Slash and Burn

Chapter 52

‘You OK, Hunter?’

‘I’m fine, Rink.’

‘Whose is all the blood?’ Harvey asked.

‘Huffman’s.’

‘Hope he didn’t have AIDS,’ Rink said.

I frowned.

‘You want me to drop this piece of shit now?’ Rink asked, his gun on Larry Bolan.

‘No. We have something to settle.’

‘He killed my brother.’ Larry dropped his assault rifle on the ground. He looked at Rink and Harvey, challenging them to disagree with him. ‘I owe him.’

‘Looks like you just tried to kill my brothers. I owe you, too.’

Larry lifted his hands to me, wiggled his fingers.

I’d promised Larry Bolan his one on one with me, but I never promised Queensberry Rules. I lifted the hook and ran at him; it kind of evened up our reach. But I wasn’t going to use it on him, not how Huffman had with me. I threw it at his head.

Larry ducked and the hook sailed over the top of him. But that was all I needed.

Before he’d straightened up again, I launched myself in the air and drove my knee directly into his face. Usually it would be insane sacrificing my stability to such a move, but when you’re fighting a giant what else is there for it? My knee, with the full weight of my body behind it, slammed his jaws shut and rocked him back on his heels. I followed him, punching him in the throat and then whipping an instep into his crotch.

Larry swung blindly at me and I dodged out then came back with another punch to his throat. It was like punching a leather drum. His backhand caught me across the chest and it was like I’d been swatted by King Kong. I staggered back, trying to catch my breath. Larry followed, hands reaching for me. He was limping slightly from the kick in the balls, but he was too full of fury to slow down.

He threw a right at my chest, and I slipped it and drove my fist into his ribs. They felt mushy. Larry grunted in agony. Old wound, I guessed, but then he was coming at me with his own kick. His leg was as powerful as a bull’s and if he got a good kick in my guts he’d probably have killed me. I avoided his boot by a fraction of a hair, then, while it was still sweeping upwards, I dropped the point of my elbow into the jumble of nerves on his outer thigh. The force of his kick almost parted my shoulder, but my elbow dug deep, and when he staggered away he was limping even more.

‘Son of a bitch,’ he snarled, slapping at his thigh to get some life back in it.

While he was still numb and ungainly I swarmed him. I threw a right hook into his middle, a left into his softened ribs. Then I trapped an elbow, striking with the other fist at the side of his neck. Lesser men could be dropped by a shot to the carotid sinus, but Larry was a solid wedge of meat. He threw a hand at me and entangled his fingers in my jacket, hauled me towards him. He was frothing at the mouth and I thought he was going to chew off my face. I headbutted him. Not once but three times in quick succession. With each whack of my forehead I saw stars, but it was much worse for him.

But then Larry’s strength became a factor. He got his arms round my back and lifted me in a bear hug. He squeezed, and though I tried not to I roared in agony. My ribs felt like they were in a car crusher, and I knew it was only a matter of seconds before they’d cave in and lacerate my internal organs.

‘Hunter…’

Rink’s concerned shout came distantly to my ears and I knew my friend would be running in to help.

‘No, Rink,’ I shouted. ‘This asshole is mine!’

Anything goes on a battlefield and this was about one of the most brutal I’d ever found myself on. I leaned in and clamped my teeth on to Larry Bolan’s eyebrow. I bit down with all my might.

Larry roared, throwing me away from him.

I landed on my back in the dirt, feeling like I’d just been in a train wreck. Like last time we’d met. I could barely breathe, but then I spat out the chunk of Larry’s brow and things got a little easier.

‘You dirty…’ Larry had his right hand clamped over the gushing wound in his face.

What did he expect? Did he want to shame me into defeat?

I struggled on to my knees. Larry was coming again. He launched a kick into my guts and I rolled with it. It still felt like I’d been hit by a runaway train but I gained space from him. There was a smouldering beam of wood thrown here by the exploding shed and I flung myself over it. Larry stooped and grabbed it. It probably weighed more than I did, but he lifted it, heedless of the embers, and hurled it at me. I staggered backwards, followed by a billowing shower of sparks as it crashed down at my feet.

