Free Pandora's Temple by Jon Land Page B

thought of crying out, screaming, anything to draw attention to herself and stop the coming attack. But the resolve she glimpsed in the men’s eyes told her no response that feeble could forestall their intentions. So she turned again, intending to cut through the center of the restaurant, when a man at a table just past the bar whipped out a sword from inside a wooden scabbard, its mirrorlike steel glinting in the naked light of the restaurant.
    At that point, McCracken was utterly unsure of his own intentions. He’d always described moments like this as swimming with the currents, letting the flow dictate his actions based on what unfolded before him.
    He had just brought the katana overhead when the two men angling for the woman from the bar area halted and steadied their pistols on her.
    They’re going to fire.
    McCracken didn’t think, didn’t hesitate. Holding fast to the simple wooden handle, he brought the back edge of the blade down hard on both men’s wrists at once, catching them totally by surprise. The force of the blow stripped the pistols from their grasps and sent them clanging to the floor, one coughing a bullet through the crowded restaurant on impact.
    That was more than enough to send patrons ducking, diving, or scurrying for cover, as McCracken rammed the hilt of the sword’s wooden handle hard into the nearer man’s forehead. He seemed to fly backward through the air on impact, feet torn from under him until a plate-laden table broke his fall and collapsed beneath him. The second man spun and had the presence of mind to go for a second pistol holstered back on his hip, steel starting to show when McCracken whipped the blade edge outward and caught enough of the man’s wrist to open up a deep, nasty gash that left the hand on that side useless.
    McCracken couldn’t believe the sword’s power, as elegant in motion as it was deadly. It felt as though he were wielding air, effortlessly able to slice though bone and flesh and almost difficult to measure his blows enough to avoid severing a limb. And, with the second man’s focus rooted on the sword now, McCracken looped in with an elbow that mashed jaw and nose under its force on impact. The man’s head whiplashed backward, and he dropped to the floor like a felled tree.
    McCracken swung, sword angled anew when screams rang out, and he spotted one of the attackers on Johnny Wareagle’s side wheeling about the tables with a huge knife sticking out of his arm.
    •
    Wareagle had seen the pistol coming up on the raven-haired woman. Knew there was nothing he could do from this distance, other than hurl the blade now grasped in his hand. It twirled through the air in a blur, ultimately piercing the gunman’s forearm.
    The gunman’s pistol fired wildly, severed nerves forcing his hand to lock in place without being able to fire it again since he couldn’t make his finger curl back over the trigger. But now the second man on Johnny’s side was angling his pistol on the young woman rushing toward an emergency exit in the restaurant’s rear, no thought given to the frenzied crowd or the very real possibility that a bullet could just as easily find a bystander. The man simply opened fire, bullets tracing the young woman’s path toward the back exit, panicked patrons now blocking Johnny’s path to reach the man. Options reduced to one, Wareagle leaped atop one of K-Paul’s tables and hopped across others en route to the final gunman who was jamming a fresh magazine home.
    From the table nearest him, Wareagle lashed out with a kick that impacted just under his chin, literally lifting the gunman off his feet. He looked as if he were trying to perform a somersault, then hit the floor with his skull breaking his fall.
    McCracken watched the final gunman go down, just as a shaft of light shined inside from the open emergency exit through which the raven-haired young woman had disappeared. Before he could even think about pursuing her, a pair of uniformed