Her attacker still tried. He held the piece up above his head two-handed, firing downward at a shallow slant. Bullets went into the car body through the roof, sent the windshield cascading away in glittering particles, thumped through the hood to clang into the engine. None came close to the crouching Annja.

The gunfire broke off as the magazine emptied. With no notion where his two buddies were, but certain the rest of the pack was catching up quick, Annja moved fast. She darted around the driver's side of the sedan and charged straight back just as the banger hopped out on the same side into a straddle-legged stance, screaming and firing his reloaded machine pistol from the hip.

She dived beneath his bullets. She smelled burned propellant and lubricant. Oddly she heard nothing. She rolled up with the yellow muzzle flare dazzling her eyes and fast-flung primer fragments stinging her cheeks. She swung the sword down.

The blade caught the chattering machine pistol and split it open. The gunman's screams went up an octave as the chamber opened up just as a cartridge went off, causing a bubble of blue-and-yellow fire to scorch his hands and scraggly beard. The powerful blade carried on downward, scarcely impeded by cutting the gun in two, slicing his left hand transversely across the palm.

She found herself sitting right in front of the man as his seared right forefinger continued to pump the trigger of his ruined weapon uselessly. With no better option in view, she jabbed the sword up, fast and short. The tip took him under the chin, cleaved his tongue, pierced the roof of his mouth and went straight into his brain.

His howls abruptly stopped. As he collapsed lifelessly, pithed like a lab frog, she tore the sword free with a desperate full-swing wrench of both hands. She was already looking right to where she heard thudding footsteps, glad not to have to see what that did to his face...

One of his comrades loomed up over the hedge. He was almost on top of her. This one had a full-on AK-47. He raised it to his shoulder.

She knocked the broken-nosed barrel up with the flat of her sword. The gun went off, a full-auto snarl, flame stabbing four feet into the night sky. The weapon's considerable recoil at such an unwieldy angle drove the gunner back, off balance.

Annja was over the hedge and on him like a leopard. She slashed at his winged-out right elbow. His arm parted to her blade. A final shot torqued the heavy rifle from the hand that still held the foregrip. He sat down shrieking horribly until Annja silenced him with a slash across the face.

A white-painted metal yard lamp exploded right in front of her. She screamed in surprise and terror, then dropped straight down as a second charge of buckshot moaned over her head to take out most of what the first blast had left of the front window of the house.

The assault rifle lay on the lawn right beside her. She sent the sword away and grabbed the rifle.

Blasting away from his hip, the shotgunner ran forward from the middle of the street. Annja yanked the Kalashnikov into firing position, pointed it at him and squeezed off a 4-round burst.

At least one shot struck home. The man reeled, stopped and went to one knee just on the other side of the short block wall at the front of the little yard. He raised the shotgun. Annja got the hooded front sight in front of her eyes. The first part of him it bore on was his head, with a ball cap turned sideways. She squeezed off a single shot. He fell.

She put the steel buttplate to her shoulder as she aimed back the way she had come. A pursuer came into view in a flying leap across the far fence of the yard she'd just escaped, a shotgun in his right hand. She fired a short burst across the hood of the shot-up Taurus. It caught him in the center of his chest. His legs flew up before him, and he landed heavily on his back.

The first car that had tried the drive-by peeled out after her. She fired an aimed burst into the driver's side of the windshield. To her gratification the car veered left and slammed into the front of a parked pickup.

Then she realized the Kalashnikov's charging handle was locked back. She'd fired the banana magazine dry.

A wild burst from somebody running up the street cracked against the stone front of the house beside her like hail. She threw down the empty AK-47 and ran for all she was worth.

Two blocks east of Broadway a green park opened up to the right, climbing a hill covered with turf grass that, well watered by the city, was still mostly green. Paths graveled in crushed pumice from the Jemez Mountains wound through it. Halfway up the hill sturdy playground equipment, a slide and swing set rose out of a little depression. At the hill's crest stood some kind of a statue. Gloom and the shine of the streetlight by the play set hid details from Annja's eyes.

Her pursuers had quit shooting to concentrate on running. There were at least half a dozen of them left. They were obviously out of shape for the chase but kept after her regardless of tongues hanging out – and regardless of the casualties she had already laid on them.

Why are they after me?she wondered. Matters had gone far past the point she could pretend this was some random act of violence against a chance victim. They wanted Annja Creed. And they wanted her badly enough to die.

As she came upon the park a pair of headlights appeared over the top of the long slope that continued a block past the park. They came fast. She knew that her tormentors had just received reinforcements.

She raced up the gravel path into the park's interior. The folds in the ground, the landscaping, the swing set bolted together from heavy railroad ties would provide some concealment and more importantly cover from bullets.

Gunfire ripped from the just-arrived car as it squealed to a stop. Bullets tore divots from the sod around her.

She reached the little hollow where the playground equipment stood. For all her fitness she was breathing hard, so winded by exertion and the stress of mortal danger that she had to put a hand on a splintery wood upright to brace herself as she gasped for air. She made herself take control of her breathing. She drew air through her nostrils deep into her lungs, using abdominal breathing from Asian martial arts and meditation practices, which would oxygenate her system far quicker than panting like a dog in a hot car.

She glanced up the hill. The statue seemed to portray a somewhat larger-than-life-size youth in what she took for not very accurate Aztec warrior garb. He knelt cradling a maiden in a long gown who was apparently expiring across his knee. The statue gleamed as if made of something shiny, possibly painted fiberglass.

From the other side of the hill she heard more voices – harsh, masculine, calling out in slangy and not very grammatical local Spanish. These were homegrown bad boys, not immigrants. They sounded like a pack of hunting dogs giving voice as they pursued a fox. Their evil intent was clear even though their words were not.

Where are they coming from? she wondered in desperation. She summoned the sword again. She wasn't sure what good it would do her against ten or a dozen foes armed with shotguns and automatic weapons, no matter how gangster-terrible their marksmanship was. But dying with it in my hand will let me feel as if I'm doing something, she told herself.

Feeling the weapon's heft and hardness in her right hand, she knew that what she was truly arming herself against was the sense of helplessness. She knew giving in to despair would rob her of the resourcefulness that was the only thing that could give her whatever sliver-thin chance of survival she had.

They were all around her now, laughing and bantering, approaching slowly. The predators were playing with their food. She grasped the sword in both hands and stood with legs slightly flexed, ready to dive in any direction – or lunge in counterattack, should a chance blessedly present itself in spite of the odds.