dochermes

"The Mongoose Hunts Alone"

8/31/1988

I.

When he heard the gunshot from inside the house, Jeremy Bane broke into a full sprint across the huge front yard. He was not wearing the field suit with all its gadgets tonight but he still carried several concealed weapons and wore the full body armor under his black slacks, turtleneck and jacket. And of course, he seldom went anywhere without the matched silver daggers sheathed under his sleeves.

As he vaulted up the front steps onto the porch, a second shot sounded within. The Dire Wolf flung the screen door open, swiveled his body sideways and blasted out a straight side punch that snapped the lock and slammed the door inward with one hinge torn loose. In that same continuous motion, Bane leaped through the opening in a crouch, the dart gun swinging in his left door in an arc from side to side. In a tiny fraction of a second, he took in details of everyone in that room and was ready to deal with them. The room itself was almost bare, with only two chairs, a coffee table and single lamp standing in one corner.

There were three dead men on the floor. Bane knew from their postures and the arrangement of their limbs that two had been shot while trying to run and the third had been struck down with lethal impact.

Four living people were beginning to react to his sudden entrance. One was a woman in her mid-twenties... thin, red-haired with a white Stetson pushed back on her head and sporting a twin-holstered gunbelt holding Colt .45 revolvers. One was an Asian man about thirty, probably Korean, short but sturdily built, no visible weapons. The third was a black man, West African and not American judging by his facial bone structure and skin tone. He was immense, at least six feet six inches tall, lanky with long arms and legs.

The fourth man was elderly, at least in his seventies, with a thick mane of silver-white hair over a proud hawklike face. Bane's instant analysis warned him that this man was possibly even more dangerous than the other three. All these impressions raced through his mind almost instantaneously and he was moving into action before the four people began to respond to his appearance.

He had decided to take out the redhead first, because her guns were the most immediate threat and because of the implication that she had been the one who had killed two of the corpses on the floor. The Dire Wolf extended his arm full-length and triggered the air-powered gun with its soft coughing retort. To his complete surprise, the young woman was already hopping to one side and the dart missed her entirely. This caught him off-guard. All his life, Bane's enhanced reflexes had given him an advantage over normal Humans and he had not expected her to be moving at his rate. Far too fast for any normal quick-draw expert to match, the redhead whipped up her right-hand Colt and fired twice with bright white flashes from the barrel. The shots were deafening in the enclosed space. Bane took both bullets high on the chest, and although the impacts stung viciously, his Trom armor under his clothes dispersed the force enough that he remained on his feet.

She did not get a third attempt. The Dire Wolf bracketed her with two quick shots and one of the anesthetic darts pierced the thin flannel of her work shirt right below the sternum. The woman felt a sharp sting and a burning sensation, but the Trom-formula drug dazed her instantly and within another second she was sagging to the floor with the Colt falling from a limp grasp.

An enormous dark hand clamped tight around Bane's extended arm with agonizing tightness, cutting off the circulation. The dart gun dropped as Bane's grip was loosened. The Dire Wolf swung his body toward his attacker, slamming the heel of his free hand up under the man's chin so hard that the jaws clapped audibly shut. At the same time, Bane had hooked his foot behind the African's ankle and tugged sharply to throw the man off-balance. As his opponent lurched to one side, the Dire Wolf threw a backfist that cracked like a whip. The big man's head twitched but he did not fall as Bane had expected; instead, the African fighter rumbled deep in his chest and clutched at his much smaller foe.

Something unforseen was going on here, Bane thought. He knew his capabilities and he was at peak tonight. To match his speed and strength, as these characters were doing, was unexpected. But there was no time to think it over. As those huge open hands reached for him, the Dire Wolf chambered his left leg and drove his boot deep into the man's hard-muscled abdomen. The black man doubled up as air was forced from his lungs and this brought his head down to where Bane could belt a hard left hook to the cheek. As his opponent fell to one knee in dazed confusion, Bane swung around to check what the others were about to do.

He turned barely in time to roll with a high kick to the head that might have killed an unprepared man. As it was, that slippered foot grazed his jaw. It was the young Korean, spinning to throw a reverse roundhouse kick with the other leg. Bane swayed his upper body enough that the blow passed by him a hair's width away, and he immediately lunged in to catch the Korean with an uppercut that connected perfectly. The young Asian dropped back a step. Bane began a front shin kick that abruptly changed a high reverse crescent which smacked against his opponent's temple like a hammer. The Korean reeled back, raising his hands in automatic defense.

From the corner of his eye, Bane saw the big African coming at him again. This was getting annoying. The Dire Wolf met him with two left-right hooks that sounded like gunshots but still the giant did not fall. Bane lost his temper at the stubbornness of these two fighters. He exploded a wide roundhouse blow that spun the African entirely off his feet to crash onto a coffee table and wreck it. The Korean was attacking again. No ordinary Humans, no matter how tough, could shrug off blows the way these two were doing.

Normally, Bane restrained himself slightly in fights to keep from killing everyone he faced. With these two, however, he seemed to be facing his peers and he could cut loose. The young Asian threw a straight right. Bane stepped past it, seized that wrist with his own right hand and yanked the man's arm out straight, pulling him into a left backfist that smacked right above the eyebrows. The Korean's eyes rolled up to show only whites and he fell backwards without trying to catch himself. The other man was stirring feebly amidst the wreckage of the shattered coffee table and he was not going to be a threat for a few more minutes.

Who were these people, he wondered. They couldn't be Melgarin, not an African and an Asian. Not Gelydrim, either. But then what was their secret? How had they been meeting him on equal terms? Even as these thoughts crossed his mind, Bane wheeled to see the white-haired man pointing a small .25 Beretta Brigadier right at him. Against any common thug, the Dire Wolf would have been inclined to trust his body armor would protect him and a head shot was unlikely considering how quickly he moved. But with foes of this caliber, he didn't think the risk was justified. He stayed where he was and awaited the next move.

The old man was well-dressed in a lightweight white summer suit with a bolo tie. The dark blue eyes were sharp and alert under spiky white brows. His gunhand was perfectly steady. "Even for an Amrath, you're exceptional," he announced. "Still, no Snake man has ever been able to escape a shot from Jefferson Aubrey Pierce!"

( the rest of the story )