossing the face of the soldier when the man realized what his captive was doing.
He tried to bring his subgun to bear, but Kane rose smoothly to his feet right in front of him, his right hand slapping aside the barrel of the Calico and his left hand stabbing out with a thumb and forefinger at the larynx. There was a mushy snap, as of a stick of wet wood breaking, as his windpipe collapsed, and the yellow-helmeted trooper dropped to his knees, a little spurt of blood spilling form his lips. Kane snatched the subgun from his hands, pivoting on the balls of his feet.
At the same instant, Brigid fell flat, balancing herself on her right hand. Using it as an axis, she spun, slamming a reverse heel kick into the back of a trooper's ankles and sweeping his legs out from under him. As he went down, Grant delivered the steel-reinforced toe of his left boot to the underside of his jaw. The crack of bone was loud and ugly.
Wei Qiang lifted his voice in an outraged shout, and the trooper holding Erica van Sloan twisted her, then flung her away as he tried to unlimber his subgun. Erica went in the direction of the throw, somersaulting backward against the legs of two soldiers behind her. She knocked one of them off his feet, causing another to trip over him and sprawl face-down, dropping his Calico in the process.
Lakesh sprang for the fallen subgun, deftly plucking it from the ground by its short barrel and whipping it around to slam the butt against a trooper's jaw. A soldier snapped up his own weapon, centering the sights on the scientist. Another feathered shaft sped through the air and struck the man in the sternum with a grisly crunch.
The point drove between the bands of Kevlar on the tunic and penetrated the man's chest, bursting out between his shoulder blades. Screaming like a wounded beast, he toppled onto his back, clutching at the arrow, blood fountaining from his open mouth.
Lakesh fumbled with the unfamiliar Calico for a long, panicky second, then directed a staccato burst in the general direction of Wei Qiang and Werner Musgrave. The two men scrambled behind the bulwark of the Scorpinaut, trying to stay ahead of the stream of poorly aimed lead. Dirt fountains erupted at their heels, little slivers of stone pelting their legs.
Brigid rolled across the ground, snatched up a pair of Copperheads from their bundle of gear in mid-tumble and bounced to her feet. She fired both weapons at the soldiers who hunkered down within the wheel wells of the FCS, shooting back hastily, without aiming.
Brigid didn't really aim, either—her objective was to keep the soldiers pinned down and seeking cover. Brass arced in a glittering rain from the Copperheads' ejector ports. The racket was deafening, nerve-racking. The rattling bursts of autofire, the sledgehammer pounding of rounds crashing against the exterior of the Scorpinaut and the high-pitched whines of ricochets all combined to make a hellish cacophony.
Two troopers recovered enough of their emotional equilibrium to return the fire with their handguns. Shots cracked and boomed. A bullet hissed past Brigid's ear and another tugged at her long hair. She maintained pressure on the triggers of the Copperheads. Three bullets took a trooper's right ear off, bit into his neck and hammered him between the eyes, blowing out the back of his skull in a gouting slop of blood, bone chips and brain matter.
One of the troopers Erica had bowled over struggled to his feet, raising his subgun just as an arrow struck him in the right thigh, piercing it completely. The man staggered, shrieking, clutching convulsively at the shaft.
Kane turned his appropriated Calico on him, stitching his midriff with a zipper of slugs. The trooper went down heavily, a wild stuttering burst from his weapon striking sparks from the hide of the Scorpinaut.
Lakesh, seemingly oblivious to the carnage about him, lunged forward and snatched the Hydra's ring from the ground. He examined it closely for damage, blowing dirt from its jewelled eyes.
A trio of soldiers regrouped, firing in the direction of Grant, Brigid and Kane, their weapons chattering, muzzles flashing with little twinkles of dancing flame. Three shots from Kane's subgun drilled holes through the lower face of one of them, punching him backward with such force his head struck the ground first.
Brigid framed the trooper next to him in her sights and fired a two-second burst that opened up his throat, propelling him backward in a crimson mist. The man was dead before his body fully settled, but he kept his finger on the trigger even as he fell, the wild fusillade striking his companion in the legs.
