Salvation Road

by James Axler

  The two mercies climbed from the wag, taking in the surrounding area and judging it to be empty. They were wary, but beneath that they betrayed the security they felt by a certain relaxation of posture. Despite the wish to be wary, everything told them that they were alone, and they wouldn't be prepared for attack.

  Jak tensed every muscle in his body, every sinew taut and ready to explode. His eyes darted from one prey to the other, and also around the surrounding area to judge the best places to move, to duck and cover if necessary. Not that he would need it.

  The two mercies had both looked into the back of the wag to remove the plas-ex they would need for their bomb when Jak moved. Although his clothing was dark, it was only the shadow of cover that had kept his startling white face and stringy white mane out of view, and as he leaped from his hiding place, it seemed to the two men as they turned at the sudden sound as though a white bird with a terrible beak and eyes of fire had sprung from the darkness.

  The sight was so unexpected and so terrible that it froze them for a second.

  A second was all that Jak needed. The man named Murphy caught a leaf-bladed knife, thrown while in flight with such accuracy and force that it entered his left eye, spinning in the air and skewering into his brain, entering the frontal lobes behind the eye socket and rendering him devoid of movement but with enough awareness to know the terrible fact that he had been chilled.

  Greenberg's attention was then fatally torn between the apparition in white and his chilled friend. Torn fatally because the albino landed on the hard-packed dirt floor and in one bound had flattened the mercie against the side of the wag, Jak's combat boots thudding into his chest at the culmination of a flying leap. Greenberg felt one of his ribs crack as he bent against the metal edge of the flatbed wag at an unnatural angle, and he was unable to drag himself upright, his breath driven from him and the ability to draw any more denied by the pain in his lung from the fractured rib piercing the organ.

  Jak landed a little way back from the mercie, having used him as a springboard to get some distance. Rolling, the albino was on his feet again and moving in for the kill against his almost defenseless foe. Greenberg fumbled for his blaster through the mist of pain, but felt his wrist crack and another agony add to that he was already enduring as Jak took his wrist in both hands and cracked it, leaving it limp and useless. The albino followed this with a straight-fingered chop to the open throat, crushing the thorax and leaving the mercie unable to breathe.

  Greenberg fell forward, exposing his neck. The bones of his vertebrae stood out against the corded muscles of his neck, and it was little more than an exercise for Jak to take one clean chop at them, shattering those that attached his skull to the rest of his skeleton.

  Greenberg was chilled before he even hit the dust.

  Jak stood back, pleased with his work. The threat was over. Barely out of breath, he turned to where the refinery buildings became an explosion of light and sound. Dean and Doc were making progress.

  But what of the others?

  MILDRED KEPT HER WATCH on the far side of the storage tank, remembering the action she had seen there previously. It was a good place for the saboteurs to come, as it was sheltered from view if there was a patrol on the near side, taking in the pipeline, as well as the tanks. Although any wag would have to come the long way around to tackle the tanks in this way, it would be worth their while as they could buy valuable time installing bombs and booby traps.

  But this night there was a booby trap waiting for them.

  Mildred had a secure place in the shadows between the two tanks. There was nothing but metal at her back, and it would be impossible for anyone to take her from behind. The same was true of both sides. The only way anyone could come at her was from the front. And it was the only direction in which she had to focus her attention.

  Mildred heard the wags come in from along the blacktop, heard the change in pitch of the engine notes as they separated and went in their differing directions, and waited for the one that she could pick out as coming near to her.

  It looked as though the wag had three occupants. They weren't easy to spot as the wag came around in a semicircle and approached the tanks from the blind side, as the wag itself was outlined against the horizon. It was a jeep, like the ones she had seen used before.

  Three against one weren't good odds. Ryan wanted one of the saboteurs kept alive to use against Baron Silas Hunter? Hell, it'd have to be one of the saboteurs from the other wags, as far as she was concerned—unless one of these bastards survived by accident. Because with odds of three to one, there was no way she could take a chance on trying to keep one alive and chill the other two. While she was paying attention to the live one, the others might get her before she could move.

  There was only one way to play this.

  Ever since she was a child, no one had ever accused Mildred of subtlety. Sure, she could hack that if it came her way. If she had to be diplomatic and sensitive in the past, she could fake it. Sometimes you had to, like in her prefreezie days when she had been a doctor and had to handle people who had terminal illnesses, or whose loved ones had passed away under her care. That was fine. But most of the time, being subtle, diplomatic and sensitive meant kissing some poisonous little snake's ass, and it meant deferring to someone who would walk all over you given half a chance.

  It was a lesson from the predark days that had stood her in good stead since she had emerged into the Deathlands.

  Mildred wasn't going to let these bastards even get out of their wag. She took from a coat pocket a gren that J.B. had given her, for use in an emergency situation.

  She pulled the pin and stepped forward, focusing her eyes on the wag that was almost at a standstill. She took a firm stance and, without leaving the safety of her shadows, she threw the gren.

  It was a good pitch. Hard and true, with just a slight amount of lift to it. It flew at the wag before the mercies had a chance to register what it was, and clipped the top of the windshield, just enough to break its path and momentum, and tip it into the interior, where the men still sat.

