by James Axler
Her eyes, matching her dress, raked the assembled crews of the wags, not settling on any one man or woman for more than a heartbeat.
Ryan had never seen anything quite as beautiful as the delicate masterpiece that was Sharona, wife to the Baron Alias Carson. It was hard to reconcile this image with the rutting alley cat that he knew she could become in the wink of an eye.
"I hope that it all went fine, Ferryman?" the baron said.
His sec-boss came close to bowing. "One hose got tore, but we fixed it."
"Place sure has the flavor of gasoline. No danger, is there?"
"Nope. Not now."
Baron Carson turned toward the Trader. "If any of my men had caused you an upset, friend, I'd have had their eyes removed with white-hot hooks and their skin peeled off with blunt flensing knives."
The Trader kept his face straight. "Mighty kind, Baron, but none of that's necessary. We got loaded up with gas and ammo, and food and water. You got our jack. We can be on our way."
Ryan happened to be glancing in the direction of the sec-boss as his boss said that, and he saw the start, the dropped jaw and the narrowed eyes that darted toward the baron.
"On your way?" Carson asked in the same, unaltering, monotonous drawl.
"Dawn tomorrow. If that fits with you, Baron?" the Trader replied.
Ferryman relaxed, looking away with a vague disinterest toward the distant tips of the Sangre de Cristo, still holding the last rays of the tumbling sun. It had been an intriguing bit of body language, and it kept Ryan's suspicions ticking over.
"Sure. And watch out for them Indians. They keep haunting us, waiting their chance to strike back, I guess."
"Not all bad, Baron," Ryan said.
He drew the lizard's eyes to himself. "You figure, Mr. Cawdor, do you? If I chanced upon one of them Apaches on fire, I would not even piss upon him."
With that he turned and walked slowly away, his wife at his side, teetering on high heels.
Ferryman watched them go, then looked at the Trader. "Party for the young'uns starts in an hour. Won't last long. You can all get to rest early if you aim for a dawn start."
Everyone was relaxed. The evening was pleasantly mild, the wind dropping right away to a gentle zephyr. A round moon rose through a rack of thin clouds, throwing sharp-edged shadows around Towse ville.
Ryan hadn't been to a children's party for more years than he could recall. He'd organized the rotation of sentries with J.B. and the Trader, and felt fairly happy that the wags were secure for the night. So there was a space to unwind and enjoy the festivities.
Hun, July, Otis and Matt went around the ville with him. In the morning they'd be back on the road, living on the honed edge of danger. For now they could all take it easy.
It was surprising how many of the youngsters around Towse showed definite ethnic signs of Indian blood. Ferryman himself was dark-skinned, with hooded, dark eyes. Three of his own children were at the festivities, scampering around and sliding quickly from being excited to becoming overexcited.
One thing that Ryan picked up on was an unmistakable atmosphere of tension among the sec-men. The short hairs at the back of his neck prickled expectantly, and he could almost taste the adrenaline in the cool evening air.
"Feel it?" J.B. asked from beside him, watching as a handful of harassed women fought to control the children and get them to play a version of pass the parcel.
Ryan didn't need to ask his friend what he meant. They both knew.
"Yeah. Figure it means trouble?"
The Armorer pursed his lips and took a slow, raking glance around the plaza of the ville. "Got to be tonight, or first light."
"If it comes at all."
"Woman said—"
Ryan interrupted him. "Sharona said a mess of things, J.B., and not all of them worth a fistful of sand."
"But you can feel it?"
"Sure. But you got to look at the other side of the jack."
"How's that?"
"Two heavily armed war wags, fuelled up, with trained crews. Run by the Trader. And everyone in Deathlands has heard of the Trader. Here we are. Could have a fine ace on the line at taking over the whole of the baron's ville."
J.B. nodded, "Guess that's so. They could just be plain scared."
Ryan laughed as one of the children ran weeping to its mother at getting knocked out of the game. But the woman wasn't looking, and the charge knocked her over in the soft sand.
"Then again," he said, "could be that the trigger edge is 'cause they aim to blast the living guts out of us in the next ten hours."
