Dealer's Choice Read Free Page A

For Ray there rarely was. He hit the man hard, once, and moved on before the joker hit the deck.
    There were three pallets of freight stacked nearly twelve feet high in front of the bridgehouse at the freighter’s stern. Behind each of the pallets were two other identical columns. The intersecting walkways between them formed a maze within which Fists were hiding like cornered rats.
    The Fists shouted to each other. Two thought that someone had penetrated their cover. Two thought the others were nuts, that they’d seen shifting shadows. Another voice shouted that someone had tried to charge them but Fred had gotten him. At least he thought Fred had gotten him.
    That voice was the closest, one stack to the right. When Ray reached him he was still calling out questioningly to the already unconscious Fred.
    “Here I am,” Ray said quietly from behind. The smuggler whirled, finger tightening on the trigger of his Uzi.
    But Ray had already closed the distance between them. He grabbed the smuggler’s gun wrist and twisted. The Uzi belched harmlessly at the sky. There was a sharp crack and the joker screamed in agony as Ray snapped his wrist. The smuggler dropped his weapon and Ray dropped him with an openhanded blow to the jaw, then moved on deeper into the maze.
    Two jokers called out, the two who were convinced that someone was among them. They dropped their weapons and walked into the open, hands held over their heads.
    The two left decided to play it cagey. They moved deeper into the maze, side by side, weapons out and covering opposite directions. There was only one way they weren’t looking.
    Ray climbed one of the freight bundles. He waited patiently, watching the smugglers below him edging away — they thought — from the action, and dropped down on them like a sack of cement, smashing them to the deck. One hit face-first and was instantly out of it. The other lasted long enough to throw a futile punch and take one of Ray’s that split his cheek halfway to his earhole. He bounced oft the freight bundle and slumped over his comrade on the deck.
    “I got ’em all,” Ray called. But he was wrong.
    A shadow fell over him, and he jerked around in time to see an astonishing sight. It was the moose he’d joked about earlier. Or an elk. Or some damn thing. Except it walked upright like a man. It was a man, a damn big man, maybe eight feet tall, with a rack of antlers that would do any buck proud. A lot of his height was in his hairy, satyr-like legs, but he also had a deep chest, broad shoulders, and well-muscled arms. A horn of some kind was slung around his neck, resting against his massive chest. The guy was not only big, he was smart. He’d kept his mouth shut when Ray had penetrated the Fists’ defenses.
    As Ray watched, the joker plucked a huge bundle of freight from the nearest stack and threw it at him. Ray dived backward, tumbling into a group of onrushing guardsmen.
    “What is it?” one of them asked as the bundle hit the deck, bounced, and skidded to a halt against the rail.
    Ray shook his head. “One of the damnedest jokers I ever saw.”
    “Let’s get” one of the guardsmen started to say, then fell silent as they heard the eerie sound of a horn blowing, an ancient, shivery sound that seemed to belong to an earlier age when wild huntsmen roved forest and fen with packs of hounds slavering at their heels. It unnerved everyone, even Ray, and for a moment no one wanted to go back among the stacks of freight. And then it was too late.
    The horned joker burst from cover upon the back of a magnificent black horse whose eyes glowed like green fire. Its sharp hooves kicked out and one of the guardsmen was catapulted backward, spraying blood all over his comrades.
    The horse took three magnificent bounds and leapt over the rail.
    “We’ve got him!” Ray shouted. There was no way a horse, no matter how big, beautiful, or mysterious, could outswim a Coast Guard cutter. They had the horny bastard.
    But when