“I’ll try,” she said. She reached into a pocket of her jeans and pressed something into his hand. It felt smooth and cold like a pebble. “This will jack you up.” She rose and slipped out.

Monks opened his hand and looked at what she’d given him-a small glass makeup jar with a screw-on lid. It was full of finely ground white powder.

His first impulse was to throw it out. But he hesitated. Meth seemed to be the key to the violent, psychotic edge that the maquis had, and that might be a big help right now.

He opened the jar and and tapped some of the powder out onto the dresser top-about half the amount he had seen Freeboot use. He didn’t have a knife to inhale it with, but he knew that it could be done through a narrow paper tube, and he fashioned one from a page he tore out of one of the Heavy Metal magazines.

He snorted hard with each nostril. It shot in like a hot sharp wire thrusting up behind his eyes and into his brain. The burn worsened instantly, becoming almost intolerable, bringing him to panic that he had done himself serious harm. But then it gradually calmed, leaving a metallic-tinged residue-and a bristling, fiercely euphoric energy.

Monks paced the small room, allowing the ache in his shins and the clank of his chains to steadily heighten his fury, like the drumbeats of a primitive tribe in a war dance-tangible reminders of his own helplessness, of the child who was slipping away from him, of his terror that this was another trap that was going to bring him only a brutal, agonized death.

Very soon, his hands were flexing in anticipation of that pipe wrench.

18

Marguerite came back twenty minutes later, carrying a big laundry basket covered with a dripping poncho. Monks pulled the poncho off. On top were neatly folded pajamas for Mandrake. But they hid a warm hooded snowsuit underneath, and a nylon rucksack big enough to carry him. Then came a large polyfil jacket with a water-resistant shell, the kind that the men wore around camp. Wrapped up in it were a folding pocket knife, a heavy-duty flashlight, matches, and a Ziploc bag stuffed with bread, cheese, cold cuts, and candy bars. There was no compass, but this was a hell of a good start on getting out of here and staying alive.

At the bottom, his groping hand touched metal. A pair of bolt cutters and a pipe wrench about thirty inches long were nestled in the laundry like snakes in a brushpile.

“Hammerhead just called in his security check-in,” Marguerite whispered urgently. “We’ve got an hour before they’ll miss him. He’s waiting for me, over at the bathhouse. Give me a couple of minutes.”

“Whoa, wait,” Monks said. “You have to keep him outside. I need a clear shot at him.”

She bit her lip nervously. Then she brightened.

“I’ll tell him I want to do it in the rain.”

Monks was impressed. That was thinking on your feet.

“Get up against a wall,” he said. “That’ll keep his back turned.”

“Don’t worry, he won’t be thinking about anything but me.” She left again, looking scared but determined.

Monks got out the bolt cutters and snipped the chains from his ankles. His feet once again were free. He put the snowsuit on Mandrake, then slit the rucksack to allow for his legs and eased him into it. This was going to be a lot easier to carry than the clumsy sling.

Then he traded the bolt cutters for the big pipe wrench, clenching his shaking hands around its steely shaft and hefting it to gauge its balance.

Everything was going to have to go right the first time.

The driving rain slashed at his face, blurring his vision as he eased out the lodge’s door. He stared into the night, crouching, waiting for his eyes to adjust. The bathhouse was about forty yards away. Within half a minute, he could see two entwined figures. Hammerhead was shoving Marguerite up against the wall, his hands working at the waist of her jeans, revealing her pale skin as he pushed them down. His rifle was slung over his shoulder.

The wrench handle was getting wet and slippery. Monks wiped it under his arm and moved forward, quickly closing the forty-yard gap. The rain helped to cover the sound of his steps, and there was no doubt that Marguerite was right about Hammerhead’s mind being far from anything but her just now.

Monks slowed, taking the final steps in a mincing prowl. He was close enough now to hear the big man’s grunts as he worked to rid her of her jeans. He rose out of his crouch, planted his feet, and cocked the wrench like a medieval executioner with a mace. The blow might crush Hammerhead’s skull, but mercy was something that Monks could not afford.

Then he realized that Marguerite had frozen in place, and was staring fearfully at him over Hammerhead’s shoulder.

With ferocious speed, Hammerhead shoved away from her and started to turn, head lowering and hands rising.

Monks swung with all the strength in his arms and shoulders, but it was not the well-placed slam that he had counted on. The wrench caught the side of Hammerhead’s thick skull above the right ear, glancing upward and almost flying out of Monks’s grip.

Hammerhead reeled back but stayed on his feet. With a blood-chilling sound that was part roar and part snarl, he charged at Monks, coming in low with outspread arms like a linebacker.

Monks pivoted off his left foot in a boxer’s slip, and brought the wrench down hard across Hammerhead’s shoulders as he lumbered past. This blow drove him to his knees. Incredibly, he kept slogging forward, clawing at his rifle to unsling it.

Monks leaped after him, boots slipping in the mud. This time, he swung the wrench at Hammerhead’s right upper arm. He felt the snap of the humerus all the way up in his teeth.

Hammerhead roared again and fell onto his side, the broken arm flopping. Monks stepped in and yanked the rifle off his shoulder, then made a quick 360-degree sweep of the camp. Nothing else visible was moving.

His fingers traveled over the rifle’s breech, identifying safety and selector switch. It was similar to the AK-47s he had seen in Vietnam. The only times that he had ever fired assault rifles were a few sessions with AR-15s in basic training. Weapons expertise was not a high priority for medical officers on hospital ships. But after treating enough wounds from larger-caliber weapons like this one, he had familiarized himself with them out of some sort of superstitious dread, as if the guns themselves were the enemy.

Marguerite was still against the wall, eyes wide with shock and jeans pushed down to her hips. Her last-second panic might have saved Hammerhead’s life.

“We need a place to lock him up,” Monks snapped at her. “Come on, quick.”

She started to move like someone coming out of a dream, pointing at a dark shed another twenty yards away, then fumbling to button her pants.

Monks stepped back to Hammerhead and pressed the muzzle against his head.

“All I need is an excuse,” Monks said. “Get up and drop your gear belt.”

Hammerhead got heavily to his knees, then to his feet. Clumsily, with his left hand, he unhooked his web belt and let it fall. Besides the radio, it had a survival knife and extra clips of ammunition. Monks scooped it up and slung it over his shoulder.

“Now get inside there.”

Hammerhead staggered toward the shed, left hand clasping his dangling right arm. Marguerite hurried ahead, unhooking the door’s hasp and swinging it open. Monks could just make out the ghostly shapes of workbenches and machinery inside.

Hammerhead stopped, his face tight with rage and pain.

“You’re dead, motherfucker,” he muttered, and Monks’s meth-charged brain almost ordered his trembling finger to tighten that final quarter inch on the trigger.

Instead, he said, “Turn around.”

Slowly, breathing hard, Hammerhead turned to face the shed.