At the next corner we ran through a volley of pistol bullets.
Reno turned around to tell me:
“If they pop the bag, we’ll all of us hit the moon. Get it open. We got to work fast when we get there.”
I had the fasteners unsnapped by the time we came to rest at the curb in front of a dark three-story brick building.
Men crawled all over me, opening the valise, helping themselves to the contents, bombs made of short sections of two-inch pipe, packed in sawdust in the bag. Bullets bit chunks out of the car’s curtains.
Reno reached back for one of the bombs, hopped out to the sidewalk, paid no attention to a streak of blood that suddenly appeared in the middle of his left cheek, and heaved his piece of stuffed pipe at the brick building’s door.
A sheet of flame was followed by deafening noise. Hunks of things pelted us while we tried to keep from being knocked over by the concussion. Then there was no door to keep anybody out of the red brick building.
A man ran forward, swung his arm, let a pipeful of hell go through the doorway. The shutters came off the downstairs windows, fire and glass flying behind them.
The car that had followed us was stationary up the street, trading shots with the neighborhood. The car that had gone ahead of us had turned into a side street. Pistol shots from behind the red brick building, between the explosions of our cargo, told us that our advance car was covering the back door.
O’Marra, out in the middle of the street, bent far over, tossed a bomb to the brick building’s roof. It didn’t explode. O’Marra put one foot high in the air, clawed at his throat, and fell solidly backward.