Chapter Thirty-Two
A MEDIOCRE MAGICIAN dropped bunches of bright paper flowers from under his damp-stained black-and-scarlet cloak; a puppet show fascinated half the children and bored the other half. Ryan kept moving, muttering a warning word to any member of the crews that he passed. In the background was the distorted, nasal squeaks of the puppet master, and the whoops and shrieks from his audience, interspersed with the occasional flat sound of a slap as one of the children was disciplined by its mother.
Ferryman, flanked by female sec-guards, loomed from out of a narrow alley between two of the square adobe houses, nearly bumping into Ryan.
"Enjoying the party, outlander?" he asked.
"Makes a change to be able to relax for a few hours. You be up and ready to see us away at first light?"
The sec-boss smiled, his teeth white in the dimness. "Wouldn't miss it. Smitty and McMurtry would've liked this party. Smitty had two young'uns."
"You buried them?"
"Sure."
"You checked them first? Find any blaster holes? Any knife cuts?"
Ferryman shook his head. "Sure didn't, Cawdor. Think you'd be here like this if I'd found anything? Just some sandblasted bones and muscle. Hardly knew either of them. That chem-storm did a good job for you."
"For me?" he asked innocently.
The sec-boss took a half step toward him, his hand striking for the butt of his pistol. He checked himself with a visible effort, shaking off the warning from one of the women.
"You're a cold-eyed killer, Ryan Cawdor. You chilled those two friends. I know that. Fucking well know that!" His voice was a venomous hiss. "And one day, mebbe soon, mebbe not, I'll take you down for it."
"Threat or promise, Ferryman?" Ryan said mockingly, trying to push the man nearer the edge in the hope of provoking him into some kind of word or action that might blow the scene open.
"Promise, outlander. Fucking promise."
The first of the fireworks exploded into the clear New Mexico sky, with firecracker ripples of cracking noise, filling the night with magnesium silver and flowering patterns of crimson and green.
Ryan tensed, wondering if the display might be the signal for the beginnings of a bloodbath. But Ferryman simply stared upward with a childlike innocence, the two sec-women also gazing at the beautiful lights and colors.
"Fucking lovely, Cawdor," said the sec-boss. "Baron does a good show."
"Can't argue with that," Ryan agreed. "See you around, Ferryman."
He turned on his heel, feeling the momentary tightness of waiting for a round between the shoulders. But none came.
The Trader was standing by the bridge over the river, leaning on his elbows and smoking one of his small cigars. Ryan noticed two dim shapes lurking in the shadows by the sec-headquarters. Even at a distance he was sure he recognised Remmy Stedman and Long Dog Hodgson.
"Good fireworks, Ryan," the Trader called. "Some of them cherry bombs could be blaster fire."
Ryan joined him on the narrow wooden bridge. "Yeah. I thought of that, too."
"See any signs of a raid?"
"Not up front. But bodies sometimes say more'n words."
The Trader nodded, taking a last draw on the butt and flicking it into the water. "Know what you mean, son."
A salvo of rockets hissed into the sky, bursting into crackling star bombs.
There was a long pause, and they could hear the
chattering of the children. Out of the corner of his eye Ryan noticed that the brace of sec-men had vanished into the darkness.
"Think it's over?" the Trader asked, sounding a little disappointed.
"Looks like… No, there's another of them big mortar rockets."
It was a single, immensely powerful firework, blasting hundreds of feet into the air. Ryan had seen the long tubes that the rockets and mortar shells were being fired from, set in the earth. The bore was at least nine inches in diameter, and the whole plaza shook when they were triggered.
It was a dazzling silver flare, spreading its light across the whole sky, throwing the entire ville into clear, crisp relief.
There was a loud "Oooooooh!" of delight from the children.
"And that concludes the entertainment for the night, I guess," the Trader said, straightening and grinning at Ryan.
The star shell still hung over Towse, burning brightly, suspended from a tiny white parachute that kept it floating. It was a beautiful climax to the display and to the children's party.
Ryan glanced at his wrist-chron. "Just before ten."
"Time for bed. Party's done."
But they both stiffened at the sound of more fireworks going off, crackling all around the ville, backed by the eager cries of the children.
But they weren't fireworks, and it wasn't just children who were crying out in the shadowed ville.
Ryan felt the rail of the bridge vibrate under his hand, and a long white splinter of wood, several inches long, miraculously peeled away and fell into the river.
