Chapter Six

As Trader accelerated up the dirt road, he checked the miniwag’s side mirrors to make sure Zeal’s sec men hadn’t jumped in their own vehicles and followed them out of the ville. Behind him, there was nothing but his own swirl of dust on the winding track that rimmed the dry lake. He didn’t really expect to see a bunch of wags in hot pursuit. The baron knew better than to try something like that. He had to figure that a man as savvy as Trader would set up an ambush to cover his retreat from Virtue Lake.

“I never guessed old Zeal would roll over so far on a deal,” Trader said to Ryan and Poet, who sat grim faced and shoulder to shoulder in the narrow back seat. “Know damned well it goes against his grain not to be the one coming out on top. Can’t see why he’d be so anxious for the blasters and ammo that he’d take the screwing I gave him. And what’s he think he’s going to do with ten new blasters and a thousand rounds of government, anyway?”

“Not much,” Ryan replied. “Very suspicious, if you ask me,” Trader said. “We could always just move on,” Poet offered. Ryan let out a snort of disgust.

The older man ignored him and went on, “We can always off-load the autoblasters somewhere else down the line. Sell them one by one, if we have to. Plenty of barons be glad to pay top dollar for goods like that, even if they couldn’t afford to take them all.”

“That’s not an option,” Trader said. “Why not?” Poet asked.

“Because I’m not running from Levi Shabazz.”

“You really think he’s in the ville?”

“Oh, he’s there, all right. He’s the tail that wags the dog named Vernel. Question is, how is he hooked up with Lundquist Zeal? And what kind of ugly plan have they got hatched?”

“The answer there’s easy,” Ryan said. “They plan on taking us down, ripping us off for the whole cargo. Wags, too.”

“Mebbe,” Trader said. “But then again, mebbe not.”

“As I see it,” Poet stated, leaning forward in his seat, “we’ve got two options. We either uncircle the wags and leave right now, or we sit tight and see it out. If we stay, we got to go on triple red, shift our wags and mass their firepower to defend the road. We put the trade goods meant for Zeal outside our defensive perimeter, mebbe even mine them for a little extra protection. That way, if we had to, we could always just let them have the fucking blasters. No way could Zeal and Shabazz take the rest of the cargo from us.”

“What do you say to that, Ryan?” Trader asked.

A glance in the rearview mirror told him what the younger man thought of the plan. There was a thoroughly disgusted look on his face.

“We’ve been butting heads with Shabazz for as long as I’ve been part of this crew,” Ryan said. “He’s not much of a trader. Doesn’t have half the brains for the job. He’s always made his real living by robbing and chilling. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of smelling that bastard’s stink every time I turn upwind. I’m tired of looking over my shoulder for his blaster barrels every time we nail down a big score. And I’m tired of hearing about how he’s fucked over another dirt-poor ville for everything but the shit in the latrines.”

Trader knew what Ryan was talking about. He had heard the rumors, too. Road scuttlebutt had it that Shabazz had recently taken up extortion in a major way. As the story went, the trader claimed to have a stockpile of nerve gas he’d looted from some government cache. Given the few secret sites the man had actually found in his career, this sounded like nothing more than a bluff to Trader. Shabazz was mostly bluff, when it came right down to it. At any rate, he supposedly had threatened to gas an entire ville unless they gave up gold and slaves. The latter was another reason why Trader had a hard-on against the bastard. Shabazz not only thieved and murdered, but he also routinely did business in the skin trade. He supplied slave sluts, slave whores, and slave field hands for East Coast barons. And no doubt he helped keep Zeal’s refinery labor force fully manned.

“Fucker gives the profession a bad name,” Trader said around the stub of his cheroot.

“So, let’s do something about it,” Ryan argued. “Instead of squatting up on top of the hill like a bunch of toothless old hags, with our treasure under our skirts, let’s take out the bastard. We’ve got enough firepower in War Wag One to split those barricades wide open and send the baron’s sec men running for the Darks. We can use the miniwags to drive Shabazz from cover, then we personally put him on the last train west. If he and Zeal have got a plan worked out to do us harm, you know Zeal won’t go it alone. If we get rid of Shabazz, we can trade the blasters to the baron, take our profit and move on.”

“Well, Poet?” Trader asked.

“If we knew for sure that Shabazz was after our cargo, I’d agree. But, we don’t. He could be here for some other reason that has nothing to do with us. Trying to take him out presents a major risk to the convoy down the line. We could lose war wags and crew in the attempt. And it’s not a sure thing that we’d get him in the end, either. Our best option is to stand pat and defend the convoy with massed blasters, do our business with Zeal and hopefully roll away without firing a shot.”

“You think Shabazz is just going to let us drive off?” Ryan shouted at the man beside him. “Are you high on jolt or something?”

“Shabazz isn’t going to try and take us if he knows we’re ready for him,” Poet said. “He’s way smarter than that.”

Ryan started to yell something more personal and inflammatory, but Trader shut him up with an abrupt wave of his hand. From their first meeting, Trader had recognized much of his own younger self in Ryan—a meeting in which the one-eyed man held him at blasterpoint while they discussed the terms of his employment. Like the young Trader, Ryan was arrogant, headstrong, quick-tempered, unbending in battle. Excellent attributes, to be sure, but Trader also knew that the only reason he had lived long enough to see his first gray hairs was that he had learned to step back from the intoxicating brink of combat and listen to reason. As far as he was concerned, it was high time Ryan started listening, too.

“Like it or not, Poet’s right,” Trader said. “You got the heat up, Ryan, and you’re not seeing the picture clearly. If we go in there with blasters blazing, rockets roaring, we could touch off the baron’s gasoline stockpile, or mebbe even the whole rad-blasted refinery. Ain’t so many places around here making even half-assed fuel that we can afford to let one go up in smoke. Be a cold day in hell before these folks build themselves another refinery.”

Ryan said nothing. His blue eye stared unblinking at Trader’s reflection in the rearview.

“And even though Zeal’s gas is the staggering shits,” Trader went on, “we got villes along our route that are desperate for it. No matter how much it makes their wags knock and ping, they want it, and they’ll trade their best goods for it. And there’s another thing. These military blasters we’re trading Zeal for fuel, only a real special buyer like him is going to have the extra jack to spend on them. They’re what you might call a luxury item. Like sweet-smelling soap, or toothpaste, or one of those predark sex magazines. Gas is another story. Everybody needs it—if not for wags, then generators. And it can be resold in small quantities by middlemen. You can’t split a longblaster up into half pints. It either shoots or it ain’t nothing but spare parts. What I’m saying is, we can make a real sweet profit here if the deal goes through.”

“I think you’re overestimating Shabazz’s smarts,” Ryan said, “and way underestimating his greed. Not to mention the fact that he’s got Baron Zeal pulling his chain.”

Trader shrugged. He knew that his war wags could handle anything that Zeal and Shabazz could throw at them. He had the biggest blasters, the most powerful armored vehicles in all of Deathlands and the most skilled and deadly battle crews.

“If that sorry son of a bitch comes after us,” Trader said with confidence, “it’ll be the last thing he ever does.”