Jonnie couldn't believe his eyes.
It was Bittie MacLeod! He was carrying something in his hand. A crop? A switch?
“Bittie!” shouted Jonnie in alarm.
The boy's voice floated back to him, carried by the wind: "I’ll get the horses, Sir Jonnie. It 's my job!” Bittie was racing up on the
“Come back!” shouted Jonnie. But the throb of the drone and a rumble of thunder in the mountains drowned his voice.
The Russian had had trouble getting his truck level. It had tilted on a boulder. But now he flung open the door and shouted toward Bittie, "Bitushka! Astanovka!(Halt!)" A sudden spurt of wind and the drone muted his words. "Vazvratnay! (Return!)”
The boy ran on. He was almost to Dancer to free the lead rope.
“Lord god, Bittie, come back!” screamed Jonnie.
It was too late.
From behind a boulder, just beyond the horse, a Brigante stood up, raised his submachine gun, and fired at full burst directly into the stomach of the running boy.
Bittie was slammed back, pummeled by bullets that drove his body into the air. He crashed to earth.
The Russian was running forward, trying to unsling the assault rifle from his back, trying to get to Bittie.
Two more Brigantes rose into view in different places and three Thompsons roared. The Russian was cut to pieces.
Jonnie went berserk!
The two Brigante guards stood no chance. With one backward stride, Jonnie was behind them. He sent them slamming together like egg shells.
He caught the gun of one as that Brigante went down and stamped his heel into the side of the mercenary's skull, crushing it.
He reversed the gun and battered the other Brigante with bullets from a range of three inches.
Jonnie dropped on one knee, turned the Thompson on its side so its kick would fan the bullets, and blew the two last Brigantes who had risen to bits.
He spun to find the one who had shot Bittie. That one was not in sight.
Five Brigantes rushed from a door in the compound and sent a hail of lead in his direction.
The Thompson he had used was jammed. It would not recock. He threw it down and picked up the other one.
Totally unmindful of the slugs ripping up the ground, running low and firing as he went, he raced forward toward the fallen Russian.
He knelt behind the body, turned the Thompson on its side, and fanned a storm of bullets into the five. They crashed back against the compound, bodies jerking as a second spray of slugs hit them before they could even collapse.
Jonnie got the assault rifle off the Russian and yanked its slide to get a bullet in the chamber.
He was after the Brigante who had shot Bittie.
To his left and behind him eight mercenaries who had been lying in wait in the ravine rushed into view.
Jonnie whirled. Then he stood there braced until the last one was out of the ravine.
They came on firing. Jonnie raised the assault rifle to his shoulder and took careful aim. He shot the last in the line first so the others would not see him go down and then fanned a barrage of shots from there to the first one in the lead.
The squad came sprawling forward in an avalanche of dead men.
Down in the garage, Lars heard the firing. He sprinted up toward the plateau. Then he heard the assault rifle's sharper bark racketing against the compound. Instantly he knew that Jonnie was not dead. No Brigantes had assault rifles. This intermediate ammunition, halfway between a pistol and a rifle, was far more accurate than a Thompson. He knew. He had tried to get some and he could not. He halted.
There was another prolonged burst from the assault rifle. The heavier staccato thud of the submachine guns had dwindled. Lars suddenly hit upon a better course of action for himself.
He scuttled backward into the garage. He sprinted into its depths. He found an old wrecked car and he crawled under the heaps of damaged body plates stripped from it. A far-off hammer of the assault rifle again. He burrowed deeper, sobbing with terror.
Jonnie raced over to the side to get a view behind the boulder, still trying to nail the mercenary who had shot Bittie.
A group of Brigantes sprinted into sight on the other side of the compound, firing submachine guns as they came.
Jonnie braced himself on a rock, fired over its top, and riddled them.
Terl in his cage had dropped down below the parapet that held the upright bars, lying flat to be out of the path of bullets. He raised himself cautiously now. It was the animal! He ducked back. At any moment now he supposed the animal would charge over here and riddle him. It 's what Terl would have done. He wondered whether he could get to the hidden explosive charge in the cave and make a grenade out of it, and then he saw he would expose himself if he did so and abandoned the idea. He lay there, panting a little in fear.
Taking advantage of trees and boulders, running from one to the next with deadly purpose, Jonnie was still trying to get the Brigante who had shot Bittie.
The wind was rising. Thunder was sounding amid the gunfire. The slow-flying drone was very near overhead now.
Where, where was that Brigante?
Two mercenaries jumped into view in a door and bore down on him with Thompsons. A bullet flicked the side of his neck.
Jonnie pounded them into rolling balls of dead flesh with the assault rifle.
He snapped in a fresh magazine from the bag. The ape he was looking for must have taken refuge back of a wrecked tractor. Jonnie probed it with bullets fired to ricochet behind it.
Running, he rushed it, firing as he went.
There he was!
The Brigante ran away. Jonnie sighted in on him. The Brigante turned and started to shoot.
Jonnie sliced him in two with the assault rifle.
The sound of the drone grew less. There was no thunder at the moment. Save for the moan of the wind it seemed strangely quiet.
Jonnie put another magazine in the assault rifle. He quickly walked over the ground, glancing at one or another of the strewn dead.
A mercenary was crawling, trying to get his hands on a Thompson. Jonnie put a burst into him.
He waited. There seemed to be no sound or movement in the area that would be dangerous.
Dancer had broken free in the firing and fled down the slope.
Jonnie held the assault rifle ready in the crook on his arm. His battle rage died.
He went down the slope to Bittie.
Chapter 9
The little boy lay on the blood-stained ground, his head back and in the direction of the lower slope.
Jonnie had been certain he was dead. Nobody could take that many submachine gun slugs in the middle of his body– and a small body– and live.
He felt awful. He knelt beside the torn boy. He was going to pick the body up and he put his hand under the head and lifted it slightly.
There was a light flutter of breath!
Bittie's eyes trembled open. They were glazed in shock but they saw Jonnie, knew him.
Bittie was moving his lips. A very faint whisper of a voice. Jonnie bent closer to hear.
"I...I wasn't a very good squire...was I...Sir Jonnie.”
Then tears began to roll sideways from the boy's eyes.
Jonnie reacted, incredulous! The child thought he had failed.
Jonnie tried to get it out, tried to speak. He couldn't make his voice work. He was trying to tell Bittie, no, no, no, Bittie. You were a great squire.
You have just saved my life! But he couldn't speak.
The shock was wearing off in the boy; the numbness that had held back the pain vanished.
Bittie's hand, which had risen to clutch Jonnie's wrist, suddenly clenched bruisingly in a spasm of agony. The body did a wrenching twist. Bittie's head fell to the side.
He was dead. No heartbeat. No breath. No pulse.