On the prow of the Scorpinaut, the front-mounted, box-fed .50-caliber machine guns suddenly rose on their armatures, swiveling and locking in a position to catch everyone, outlander and soldier alike, in a triangulated cross fire.
"Down!" Grant bellowed. "Everybody get down!"
He flung himself full-length, rolling frantically toward the front of the vehicle. Flickering tongues of flame lapped out in rotating circles as rattling roars pressed against his ear drums. He saw his friends following his example, dropping flat and crawling forward as fast as they could. However, the soldiers evidently believed they were immune from gunfire and they kept to their feet. A storm of .50-caliber bullets pounded into a pair of troopers, breaking their chests and heads open amid flying ribbons of blood. Great gouts of earth exploded all around them.
As Grant rolled across the pile of their gear, his hands groped blindly over the combat harnesses until his fingers came in contact with the familiar canister shape of an M-33 fragmentation grenade. Taking a deep breath and holding it, he jerked the grenade away from the vest, leaving the safety ring still connected to the spring clip.
Lunging to his feet between the pair of jackhammering machine guns, he reached up with his left arm to grasp the barrel of the cannon. He chinned himself up by one arm, wriggled around, his thumb flipping away the priming lever. He jammed the grenade into the bore, smacking it with the palm of his hand to push it on its way.
Grant dropped, falling flat and yelling, "Fire in the hole!"
The detonation of the grenade was like a distant thunderclap. For a microsecond, the bore of the cannon was haloed in a red flash. Then flying tongues of flame billowed outward. The outlanders felt the concussion in their bones. The entire vehicle jumped. The barrel of the cannon bulged out at the juncture where it joined with the turret. Smoke spouted from splits in the alloy. Both machine guns fell silent in the same instant.
The topside turret hatch swung open, and amid billows of gray-white vapor, a blood-streaked man clawed his way out and tumbled gracelessly onto the chassis of the FCS. Coughing, he waved his arms as if to signal he wished to surrender, but an arrow impaled him from back to front and he fell from the Scorpinaut to the ground, writhing only briefly before ceasing to move altogether.
"Where'd you come up with that strategy?" Kane asked Grant.
"I improvised," the big man replied hoarsely and retrieved his Sin Eater, still snugged within its power holster, from their bundle of belongings.
Wei Qiang's voice bellowed commands and warnings in Mandarin.
Kane eased around the front of the Scorpinaut. "Who is he yelling at?"
As he did so, he glimpsed four yellow-robed, shaved-headed men emerging from thickets and shrubbery. All of them wielded long bows and carried wooden quivers full of arrows.
Tai Mi, his face bruised, blood trickling from a laceration in his scalp, shouted in English, "Flee, you fools!"
He pointed an arrow in the direction of the village. They followed the barbed point and saw at least a score of helmeted men approaching at a run, chanting, "Jun Zhu! Jun Zhu!" Behind them rolled a Scorpinaut, engine roaring.
Kane helped Erica van Sloan to her feet. Although she kept her right eye covered by bloody fingers, she shook loose from his grasp. "I'm only half-blind, Kane."
"Suit yourself," he replied, bending to collect their gear.
"You haven't much time!" Tai Mi shouted, a note of angry desperation entering his voice. "Flee!"
"Flee where?" Lakesh demanded.
Tai Mi pointed with the arrow again, indicating the cove. "There!"
Brigid cast a worried glance at the approaching soldiers, barely one hundred yards distant. "We won't be able to get out of range of their guns in that sampan!"
Grant gusted out a short chuckle. "We won't have to...look."
Turning, Brigid saw the high masts of Captain Sun Fan's junk as it hove into view at the opening to the river.
"Go!" the monk shouted, nocking the arrow. "My brothers and I will give you time to reach the ship."
"What of you?" Lakesh called.
"Our temple was set afire," he answered flatly, hefting the bow. "This is all we have left."
"The priests are forbidden by their creed to use axe or club...but not arrows," Kane murmured.
"Convenient loophole," Grant grunted, jogging toward the ridgeline. "It just might save our asses, if we're lucky."
