"Easy, easy," I said. Danny was excited and giving the pedal too much.

"I'm on it." The Cordoba didn't back off enough from the rear of the garbage truck.

Nap got closer, then he brought the bobtail sideways across the double yellow lines. The garbage truck slammed into the side of the thing. We came up lurching behind, too close, but I was already moving.

"Back this short up," I screamed, tumbling out of the ride. The garbage truck was moving backward, but I had forward motion. I blew out the truck's passenger window with some buckshot and tossed a flash grenade.

"Shit," I yelled as the grenade bounced off the metal frame of the window. The grenade went off in midair, but I had on my goggles, which protected my eyes. I jumped on the truck's running board as it crunched into the grill of the Cordoba.

"Back it the fuck up," I hollered again to Danny. The driver of the truck was squinting, so I figured the grenade probably reflected off the windshield. The dude on the passenger side where I was hanging on must have closed his eyes when he saw me throw the grenade, or maybe he'd just been scared shitless and couldn't stand to see it coming.

Whatever, he blasted off a round at me, the bullet going right past my cheek as I batted his arm away.

"You're dead, bastard." He capped off another one, but I spoiled his aim by grabbing his arm. The sound made my ears ring and the right one seemed to go out on me. I yanked on the dude hard, lifting him halfway out the window. I was hanging onto his clothes to keep myself from falling to the ground.

The truck was still going backwards. Danny had finally gotten out of the car, having moved it off to one side. The boy was supposed to have done that sooner so he could shoot out the truck's tires. That's why I'd had him get Teflon loads for his piece. But I had other worries at the moment.

The gun was coming up at me and I bit down on the fool's arm like it was Christmas turkey.

"Fuck." I hadn't noticed before, but he had an accent like Stadanko. Figured.

I headbutted the chump, but he had a hard skull and didn't seem to feel it much. He hit me solid with his other hand, stunning me. The truck jerked sideways, skidding. Where the fuck was Nap?

The driver's vision was clearing and he was pulling out a piece too while he slammed on the brakes. Me and the other cat were still wrasslin'. There were some pops, then the truck fishtailed and went backwards real fast into the side of the mountain. I grabbed the strap holding the shotgun slung over my back and quickly brought the piece up over my head with one hand. It looked like Danny had finally done what we had practiced and blown out the truck's tires, but of course he'd done it too late. I got knocked loose, my back scraping against the mountainside as I flew off.

Operating on pure instinct, like I had so many times before, I let loose with the shotgun in midair before I hit the ground. I caught homeboy in the passenger seat as he was clipping off a couple rounds at me with his piece. The blast took his arm off from the elbow to his gun hand. He was screaming something fiendish as I tried to stand up and run to get around the truck on the front end. But I went right down again on one knee, my hip on fire.

The dude whose arm I'd just blown away was climbing out of the truck, blood spurting from his stump like he was a zombie in a Wes Craven movie. He was trying to pull another gun from inside his jacket, but what with it being on the same side as his good hand, he was having serious trouble. I couldn't get up, my hip was locked. I put the shotgun on him as he lurched forward and cursed at me in that goddamn language of theirs.

Fuck me if a bullet from somewhere else didn't drill itself into my chest. If not for the Kevlar body armor I was wearing underneath my overalls, I woulda been toast. On that show I'd done for a hot minute, the dude that did the explosions and firearms always had this kinda shit around. I'd got the vest from him together with the flash grenades. Now I was damn glad he'd mentioned that if I was gonna do something heavy, I'd better be protected.

As it was, the impact drove me back, knocking the wind out of me. The driver had me cold with his rod, then his head disappeared in a cloud of red. He dropped away and I could see Nap running forward, the Glock in his hand. But the one-and-a-half-armed motherfuckahwhat did this boy eat for breakfast?leaped on me, beating at me with his good hand. He lodged his stump under my neck and damned if he didn't clamp his mouth around my Adam's apple.

''Shit," I screamed, falling on my back. I hit this vampire as hard as I could in the side of his head with the shotgun's butt. His eyes got real wide, then rolled up in his head. Nap and Danny got him off me and helped me to my feet. We all listened for what seemed like forever, but could hear no cop cars or anything else on the lonely stretch of the mountainside.

"We're paid, man," Danny said in a quiet voice.

We all still had on our goggles, making us look like Outer Limits rejects. Me and Nap glanced at each other, and I knew he was grinning underneath his mask like I was. The three of us made our way to the rear of the truck. Nap carried the gas masks we'd need to use to dive into the garbage.

"Let's get the back open and then see what's what," Nap said. Using the straps of the gas masks, he put them on one of his big arms. Then he started undoing the latch so we could open one side of the large rear double doors.

"Man, that's rank," Danny cried. The smell was enough to knock you to your knees.

"For once we agree," I said, putting a hand over my nose and mouth.

"You girls can snivel if you want," Nap joked, "but I smell fortune."

Suddenly the other door got shoved open from the inside. Gunfire sputtered and Nap tumbled back into the road. The gas masks flew off his arm as he was shot.

"More marks," Danny yelled, gesturing at the three gunmen who'd been laying in wait for us inside the truck's garbage container. They were dressed in rubber suits with built-in gas masks to hide inside the garbage. Stadanko, or more likely his clever-ass cousin Chekka, had planned for an emergency.

I tossed two more flash grenades and went low as one of the stiffs let loose with his chatter gun. The whiteness spurted up around us like thick fog rolling in on the beach.

"What in hell," one of them yelled.

The shotgun's buckshot caught this cat in his stomach. Parts of his suit and body splattered everywhere as he slammed back into the truck.

I went over the edge of the roadway, using my arm to vault the low rail. The brightness of the grenades was fading. Bullets tore into the rail and the air around me as I dropped down on the side of the rise onto something sticking out from the hill. Danny had pulled Nap behind the Cordoba. One of the shooters was burying bullets in the car from where he crouched beside the truck.

I stuffed more shells into the Remington from the extras I had tucked away beneath my flak jacket and pumped off a couple at him. Where was number three? I went back down before the shooter turned my way and buzzed off some rounds toward me. He couldn't get us, but we couldn't get him either.

"Hey, how is he?" I yelled at Danny

"He's breathing." More gunfire popped off.

I was crouched on a large sewer pipe buried in the hillside. There was a grate over the front of the thing. My hip had eased some, and I crawled up the hill on my elbows. The truck was sitting near the top of the roadway. It was starting to get dark. I looked around. Across from where I was on the other side of the valley I saw some kind of power plant. There were large tubes running from the plant into the hillside. I looked back toward the road again.

I had a bad feeling the third gun was trying to sneak up on us, but I couldn't see how. There was no way to get to where I was except by coming over the rail. Maybe he was climbing on top of the truck to give himself a better shot. That way he could draw down on Danny too.