Borderlands: Gunsight by John Shirley

the street behind him, a split second from hammering rounds into his back.
    Should’ve brought a shield . But he’d wanted to operate completely in the dark and the shield would interfere with the auto-camo and—he felt a round big as a knife slice along his ribs, on his right side, grazing him as he leapt between the buildings.
    “Shit!” he hissed, and tossed a smoke grenade behind him.
    The bomb gushed almost immediately into a thick plume of dark gray smoke, hiding him as he ducked behind the shack, ran along the rim of the escarpment—and saw an old oil barrel standing behind the shack. An idea came to him.
    He climbed onto the barrel, jumped up from there to grab the edge of the roof, and did a pull-up. In seconds he was on the roof, running back toward the road he’d just escaped—and as he’d hoped, the technical was doing a U-turn, knocking a small shack off the hill because of the tight turn radius. Someone howled in protest as the shack tumbled down the hill. Then the armored truck was roaring up close beneath Mordecai, as the machine gunner hadn’t seen him on the roof;he was squinting at the space between buildings, hoping to get another shot at him. So he didn’t see Mordecai leaping down on him, firing the machine pistol as he came. Gergle looked up in time to see Mordecai coming—and that was the last thing he saw as bullets took out his eyes and knocked him backward, dead before he hit the bed of the truck. The same burst hit the machine gunner but the man’s shield held up, sparking purple with the rounds. Still, the gunner was staggered backward, losing his grip on his weapon.
    Mordecai saw all this in the second it took him to complete his leap. He landed in the back of the speeding truck, pitched hard to the left by its motion. He rolled, came up firing the machine pistol. Again the shield held and this time the machine gunner was reaching for a shotgun clipped to the back of the technical’s cab. Mordecai rushed him, used all his strength and momentum to jab the gun through the shield. He fired, tearing up the gunner’s chest. The Marauder jerked with the shots and went down.
    The technical screeched to a halt. “What’s goin’ on back there?” the driver demanded.
    Mordecai plucked another smoke grenade, leaned over the cab, and tossed it through an open window. Smoke gushed and the driver climbed out, coughing—only to be shot through the top of his head by the last few rounds left in the machine pistol.
    Mordecai heard a slobbering sound, turned to see the SlagSlug rearing up behind the technical. The SlagSlug opened its big red mouth—and it spewed.
    Just ahead of the creature, Mordecai vaulted over the machine gun, coming down hard next to the driver’s body. He absorbed the shock with bent knees, then jumped into the cab,squinting as the smoke swirled past him. He put the vehicle in reverse and slammed the accelerator. The technical backed up, hard, into the SlagSlug—there was a nasty crunch, a squeal of pain.
    “Oughta slow the ugly bastard down,” Mordecai said as Bloodwing swept into the smoky vehicle’s cab with him.
    He changed gears and accelerated down the road, which curved sharply as it descended. Mordecai drove with his left hand, with his right switching the machine gun to driver control.
    A group of four guards on foot were rushing up the hill toward him—he knocked three of them down with the machine gun, their shields sparking. He hit the fourth one head-on with the armored truck, splashing blood on the windshield and crushing the man under his front wheels. Mordecai bumped over the other three sentries—he winced at the sound of it—and then jerked the wheel hard to take him around the tight curve. The sharp turn took the technical up on two wheels, and it almost flipped over. But then it fell back on all four wheels with a joint-jarring thump, and he was roaring down to another curve. The curvy road snaked down the hill, more tight turns than straight