A Coming Of Age

"Thanks. Now what?"

"They should be throwing everything loose at the place that one was supposed to hit. Deflect as many as you can in any direction you want—not so close this time."

The words were hardly out of his mouth when the open window suddenly erupted with a veritable stream of flying objects. Tirrell ducked involuntarily, but Tonio was equal to the challenge. Directly overhead, the stream broke up, its component elements splashing into a roughly circular pattern centered a dozen meters upslope. Gritting his teeth, hating his own inactivity even while recognizing there was nothing he could do, the detective watched and waited... and, as abruptly as it had begun, the barrage ceased.

Beside him, Tonio exhaled loudly. "Whew! I'm glad that's over. Or are they just collecting more stuff to throw?"

Tirrell risked taking the time for a quick look at the objects littering the ground around them. Several sections of iron grating, what looked like an ingot mold, a wheel off a cart, a small box. "They're certainly throwing everything that isn't nailed down," he said. "But I suspect that last attempt cleaned out their stockpile, at least for the moment. My guess is that they'll try coming after us personally next—we've pretty well proved this approach doesn't work."

Tirrell's prediction was quickly borne out; but with a twist the detective hadn't expected. Without warning, two kids came shooting out the same window the earlier barrage had come from and headed swiftly toward them. Simultaneously, a third boy took off from the building's east side, a small box clutched in his arms. At breakneck speed he headed for the trees a kilometer away.

"Stop him! Tirrell snapped, pointing at the fugitive. Their only hope was to keep Martel's group bottled up in the refinery until reinforcements arrived, and if they allowed even one of them to get away, the fagin would keep trying until all of them had made it.

Tonio's response was typical of the righthand's sense of humor. Instead of simply trying to halt the other's dash by brute force, he abruptly teeked hard on the box clutched in the kid's arms. Unable to react fast enough as the box suddenly slowed, the boy slammed into it stomach-first, legs shooting by underneath as he wrapped himself around it with a gasping yelp loud enough for Tirrell to hear a kilometer away. An instant later both he and the box were hurtling backward toward the refinery as all resistance to Tonio's teekay vanished into the boy's all-consuming need to get air back into his lungs. Satisfied his righthand had that part under control, Tirrell shifted his attention skyward.

The other two kids were almost directly overhead, drifting slowly now as their eyes swept the ground. Tonio, sitting right next to a large bush, was temporarily out of their line of sight; but Tirrell was perfectly visible from their position, and he knew he had seconds at the most before they spotted him.

There was only one thing he could think of to try. "Get ready to catch me," he muttered to Tonio. Waiting until the searching eyes above them were looking elsewhere, he scrambled to his feet and ran recklessly down the slope toward the refinery, the tear-gas grenade he'd scooped up concealed in his left hand.

He hadn't covered more than five meters when his feet found themselves treading air. Looking up, he saw one of the kids coming up behind him at a height of a hundred meters or so. The second, close behind, was glaring at the ground, and Tirrell got the impression that a teekay battle was underway between him and Tonio. Mentally crossing his fingers, Tirrell glanced at the ground, perhaps three meters beneath him now, and waved his empty hand at his captor. "Not so high! Not so high!" he yelled, putting an edge of hysteria into his voice.

The kid responded exactly as Tirrell had hoped he would. Instead of lowering the detective, he did just the opposite, yanking him swiftly upward as a fisherman would reel in a catch. Higher and closer he was teeked... and as the kid reached out toward him, Tirrell pulled the three-second fuse on his grenade, counted two, and threw it.

He had aimed the device to go off directly between the two kids, but whether or not it actually did so he never found out. The flat crack of the compressed tear gas bursting free and the cool wave of moisture that followed immediately afterward caught Tirrell with his head turned aside as far as possible, his eyes squeezed tightly shut with hands protecting both them and his nose. That his plan had indeed succeeded, however, was clear from the strangled gasps above him—and from his sudden, uncontrolled tumble toward the ground.

Falling blind was a far more u

"Tonio?" he whispered loudly, dropping into a kneeling crouch. Brushing his sleeve against the tear gas still clinging to his hair, he risked a quick glance, saw nothing but tall grass.

"Back here," came a muffled whisper from a few meters to his right. "Here—your gas mask."

Something bumped lightly against the side of Tirrell's face. Grabbing it, he slid it on, fumbling a bit before he got the straps properly tightened. Exhaling what was left in his lungs to clear the mask of any traces of gas, he cautiously took a breath. Just as cautiously, he opened his eyes.

Tonio, his own mask firmly in place, slid through the grass to Tirrell's side a moment later, the remaining gas grenades held in a fingertip-and-teekay grip in front of him. "Grack, but you took a chance there," he murmured.

"Had to be done," Tirrell grunted, taking a second to examine the righthand's mask. Tightening one of the straps, he returned his gaze to the now empty sky. "Did you see what happened to them?" he asked.

"I think their friends teeked them back into the refinery. They sure weren't navigating on their own. Are they going to be all right?"

"Oh, they're not in any danger. But I think we can scratch them from any further action for the day." Raising his head cautiously, Tirrell peered over the grasses at the refinery. No activity was visible; the window Martel had been using for his attacks was now sealed against the bluish-looking cloud of tear gas that was slowly drifting toward the east in the light breeze. "In fact, depending on how close everyone else is crowding around them, we may be able to take out the rest of them, too. Grab another grenade, Tonio, and let's try to teek it straight down Martel's throat."

Gasping and rubbing almost viciously at their eyes, Kalle and Barth were teeked back in through the window. "Close that window tight!" Martel snapped to Axel, his stomach threatening to climb up his throat. "All the windows—as tight as they'll go." The kids flew off to obey, leaving him staring out the window. Not at the cloud of gas that had unexpectedly robbed him of a quick victory, but at the place where the man who'd executed the maneuver had disappeared back into cover.

Tirrell. It had been Tirrell.

He swallowed once, hard, and as his brain slowly unfroze, he became aware of a sharp odor in the air. "Get over there—all the way in the corner," he ordered the two disabled kids. "Axel, teek them over there. Everyone else keep away; they've got the stuff on their clothes."

"Something coming!" the boy on lookout two windows away snouted.

Martel jumped to his side. A small black object, heading straight for the window. "Knock it down," he commanded the boy. "No, wait—just stop it and try to pull on anything that seems to be sticking out."

The cylinder hesitated in its flight, wobbled back and forth under the opposing forces, and a small ring near the front abruptly popped free. Seconds later the cylinder seemed to explode into another of the off-white clouds.