"What are they doing there?" Gadgets asked.

"It says they wanted a quiet place for intensive talks."

"Ha!" Lyons laughed bitterly. He turned to Konzaki. "What I want to know — did you put all this together in an hour? Are you a magician?"

"No." Konzaki spoke with infinite sadness. "I assembled several groups of weapons, each group suitable for different locales in the world, and different circumstances. I am not a magician, nor can I foretell the future, Mr. Lyons. I simply read the newspaper. I knew it would only be a matter of time before these weapons were needed."

5

Chris Davis lay in the dark, listening to Mrs. Shepard comfort her husband. Mr. Shepard, though battered and bleeding, sometimes doubling over with pain in his gut, had been silent until he slipped into sleep. Then he moaned and cried out. His wife held his head, smoothed his hair, pulled blankets around him.

He startled awake, and stared into the darkness around him. "It's okay," his wife whispered. "We're all right, it was only a nightmare..."

"You mean what I dreamed?" he asked her. "Or what's happening? Kid," he called, and Chris jumped up, "get me a bucket or something so I don't mess up your dad's study."

Mr. Shepard had suggested to the boys that they all sleep in the one room. As the den opened to the patio, their voices or flashlights would not betray them to Outlaws patrolling the street. If the Outlaws fired into the house, then two walls and Mr. Davis' shelves of law books protected them.

And they could watch and listen for movement in the backyard while one of them stood guard in the front room. Chris took a towel and a bowl to Mrs. Shepard, then joined Roger and their friend Jack in the front room.

He saw Jack smoking a joint. "Man! This ain't no party. You could get killed."

"Hey, man," Jack laughed. "This is the best party yet. We're going to kill some bikers. They show up, they die! Bang, bang."

"I told him," Roger said, shaking his head.

"Yeah, well I'm telling him again. Listen to this, jerk. If the bikers out there see that joint or your lighter, they're going to know someone's in here."

"Yeah. Well, okay. I'm going to catch some sleep. Wake me up when you see some targets." He blew smoke at them and returned to the den.

"They don't call him Jack-off for nothing," whispered Chris.

"I wish you hadn't given him that gun," said Roger.

"He's a jerk but he is on our side. We need all the help we can get. I think Mr. Shepard's going to die."

"I thought he only got punched out."

"Nah, he's all broken up inside. He's trying to be cool in front of his wife, but I think he's puking blood. If he can't get to a hospital, he could bleed to death in his guts..."

"Up there! Bikers! At the end of the street." Roger pointed up the block, to where their street ended in a three-way intersection with a cross street.

The bikers went into the house. Chris and Roger watched the lights go on. Shadows crowded one window, the window opened. From it could be seen the entire length of their street.

After the bikers left the house, the lights went out. One of the them pushed a motorcycle deep into the driveway, where it could not be seen from the street. Then the bikers left.

"One of them's stayed in that house," Roger said. "Watching the street."

"I'll get Mr. Shepard." Chris went into the study, and returned with the shaky adult.

"How you feeling, Mr. Shepard?" Roger asked.

"Fantastic." His face was too swollen for a grin. "So what's the problem?"

"That house over there," Roger pointed. "The Outlaws left a man in it to watch the street. They've got us trapped."

"You said you had it worse than this, Mr. Shepard. Were you in Vietnam?" Chris asked.

"I did all my fighting on Wilshire Boulevard and in front of the Pentagon in Washington. The name's Glen..."

"Your wife said you were in the army."

"They drafted me. It was prison or the Airborne. My mom and dad talked me into going, said Vietnam was all over, why not do my duty? Well, I went through basic, advanced infantry training, special weapons school, then they sent me to school to learn Laotian. That was in 1972, and they're teaching me to speak the Laos languages?"

Glen warmed to his story. His wounds had put him in the right mood for it.

"I told the Commandant of Fort Ord that if he tried to ship me out without declaring war, it would be my duty to resist. And the first criminal I'd shoot would be him.

"That was a quick ticket to the stockade, but I didn't go to Laos. They figured I was crazy so I did eighteen months in the psychiatric ward. Drugs, electro-shock, beatings..."

"Huh," Chris puzzled. "So that's why you're so political."

"This man knows the truth. Now let's figure out how to snuff that sniper."

"You can't do anything, Mr. Shepard. You're hurt."

"You want to do it?" Glen Shepard asked bluntly. "Think you can kill a man in cold blood?" The boys didn't answer. "I was trained to defend my country. Right now, my wife and you and the neighborhood people are my country."

Leaning his M-14 rifle against the window ledge, Acidhead dropped a pinch of PCP onto a rolling paper, added some Mexican marijuana, and rolled up. He leaned back into the easy chair and touched a flame to the joint. "Dusted!" he laughed, watching the street through heavily lidded eyes.

Headlights and taillights streaked across the far end of the street; the rumble of motorcycle engines came loud, then faded. A patrol, thought Acidhead. He stared at the trees overhanging the quiet street. Dawn-gray sky showed through the canopy of branches. He took a few more hits of the cheap dust and cheaper marijuana. The pattern of dark branches and graying sky suddenly reversed, the sky a mass of jagged fragments exploding from darkness all of a sudden.

He shook his head to clear his vision. "Can't get too far out there," he mumbled to himself. He ground out the half-smoked joint. "Gotta do some killing."

A wiry man, Acidhead stood less than six feet even in his thick-soled riding boots. He wore his curly hair and beard cut to the same two inch length; hair stuck out straight from his head, giving him a surprised look at all times. His bulging eyes added to the impression.

"Acidhead, this is Horse," the hand radio squawked from the window ledge. "You in position?"

"Wherever I am, I'm here and ready."

"You got much fog there?"

" I can see a block or so."

"You know what to do. Anything that don't wear our colors, kill it."

Watching for movement on the street, Acidhead thought of the people who lived there. Upstanding citizens. Righteous, God-fearing people. Daddy, mommy, the little kiddies. When he cruised the freeways on his bike, they were the people who stared at him like he was some kind of human-shaped shit.

He'd get his chance. All the guys guarding the crowd in the Casino talked about how many teeny-boppers they'd rape. Forget the teeny-boppers, Acidhead thought. When he pulled guard duty, he'd take the real young ones.

Fantasizing, he picked up the half-smoked joint, relit it. He thought of how they'd cry and scream. What would the good people think of that?

Easing himself over the last fence, Glen Shepard dropped to the sidewalk and stayed crouched in a shadow cast by a streetlight. He unslung the short-barreled shotgun, watching the street for bikers.

Wearing his dark slacks, and a black leather jacket and black stocking cap borrowed from the Davis boys, he hoped he looked like an Outlaw. He moved from shadow to shadow until he saw the sniper's window. A lighter flared, the biker's face emerged from the darkness, then was gone as the flame died. But the red point of a cigarette glowed. Glen watched the window for a minute. He saw only the one cigarette, heard no voices.