Written in Time (70 page)

Clarence still grasped Matthews’ gun hand. Abruptly, Clarence twisted it a few extra degrees and locked his own arm to maximum extension, forcing Matthews’ arm upward like the hand of a clock closing in on eleven. Clarence turned a full one hundred eighty degrees, the pain in his right side entrance wound and the numbness by his kidney almost making him lose balance and stumble. But Clarence kept himself standing, his right hand flashing upward, outward, grasping Matthews’ gun arm elbow. As Clarence pressured the elbow upward with his right hand, Clarence jerked the gun hand downward, hard and fast. The sharp sound of the bone snapping—actually, more like several bones—was clearly audible, and Matthews shrieked with pain.
 

The .25 fell from Matthews’ grasp as Clarence let go of the hand and wrist but kept his arc of motion going, burying his left elbow into Matthews’ solar plexus. There was a gush of breath that smelled of fear, and Clarence snarled as he told Matthews, “I learned that one in a bar fight in Greece when a guy came at me with a knife. Like it?”
 

Clarence didn’t wait for a response, wheeling one hundred eighty degrees once again. He was inside Matthews’ guard.
 

And Clarence did something for which he knew he would never forgive himself. He murdered Lester Matthews by smashing the heel of his right hand upward against the base of Matthews’ bloody pulp of a nose, driving the ethmoid bone up into Matthews’ brain, killing him instantly.
 

Bethany, skirts billowing wildly about her, rode low over her black horse, rode as if all the demons of Hell were suddenly chasing her. But it was only David and his father who pursued her. She might have had better luck with the demons.
 

A man in a German officer’s uniform, a Broomhandle Mauser pistol in his left hand, rode beside her. The horse was, quite evidently, not his own, fitted with a western stock saddle rather than a military one. Yet the German rode his mount perfectly, commandingly upright in the saddle.
 

There was a sharp report from the Broomhandle Mauser, like the sound of lightning striking a tree limb. Instinctively, David ducked, realizing nonetheless that the German’s chance of hitting anything from the back of a galloping horse was less than negligible.
 

“He could get a lucky shot, son! Keep low,” David’s father warned, himself low over the neck of his mount, the animal’s reins in his left hand, his long-barreled special Colt revolver in his right hand.
 

In the next instant, David watched his father bring the six-gun’s barrel on line and snap off a shot. David’s mount edged right, nervously. “Dad! Knock it off with the cowboy movie chase scene bit, will ya!?”
 

But his father wasn’t listening, even if he heard.
 

Bethany and the German officer rode at the center of a pack of six men, at least two of the men part of the assemblage of diplomats, two others dressed less richly and likely underlings. Of the remaining two, one was clearly just a hireling, a kid with a brace of six guns and a paint horse under him. The other rider was clearly a Lakewood Industries man, a submachine gun hanging at his side. As of yet, it was unused, the Lakewood man displaying obvious difficulties keeping his mount under control.
 

Jack fired one more probably useless shot, then holstered and hammer-thonged his Colt. The slipstream around him and his animal was stronger than he had imagined it might be all the times he’d watched his favorite western heroes riding hell for leather after the bad guys; Jack’s Stetson was nearly blown off. He screwed it down tighter and leaned lower over his mount’s neck, the animal’s mane lashing at his face, foam from its lips spraying him. Jack’s eyes were squinted against both.
 

The horse he rode with the European military saddle and Imperial German crest on the saddle blanket almost certainly belonged to the Mauser-armed German officer riding with the Kaminsky woman. “Come on, girl—we’ll get you reunited with der kapitan or whatever the hell rank he is. Come on!” Jack’s heels pumped against the animal’s flanks, the black’s pace quickening. Aside from the fact that he might get killed and be taken from his wife and family, Jack half-wished for a silver-mounted saddle and a big silvery-white stallion or a golden palomino. Live or die, this was probably the only horseback chase scene-cum-running gun battle he’d ever be in, and there was no sense not doing it right.
 