The five of them ran, sliding and stumbling down the face of the slope. Erica had a difficult time maintaining her footing because of the hand she kept pressed to the right side of her face, but she did not ask for help. She passed the maimed, headless corpse of Seng Kao without a word or a backward glance.
They dashed down the short dock to where the sampan was moored and scrambled aboard. Erica sat with her back against the tiny cabin wall amidships. Her clenched teeth gleamed between her full lips as if she were struggling to bottle up a groan or a scream.
Lakesh pulled the rope off the piling and Grant yanked the starter cord of the outboard motor just as the first of Wei Qiang's soldiers appeared on the crest of the ridge. Several of them fired in haste, a couple of bullets splashing the surface of the water only feet from the boat's stern. Others hit the dock, sending splinters flying like confetti.
The outboard caught on the first try and the sampan lunged away from the pier, foaming ripples spreading out in a V beside the prow. More slugs punched little fountains in the water around them. Kane slammed his appropriated Calico into full-auto and squeezed the trigger. The weapon bucked in his hand as he sprayed the ridgeline. Grant crouched, sinking his head between the wide yoke of his shoulders.
Brigid squeezed off several rounds from her TP-9 and glimpsed a yellow-tunicked body rolling down the slope, breaking a few shrubs and dislodging a number of rocks before it sprawled loose-limbed and lifeless in the mud of the cove.
When the bolt of the Calico snapped loudly open on an empty chamber, Kane dropped it and grabbed a Copperhead, firing steadily. Most of the soldiers were too worried about catching a bullet to risk exposing themselves to return the fire, so when Grant gunned the outboard to its highest rpm, no more bullets came their way.
Kane got up and walked to the bow of the sampan, balancing himself against the rocking of the light boat. He stepped over Lakesh, who was attending to Erica. The scientist asked, "Is everyone all right?"
"So far," Kane replied. "That could change."
Erica snorted, hand still over her eye. "Tell me about it."
"We'll treat you as soon as we can," Lakesh told her sympathetically.
As the craft passed between the bastions of rock into the river, Kane waved toward the crew of the junk assembled at the side. They shouted in response and gesticulated wildly, pointing back toward the cove.
Twisting, belly slipping sideways, he saw a Scorpinaut lurch to the lip of the ridge. Wei Qiang stood atop the turret. Before Kane could shout a warning, the bore of the 40 mm cannon erupted thunder and smoke. The shell splashed into the water of the cove only a few feet to port. Scarcely had the ripples begun to spread when a, column of water boiled up in an explosive geyser. The sampan rocked from the concussion. Foaming spray cascaded over the sampan and drenched everyone on the deck.
"Can't this thing go any faster?" Brigid shouted, tossing wet hair from her eyes.
Wiping water from his face, Grant snapped, "We could always swim."
He steered the boat clear of the cove and turned it almost immediately to port so the tumble of weed-choked rocks would provide cover from the cannon. With its diesel engines throbbing, the junk hove to on an intercept course, its exhaust funnels giving off oppressive fumes.
Kane glanced back, but couldn't see the Scorpinaut. He couldn't be sure, but he doubted Wei Qiang would be so angry as to lay down a blind firing pattern in the hope of sinking them or the junk. After half a minute, when no more cannon rounds came their way, he realized his assessment had been correct, but he did not feel relief. Wei Qiang knew their destination.
The junk came alongside in a rush of foam, and ropes came looping down to make the sampan fast. Sun Fan's face appeared at the rail, pale and drawn, but creased in a sardonic grin. Touching the brim of his cap with a forefinger, he said, "Looks like we am still in same boat together."
Chapter 23
The Yangtze was tremendous, a vast flow of silt-laden water so broad that it was almost an inland sea. Far, far off to port Kane saw a few twinkling lights ashore, four miles or more away. To starboard there was nothing but the purple-hued tapestry of the Chinese twilight and a sense of timelessness. The Yangtze's volume equaled that of all the rivers in Asia, and at almost four thousand miles in length, it had been rightfully termed the "long river."
Not only the longest river on the Asian continent, it was also the third-longest in the world after the Amazon and the Nile. The Yangtze began in the Tibetan Plateau and, fed by the snow and ice melt from the surrounding mountains, it emptied out into the South China Sea near Shanghai.
