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Landed on the good leg in a three-point stance, solid hickory in his right hand.
The gunner turned his head and got a brief look at his own death before the claw end of the legworm pick did its work.
The terrible exhilaration took over.
Valentine shoved the body aside with one hard pull. He scooted forward and tried to ignore the twitches of the dying man.
The driver turned, perhaps to point to Duvalier, hanging off the side of the front armored car's spotlight by one thin hand, the other unwilling to relinquish its grip on her sword hilt.
Valentine smashed him hard with the hammer end of the legworm pick. A reflex, perhaps, but the driver stood on the brakes. Valentine would have gone off without the claw end of the pick, which latched on to the driver's hatch.
He pushed the mess aside and sat in the driver's seat.
David Valentine wasn't comfortable behind any wheel. Machines bothered him, and the bigger and faster they were the more likely it seemed they'd get out from under his control and strike something. He pressed a pedal and the armored car slowed, another one sped it up.
The armored car slalomed as Valentine oversteered, heart pounding and the scent of blood in his nostrils.
His eye caught a reflected glint from the vehicle ahead. The driver there knew his job, and had set up some kind of safety mirror to keep an eye on the following vehicle.
He cranked his vehicle to the side of the road, into the thick brush. Duvalier was torn free as though by a dozen grasping hands.
Valentine found the brake and slowed the vehicle, but he still felt a thump as he struck Duvalier.
Heart pounding high and hard, Valentine halted the armored car and raised himself out of the seat.
Duvalier, her face a road map of scratches and wounds, grinned from behind a torn lip.
"You brake for redheads?" she asked.
"Thank God," Valentine managed.
"For inventing traction," Duvalier said.
Valentine pushed the vehicle into gear. "Get in the gunner-"
"No, I'll drive. You shoot."
"Catch up to him!" Valentine shouted, glancing through the armored glass. No wonder the driver was driving from the higher seat, the thin slits didn't give much visibility, and what there was had leaves and branches latticed across it.
Valentine went under to reach the gunner's seat in the armored car, noting that you could fit perhaps four men in the compartment between the driver and gunner positions. There were firing slots for them. Bags of gear were netted on the floor and against the ceiling.
Valentine saw a box of grenades and took a couple. He sat in the bloodstained seat and evaluated the weapon.
You pivoted it with a pair of pedals, and once pointed in the right direction, the gimbal allowed the gunner about a twenty-degree field of fire.
He saw the first vehicle with its dead gunner. Its driver was better than Duvalier; he was hurtling down the road, swerving around the bigger tree trunks, sending a constant hail of clipped-off branches back at the followers. He must be aware something awful was up.
Duvalier had to thump along in his wake as best as she could.
Valentine tried a burst, then a second. The bullets made a hole or two, but he could see no other effect.
Their quarry swerved and Duvalier struck a red oak trunk with a glancing blow, tearing off a sheet-sized piece of bark and knocking Valentine out of the seat. The Georgia driver had waited to the last second to swerve around it and only Duvalier's keyed-up reflexes prevented them from crashing into it.
No good throwing grenades in this mess. Valentine climbed out of the cupola, flexed his fingers and tested the skin on his hands for machine oil.
He crouched next to Duvalier.
"Get right up behind him!" he shouted in her ear.