All the years of television westerns as a kid colored his perceptions, he thought, affected him to the point that— as surely as if he were listening to one of his daughter’s CD-things through a pair of headphones—the music he’d loved so much as a child, memorized in order to retain it, to possess it, long before the days of videotape, played in his head, with a depth of orchestration he’d never before experienced. It was the music from Stories of the Century and a half-dozen other programs, chase-scene music, frantic, full, resonating through his soul.
 

The German officer fired a series of quick shots. Jack’s stolen horse took a crease along the left side of its neck. Jack was angry: What kind of man fired at his own horse?
 

“Gyaagh!” Jack snarled, the music in his head playing louder . . .
 

Lizzie did it, the movie thing girls did every time a bad guy or a monster—in this case, a helicopter—chased them with evil intentions. She fell, almost flat on her face, her nose suddenly stiff feeling, but her right ankle hurting her more than any pain she could remember, even worse feeling than when she was shot. “Damn!” She tried standing up. If the ankle wasn’t broken, it was doing a great imitation.
 

Lizzie tried again, the ankle feeling almost worse, if that was possible. She drew a revolver.
 

The helicopter was closing fast. There would be time for one shot, maybe two. Why weren’t Lieutenant Castle and the two enlisted men firing? As she glanced right, she saw the two enlisted men, Private Butler and Private Hargrave, standing, their rifles to their shoulders. Lizzie craned her neck, spotted Lieutenant Castle. She saw his lips moving, saw a flash of gunfire from his revolver. Even above the whirring roar of the helicopter as it closed with her, Lizzie heard the dual cracks of rifle shots.
 

The helicopter kept on coming. More rifle shots, and maybe pistol shots, too. Hopelessly—almost—Lizzie stabbed one of her own handguns toward the helicopter. In the same instant that she fired, there was a ragged volley, coming from Hargrave, Butler and Castle.
 

The helicopter seemed to stop, suspended in mid-air, like a soaring bird of prey could do, its wings motionless against a powerful air current. But the helicopter, of course, had no real wings, merely its powerfully bladed main and tail rotors. These spun, but somehow not as she remembered them moving a split second before.
 

Her ankle screamed at her, but Lizzie got herself to her feet, started to fall. The dashing Lieutenant Castle was there beside her, catching her, propelling her away from beneath the helicopter, its gun silent, its fuselage spinning on its vertical axis, beginning to auger down toward the dry lake bed and destruction. Lizzie decided that her ankle couldn’t be broken; she hadn’t passed out from the pain.
 

Turning her head to glance behind her, just as quickly, she turned her face away. A rush of hot air engulfed her. The helicopter shattered against the sun-hardened surface of the lake bed, and a fireball flared from its fuel tank. She wasn’t on fire and she kept moving, thanking God for favors large and small.
 

CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
 

Jack was gaining on the fleeing bad guys and the bad girl who led them. David, although he told himself what they were doing was beyond insanity, would not have missed this experience with his father.
 

Without knowing why, David found himself wondering if there were secret orders that the Naile family should all be killed. Then, would other soldiers kill the soldiers who had killed them, like some sort of Ancient Egyptian security precaution taken when the great tombs of the Valley of The Kings were sealed against a presumed eternity? He’d seen that old Boris Karloff movie about a mummy on the loose.
 

And, riding like a madman, bullets periodically whizzing around him, the uneven ground enough to make his horse snap an ankle and pitch him to the rock-hard lake bed, dead, crippled or concussed, was it that one’s mind turned to unadulterated crap in the moment before death?
 

The mysteries of life and death perhaps unfolded before him. “Fuck it,” he murmured, kicking his heels into his mount’s sides still harder and getting with the spirit of the thing, firing his Colt revolver uselessly and shouting, “Giddyup!”
 

If his old friends could have seen him—David shuddered at the thought . . .
 

Lieutenant Castle’s hands were at Lizzie’s waist, Private Hargrove’s left hand under her good foot, Castle saying, “On three, Hargrove! One. Two. Three!” Then Lizzie was up into the saddle, and the pain in her ankle—it wasn’t broken, she told herself—only felt unbearable for a split second, then began to subside.
 