  The gren went off in a flash of light and a roar of sound. It was a shrapnel gren, and Mildred hit the dirt, covering her head with her arms against any debris.

  Inside the wag, the mercies didn't have a chance to realize what had hit them as the shrapnel ripped them to shreds seconds before the explosive charge triggered off the plas-ex they had with them, and ignited the wag's gas tank.

  Threat nullified by the second big explosion of the night. Mildred looked up to see a smoking chassis and little else where the wag had been standing.

  She wondered how John was doing.

  J.B. WAS, in fact, a man whose almost infinite patience had been stretched unnaturally thin. There was little he could do in his position out near the blacktop that fed a side road to the refinery and well. A small hut there held building materials for the road, and the Armorer had been able to secure a hiding place. But this supply hut was the target for this point, and if it was to be hit, he was directly in the firing line. He just hoped that the mercies would want to lay a bomb and not just use a gren. If the latter was the case, then J.B. was dead meat before he had a chance to bite back.

  He was the first to see the wags approach. Five of them, in convoy. There was something about someone in the leading wag that seemed oddly familiar, but he dismissed the thought. Let whoever got that wag deal with the problem. Then four of them peeled off the blacktop and down the side road, past the hut where he was hidden and off across the desert to their allotted tasks. With the amount of grens he had on him, plus the M-4000 and the Uzi, it was tempting to try to take them out as they passed. But before he could have got them all, his position would have been identified and bombarded.

  Better to let them pass.

  That had galled him, but now he sat waiting for the last wag, which still stood on the ribbon of blacktop. He didn't dare risk firing until it started its run toward him, as then the crew would just hav
e to concentrate their blasterfire on the hut or pitch a gren at it to completely obliterate him. But leave it too late, and he would be blasted out of existence before he could pick them all off.

  Did they know he was in there? It certainly seemed to him that they were mounting a war of nerves…and winning.

  The Armorer felt sweat bead on his forehead and trickle down the bridge of his nose, past his spectacles. He blinked as the sweat stung his eyes, but kept his Uzi, set to rapid fire, trained on the wag. That was his best first-line defense.

  Finally, just when it seemed that his nerves were screaming at him, the wag began to move. He could only assume that they had been waiting for the other wags to make distance so that they could time their raids in unison.

  Through the small window hole of the hut, the snubbed barrel of the Uzi stood out. If he let them get too close, they would see it and start to fire. But too far and they would be out of effective range.

  J.B. blanked his mind. His grasp of weapons was so instinctive that he wanted to go with it, and trust his gut feeling.

  Now.

  He squeezed the trigger of the Uzi and started to spray the oncoming wag. There were sparks as bullets ricocheted, and the wag swerved as the driver tried to take evasive action. But he swerved too hard, and the front wheels hit a ridge of rock at the side of the road. The wag tilted and tipped, the near-side wheels turning on air.

  Slugs from the Uzi sprayed the underneath of the wag, severing the fuel line and igniting the fuel. The gas flickered to flame, spreading to the tank and making it combust. The explosion was doubled in a fraction of a second by the plas-ex that the wag was carrying.

  "Dark night!" the Armorer cursed, flattening himself in the hut to take cover from the force and heat of the blast as it swept over the structure.

  He picked himself up as it subsided and looked out of the window at the blazing hulk of the wag.

  So much for trying to take a mercie prisoner. Maybe someone else was having that kind of luck. J.B.? At least he was alive. There was nothing more important than that.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ryan and Krysty made their way to the well and derrick on foot, having tethered their mounts in their rostered positions. Both moved swiftly on foot, keeping a watch for each other as they approached the site. Krysty was sure that the saboteurs were at a safe distance as her hair flowed wild and free, not curling to her neck in the manner it adopted when there was danger present.

  So it was that she knew instinctively that the approaching footsteps—light and almost inaudible on the still night air—were Ryan's.

  "So you got here, then, lover," she said softly.

  "Yeah, and with time to spare, I'd say. There's no sign of anything going down yet."

  Krysty shook her head. "When they come, how the hell do we take one alive to nail Baron Silas?"

  Ryan shrugged. "I don't know. In the middle of a firefight it's not going to be easy to just stop one of the coldhearts and say 'Excuse me, would you mind coming with us.' Guess we've just got to hope, and mebbe hope that one of the others can get us a mercie."

  "Not much of a hope, is it?" Krysty queried.

  Ryan shook his head. "I reckon we might just have to battle our way out of this, like every other fireblasted situation."

  "At least we're ready for it," she replied.

  Ryan pointed out the two areas of the wellhead where there were hiding places. One was the small blockhouse used to house the main valves and stopcocks for the wellhead pumps—where J.B. and Jak had previously encountered saboteurs—and the other was in the heart of the derrick itself, over the hole where the main shaft of the pump would fit when it was restored. A smaller, test borehole stood to one side of this, and the casing around it would provide cover for the one-eyed man to use in the event of a firefight…which was an inevitability.

  The two companions took their positions and waited. They didn't have long to wait before the distant roar of the wag engines became audible. As with all their companions, they were able to hear the change in pitch and harmony of the engines as they veered off toward their differing destinations, and were able to pick out the sound of one individual wag as it moved toward them.

