The attack Wayne Summerall launched was savage and brutal, a blistering storm of punches to Sam's head and upper body. The man was strong, as powerful as any Gifted opponent Sam had ever faced, and his blows shook the Chicagoan to his core.

But Sam wasn't accustomed to losing fights, and he had no intention of developing the habit so late in life. Summerall was strong, and he was quick, but the man had made the mistake of following Sam to the floor and taking a knee better to deliver his blows. And the old Chicagoan was a fighter, who knew every dirty trick in the book.

Sam's initial counter wasn't even especially dirty. His first move was to cover up, protecting his face and head as best he was able, and then to shove the heel of his right foot against Summerall's exposed knee, the one upon which the man knelt.

The short and sharp kick caused zero damage, and barely moved Summerall's knee six inches, but it broke the larger man's rhythm and caused him to wobble while he regained his balance. When Summerall's right hand shot to the ground to steady him, Sam grabbed the man's left arm, used it as a lever to pull Summerall close, and hooked the man's torso in a scissoring motion between both legs.

It wasn't a proper arm bar, at least not one that could hold the stronger man for long, but Sam twisting and pulling that left arm meant, for the moment, that Summerall could throw no punches with either arm. His left arm was under control, and his right was too far away from Sam's head to deliver even the most ineffectual punch.

Hurting or disabling Summerall wasn't the point. The move gave Sam a moment's reprieve from the pummeling to scan the room and assess the situation. Foremost in his mind? Where was Lydia?

Scant seconds had passed since the melee had commenced. Merrick was staggering to his feet from under a table on the far side of the room, and Sokol was in the hallway screaming something incoherent into the distance. There was no sign of Lydia.

But as Sam looked, Summerall rose to his feet and curled his powerful bicep, lifting Sam several feet from the ground and bringing the Chicagoan again within range of the man's free hand. Another punch rocked Sam, but he ducked his head and loosened the tight grip of his legs around his opponent, and in a flash swung free of Summerall and skipped lightly for the door into the hallway.

He didn't make it.

As he reached the doorway, a granite fist from the hallway struck him across the nose, and before the oldster knew it, Merrick and Summerall were on top of him. Massive arms squeezed him from behind, and powerful fists pummeled his head, face, and shoulders. There now were at least three of them, and his assailants spared him nothing.

As before, Sam ducked his head and shielded his face and head with his heavy arms, as any bareknuckle boxer might. The blows hurt, but in a moment, he found his footing, ducked, and lifted. Whichever of his adversaries was holding him from the rear lost his footing, and Sam pivoted hard on the balls of his feet, sending the man whipping about and into the bodies of his two comrades, knocking them off balance too.

From between Sam's raised fists, Wayne Summerall came into view. Sam would never win a stand-up fight against three adversaries, but he would never escape the room alive as long as the three could punish him at their leisure, without risk of being struck in return. It was time to punch back, and Summerall's ugly mug was a good enough place to start.

There were no signs of it now, but Sam knew the man's nose recently had been broken. The old fighter threw a flurry of clearing punches left and right, before lunging forward and snapping a hard and sharp left-right-left combination at Summerall's nose. The big man's head jerked back, knocking him further off balance, and Sam spun hard left and sent a half dozen punches into whichever adversary was standing there.

For a moment, their attack ceased, but the third adversary, who still clung to Sam's back, managed to regain his feet and to lift the old man in a bone crunching bear hug. Sam kicked hard with both legs. One of the blows, by merest luck, caught Summerall in the face, and the second flailing kick generated enough force that it pulled Sam and the man on his back off to the left, where the two stumbled and flipped over the remains of the room's large central table.

Sam soon found himself on the ground, where savage kicks to his legs and torso were added to a deluge of punches to his head. The old Chicagoan was hard and rugged, but his opponents were men of incredible power. Their blows knocked the breath from him. He managed to get hold of a leg—he knew not whose—and vainly sunk his teeth into it. Hunching his shoulders and dropping his head, he managed to pull that single opponent to the ground. His ears were ringing, and he was so dazed that he scarcely noticed when the deluge abated.

"Get up," screamed Lydia above him as she tugged on his arm.

Magically, he was on his feet and, before he knew it, was running out of the dayroom and down the hallway toward the hangar bay. As they fled, he caught a glimpse of someone, possibly Summerall, attempting to pull himself from a newly formed hole in the plaster wall. For the faintest of moments, Sam's step faltered. The old man's blood was up, and he wanted nothing more than to thrash the young mercenary, an urge so violent that he nearly could taste it.

Instead, he turned and ran. He needed to get some space and to come up with a new plan. He'd made the trip to Rantoul, Illinois, in order to help these people, not to give them a beating—no matter how well deserved it might be. Their recalcitrance now didn't change that fact.

He lost sight of the speeding Lydia, and as he left the hallway and entered the large and tightly packed hangar bay, he caught a glimpse of her shoving several frightened men toward the door. His young ward—his daughter—had something long and heavy in her right hand.

Some instinct in the veteran fighter caused him to turn and duck, just as an attacker lunged at him from the rear. It wasn't clear who it was, but Sam hit the man below the belt with his right shoulder and, grabbing the fellow by the ankle, just above the left foot, pivoted and spun once, tossing his adversary against a high stack of crates 30 feet away.