The battle raged on a mile or so ahead of them in the dry lake bed, and Lizzie wasn’t going to miss it. “Let’s go, Lieutenant!”
 

“Yes, ma’am!”
 

He was cute, she thought.
 

Clarence leaned heavily against the side of his tank; he’d miss the tank, actually. Easley asked him for the third time in the last few minutes, “Are you sure you’re all right?”
 

“I’ve never been shot before. Have you?”
 

“No, Clarence, I haven’t.”
 

“So I don’t know if I’m okay or not. But there isn’t a lot of blood. My wife’s a doctor from my time. Once we get me outa here, she’ll fix me up quick as anything.” Easley was either moving, swaying back and forth, or Clarence’s vision was starting to go. He felt a spasm of pain, clutched his side, fell forward into darkness.
 

***

The Lakewood man reined in his horse, half fell from the saddle and tried holding on to the terrified animal’s reins as he swung his submachine gun forward on its sling.
 

The guy had watched too many movies, Jack observed to himself, realizing the mere thought was the pot calling the kettle black. The MP-5’s butt stock wasn’t extended, and the weapon wasn’t even steadied at his hip. He just held it up, jerking the muzzle side to side and firing like somebody in a Middle Eastern terrorist group or something, his bullets stitching into the ground, making a lot of noise and frightening the horses—especially his own—but doing nothing to stop the men who pursued him. David’s horse reared; David held on, then spurred the animal into a lunge that took rider and mount perilously close to the Lakewood man.
 

Jack reined in tight, his stolen black skidding on its haunches.
 

Jack swung down out of the saddle, hauling the animal downward, tugging hard on the right rein to turn the horse’s head away from him as his left hand went to the horse’s near-side elbow and pushed. The animal laid itself down, belly toward the man with the submachine gun. Jack dropped behind the saddle, knowing he had a matter of seconds before the horse might bolt to its feet. Jack drew his revolver and fired one shot, hitting the Lakewood man in the throat. Jack fired again, the second shot striking the man in the forehead.
 

Jack stood, stepping back as he tugged at the reins and let the horse rise to its feet. Jack stood on the reins in the next instant, quickly replacing the spent cartridges in his revolver, holstering and hammer-thonging, then catching up the black’s reins in his left hand. “Easy, girl. Nearly through here.”
 

Jack led the less skittish animal quickly toward the dead man. He dropped into a crouch, holding the reins under his boot once again as he rapidly opened and removed the dead man’s pistol belt, then the strapped bag of spare magazines. There were three thirty-round sticks remaining. Jack examined the magazine in the weapon. Three or four rounds appeared to remain. There would be a round in the chamber.
 

Jack inserted a full magazine up the well, slinging the submachine gun to his right side well behind his revolver, the magazine carrier already slung to his left. The pistol on the man’s belt was apparently the man’s own and a brand that Jack didn’t fully trust. He cleared the weapon, dismounted the slide, pulled the recoil system and dropped the springs into the magazine case. He flung the weapon’s slide and frame in opposite directions, dropping the dead man’s belt.
 

Jack eased the cinch on the dead man’s mount, tethered the animal to some scrub just off what passed for the road. Swinging up into the saddle again, his own animal starting to shiver from its sweat—no time to rub the black down— Jack turned in toward the pursuit, but not taking the trail. What Jack intended to do in order to make up the lost time was dangerous in the extreme, something that could result in a broken leg for the black and a broken neck for himself. The shootout with the Lakewood man had been at a hairpin along the ridge road, the road turning back on itself into the next valley. A steep incline separated the two sections of road, cutting off, Jack calculated roughly, close to a mile and a half.
 

Jack made the Sign of The Cross and murmured “God help us,” then started the German’s horse down on to the loose gravel and sand that formed the slope. Errol Flynn or his stuntman did it in the classic film Virginia City and Jock Mahoney, one of the greatest stuntmen who ever lived, did it in 1958’s The Last of The Fast Guns.
 

Jack tried to concentrate on the ride. He no longer actually controlled his horse’s movements, nor did the black control its movements, either. What he and the animal beneath him were engaged in could best be described as a headlong downhill lunge. To stop would be suicidal for them both.