Revenger

29

The men who’d fled when they rescued Paula Miklosko must have gone for reinforcements. Carver could see a couple of them among the runners bearing down on his friends. The presence of so many people around them had restored their fighting spirit and now they were bent on revenge.

There were more scurrying figures dashing down the side of the road. Carver understood at once that they were trying to outflank him, get behind the garbage truck and cut off his line of escape. Another figure caught his eye, if only because he was standing quite still at the centre of the storm: the skinny, grey-haired man who’d given them their orders in the yard at the back of the Dutchman’s Head. He was very coolly directing his forces and, Carver had to admit, doing it pretty well.

Carver shouted at Schultz, ‘Behind you!’ He sounded like a kid at a pantomime and had about as much effect.

Now the runners were twenty metres behind Schultz and Chrystal.

Carver had to move fast, but Paula Miklosko wasn’t going anywhere, so he hoisted her over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift, thanking his lucky stars that she was so lightly built. Then he started running towards Schultz as fast as his burden would allow, waving his free arm and shouting as he went.

Finally Schultz noticed Carver’s wild gesticulations and looked around. The first rioters were barely ten metres behind him as he shoved Chrystal away in Carver’s direction, screamed, ‘Move!’ and turned to face the mob.

The pistol appeared in Schultz’s hand. He fired three times in quick succession. The first round hit its target right in the middle of the chest, smashed through his ribcage and ploughed into his heart, dropping him immediately. The second struck another man just below the collarbone. Cranked on a chemical cocktail of speed, alcohol and adrenalin, and brandishing an axe, he barely broke stride, and Schultz had to resort to a head shot at point-blank range to finish the job. As the two shot men dropped to the ground, several of the people nearby flung themselves down, too, in fear of another shot. The rest stopped, recoiling as if hitting an invisible force field, and in the fractional pause that followed Schultz was able to sprint like hell and buy himself a bit more space and time.

He caught up with Carver and Chrystal, who were making their way across to the far side of the road, heading away from the garbage truck to a point about midway up Netherton Street.

‘Now what?’ Schultz asked.

‘Over there!’ Carver said, pointing down the road.

Carver was about to say more when he heard the whipcrack sound of a bullet passing by him, going faster than the speed of sound, followed a fraction of a second later by the blast of the gunfire itself.

‘Suppressing fire!’ he shouted at Schultz, who stopped and fired two more quick shots at the pursuing horde — aiming to scare rather than kill this time — before chasing Carver again.

‘I need another couple there,’ said Carver, pointing at another, smaller group of rioters ahead of them. ‘Above their heads!’

‘You sure?’ Schultz asked.

‘They’re just kids,’ Carver replied.

Like that makes any fucking difference, Schultz thought to himself, bringing his gun to bear as another fusillade of bullets crackled behind them, ricocheting off paving stones and lamp posts, blasting holes in the brickwork of nearby houses, and smashing a couple of windows — but somehow missing their fleeing figures.

Schultz fired and saw the people ahead of them scatter: job done.

Then he felt a sickening shock of pain in his left arm and heard a sharp crack of gunfire, and that was when he shouted, ‘I’m hit!’