Chapter Five

 

 

The swirling dust choked Ryan as the explosive force picked up the sand from the floor and mixed it into the air. Then he was slammed in the ribs by a chunk of rock that he never saw coming. His breath, what little he'd been able to take in, rushed from his lungs in a painful gasp.

 

He staggered and went down on one knee as his muscles were seized in agony. He maintained his grip on the SIG-Sauer blaster with difficulty, feeling the grit that had slid in under his palm against the chilling machine's butt-plates.

 

"Move," Jak ordered, pushing himself up under one of Ryan's arms. "Got war wags. Wall not hold out long."

 

"I got it," Ryan snarled, making his body bend to his will in spite of the pain trying to double him up. "I walked into this on my own. I'll see clear of it the same way." Still, he let the albino hustle him farther into the installation before disengaging himself.

 

J.B. took off his fedora long enough to wipe the fresh layer of dust from his face. Once he was satisfied with the effort, he worked on the lenses of his glasses, managing them one-handed on his shirt while he held on to the shotgun.

 

"More where they come from," Jak said.

 

Ryan couldn't see much in the darkness. Once the entrance had been blocked, nearly all of the light had gone with it. "You seen others like them?"

 

"Sure. Room full. Not ask questions. They just shooting."

 

Ryan followed the teenager's voice, knowing Jak had marked their way in his mind by memory or things he could touch along the way. He stepped carefully. The debris from the explosion had made walking even more treacherous.

 

A self-light flared to life, framing Mildred's face as she cupped the flame. "We blocked them in another room," she said. "Jammed the controls on the door. If they want to get out, it's going to take some doing." The fire in her hand spread up the torch she held, growing until it became big enough to light their way.

 

"They with the same outfit?" J.B. asked.

 

"Oh, yeah. No doubt about it."

 

"Where's Krysty and Doc?" Ryan asked as they headed for the stairwell. The large chamber on the other side of the entrance spun out in a wheel, shooting off a half-dozen other tunnels that led into other parts of the structure. Three of them, they'd discovered, were blocked by fallen ceilings and walls. Another had been shut off by a thick steel door that J.B. had said would bring the top of the building down if an attempt was made to blow it.

 

"Must still be down in the tunnel they were following," Mildred said. "We haven't heard anything from them."

 

Ryan knew only that Doc and Krysty were somewhere inside the labyrinth they'd ventured into. Since he didn't know for sure they were dead, he had to assume they were still moving. "We got a way open to us now. Go. Mebbe we'll run out of places to go to later." He passed the torch to Jak. "Take the lead. Mildred, you follow. I got the rear, and J.B., you're about a step ahead of me."

 

The other three nodded tensely and got under way.

 

Ryan waited at the entrance, leaning around the corner long enough to snap off a shot that caught a man in the shoulder as he tried to make more ground toward the stairwell. He fired two follow-up shots to pick the guy off as he spun, but both went wide of the mark by only a few inches. Bullets from the other soldiers hammered him back into hiding.

 

Suddenly a soft, blue gray light pulsed into being above and behind him.

 

Ryan whirled, his eye adjusting to the flat monitor screen built into the wall. The color was washed-out, leaving the images only a palette of grays to work with, but he had no problem recognizing Krysty. In the distance machinery seemed to fill the background behind her.

 

"Hello, lover," Ryan called softly. "How are things on the other side?"

 

There was a harsh sputter of static, punctuated by the words "way outmaphurry."

 

Her image blanked out, fading like a ghost caught in a mat-trans jump. In a moment it was replaced by a jumble of lines Ryan knew had to represent corridors and floors inside the installation.

 

"Anybody make any sense out of that?" Ryan asked.

 

"The floor she and Doc on," Jak said. He reached out and tapped the monitor. "Stairwell here. She there." A faded lemon dot stood out against the gray under his forefinger.

 

"Can you find it?" J.B. asked.

 

The albino nodded. "Sure."

 

"Go," Ryan said. "Things around here aren't going to get any friendlier."

