Before her, the huge, muscle-bound Zandor was strutting proudly down the midway. He obliged children by letting them feel his muscles in the hope their parents would come to the entertainment tent, where he performed his act. Patty knew the steel bars the strongman bent were the real thing.
She concentrated on taking tickets, but once the ride started, she let her eyes roam. So far she hadn’t spotted anyone who looked suspicious. She took a deep breath. The chances of her being spotted had been reduced significantly now that it was getting dark.
A pop! sounded suddenly; behind her the Ferris wheel ground squeakily to a halt. A few of the people caught near the top screamed. Patty shuddered. Talk about bad timing! The damn thing had broken down, and now practically everyone at the carnival was looking in her direction.
“A cable broke loose down below,” the man running the ride told her. “I can see it. I’ll try to fix it.”
The man grabbed his tool belt and moved off toward the wheel itself, dropping down below it to get to the works and the faulty cable. The racket made by the stranded riders continued to attract bystanders. Although the true villain was the broken cable, accusations were hurled at her — in Portuguese, to boot — which she barely spoke at all.
She saw John’s face in the crowd. He was coming toward her, to rescue her from this mess! Then she noticed he was walking without his cane. Two men on either side of him were supporting him. The men were smiling. John wasn’t. They’ve got me, she realized, actually more worried about John than herself. They’ve got me….
Blaine had been walking about for twenty minutes when he first noticed the ticket taker at the Ferris wheel. He looked away, but something made him gaze back her way. The hair was the wrong color, the age, too, but something, something…
Could this be Patty?
He wasn’t sure until he saw the two men moving the woman’s way, dragging a third between them. Da Sa’s soldiers had one captive in hand and were now heading for the woman.
“Now!” McCracken ordered, rushing up to Reverend Jim. “Now!”
Hope’s hands jammed into his pockets and emerged with some fireworks and a lighter.
“Come on!” Blaine urged, just ahead of the first hiss, as flame met fuse, and Reverend Jim tossed the initial trio forward.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
McCracken shoved him aside. “Keep your eyes on the boys, Reverend. Keep them safe.”
“Where are you going?”
Blaine looked back one last time before sprinting for the Ferris wheel and the men approaching Patty Hunsecker.
“To work,” he said.
The popping sounds cost Patty a heartbeat, as John and the two men holding him captive neared the platform. The Ferris wheel had started to spin again, and behind her customers were piling out. She stood frozen, unable to move.
Turn myself in and maybe they won’t hurt him. What choice do I have?
That thought had been barely formed when she saw the shape whirling toward the platform, just to the rear of the trio approaching her. The night was dark, and he was darker, but Patty saw the beard, recognized him as his hands shot out in the direction of the men holding John Lynnford.
The goons holding the man with the limp never even turned. Blaine’s approach angled slightly from the left. He grabbed the one on that side by the scruff of his collar and heaved backward. When the man resisted, Blaine went with the motion and smashed him facefirst against the steel railing meant to keep eager patrons back. The one on the right had turned by then, the gun that had been pressed against Lynnford’s side coming up but not getting there before Blaine smashed the whiskey bottle against his face. It shattered against bone and flesh and the man reeled backward, crumpling, his cheeks and nose a spider web of blood.
“Come on!” he yelled to Patty.
Instead she leaned over to help John, who had been thrown down in the struggle.
“There are others!” she screamed at Blaine.
“I know,” Blaine said, ducking the gunfire that pulsed their way, bodies toppling in the path ahead of them. “The kids didn’t have enough time!” he shouted. “They didn’t have enough time!”
The plan McCracken had outlined to the boys was risky at best. Once they heard the sound of the firecrackers, they were to move in pairs on targets chosen by themselves. Not to lift wallets from pockets, though, not tonight. Tonight their targets were the pistols the enemy force undoubtedly wore beneath their jackets or clipped to their belts. Blaine had hoped to give them plenty of leeway. To pick and choose the time after he spotted Patty. As it turned out, he’d given them a minute at most, which meant few if any had completed their assigned task.
As he grabbed for Patty and Lynnford, he would have been surprised to learn that six of the fourteen additional gunmen had already been stripped of their pistols. Others either were equipped with minimachine guns or wore their pistols too well secured to make off with. But for these, the boys had an answer as well.
McCracken had expressly forbidden them to use the guns they had pilfered; nothing could have seemed worse to him than turning children into killers. But they had brought an assortment of other weapons that worked just fine. When a number of the still-armed gunmen drew their weapons, the boys were all over them with spray-paint cans, distorting their vision and confounding their aim. This much was accomplished ahead of the initial bursts of fire. At the sound of the gunshots, the boys scattered among the rest of the patrons along the midway, which had been turned into chaos.
A stray bullet caught John Lynnford in the shoulder as Blaine and Patty helped him backward. McCracken heard him gasp; he shielded the man with his own body as they dragged him into the cover provided by the guts of the Ferris wheel.
In the process, McCracken realized angrily that some of the boys had totally disregarded his orders and were in the process of firing back at the gunmen. For a time they held their own, but now those of Da Sa’s soldiers who had been stopped temporarily by the spray paint were joining the battle, shots firing wildly in all directions. Bodies surged down and through the midway, changing directions from one burst of fire into another. Booths toppled as patrons sought refuge. McCracken watched as a bald strongman lifted a gunman brandishing an Uzi up overhead and tossed him effortlessly into a neon sign advertising the TEST YOUR STRENGTH booth. Bulbs popped and crackled. The bell at the top chimed as the gunman crashed into the apparatus and tumbled it with him.
“Zandor!” Patty cried happily.
“Stay here!” Blaine ordered.
“Where are you going?”
“Out there to do what I do best, lady. And do it fast.”
McCracken had just slid out from the makeshift hiding place when five trucks roared onto the scene with gunfire marking their path.
He should have figured the opposition would have left some reinforcements back a bit — to be used only if needed, like now. The trucks roared onto the scene. The gunfire surging from them was indiscriminate, and bodies fell everywhere, some hit, some trying to find cover.
Blaine’s first order of business was to get a gun. He had scarcely left the cover of the Ferris wheel when he spotted the dark figure of Reverend Jim waving to him with pistol in hand. In a crouch, he rushed toward Hope, only to be caught in the spill of a truck’s headlights, making him an easy target for the gunmen on board. At the last possible instant, a shape lunged between the truck and him. The angle allowed Blaine to see the young American-looking boy named Edson, who had been part of that morning’s demonstration back at the slum, firing straight at the truck. It veered and crashed into the Ferris wheel, tearing away some of its supports and forcing it into a dangerous list.