“Watch the throwers,” Ravi advised, batting away an incoming missile. “Not the rocks.”
This was terrific advice. There were only so many rockers, and their throwing motions were obvious even if the rocks themselves were hard to see in flight. To avoid being flanked by Laks, Gopinder, and Ravi, the rockers who’d formerly been on the Indians’ left flank—shifted one at a time to the Indians’ right. Laks risked taking his eye off them long enough to glance left at Sam and Jay, now almost abreast of him. He got a rock in the rib cage for his trouble but saw Sam roll over onto his back and give a thumbs-up. Jay was up on his elbows pressing a soccer scarf against a laceration above his eye. “If you can, tuck in behind us,” Laks said.
“Roger that,” Sam responded. The mere fact that he could talk suggested he had got his wind back. As Laks moved past them, the Englishmen planted their sticks in the ground and used them to get up to their feet, then swung in behind. “You’re going to be my left wing when we get closer,” Laks said. “Make sure we don’t get flanked on that side.”
“Yes SIR!” Jay responded. Military style. Not sarcastic.
“Ilham. The stick guys. What’s that on their faces?” They’d now drawn close enough to see that the Bonking Heads stick fighters—who, to this point, had done nothing but make fun of them—had some kind of weird objects stuck to their noses.
Ilham, who was now trailing a safe distance in their wake, had access to all three video feeds, as well as image-stabilized binoculars. “Little cups strapped to their noses. Tubes coming out of them.”
Laks had heard of them, but never seen one, while working in the oxygen langars. “Nasal masks,” he said. “Like a mini oxygen mask, but it doesn’t cover the mouth. They’re on supplemental oxygen.”
“Explains why they won’t fucking shut it,” Jay remarked. He and Sam had belatedly got their earbuds in and joined the feed.
Laks asked, “Sue or Bella, can you get line of sight to the source?”
“On it,” Bella announced. Laks heard a drone bank and veer.
“Nice, Bella!” Ilham said a few moments later. “It’s a big oxygen tank, like welders use, lying flat on the ground behind them.”
“Gopinder and Ravi. When we engage, draw them away from the tank,” Laks said. “Don’t make it easy for them. At some point they’ll have to lose the masks. Sam and Jay, which of you is in better shape?”
“I’m going to say that’s me,” Sam answered. “Jay’s got blood in his eyes.”
“Sam, wing me on my left,” Laks said. “Jay, after we engage, see if you can cut around their flank and cut the oxygen lines.”
“Rockers are pulling back,” Ilham reported. “They’ll stand off and throw from a distance when they have a clear shot.”
“Jay!” Laks called and tossed Jay his dhal.
“Thanks, mate!”
But Laks did not hear it because at this moment—having not moved at anything faster than a geriatric mall-walker’s pace since exiting the bus—he pivoted toward the Bonking Heads’ position, sprang forward, and came at their foremost stick fighter—obviously their best guy, their ringleader—full speed, in exactly the same light-footed prancing style that this asshole liked to make fun of. Which worked great, actually, on a boulder
field. At the same time Laks was whirling his stick up to a velocity where it almost disappeared. He was pleased to note that, at this altitude, air resistance was less of a factor. Despite the speed and suddenness of Laks’s advance, this guy was good enough that he reacted just in time, drawing back instinctively, rear weighted, front leg poised out in front of him. Laks performed a move he had been practicing against heavy bags in the gym since he’d been eight years old, letting his stick hand pass behind him for a moment and then bringing it out so that his entire body, from the soles of his feet up through his legs and torso and arm, cracked like a bullwhip. The end of the whip was the stick, whose last six inches impacted the shin of his opponent just below the knee with a crack whose reverberations were probably detectable on seismographs in Pakistan.
Nowhere near as loud, though, as the scream that followed a moment later. Enraged, the man moved forward to take a swing at Laks. But Laks was already drawing back, forcing him to over-commit. All his weight came forward onto the injured leg, which buckled. As the man staggered forward in an effort to remain upright, his oxygen tube snapped taut behind him, his head reared back, and the little mask popped off his nose and bounced in the dust. All these distractions ruined him, leaving him wide open for Lak’s follow-up, which was a simple pool-cue strike into the liver.