The Chronicles of Riddick - Alan Dean Foster [8]
“Is there more? Oh, you know there’s more!” He sniggered. “Wanted on five worlds in three systems for . . .” Feigning thoughtfulness, he tapped his lower lip with one forefinger. “Lessee—how many murders? Can I use all nine of my toes to run the tally?” He was fairly dancing now with repressed excitement. “Oh, yeah, baby, I bagged the man in motion, the killin’ villain himself! Too bad about Codd and Johns. Shame they won’t be around to split the reward. I’ll just hafta handle their thirds for them. Life’s a bitch, but Death, she can give it up when she wants to. Guess I must live right. Guess I must live.” Now he did giggle, a sound more unsettling than his regular laugh.
Finger light on the trigger, he cradled his weapon in one hand. Short and nasty, it had two thick-bodied, large-caliber barrels over and under, butt and trigger snapping out from the lower half. A shot from either barrel would blow a man in half. Let loose with both barrels and—well, there wouldn’t be enough left on which to file a claim for payment. Removing a pair of cuffs from his utility belt, he dangled them like an enticement to a dance.
“C’mon. Party time’s over. Time to say bye-bye to this shit ball. Fulfill the drill.”
Toombs tossed the cuffs at his quarry. They bounced off the man’s chest and fell into the snow. The quarry glanced down at them, then back up at the mercenary, still not saying a word. He might act the mute, but Toombs knew he was not.
The mercenary could have grimaced, snapped something like “Put ’em on now, I’m not fucking around!” Instead, he took aim and let loose with both barrels of his weapon. The breeze from the explosive shells passed close enough to the quarry’s skull to riffle his tangle of hair. They were more eloquent than anything Toombs himself could have said.
Bending, the quarry picked up the cuffs and worked them around to his back. Cuffing oneself wasn’t an easy task, even for a renegade contortionist, but though the big man took his time, he made it look easy.
Edging around behind him, twin gun muzzles never wavering, Toombs checked the cuffs. While doing so, he also kept a watchful eye on the prey’s urzoshod feet. Explosive power sufficient to destroy a small aircraft hovered centimeters from the quarry’s spine. With practiced fingers, the mercenary checked and rechecked the bonds. No funny business there, at least. The cuffs were locked and secure.
Even more emboldened than before, Toombs moved closer until he was practically inside the other man’s protective suit. Licking his lips, he made his voice as low and intimidating as possible.
“An’ just for the file. Just so you shouldn’t forget it. The guy all up on your neck right now? It’s Toombs. The name of your new shot-caller is Toombs. Easy to remember. It’s what you’re gonna end up in.”
This time the quarry did react but not in the way Toombs expected. He was too big, too wide, to do what he did. The impossibility of it did not fully register on Toombs until later. All he knew was that one minute his quarry was standing in front of him, and the next, he had sprung into the air and backward somersaulted over the stunned mercenary. In the process, he simultaneously dislocated his shoulders and his wrists. One freed hand came around in an arc to smack the weapon out of Toombs’s hands. The other caught it before it had flipped halfway to the ground.
A grand total of perhaps two seconds had elapsed. Before, Toombs had been standing behind his bound prisoner, weapon in hand. After, he found himself with their respective positions exactly reversed. Though it had happened, the bewildered mercenary was unsure of how it had been accomplished.
The reality of the transformed situation beggared analysis. All he knew was that instead of holding the gun on his quarry, it was the quarry who was now pressing the double barrels against the bottom of Toombs’s jaw. A single shot would messily remove that important bit of skeletal structure, along with half the mercenary’s head.