  From his position on the derrick, Ryan was unable to see the wag until it was upon them, but Krysty had been able to observe its approach, and identified it as yet another of the jeeps that the saboteur parties seemed to favor. She could tell that it had three occupants—a driver and two passengers, one of whom was holding what looked like a Heckler & Koch G-12 caseless rifle. Even in the darkness, Krysty was able to identify the shape because Ryan had once used such a blaster.

  Krysty waited in the blockhouse, her Smith & Wesson .38 in hand. She was sheltered in the shadows cast around the doorway, but had enough of herself showing to be able to get a good view of the outside.

  The occupants of the wag climbed out. They were brisk and businesslike, but not hurrying, men who knew exactly what they were doing and that they had but a little time in which to do it. So every movement was to maximum efficiency. The driver of the wag was short and fairly stout; he looked powerful but not too fast, and carried a snub-nosed handblaster that could have been anything in this light. The second man was taller, but just as broad. He had long dark hair that made the line of his head flow smoothly into his neck in the dim light, making him appear to have no neck. He looked very powerful, as his torso tapered to a tight waist. He would be quick.

  But it was the third occupant of the wag that took Krysty's breath away. She got a clear view of him as he moved across toward the derrick in the moonlight, suddenly becoming illuminated as he moved across patches of shadow and into the light. There was no mistaking the Stetson hat, snakeskin boots and rangy figure…

  Although distracted by the surprise of seeing the baron, Krysty soon switched her attention back to the two men by the wag. They were unloading a cache of plas-ex, and also something that could be timing devices, although in the poor light it was difficult for Krysty to tell. The baron was moving over toward Ryan, so it was up to her to take these two out.

  Krysty leveled her blaster and aimed at the shorter, fatter man. If she took him first, then the one with the Heckler & Koch—the one who looked leaner, fitter and faster—would have time to turn and loose a few rounds at her. Whereas his companion, if he were to be the one left after the initial shot was fired, would probably be slower, and would be using a handblaster that would be less powerful and less accurate from a distance.

  That settled it. The taller, more muscled saboteur would be the first one chilled. For there was no doubt in her mind that she would take them both out. Ryan had to keep Baron Silas alive, as he was the best chance they had of proving their own innocence in the bedlam that was bound to erupt.

  The two saboteurs were now hunched over the plas-ex and timers, the taller one holding a lamp that illuminated the work the fatter man was involved in. He was manipulating the wires of the timing devices, rigging up a bomb. Krysty knew she would have to strike soon, and so she drew a bead on the fat man. Her finger tightened on the trigger, pressure increasing as she squeezed gently but firmly…then stopped suddenly.

  Baron Silas Hunter walked back into her field of vision, stopping in front of the two saboteurs and blocking her shot. There was no way she was going to risk taking out the baron.

  RYAN STOOD behind the cover of the borehole shaft, the SIG-Sauer in his hand. His amazement at seeing the baron walk toward him had lasted only a moment. It was incredible that Hunter would risk everything by going on one of his own sabotage missions, even if it did confirm for Ryan that the baron was indeed behind it all. It had to mean that this night's attack was the last gasp by Hunter to stop the project going any further. Why was something that Ryan would have liked to know, but ultimately that was unimportant. The only thing that mattered now was getting Hunter alive and keeping him that way.

  As Ryan shifted J.B.'s M-4000 across his back, Hunter suddenly stopped in his tracks, causing the on
e-eyed man to also freeze. Was he aware of Ryan's presence?

  Hunter turned and walked back toward the wag, passing out of Ryan's view and causing the one-eyed man to curse to himself. It would have been a whole lot easier if the baron could have been kept separated from the other saboteurs.

  THAT SENTIMENT WAS ECHOED by Krysty as Hunter bent over the other two, muttering in a voice too low to be clearly audible. He straightened, nodding as he did so, then ran across to the derrick, passing from her field of view.

  All yours, lover, she thought as she closed in on the two saboteurs, who were set to their task with more speed than previously.

  The saboteur with the lamp and the Heckler & Koch had no idea what hit him. Although Krysty wasn't an accurate shot to the degree that either Mildred or Jak were, she was still the possessor of a keen eye. The bullet took the tall and muscular saboteur straight between the eyes, shattering his skull and the bones of his nose, driving splinters into those frontal lobes that weren't eviscerated by the hot lead of the slug. He fell backward, dropping both lamp and blaster, not knowing that he was even chilled.

  The fatter saboteur was momentarily stunned into shocked stillness. Then something in his brain clicked into gear, knowing that he would be chilled unless he acted. He went for his blaster, trying to turn…

  Too late. Krysty's second shot took him at the top of the cheekbone, in the area between the ear and the eye socket. He screamed as the bone acted as a shock absorber for the slug before shattering under the impact. It was the merest fraction of a second longer that he lived, but a fraction of a second that was of the acutest agony.

  Knowing they were dead, Krysty emerged from the hut, keeping low in case Hunter should have turned back. She checked the chilled saboteurs to be sure, then turned to the derrick.