That would slow the fellow down, but Sam was in a quandary. He and Lydia faced at least three opponents, Summerall, Merrick, and one other. He was certain Nan wasn't one of them, and two others were wildcards.

Against normal folk, the best option would have been to keep their adversaries inside the building, amid the packing crates of the bay or in the hallways that connected the rooms of the shop. In those locations, their opponents could only come at them one or two at a time.

But these folks were of such titanic strength that they could batter through walls and, one way or another, soon would surround them. It was a bad option, but moving the fight outdoors onto the tarmac, where at least they could see the men coming, and Lydia's great speed and agility would allow her to defend herself—or to flee, if it came to that—was their best bet.

A deafening scream, like that of some feral animal, sounded from the direction of the dayroom. Summerall. If the man had been angry before, now he was livid with rage.

Thirty long strides brought Sam near the hatch that formed the hangar bay door, the same portal through which he and Lydia had entered the building earlier that morning, and as he did, something tall and slim flashed by him in the opposite direction.

"Lydia, dammit!" he nearly yelled, before catching himself.

Instead of Sam's verbal explosion, however, an actual explosion rocked the large bay, as Lydia hurled the item that was in her hand at the large tanks located near the rear of the chamber. Whatever the projectile was, a crowbar or other heavy tool, it struck the tank, which ruptured like a bomb. An ear-splitting shriek of escaping gas and a jarring rattle of grinding gears followed.

To Sam's further astonishment, the youngster didn't stop. Three light skips took her to the top of the highest stack of packing crates, and, from there, the kid leapt the additional 15 feet into the rafters above, where she glided, hand over hand, from rafter to rafter, to where an enormous heating mechanism was situated in the roof. Taking a sturdy grip on the central beam, Lydia delivered a dozen brutal kicks to the unit, which broke loose and dropped to the ground near the entry to the hallway through which they'd just escaped, nearly crushing two men as they prepared to emerge.

The men, one of whom appeared to be Merrick, ducked back into the hallway.

Lydia reversed course and glided back across the roof, skipping every other rafter as she went, before releasing her grip, executing a double flip in the air, and lightly touching down on the bay floor a dozen feet in front of him, a silly grin lighting her face.

The girl soon was at his side again. The whole episode had taken scant seconds. "Let's go," she said impatiently.

"What the fu ...?" he began, before again tempering his language. His daughter's feat had been nothing short of astounding. He knew that her speed and agility had improved by leaps and bounds, but it hadn't occurred to him the degree to which her raw strength, even in recent weeks, had increased. The incident left a surreal feeling within him.

"I threw a prybar into one of the tanks in the back," she said with a laugh, omitting completely her incredible display in the rafters above. "Should I call Tommy now?"

The old man couldn't help but laugh. "Nah, I think we got this one, hon."

No, Sam Babington was a hopeless optimist. His worry, or what little he'd felt of it, now evaporated. Despite the belligerence of the mercenaries, he would not give up on showing these souls the light, even if that meant kicking the living shit out of each and every one of them to do it.

All of these folks were hard and dangerous, but Sam had defeated an opponent in the Montana wilderness very nearly as strong and as quick as Summerall—and that had been with a fresh bullet wound in his belly. And though the thought of involving her still filled him with some anxiety, Lydia had proven she could defend herself. Hell. She'd nearly knocked Tommy Haas on his ass some days before.

As he and Lydia emerged into the August morning, the parking area on the tarmac was as they had left it, save for an additional car and a single person. An amused looking Barret stood near Sam's borrowed van, smoking a cigarette, two heavy military duffle bags at her feet.

"Sounds like you're winning friends," she hollered over to them. "You certainly scared the shit out of the day geeks. They lit out of here like their nuts were on fire."

Sam looked around and began striding purposefully to where the woman stood. Their opponents would be outside in a few minutes, but Sam was planning ahead.

"Honey," he said quietly to Lydia, "when they get out here, lead one of them off on a chase, but don't show him how fast you really are ...."

"Or he won't take the bait." She smiled. They'd talked about such strategies before.

He spoke in a normal voice to Barret. "Does that joint have gas laid on?"

"The building? Nah, I don't think so. Everything's electric ...." The woman then appeared to catch his meaning and, bending slightly at the waist, laughed around a drag of her cigarette. "No, but there's still some aviation fuel in a trailer at the back of the bay."

"I hope you got all your gear," he said. "I'm burning this motherfucker down." Sam had never wanted to add "arsonist" to his vita, but there it was.

The woman barked a morbid laugh. "You knock yourself out, my friend. I still can't fucking believe I let Wayne talk me into this shit—Mr. 'I got six months of business school.' Jesus, I need a bath."

Sam smiled. The woman's neutrality meant that they would have, at the most, four adversaries. In addition to Summerall and Merrick, either Feist or Sokol already was against them—it wasn't clear which—and the other was an unknown commodity.

But really, Sam just needed to beat Summerall into line. That man was the linchpin. He remembered what Tommy had told him of his friend Cecil's encounter with the man. The big lad had weaknesses, and Sam planned to exploit them.

At about that time, Summerall and Merrick emerged from the hangar door. It was obvious that both men were angry, but the group's supposed leader was quivering and white with rage.