Chapter Sixteen

It took twenty minutes for Ryan, Poet and Hun to retrace their steps back to the mini-mall because they had to keep diving for cover from the sec patrols. They reentered the shantytown and, from the cover of a lean-to wall surveyed the milling armed guards, the yellow-tape barrier and the rows of parked wags beyond. They got an almost immediate and very welcome surprise. Hun nudged Ryan with an elbow. “Yeah, I see him,” Ryan hissed back. In the glare of headlights, they watched Trader, cigar firmly clamped in one corner of his mouth, duck under the plastic tape and walk over to the pink long wag. Ryan recognized the man who stood outside the rear door, holding it open for him. It was Levi Shabazz. Trader climbed in the back of the wag; Shabazz entered after him and closed the door. Then the hot pink Lincoln rumbled away in the direction of the big house.

“What was all that about?” Hun said. “Got to be the internal autodestructs,” Poet said. “We’ve been out of the wags for more than four hours. By now, all the mines should have blown. Trader must’ve told Zeal and Shabazz about them. That he had to disarm them or the whole convoy was going to go up.”

“I can’t believe those two pirates let him inside the wags all by himself,” Ryan said. “How the hell did he pull that off?”

“A smooth-talking son of a bitch, that’s Trader,” Hun said.

“More like he gets you in an armlock, then puts on the pressure until something goes snap,” Ryan said.

“It ain’t exactly fair, is it?” Poet stated. “Almost makes you feel sort of feel sorry for the thieving, chilling bastards.”

“Wouldn’t go that far,” Ryan said.

“I said ‘almost.’ “

“Which wag has got the cases of C-4?” Hun asked.

Ryan pointed to one of the smaller transports parked in the lot closest to them, the lot that hadn’t been cratered. “It’s in that one,” he said. “I know because I watched J.B. pack it in himself. He’s real particular about how his high-ex rides.”

“Figure there’s enough to do the job we got in mind?” Hun queried.

Ryan shrugged. “J.B. would know that better than me. I guess there must be at least fifty pounds of the stuff in the wag, and plenty of rigging wire, blasting caps and predark detonators. We aren’t going to leave any explosive behind. Take it all, use it all. You’ve seen the fuel plant. It’s huge. If it takes more than that to bring it crashing down, I suppose we’re shit out of luck.”

“Got to add in the gas that’s already stored there,” Poet reminded him. “Plenty more explosive potential there. I figure we can make a mighty big boom with what we’ve got. Especially if we’re crafty about where we place the charges inside the refinery.”

“Major fireball,” Ryan agreed.

“What about the folks in the ville?” Hun asked.

“What about them?” Ryan said.

“Big blast could do them some bad damage, too. Especially if you’re planning on making the gasoline catch fire and explode. Whole ville could burn down.”

“We’re not planning on touching off the C-4,” Poet assured her. “It’s a last resort. Just in case we can’t come to an agreement with Zeal. And I’m thinking mebbe the baron might want a look-see at our mining job, just to make sure we’re not trying to skin him with nothing but hot air. If it comes to that, he’s got to find a real threat to his refinery or we’re goners, and so is Trader and the rest of the crew.”

“I see what you mean,” she said.

Ryan wasn’t paying much attention to their discussion.

He was watching the sec men along the tape barrier, trying to figure out a way to get past them to the transport wag without being seen. The trouble was, the barrier was set up a good way from the parking lots, which left a stretch of open ground they would have to cross even after they reached the tape, allowing the sec men plenty of time to aim and fire. On the upside, there wasn’t much available light, only the shifting glow given off by trash fires the guards had lit in fifty-five-gallon drums. The fires were few and far between, and the area they lit up wasn’t large.

“If we’re seen going in,” he said to the others, “and the sec men raise an alarm, I figure they won’t shoot at us for fear of hitting the wags and setting off another big blast. But if they see us going in, they’ll be waiting for us to come out, and their blasters will be massed. In which case, we’re chilled. We’ve got to find the weak spot, or make one.”

Poet smiled like he thought something had finally sunk in.

A day before, that same grin would’ve made Ryan want to lay hands on the man. Funny thing, though, now it didn’t seem so insufferable. Now it seemed like the war captain was actually proud of his progress.

“Go on,” Poet prompted.

“We can’t raise a ruckus, either. We don’t want anybody to know we’ve been in there until after we get the charges set.”

“Hard set of problems, there,” Poet said. “One piled on top of the next. How do you figure to solve them?”

“Way I see it,” Ryan said, “the first thing we do is this

“

“CRYING SHAME about the gaudies,” the skinny sec man said to the guard standing next to him, this for perhaps the tenth time. He was talking just to keep from falling asleep on his feet. The perimeter they were supposed to be guarding was so big—it encompassed four square blocks of Virtue Lake’s commercial district—that the sentries were strung out pretty thin. The nearest other sec men were more than 150 feet away, and they had an oil drum, the lucky bastards. A fire was something that kept the mind occupied. And the body, too. A fire you could tend. You could feed. You could poke. You could watch the flames shoot up.

