“It’s come down evolution time,” Spoiler said. “Prove yourself or die, nat.”

Brew and Luce held obvious if not formalized rank; they could stop this if they chose. They made no move.

While she was looking toward them, Rhino charged. Moonchild leapt high, somersaulted over his head.

Built low to the ground, he recovered quickly, spun to face her again. With a falling-away sensation she realized she had not made much impression on the onlookers. They had all seen that move in a dozen kung fu movies. They didn’t realize that in most cases it was a special effect.

“Think you’re clever,” Rhino rumbled. He brought his blocky three-fingered fists up to either side of his lowered horn in a pose reminiscent of a muay Thai stance and began to circle her clockwise. She doubted he could manage the freewheeling kick-boxer’s shin-kicks, but if she got inside the comfort zone of his horn, he could give her a rib-crushing knee.

The onlookers began to jeer, disappointed by the lack of action, the lack of blood. Predictably Rhino was goaded into an advance, spiraling toward her in that mincing Thai step.

As he got near, he tossed his head and that wicked horn. Her guard came up. He whipped a roundhouse shin-kick up and into her ribs and sent her flying.

She tucked a shoulder, rolled, came up to one knee as he charged. She whipped her right arm up and out in a forearm block that connected with his horn with a sound like a pistol shot. As momentum sent him thundering past, she fired a punch into his side.

He staggered, stumbled, went to a knee. Then he stood up, hunched over with an elbow pressed to his side. She wondered if in her anger at being caught unawares she had failed to pull the blow enough, had really done him harm.

“We can quit now, before someone gets hurt.” Instantly she realized it was the wrong thing to say; to quit now would make him look as if he feared her. Why cannot I be better at this? Why is it so hard to talk to people?

He came at her with two quick punches. She blocked them easily, so easily that when the knee-shot they’d been intended to set up came, she hopped half a step away, out of the way of the short-ranged attack, and spun a back-kick into his broad belly.

All two hundred kilograms of Rhino sailed into the air. Spectators scattered. He landed on his butt with a mighty thud ten feet away.

The crowd made impressed noises. She had flashed her own power and speed. He had weight on her and probably strength. Speed and skill were all hers.

Rhino picked himself up, moving as if it pained him. “We’ve done enough and more,” she said. “Why should we hurt each other, to excite these others?”

He shook his heavy head as if her words were water he wished to shed. Surrender was no option to the proud joker youth. I hope this boy has the sense to take a dive, she felt J. J. Flash say in her head.

She was surprised. Her image of J. J. was all combative cockiness, not compassion. Rhino rushed her then, lashing out with a roundhouse swipe of his fist.

She ducked, wheeled, caught the horny wrist. She pulled the arm out straight, helping Rhino along the way he was going, put her palm against his suddenly-locked elbow, and levered his horned snout into the mud.

He struggled briefly, but he could not fight without dislocating his shoulder – or breaking his elbow. His nostrils dilated, a vast sigh blew furrows in the mud, and he went dormant.

“Waste him!” the crowd was yelling. “Rip his arm off!” She released him and stepped back.

“So brave, all of you!” she flared at the crowd. “He had the courage to fight. If you have the courage to do more than jeer, step forward and prove it!”

The crowd seemed to be held back by an invisible cordon. Spoiler had mysteriously vanished from the front rank. That spinning back-kick would have stove in the chest of just about any man in camp.

She reached a hand to Rhino. He took her hand, pulled himself upright. Then he stared at her.

“I could have stuck my horn right through you, just now,” he said, thick-tongued.

“I know.”

Soundlessly he began to cry. Then Brew and Luce were shoving their way through. “Hey,” Brew said, in that quiet, laidback way of his, “do all of you really have nothing better to do than hang here and gawk? And is there anything here you really need to see?”

Luce glared the jokers back. “If you don’t have anything better to do,” he snarled, “maybe we should schedule extra kiem thao for everybody, huh?”

The crowd became one with the night almost as readily as Moonchild might have. “All right, suckers,” Croyd announced in his best carny-barker voice, lighting up one of his death-wick cigars, “step right up and take your best shot at the Queen of the Night!”

Moonchild gave him a dirty look. Brew and Luce had Rhino under the arms now and were helping the sobbing youth to his feet. Moonchild fired a final contemptuous glance at the rapidly dwindling crowd.

She found her eyes locked with Eric’s. In them she read a compassion and understanding so profound, they staggered her.

She felt the end of her hour approaching and hurried into the bunker. Some moments were too private to share, even with comrades.

Chapter Twenty-five

J. Bob Belew was sleeping in when they came knocking on his door with a Soviet RGD-5 hand grenade.

Before the plywood splinters settled, Belew was awake and rolling, off the bed. He came up with his Para Ordnance. Explosive entry was not just something you passed around among friends like chlamydia.

He double-tapped the first man through the blown-in door, easily controlling the big handgun’s kick. The intruder uttered a choking squawk, dropped his Kalashnikov, and reeled back into the man behind him.

Belew gave the point man two more in the chest. The 180-grain Hydra-Shok slugs expanded in meat, gouging great channels through him. Skinny as he was, they passed right along through to spoil the day of the man he’d stumbled against.

Compulsive tinkerer that he was, Belew had made a few alterations to his miserable back-alley flat with the dull Asian porno prints of Thai cuties in dowdy fifties bikinis shellacked to the wall. He grabbed his jacket and light pack and dove for the window. The whole assembly blew out into the alley.

It was dark and narrow, defined by shacks with crazily angled corrugated-tin roofs that threatened to slump into the right-of-way at any moment. Belew rolled clear of the debris – a new layer added to the accumulation of years – and came up with his pistol in both hands, drawing down on the window in case his drop-ins were following right behind. Instead another flash and crash and swirl of smoky rubble inside; with at least two punctured they had belatedly decided to play it safe by pitching another grenade.

It was that grimy time of day when enough light has spilled over the horizon to spoil the darkness, but not enough to really illuminate. That time of day beloved of cops and marauders: predawn, as in “predawn raid.” Fully dressed, of course, J. Robert Belew got up and raced between the slouching buildings, raising a bow wave in ankle-deep puddles.

A stutter of gunshots behind him. Holes splintered open in a rude plank wall right in front of his face. He hit a T-junction in the shanty labyrinth and cranked hard right. He was built low to the ground, not much for sprint speed, but still one hell of a broken-field runner. For one thing, though he aged normally in cosmetic terms, his ability to regenerate meant he had seventeen-year-old cartilage in his knees.

Another slow, heavy AK burst chewed the wall, long behind him. Somebody began screaming, whether in terror, pain, or sudden grief he had no way of knowing.

J. Robert Belew was a man who believed in always traveling first-class. It was just that his definition of first-class was skewed from the rest of the world’s, like so much about him. He loved fine wine, Vivaldi, satin sheets, and beautiful, long-legged women to slip between them as much as the next man. When those things fit the mission profile. On a gig like the present one – freelance; high-risk factor; no assets; a quick, clean death one of the more favorable outcomes he could hope for and a warm sense of accomplishment about the optimum – he had different criteria. Here he liked a low profile, incurious neighbors, a lot of traffic in the area to cover his moves, and ready escape routes.