 

An explosion slammed against the exterior of the building with enough force to tear loose inner sections of the wall near the blocked entrance. At the same time the group of attackers inside the complex surged up from the ground and charged the stairwell.

 

"J.B.," Ryan called.

 

But the Armorer had already drifted into place on the other side of the entrance.

 

 

 

"HIT THE WALL one more time!" Burroughs ordered. He crouched on the other side of the FAV, taking shelter from the debris raining to the ground. The turret on the M-l Abrams shifted slightly. The first round from the main gun had caused it to twist slightly in the loose sand.

 

"Ready, sir," the tank's gunner called out.

 

"Ready, sir," the tank commander relayed.

 

"Fire," Burroughs ordered. He took a last look at the debris-choked entrance, knowing there was no way they could hope to penetrate the occluded mess. He hadn't been expecting Cawdor to mine the doorway. His adversary was every bit as good as the reports had indicated. It was just too bad the man refused to see reason.

 

No matter how tough and seasoned Deathlands had made Ryan Cawdor, there was no way he was going to stand against real military men.

 

The major was counting on the edge that his unit had brought with them out of the installation after almost a hundred years. It was what was going to deliver a world to him, and he'd spent decades figuring out how to get it right. The casualties Ryan and his people had inflicted reduced Burroughs's favorable odds, though. His men had been blooded and provided with training and discipline that combat men would never receive again. Unless he took the time to train them himself. And the patriotic fervor that drove most of his unit was irreplaceable. None of the recruits he'd be able to find would ever hold the same love for their country that he and his men did.

 

Project Calypso had given him all the time he figured he'd need to reclaim his country. Provided Cawdor and his team hadn't discovered the project's secrets during their exploration of the installation.

 

The tank's main gun fired, and the shell was dead-on. Then Burroughs ordered his armor forward for the next phase of their assault. There were only two entrances into the building and his men covered them both. Cawdor and his group were going to die like rats.

 

 

 

"GREN," RYAN WARNED, taking the explosive from his pouch.

 

"Go," J.B. called back.

 

The one-eyed warrior pulled the pin and hooked the spherical explosive around the corner and out into the midst of their attackers. He fired at a man partially exposed behind a crooked slab of stone wall, but missed.

 

An instant later the gren blew, throwing out shrapnel and a brilliant burst of light.

 

Even though he'd turned his head and closed his eye, the flash imprinted against Ryan's lid and removed some of his night vision. He blinked his eye, trying to clear it.

 

The second explosion sounded outside, tearing up the inside of the building even more. This time a hole opened up, as big as a man's chest and shoulders.

 

"Going to be in here on us," J.B. warned, thumbing fresh shells into the M-4000. "Uneven odds are going to get even worse."

 

Before Ryan could respond, the buckled wall exploded inward, driven not by another 120 mm shell, but by raw tonnage of the rolling tank.

 

The vehicle roared through the wall as if it were paper, except that the rough and ragged edges of the steel dug deep gouges across the painted finish. Exterior flood-lights mounted on the outside of the war wag sprayed out and focused on the stairwell.

 

"Dark night," J.B. said. "That man isn't going to back down for anything."

 

"Man who works that hard," Ryan gritted, "must be hiding a lot. We can't hold here."

 

The Armorer nodded. "Ready when you are."

 

"Now," Ryan said, pulling back. He hoped the new light would be confusing to the men watching their position. Once it was known they'd dropped back, the pursuit would begin through the tangle of the stairwells. There'd be little chance of taking a stand. He flicked a last glance at the map Krysty had displayed on the monitor. From the looks of it, they were headed straight for a dead end.

 

Heavy .50-caliber fire from the tank hosed the stairwell, tracking across the floor and destroying the collections of skeleton honor guards that hadn't already been wrecked by previous gunfire. The steel-plated walls didn't hold, and puckers opened up in them as they gave birth to sudden death.

 

J.B. took the lead and Ryan followed.