The skinny sec man could no longer even pretend to watch the edge of the shantytown for possible trouble. Nobody was coming his way. After what had happened earlier in the afternoon, who would want to break into the convoy area, anyway? Be like walking into a rad-blasted minefield. Hours earlier all the gawkers and the drunks had drifted off. There wasn’t even anybody to warn to stay back anymore. He had hoped to be able to fire a few warning shots over somebody’s head, or into somebody’s head if the opportunity arose, but that hadn’t happened, either.

“Yeah, a shame,” said the sour-faced sec man standing next to him. Eyes glazed over with boredom, he was picking at the huge gaps between his teeth with a sharp splinter of wood.

“Pizza Man was my favorite,” the skinny one went on. He lowered his machine pistol and let it hang down by its shoulder sling. Then he pushed it out of the way behind his hip so he had room to talk with his hands. “That gaudy had the best beer in the whole damned ville. At Pizza Man you’d never find something nasty in the bottom of your glass. Nothing with legs, anyway.”

“Yeah, good beer.”

“There was some friendly women there, too. Not much to look at. Seen trash-can lids with more sex appeal. But real friendly, even if you didn’t have a zealie to spend on them.”

“Yeah, friendly.”

“You know I seen the bodies carried out, and then had me a look-see at the place before we got the order to pull back. Man, there was nothing left inside the walls. Just heaps of crushed concrete block and broken glass. Do you think all the sluts got chilled? Man, that would be a shame. Kind of chokes me up, to tell the truth.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

After a long pause, the first sec man added, “But it was quick, you got to figure it was quick. There’s a mercy in that.”

When his companion didn’t parrot a reply, the sec man started to turn. As he did, he heard a strange rasping sound. What he saw beside him was a woman with short green hair and a fierce expression, her teeth bared like an animal, stepping out from behind the other guard.

Then he saw that his companion was crumpling to the road, and that his armor vest was sheeting blood from a throat cut ear to ear. The green-haired woman snatched the bill cap off the dying man’s head and slammed it down on her own. A serrated blade gleamed wetly in her fist.

The skinny sec man lunged for his weapon. Something moved, close to his right. He craned his head around and found himself staring into a single blue eye.

Ryan caught hold of the machine pistol’s strap with his left hand, holding the weapon pinned to the sec man’s side. His right hand clamped over the man’s open mouth. Hun was already moving around the sentry, who could see her coming, his eyes was big as doorknobs.

Expertly she reached in above the collar of the armor vest and made one lightning-quick slash at the side of his neck with the first two inches of blade. In passing, she ripped the bill cap off his head.

Ryan held the skinny man until he lost consciousness, which took ten seconds with the blood flow to the brain cut off. Blood was flowing everywhere else, though. Ryan let the guy slip to the ground, then stripped open the Velcro tapes on his armor vest, jerked it off and tossed it aside.

Meanwhile Poet and Hun moved shoulder to shoulder, blocking the view of the sec men over by the burn barrel. Due to their captured bill caps and the poor light, nothing seemed amiss.

The distance to the nearest garbage container was roughly one hundred feet. Ryan caught one of the men by the heels and dragged him over to it. Then he propped the body up and tipped it in. He did the same with the other corpse.

No alarms were raised.

No one noticed.

Just as he’d figured, the sentries were lost in their own thoughts. The weak point was their boredom, after hours of doing nothing but staring into the darkness.

Ryan crossed into the taped-off area, keeping to the deep shadows. When he reached the small transport, he moved to the back side. He crawled in under it and found the cover plate for the external mines. He tripped the switch, then crawled out again.

After tapping in the lock-release code, he opened the well-greased starboard side and slipped inside. Because the blasterports along the corridor were unblocked, he couldn’t risk a light. He fumbled his way down the narrow hallway toward the cargo hold. His fingers grazed the bulkhead door. Before he opened it, he felt along the adjoining wall for the crowbar that was mounted on a clip bracket.

Inside the cargo bay, it was darker than hell. So dark, that Ryan had a moment of complete disorientation. Reaching out to grip the door jamb, he forced himself to remember the layout of the hold. Only when he had it clearly in his mind did he proceed. He felt his way down a narrow aisle, passing his hands over stacks of crates and drums as he moved toward the middle of the cargo area, where he’d seen J.B. working. He remembered that there had been drums lined up on either side. His fingers found drum lids, then a gap then more drums.

He retraced his steps.

Leaning over the rims of the barrels, he touched the top of two wooden crates, laid side by side. Because of th surrounding heavy drums, they were well-braced in place.

Using the tip of the pry bar, Ryan popped open the nearest crate and slid his hand inside. After brushing aside the excelsior packing material, he felt rows of solid blocks, individually packaged in oiled paper.

C-4.

Ryan silently thanked J.B. as he tore the lid away.