Chapter 17

Kat slid the door open as quietly as she could, the movement catching Bob's eye. He lifted an eyebrow and she gestured towards the door, holding up a hand with 4 fingers extended, and then made her hand into a gun shape.

Bob, his brow tightening, extracted his arm from around the blonde, set his drink calmly on the bar and then, in a movement that was faster than Kat believed him capable, he clipped the blond behind the ear and lowered her to the floor. Sliding over the top of the bar, a handgun in his hand, he gestured to Kat, pointing towards the door behind the bar. Kat stood, and walked calmly towards the bar as if she hadn't a care in the world. This action must have triggered some contingency plan for the men outside because she had gone no more than three steps before the swinging doors slammed against the interior walls and four men rushed into the room.

Two split right, their weapons at the high ready and seeking for Bob. Two split left and came right towards her, the black barrels of their rifles leading the way. The men were shouting something that sounded like "MineSecurityDoNotMove!" but their shouts were overpowered by an explosive roar from the area by the bar.

In her peripheral vision, she could see one of the security types propelled backwards, a fine mist of red droplets spraying out behind him. Her primary attention, however, was on the two who had targeted her. The security types hesitated for just a moment, a flicker of the eyes and a twitch like they were going to turn towards the sound of the shot.

That is what Kat had been waiting for. Her right foot lashed out, connecting solidly the nearest chair and sending it hurtling into the knees of the first man. It hit with a crash, sweeping his feet out from under him. Before he could hit the floor, Kat's hands flashed to the pair of ceramic reinforced knives she carried in her belt and she hurled them both at the second man.

There was another roaring explosion from her left, but she ignored it, trusting in Bob to handle his side of the room. Her knives struck home with a meaty thunk. One entered the man's throat, just under his chin, and the other was planted firmly in the shoulder of the guard's firing arm, causing his arm to jerk outward, pulling the barrel away from its intended target and spraying a line of shots into the wall and ceiling to her left.

Kat vaulted to the table top and leapt as high as she could, using gravity and her weight to add force in a strike at the guard she had stumbled with the chair. He had just started to push himself up from the floor, his head still looking down, and her clenched fists struck like a sledge hammer. In a perfectly targeted strike, impacting between the C5 and C6 vertebrae, her blow snapped the guards neck. He was dead before he hit the floor. Her eyes snapped to the second guard, but he was down, pawing weakly at the knife embedded in his throat, his life's blood pumping all over the wooden floor.

Kat, still in a half crouch, drew her left-hand needle thrower from her cargo pocket and turned towards the bar. Bob had his pistol in one hand, an antique-looking twin-barreled firearm in the other. He must have found it under the bar and decided to take advantage of the opportunity. Both of his security guards were down and not moving. Bob grinned at her and started moving towards the rear door. Kat put her foot on the chest of the second guard and used the extra leverage to help retrieve her knives. Stooping to wipe them quickly on the guard's uniform, cleaning the worst of the blood off, Kat hot-footed it after Bob.

The door led to a service corridor, the kitchens and storerooms. Pelting through the kitchen, Bob slid to a stop at the rear door where deliveries were probably received, and waited for Kat to catch up. Cowering in the corner, hands above their heads, were the plump woman that had been in the front when they arrived and an obese man in a filthy apron and stained sleeveless shirt.

Kat dismissed them as a threat, but motioned for Bob to cover them and the door to the main room. From her pocket, she retrieved her Comm unit and activated the special circuit again. This time she chose the echolocation feature and passed the unit over the wall near the door. Nodding her head, she did the same on the other side of the door. Slipping the Comm back in a pocket, she tapped Bob on the shoulder, pointed at one side of the door and held up a single finger. Then she pointed at the other side of the door and repeated the gesture. There were two men out there, backs against the wall, one on each side of the door.

Bob nodded, and motioned her to stand back. Bob centered himself on the doorway and pointed the double-barrel firearm at the wall to the left. He shielded his eyes and fired one barrel. The weapon roared and a tongue of flame speared from the end of the barrel and seemed to disintegrate a section of the wall at chest height. Bob quickly shifted the gun to the right and fired again. Two holes, the size of a dinner plates, had been punched in the wall and through the left hole, Kat could see a body, sprawled and bleeding on the dirt ground of the alley.

Bob's foot lashed out, impacting on the door's latch. The lock shattered and the door smashed open, slamming against the outside wall. Bob let the momentum from the kick pull him forward and he darted through the open doorway, immediately turning right and sweeping the alley with the barrel of his weapon. Kat followed right on his heels and spun to the left, her pistol up and covering the other end of the alley. "Clear" she shouted, her ears still ringing from the roar of that twin-barreled monster.

Kat turned towards Bob in time to see him shove the borrowed weapon into a pile of refuse, tumbling more garbage from the pile to conceal it, and then holster his handgun under his shirt tail. Kat, taking her lead from Bob, slid her pistol back into her cargo pocket but kept the knives in her hands, the blades concealed by holding them along the inside of her wrists.

Kat and Bob exited the alley at a normal pace, walking calmly to the mule and climbing aboard. Bob backed out, then calmly drove down the street, acting as if he had been there all along. Only his eyes gave him away, darting left and right, looking for threats. Kat turned casually in her seat, facing Bob but keeping her attention on their back trail. She was able to clearly see, on the far side of the whore house, a pair of mules pull out of an alley between two buildings further down the street. They accelerated hard and came to a screeching halt in front Mabel's. From the rear of the mules poured a dozen men, all dressed identically to the six security guards they had killed. As the backup troops rushed into the building, Bob calmly turned on to a side street and accelerated.