The sniper kicked Johnny Murk. As the mogul recoiled away, he settled back into position and looked again through his scope. Actually, his target — he never thought of people he was shooting at as people — had found a good position, by luck or happenstance or … skill? The kid had made an excellent shot, 312 yards. Wounded his target but didn’t kill; still, a fine shot for open sights.
Harrison Douglas lay writhing in the snow, which was three or four inches deep. His wound, bleeding from both the front and back of his arm, was beginning to hurt terribly. Maybe the bone was broken. He tried to move his hand and couldn’t. He moaned softly. Johnny Murk and the rifleman ignored him.
As he lay behind the pile of stones, Rip Cantrell reloaded his rifle. He filled up the tubular magazine and made sure he had a live round in the chamber. He left the rifle cocked.
He was safe here behind this rock pile, he thought. Safe enough, anyway. That sniper couldn’t see him.
With the rifle reloaded and ready, he lay waiting, watching the ledge above him. They would have to come over that, he thought. Rappel over the edge and try to get onto this Anasazi ledge. There was only the narrowest of ledges leading away from the cliff dwelling behind him, a path so narrow that only a suicidal fool would try it. The far end of the ledge ended in a sheer wall; a great slab of the old rock had slipped away sometime in the ancient past, carrying the old Indian trail, if there had been one, with it into the great canyon.
“Come on,” he whispered. “Come and get it.”
A bullet slapped into the rock above him. Then, fifteen seconds later, another. They were trying to make him keep his head down. The bad guys were coming …
Above him, a rope came snaking out into space, then fell to hang vertically. Then a second one, a bit closer to the sniper. Then a third.
16
Adam Solo was overwhelmed by the moment. All his long life had led to this: He was dying, and these three earth people were risking their lives for him anyway. The flat crack of Rip’s .25–35 Winchester had died away, as had the booming reports of whoever was shooting at him. The sound of the bullets smacking into the rock was quite audible here in this sanctuary.
“I’m dying,” he whispered to Egg Cantrell, who was checking his bandages.
“We all are,” Egg shot back. “Sooner or later.”
“I’m a sooner.”
“Charley,” Egg said. The female test pilot rose from her position at the window and came over to where Egg was tending to Solo. “How much longer until the saucer gets here?”
“Perhaps ten minutes. I don’t know exactly, Uncle Egg. It’s on its way, I think.”
“What are you going to do with it when it arrives?”
“I’m going to use the antimatter weapon on these poor, misguided fools. Introduce them to the wages of sin.”
“You are going to kill them,” Egg said flatly.
Charley’s head bobbed affirmatively. “They are going to find out rather quickly if there is life after death.”
“Charley, Charley, Charley…” Adam Solo whispered. “I’ve killed a lot of men. All were trying to kill me. But I’ve had to carry it for all these years. Sometimes at night I can see their faces, see their death agonies, hear their screams. After all these years.”
“I’m not going to live as long as you have,” Charley said, frowning. “What do you want us to do? Let them kill us? Take your body away and dissect it so those fools can get filthy rich making eternal-life pills? I don’t think so.”
Solo swallowed three or four times. His mouth seemed unnaturally dry. “I hope Rip understands the quality of his lady.”
“By God,” she said fiercely, “he’d better.”
After the three ropes came over the overhang, Rip waited expectantly. His hands were sweaty despite the cool temperature of the day. The sun shone brightly on the ropes, a nice contrast to the shadow under the overhanging cliff. Rip didn’t notice. Nor did he pay much attention to the spectacular view, the vastness of the canyon, the shadows and sunlight on the rocks, or the narrow gorge far away and below where the river ran hidden from sight. He waited for the ropes to twitch, to show that someone was hooking up to them.
They hung lifeless, stirred only by the gentle breeze.
A sound behind him — he turned and pointed the rifle all in one motion. A man was there on that narrow ledge, and Rip was just a split second faster. He merely pointed the rifle and pulled the trigger.
The impact of the bullet made a whacking sound as it hit the man chest-high. The man teetered for a second, trying to regain his balance as Rip worked the lever. He didn’t need another shot. The gunman toppled over the edge and fell, his submachine gun hammering. He was twenty or thirty feet down when Rip realized that the man must have been wearing a bulletproof vest. Still, the impact of the .25 caliber bullet had pushed him off the ledge to his death.
Rip didn’t watch the man hit hundreds of feet below. He was already concentrating on the ropes.
The far one. A pair of feet came into view. Rip aimed at a foot, snugged that front bead down into the notch and squeezed the trigger. A scream. Now the man’s crotch and torso fell into view. He was slipping on the rope, which apparently went through a carabiner ring. Didn’t have the strength to hold on. Down he came, his submachine gun dangling uselessly.
The man on the rope fought to regain control. Another bulletproof vest. No, he couldn’t hold on to the rope, which ran through the ring until the man hit the end of the rope and kept on going.
A bullet tagged Rip on his neck. He whirled and fell on his back. It stung like hell, and he couldn’t move his head. He reached and felt — couldn’t help himself. His hand came back bloody. Well, if the slug severed a vein he was going to pass out in seconds and bleed to death.
He didn’t. Gritted his teeth and said a few dirty words he knew while watching the ropes.
That damn sniper!
Maybe he thought he killed me. Or disabled me. I went down pretty quick.
Here they came, two more men down the ropes. He didn’t wait but shot them when their legs came into view. One man lost his grip and went zipping down the rope into space. The other hung on for dear life. When he got stabilized, he tried to get his submachine gun into action. Rip hesitated — if he wasn’t careful he was going to run out of bullets — and was rewarded with a shower of slugs that he miraculously avoided by rolling behind a rock.
The fool used his entire magazine, spraying slugs without a target. Rip risked a peek. The guy was dangling there and trying to change magazines with one hand. He was only perhaps fifty feet from Rip now.
“You have a choice,” Rip called. “You can tell them to haul you up or I’ll shoot you again. Which will it be?”
The guy dropped the submachine gun and it dangled on a strap. His leg was turning red. Maybe an artery severed. He spoke into a mike arranged on some sort of helmet, and the people on top began hauling up the rope.
If the guy doesn’t pass out before they pull him up, maybe he’ll live, Rip thought. He did pass out, though. Lots of blood on the injured leg. He lost his grip and began sliding down the rope, faster and faster. He was in free fall when he ran out of rope.
He hit about two hundred feet below on the scree fan and began rolling. Rip closed his eyes and felt his neck. Ai yi yi.
Johnny Murk’s satellite telephone rang. He looked at the number. The Space Command spy.
“Yeah.”
“Mr. Murkowsky, that saucer is coming back. It’s reentering the atmosphere, and from its trajectory, it looks like it’s headed right for the Grand Canyon.”