Shadow Box. James Axler

the dancing girl off him, slapping her to one side as he stood. “Let’s get out of here,” he said as he turned to his companions, who were warily getting up from the floor. Even with their eyes closed and their heads turned away, the effects of the flash-bang in the little room had still been strong. Heaven only knew what Carnack’s crew had to have been thinking right then.

      At the door, the velvet-coated Señor Smarts was reaching for his face, his tiny handgun forgotten as tears streamed from his eyes. “I’m blind, I cannot see,” the effete Mexican wailed.

      Grant stepped across to him and punched him solidly in the jaw, knocking the man backward into the wall hidden behind the drapes. Smarts slammed against it with the back of his head and crashed down to the floor, unconscious.

      A second later, alerted by the noise of the flash-bang, the two burly guards from the anteroom stormed in through the part in the curtains. Grant dropped to the floor and angled a swift leg sweep, knocking both of them onto their backs. He lunged at the closer man, left hand held flat, and rammed him in the throat, bruising his windpipe and sending him into instant unconsciousness.

      The second guard struggled to pull his gun out from under him and began to raise it in Grant’s direction, but Brigid was already beside him. She kicked her right leg out and up, knocking the pistol from the man’s grip. He yelped in pain as the gun disappeared over his shoulder and through the curtain back into the anteroom. Then Grant swung a powerful fist into the man’s face, crushing his nose in an explosion of blood. The man shook his head, droplets of blood spraying left and right, struggling to get to his feet so that he could take on Grant. The ex-Mag drove another jab at the man’s face and he slumped back, his head lolling on his neck, unconscious like his companion.

      Meanwhile, Kane had walked across to Tom Carnack, who was doubled over and clawing at his face with one hand, tears streaming from his eyes. Kane grabbed the Kalashnikov midway along its barrel and yanked it from the man’s grip with a single, mighty heave. At the same time, Brigid and Grant disarmed the two other blinded guards.

      “Okay, Tom and Tom’s people,” Kane announced. “I want you all to listen up. See, you really did make a mistake. We’re not Magistrates come to haul you in. But we’re also not the kind of people you can just screw over like this. So now we’re negotiating ourselves some new terms.”

      Carnack’s face was bright red, and his bloodshot eyes were open but unfocused. “Go screw yourself,” he snarled.

      Kane swung the heavy barrel of the Kalashnikov into the man’s face, connecting with a loud crack and knocking the smaller man onto his back. “I don’t think we need any more of that attitude,” Kane spit. “Here’s how it’s going down. You, me and my associates are going to walk out of here together, and you’re going to take us to wherever it is you have the hybrid DNA and the birthing pod stashed. And in return for handing them over, gratis, I am going to be very generous and let you live, on the basis that you close up shop here in Hope. Okay?”

      “What are you?” Carnack growled, wiping blood from his mouth where the blow from the Kalashnikov had loosened a tooth. “Some kind of joker? You’re surrounded by a whole bloody ville of my men. I ain’t going to give you squat, buddy. Squat, got it?”

      Kane smiled humorlessly. “If you tip-off your men, if you so much as breathe funny once we leave this room, I will shoot you in the head. You understand?”

      “Do I look like an idiot? You’d never get out of Hope alive, Magistrate,” Carnack stated bitterly.

      “Ninety seconds ago you had a gun pointed at my crotch and your gal pal here was about to take my eyes out,” Kane told him. “I’m thinking that this here is a step up. Now, on your feet, we’re leaving.”

      Tom Carnack spit a gob of blood to the floor as he slowly lifted himself from the disarrayed cushions. Kane noticed there was a single broken tooth shining amid the splash of blood.

      Grant slipped through the curtain back into the anteroom while Brigid kicked back her foot until the heel of her left boot snapped free. Kane looked at her and she shrugged.

      “I’m not running around on one heel,” she told him. “That’s a sure ticket to spinal damage.”

      “I didn’t say anything.” He held the Kalashnikov steady on Carnack.

      Then he raised his voice, calling to Grant, “Everything okay out there?”

      Grant’s head popped through the drapes a moment later, his brow furrowed with concern. “I got into the trunk but the kid’s disappeared.”

      Carnack nodded knowingly. “Benqhil has gone for help. You’re dead men,” he snarled.

      “Yeah, pal,” Kane said, dismissing him, “heard it all before. Distribute the weapons and let’s move, Grant,” Kane urged, shoving Carnack toward the rift in the drapes.

      As they left the room, the dancing girl writhed on the floor, still clawing at her eyes. “Did you hear? They’re taking Tom. Are you all buffoons? Stop them.”

      Her pleas went unacknowledged—the guards in the room were either unconscious or still blind and deaf from the flash-bang.

      Outside, the chest on the floor of the anteroom stood open, its lock smashed in two where Grant had either pulled or kicked it apart. Grant handed Brigid her compact TP-9, and she checked its ammo clip was still in place before she led the way into the street outside. The TP-9 was a midsized semiautomatic weapon, roughly the length of Brigid’s arm from wrist to elbow. The bulky pistol had a grip just off center beneath the barrel, and a covered targeting scope across the top for pinpoint work. The whole unit was finished in molded, matte black.

      Grant clipped the sheathed knife back on his boot and shoved the corroded Police Special into an inside pocket of his black leather duster, keeping the Heckler & Koch in his right hand. He offered the .44 Magnum weapon to Kane, who shook his head.

      “Seems a shame to lose the Kalashnikov,” Kane told him, “but it would be bastard conspicuous out on the street.”

      While Grant held both pistols on their blinded prisoner, Kane removed the clip from the AK-47 and pocketed it before tossing aside the empty rifle.

      “They’ve probably got spare ammo,” Grant warned.

      “Of course they have,” Kane agreed as he took the .44 Magnum weapon from his partner, “but they’ll be blind for a couple more minutes yet, and I intend to be long gone by the time they’ve reloaded it.” With that, he shoved a firm hand between Carnack’s shoulder blades and pushed him through the curtain into the tight alleyway after Brigid. “Keep going forward, fast as you can,” Kane told him, “I’ll tell you when to stop.”

      “I can’t see anything, you idiot,” Carnack screamed at him as he batted at the wall in front of his face.

      “So, run your hand along the wall if it helps,” Kane suggested. “Just keep moving.”

      Brigid Baptiste waited for them in an alcove across the main street at the end of the alleyway, the TP-9 cradled in her hands, partially hidden by the shadows. The whole shantytown reminded the three of them of the Tartarus Pits back in Cobaltville, the ghetto level that sat at the base of every ville structure, both metaphorically and physically, supplying cheap labor and offering dire warning to those who disobeyed the baron.

      The whole ville stank of human waste, and people watched warily as they made their way into the light. None of the street people looked well fed. By contrast, the physically powerful Cerberus warriors had to have looked like gods to their eyes.

      “We got a way out of here?” Grant asked as he mentally checked off the people milling in the street, reassuring himself that no one was taking any undue interest in their progress.

      “Our best bet is to head for the docks and pick up a boat there,” Brigid said.

      “Do you know where you’re going?” Kane asked her.

      Brigid smiled, tapping the side of her head with her empty