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Ruger stared at the gun, not believing what he was seeing. He almost smiled. How could so many fucked-?up things happen all in one day? With a snarl he yanked Val to her feet and pulled her in front of him. “Go ahead and shoot, sonny-?boy, but you better be a good goddamn shot or you’re liable to blow a hole in this young lady. ”
“As it happens,” Crow called, “I am a good goddamn shot. ” He fired the pistol. The bullet burned the air a foot from Ruger’s ear. He jumped and jerked out of the way far too late, but the bullet hadn’t been aimed to hit flesh, just pride.
“Now let her go. ”
Ruger’s fingers were digging so tightly into Val’s throat that she saw sparks dance in her eyes and the world was taking on a drunken, swimmy feel to it. She was vaguely aware that it was Crow there, but her shocked and oxygen-?deprived brain was losing its ability to care.
Crow fired another shot, closer to Ruger’s head. Ruger didn’t even flinch this time; instead he pulled Val’s head up level with his, lifting her onto her toes, using her battered, weeping, strangling face to block his own.
Crow took another step forward, steadying the gun with both hands. Now he was no more than ten feet from Val and Ruger. “That was the last warning shot, Bozo. This baby carries fifteen shots. The next one’s going to go up your nose. ” Even with Val as a shield, Crow knew he could clip the man in the arm or leg, but he didn’t want to gamble. He read the darkening of her face and saw the horrible tension in the hand that was clamped around her throat and felt fear and fury lash at him from within. Fear churned his gut into a greasy mush and despite the rain his mouth was bone dry. He swallowed, trying to lubricate his throat.
“I said, let her—”
At that moment, Ruger lunged forward and shoved Val right at Crow. He shoved her with all his force and she went flying. Crow barely had time to bring the gun up, to wrench the barrel away from her. He tried to step forward to catch her, but just as forcefully as Ruger had shoved her he had also thrown himself forward. He used her as a ram as well as a shield, and slammed into Crow with freight-?train force. Val’s released throat opened as the two bigger male bodies caught her in the press and she screamed.
Suddenly Crow had too much to do. He tried to catch Val as she crumpled, screaming, to the mud; he tried to pull her away from the madman; he
tried to bring his pistol to bear; he tried to evade the man’s rush.
In all of these things, he failed utterly. Fear of hitting Val and fear of the man himself made Crow hesitate a fraction of a second too long.
Ruger was on him with all of his terrible force and speed and rage bursting forth. He trampled Val as he leaped at Crow, fists swinging. Ruger knew he had no time or chance to wrestle the gun out of this man’s hand, so he swatted it away, sending it sailing end over end into rain and muddy darkness. It struck the side of the car with a muffled metallic clunk! His forward rush sent Crow tumbling backward, and Ruger rode him down like a surfer setting for a wave. Crow landed on his back and slid, and before the slide had spent itself, Ruger was smashing him with rock-?hard fists.
Karl Ruger had only lost one fight in his life. He had been eleven at the time and a sixteen-?year-?old kid had plain whipped the tar and tears out of him. The teenager had beat him so bad that young Ruger had lain in the street, crying, peeing in his pants, trying to stanch the bright red blood that blossomed from his nose. The older kid had laughed at him and kicked him when he was down, and other kids, most of them older, but some of them his own friends, had watched and laughed.
That was the only fight Ruger had ever lost.
A week later he pushed the sixteen-?year-?old under the iron wheels of the elevated train, watching with bruised eyes as the bully’s body was torn and reduced to red rags.
Since then, no one had ever beaten Ruger. No one had ever even stood up to him for very long. It was the ferocity of his attack. He went into a fight at full speed, not building to it like most people do. Every blow was backed with a deep knowledge of how to hit, and where, and how to hit hard and fast and often. He’d learned that in South Philly bars, in a dozen jails, in back alleys, and in a score of fights he himself had started just to test himself, to learn how good he was. It mattered to him that he was good enough to survive anything that came down the pike. Anything. If a person stood up to him, no matter how tough, how big, how well armed, Ruger took him down. All the way down. Down to blood and death and closed coffins.
He went after Crow like that, and tonight he had all his frustrations and disappointments boiling inside him, putting more steel in his fists, stoking the fires of his rage.
Crow toppled under him, and Ruger straddled his waist, locking his legs around Crow’s hips for balance, and began the work of beating this man to death. Blood burst from Crow’s eyebrow and nose, his cheek ruptured and tore, and the fists never stopped. They kept hitting and hitting.
Then suddenly Ruger was falling!
Crow had brought his knees up, planting his shoes flat on the muddy ground, and then with all his strength and speed, had arched his back and twisted. Ruger was lifted like a rodeo rider on a bucking bull, and as Crow twisted, Ruger’s weight pitched him sideways. As they fell, Crow balled up his right fist so that the secondary knuckle of his forefinger protruded, and as they landed he punched Ruger once, twice very hard in the very top of his thigh.
The pain was so intense that it made Ruger howl.
Snarling in pain and surprise, Ruger kicked himself free and rolled catlike to his feet, and Crow came up off the ground at him. Crow faked high with both hands as if to tackle Ruger around the middle and then dropped suddenly to one knee and hooked a sharp uppercut into the tender flesh on the inside of Ruger’s thigh, missing his groin by half an inch. Ruger’s leg buckled and twisted, and he went back down.
Crow leaped at him, but Ruger kicked out as he fell and the thick heel of his boot caught Crow in the chest and using his leg like a strut, he threw Crow over his head.
Crow tucked and rolled and was on his feet first, spinning and crouching to face Ruger.
Ruger staggered to his feet, ignoring the pain in his leg. His hands opened and closed, opened and closed as if he were squeezing something that would scream.
Ruger’s eyes narrowed as he moved. Suddenly it had become a different fight. From a murderous attack—the kind of attack that had worked for him so many times in the past—he now found himself in a real fight. Whoever this guy was, he could fight, and in a twisted way Ruger was actually enjoying it.
They circled each other for a few seconds, making tentative half lunges, feinting, dodging half-?thrown blows.
It was Ruger who made the move, and he made it as fast as the lightning that lit the sky. He used a variation on Crow’s trick and faked high, then dipped and dove for Crow’s legs. The move was an old favorite of his: wrap the legs just above the knees and bear forward. The poor sap goes down hard on his coccyx with two sprained knees to boot.
Crow stepped into the rush, and as Ruger’s arms closed like a crab’s pincers around his legs, he punched downward in as hard and true a vertical line as a drill press, driving the two big knuckles of his right hand between Ruger’s shoulder blades, dropping all his body weight with it to try and break the man’s back. It was a devastating blow, but the mud was soft and Ruger was hard. Still, the air went out of his lungs for a moment and he tasted mud in his mouth.
Crow stood over him for a moment, chest heaving, heart hammering from fear as much as from exertion. He had never seen anyone move so fast or hit so hard or fight with such animal ferocity. He risked a glance at Val, who was on her knees, one hand massaging her throat, he face slack with dizziness and nausea. He tried to give her a reassuring smile, and even opened his mouth to say something, but Ruger abruptly reached up and punched him right in the balls.
