Wild Cards [09] Jokertown Shuffle Read Free Page A

Miller
    But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, Who is neither tarnished or afraid....
-RAYMOND CHANDLER

    1.
    Brennan woke suddenly, though the night was quiet and Jennifer was sleeping undisturbed beside him. He wondered what had woken him. Then he caught again a faint whiff of grease and gun oil, and sat up as the night was split by thunder and fire.
    He pushed Jennifer off the right side of their futon and rolled to the left as a bullet seared his side and another ripped through his upper thigh. He gritted his teeth, ignoring the agony that lanced through his leg as he dove naked through the darkness. His first thought was to draw the fire away from Jennifer. His second was to get the bastard who was doing the shooting.
    There was a problem with that. Brennan no longer kept weapons in the house. They were all locked away in the backyard shed as a repudiation of the life he'd once lived. He regretted this decision as a stream of bullets tracked him while he hurtled through the bedroom door into the interior of the house. There was the sound of smashing glass, and a stabbing winter wind struck Brennan as the assassin crashed through the bedroom window and followed him.
    Brennan headed for the kitchen, stopped, and reversed his field as he heard a second hit man breaking down the front door. He turned for the door that led to the backyard. His only hope, he suddenly realized, was to get outside where he could use his hunting skills to neutralize the numerical superiority of his heavily armed opponents.
    Brennan flung himself through the back door, dodging left and rolling on the ground. Another assassin was waiting for him, but Brennan went through the door too quickly for the killer to draw an accurate aim.
    Brennan gritted his teeth against the pain lancing through his leg as he sprinted across his meticulously raked sand garden, ruining the serenity of the gravel-sculpted waves with footprints and bloodspatters. The assassin was too slow to track him, and a fusillade of shots ripped into the ground at Brennan's heels as he dove into the thick brush surrounding his isolated country home.
    The cold night air frosted Brennan's breath as he stood naked on the frigid ground. His bare feet burned in the snow, and his thigh throbbed as it dripped blood, but he scarcely felt the pain as he crouched low in the snow-laden bushes. A second black-garbed figure joined the one who'd been lying in ambush in the backyard. They conversed in low unintelligible voices, and one of them gestured toward the forest in Brennan's general direction. Neither seemed eager to go into the darkness.
    Brennan grimaced, forcing his mind into dispassionate rationality. His biggest problem was time. His assailants could afford to wait him out. He was crouched naked in a frigid winter night that was already sapping all the warmth from his bones. He had to get to the shed behind the greenhouse before he became an immobile hunk of frozen meat.
    Just as Brennan convinced himself to move, the assassins were joined by a third figure, who thumbed on a powerful flashlight and aimed it into the woods just to Brennan *s left. Brennan's hopes sank even lower. Now it would be almost impossible to get away. The hit men could jacklight him and shoot him down the moment he moved. But if he stayed put, he'd freeze and save them the effort of pulling the triggers. He scrabbled through the snow with fingers stiffened by the cold and found a fist-size rock that was slick with ice. It was a poor excuse for a weapon, but it would have to do. He shifted silently as the beam from the flashlight swept closer. He stood to throw the rock; then suddenly something fell from the loft window overlooking the backyard.
    A tiny figure, no more than ten inches high, landed on the shoulders of one of the assassins with a thin high-pitched scream. There was the gleam of metal flashing in the light of a slivered moon, and the figure screamed again and stuck what