Rink and Harvey were both shouting but their actual words were lost on me.

‘Do not shoot him!’

But that wasn’t what they were getting at. Our fight had taken us dangerously close to the roaring flames of the ranch and I was too caught up in the adrenalin rush to notice. By the looks of Larry Bolan he didn’t care either. Blood poured from the wound in his eyebrow, but his eyes seethed beneath it. His mouth was clamped in a rictus. He charged me, his hands going for my throat.

I ducked beneath his outstretched arms, sweeping them over my head with my forearms, gave him an elbow into his damaged ribs. He bent in pain and I clambered up and on to his back. I clamped my legs round his waist and one hand in his hair and struck repeatedly with the knife-edge of my free hand in the side of his neck. He began to weaken.

Larry Bolan must have known he was going to die. Even if he finished me, it wouldn’t matter what I’d said; Rink or Harvey would drop him. But he wanted to take me with him.

‘Trent!’ he roared. Then he clamped his arms over my legs to stop me pulling free and ran directly at the burning building like we were in a piggy-back race, intending crashing through the wall of flames and into the heart of the inferno. Neither Rink nor Harvey could shoot him for fear of hitting me. I let go of his hair, forgot all about chopping his neck and I did something so terrible that it would come back to haunt me in nightmares.

As Larry charged towards the flames and I felt the skin on my face begin to roast I reached round and jammed my fingers into the corners of his mouth. Then I hauled backwards, as if I was reining in a mad stallion. Larry’s face split like an overripe melon and his system failed him with the shock of what I’d done. His arms flopped wide, and I sprawled on my back, chunks of Larry’s lips clenched between my fingers.

Maybe what I did was enough to throw him over the precipice of insanity, maybe he had no desire to live any longer with only half a face, but he kept on running and the last I saw of him was a lumbering shadow flailing within the flames.

Next, hands were at my collar and I was dragged unceremoniously away from the building as it crashed down and sealed Larry’s fate.

I lay there in stunned silence. Equally quiet were my friends. In the end, Rink said, ‘You shoulda let me shoot him, Joe.’

I looked at the filth in my hands and was sickened. But then I recalled the threat Huffman had made to Kate. That he’d allow Larry to rip her apart. Larry wanted to eviscerate me, too. Well, what goes around comes around.

Together we moved past the burning buildings and turned into the road. The entire ranch was now a magnificent pyre from which smoke billowed into the heavens. Beneath a shawl of smoke I saw the crumpled form of a man lying on the road. I knew without checking that the smashed-up body was that of Rourke. I felt no pity. He’d died after all, but it wasn’t me who’d killed him. I’d only helped him along in the right direction.

‘Is he the last of them?’

‘I got a man round back, plus another out in the field that I took the rifle off,’ Harvey said.

‘Goddamnit,’ Rink said. ‘I stuck one with my knife, but all I got to shoot at was freakin’ walls.’

Harvey grinned. ‘That’s the only way we could be sure you wouldn’t miss.’

‘Course, I got to soften Bolan up for you, Joe.’

‘Yeah, but it was me who made a start on his lips for you,’ Harvey added.

My friends, like many soldiers stuck in desperate circumstances, were trying to lighten the mood with graveyard humour. I was doing a quick head count. I wasn’t sure how many people Huffman had at his disposal, but there was at least one I hadn’t come across yet.

‘There was a woman. She was with Huffman when we took Kate away from him. Where’s she at?’

‘I didn’t kill any woman,’ Harvey said. As it was to me, the very thought of killing a woman — even a mob enforcer like that one — was abhorrent to him.

Rink shrugged expansively. ‘Like I said, all I got to do was shoot at walls.’

I experienced slowly creeping dread. ‘I’ve got a horrible idea where she is at.’