The smaller man was caught in a moment of indecision—help his friend or finish me off. That split second gave me a doorway back into the fight. I pushed off the frame and tried a swat of my own to knock aside the rifle barrel he was trying to raise, but hitting his arm was like striking a seasoned oak tree. I hit hard, but all I accomplished was to move the barrel two inches to one side as he pulled the trigger. The bullets caught me on the side as I tried to turn to avoid them. My armor is really good, but the angle of impact was bad, and the impact spun me.

I took that force and let it turn me all the way around, and as I completed the pirouette, I chopped him across the point of the jaw with the bottom of my fist. Armor or no, that is a lot of torque and leverage, and the blow whipped his head to one side. It should have given him whiplash at the very least. It didn’t. He cursed and pivoted back, tried for another shot, but I was moving now, my balance on the balls of my feet. Not sure what kind of body armor he had or how it could possibly have sloughed off the damage from my hit to his chin, and I didn’t care. I had a tiny window of opportunity, and the Killer in me was fully in the game now.

The Killer. Not the Darkness. Small mercies.

I grabbed the handles of the two Randall Attack knives and snap-released them with downward jerks. The matched knives had seven-and-a-half-inch Bowie-style blades and brass double guards. Fourteen ounces each. I usually prefer the much smaller and lighter Wilson Rapid Release folding knife, but I was far from home and working with the equipment I could scrounge. These blades are excellent, and they don’t give a damn about body armor. I proved that by slashing down at his forearm with one and across his face with the other. Did it the same way a samurai cuts with a sword—chopping down while drawing the blade fast and smooth, letting the length of cut give me depth of injury. Both knives bit deeply, and a reddish-gray gel of some kind oozed from the slashes.

The killer did not shrug it off. No, sir. This time, he screamed in pain, staggered back, and in doing so lost his grip on the rifle, which dropped to hang on its sling. Blood poured from both wounds.

They were bad wounds. Very deep. The kind that awaken thousands of outraged nerve bundles and flood the brain with white-hot agony.

But he didn’t stop.