Chapter Twenty-Eight

The moment Baron Zeal saw the one-eyed man behind the wheel of one of his sec wags, headed in the direction of Spearpoint, his plan to pull back to the safety of his stockade went out the window. The whole hunker-down scheme depended on Trader staying right where he was, on Trader’s wags staying where they were and on the rest of Trader’s crew still being safely tucked away in the Virtue Lake jail. The one-eyed man would certainly find the pass and rescue his crewmates. Trader and the others locked up inside the wags’ storage compartments wouldn’t starve to death as Zeal had hoped. Starvation was a particularly nasty way to go; he knew this from firsthand observations on his slaves. Once Trader was freed, he would turn his war wags against Virtue Lake.

There was no doubt about that.

Trader wasn’t the kind of man to call bygones bygones. He was the kind of man who kicked his enemies where it hurt them most. In the case of Zeal, that meant the refinery. The thought of losing his cash cow made the baron go soft in the knees. It was his stranglehold on Deathlands; without it, he would go back to being just another road pirate, fighting over the scraps that the larger predators dropped or discarded.

As he slowed to approach the gate to the ville, he saw the long row of bodies laid out by the side of the road. They weren’t covered, and as he pulled up he recognized some of them as his sec men. The survivors of his crew stood along the edge of the road, looking pained, or scared, or angry.

“Get some blasters behind the barricades to defend the gate,” he shouted at them. “The rest of you get in your wags and follow me.”

As his destination became obvious, Vernel, who sat in the copilot’s chair, said, “It’s gonna be tough to keep Trader from hammering the refinery. He’s got HEAP rockets on that big wag of his, and he doesn’t have to be within a mile of the ville to use them.”

“I took a peek at the pods after we stopped at the end of the road,” Zeal said. “And they all looked mighty goddamned empty to me. We didn’t find any more rockets stashed in the MCP, so I’d say the rest of his supply is safely tucked away in my warehouse with the crates we took from his transports. Either that, or he doesn’t have any more rockets.”

When they arrived at the refinery, Zeal parked the wag, got out and immediately addressed his assembled sec crews. “We need all the steel plate you can put your hands on,” he said. He waved his arm, indicating about half the sec men. “You lot,” he said, “take every worker out of the plant and start foraging for armor.”

One of the crew bosses raised his hand. “Baron Zeal,” he said, “we got a shift change coming up in about a half an hour.”

“Forget it!” Zeal snapped. “Nobody goes home. And anybody who shows up for the shift change, put them to work, too. The rest of you, up to the stockade with transports and move all the stored weapons and ammunition down here. We’re going to make our stand at the refinery.”

Then, to further stimulate their work ethic, he added, “Trader and his war wags are on the way. If we aren’t done before they arrive at the gate, we’re all going to be dead meat.” In roughly twenty minutes, Zeal’s crews had everything he had requested gathered up and moved into the plant. At his direction, armor-plate baffles three feet high were put up behind the closed hangar doors. Blasterports were then cut into the thinner steel of the doors. The sec men covered the refinery’s windows with anything they could find, plywood scrap, corrugated sheet metal, as there wasn’t enough heavy plate to do the job there. The effort on everyone’s part was frantic. Given the circumstances, the baron was even ready to sacrifice his favorite toy. He stood in front of the stainless-steel torture tank while his workers fired up their cutting torches.

“Hate to see it go, I’ll bet,” Vernel said.

“Happy memories,” Zeal replied. “So many happy memories.”

The laborers were just starting to cut the door off its hinges when something exploded outside the plant. The boom was powerful enough to rock the floor. “What the hell was that?” Vernel roared. A sec man raced down the central aisle. “A bomb!” he cried. “There was a bomb in the side yard!”

Zeal caught him by the shirt collar. He didn’t ask how many were dead or how many were injured. He didn’t ask because he didn’t care. “You mean some of Trader’s crew have been on the plant grounds?” he snarled into the man’s face. “You let them on the grounds!”

The sec man looked desperate. No answer he could give was safe.

“They were in here, then,” Vernel said emphatically. “You got to figure on that.”

Over his victim’s shoulder, Zeal saw a red light wink on and the beam it gave off drew a fine line through the air, cutting across the aisle. It was coming from underneath one of the crude-oil storage tanks. He pushed the sec man away from him and dropped to his knees. What he saw stuck to the underside of the tank made his heart jump into his throat—a small parcel, a gray oblong capped with a black plastic box. He recognized the box for what it was, at once.

“Nobody move!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Everybody freeze!”

Vernel started to take a step toward him, then stopped in his tracks when he saw the laser light.

“Pass the word!” Zeal shouted. “Nobody move!”

The baron anticipated imminent death. He fully expected someone to disobey or not hear the command he’d given. So he was profoundly relieved when the plant didn’t immediately explode all around him; on the contrary, a kind of reverent hush fell over the place.

“We’re fucked, you know,” Vernel said. Sweat was popping out on top of his shaved head and dripping down the sides of his face.

“We’ll figure a way out,” Zeal assured him. “There’s got to be a way to disarm the explosives. If we can just locate them all

“

“There isn’t time.”

“What are you talking about? They’re motion sensors, not timed detonators.”

“The whistle,” Vernel said in a voice that was just above a hoarse whisper.

“The whistle,” Zeal repeated as the meaning finally sunk in—the ear-shattering, earthshaking, shift-change whistle.

The baron looked frantically for somewhere to hide. There had to be somewhere to hide. He scanned the floor ahead and saw no telltale laser beam across it. Without a word of warning to Vernel, he sprinted full-out for the only cover available. He dived into the heavy steel tank and pulled the door shut with a clang behind him.

Then the shift whistle blew. And kept on blowing.

Zeal cringed inside the tank. The piercing sound made the steel walls under his knees and hands vibrate, but not for long. The whistle was cut short as all the detonators tripped, and the Virtue Lake refinery dissolved in an enormous, spreading fireball.