"Fireblast!" he cursed, drawing the Ruger before he even realized his hand was moving to the holster.
The firefight was on.
Chapter Thirty-Three
SHARONA CARSON'S warning to Ryan hadn't honestly made a lot of difference to the reactions to the treacherous attack. Nobody in the Deathlands ever trusted a baron, and Alias Carson was simply proving himself true to his breed.
The war wags that Marsh Folsom and the Trader had discovered so many years ago were devastatingly powerful pieces of mobile weaponry, with a unique overchill capacity. If the Trader had been so minded, there was scarcely a ville in all Deathlands that could have withstood a serious attack from War Wags One and Two.
Sharona had simply amplified the Trader and Ryan's awareness of the high-risk situation they were in at Towse ville.
At a moment of frozen violence, all the Trader's drills and iron discipline came into its own. There wasn't a man or woman from either vehicle who wasn't honed and ready for a firefight. The wags themselves were locked down sec-tight, and a skeleton crew was ready to repel any hijackers.
Used to scabbies, stickies and the local poorly armed Indians, Baron Alias Carson had made a grave and costly error of judgment. His forces were spread around the ville with orders to launch a general attack at the signal of the single, final skyrocket.
Ryan had been thinking about how he might play that sort of assault, and he decided he'd have placed marksmen to pick off the Trader, J.B. and himself, and try to establish a wedge between the two wags and the bulk of the scattered crews.
Carson had gambled on the shock of the firing producing panic in the outlanders. His gamble failed him. The Trader and Ryan were standing on the bridge. An Uzi chattered, and a trail of lead furrowed across the wood. Both men dived for cover, landing with their legs in the freezing water, sheltered by the slope of the bank. The Trader's beloved Armalite was back in War Wag One, but he'd drawn his Browning FN-DA, a big fourteen-round double-action blaster that he carried for its reliability and stopping power.
Ryan had the Ruger Blackhawk cocked and ready in his right fist.
"Make for the wags!" the Trader yelled.
"Together?"
"Hell, why not?"
Just as they readied themselves to make a move, the parachute flare finally burned out and the whole area was plunged into relative darkness. There was still a good hunter's moon, but after the mag-bright rocket, it was like being shrouded in black velvet.
"Now!" the Trader shouted.
Ryan was at his chief's heels, powering out of the clinging mud, running in a half crouch. The air seemed filled with whining lead, and the ground around their feet exploded in shards of stone. Most of the firing seemed to be coming from their right, where the sec-men had their main barracks and both of them snapped off a couple of shots in that direction. Their reward was a scream of pain from one of their attackers.
A grenade bounced off a low adobe wall in front of them. The Trader dropped flat, and Ryan followed him, hunching his shoulders and opening his mouth slightly to minimize the damage from the blast.
In the second of waiting, Ryan recalled something that J.B. had once told him about the killing capacity of grenades—"Explode a gren in a group of men all six feet away from it, and only about half get injured. Less than a ten percent chill rate. Course, the M-26 got notched wire wrapping and that fragments. More effective."
The grenade went off with a stunning blast but failed to injure either man. The Trader was immediately on his feet again, darting and dodging toward the bulk of the two wags.
Trails of bullets erupted from the machine guns on both port and starboard sides of the war wags, interspersed with the golden light of tracer rounds.
Ryan saw a lot of dead.
What might have seemed a pretty clean operation when it first filtered through Alias Carson's calculating mind was becoming messy on the ground. Nobody had thought about clearing the children out of the way once the bullets began to sing, and many of the corpses scattered around Towse were very small and frail.
J.B.'s slight figure could be seen at the center of a defensive ring of men and women, covering the retreat of the other crew members from all over the ville. He spotted the Trader and Ryan sprinting toward the wags and gave a yell of warning to the rest of the perimeter.
A bullet plucked insistently at Ryan's sleeve, stinging his skin. Although he was very fond of the Ruger, he was painfully aware that six rounds wasn't what you needed in this kind of all-out, knock-'em-down-and-gouge-'em firefight.
With only two rounds left he spotted the stocky figure of Remmy Stedman coming at him, firing his Renato Gamba Trident Fast Action .38 from the hip.
One of the last pairs of .357 rounds hit the sec-man through the left side of the body, under the ribs, knocking him down sideways. But Stedman was tough, and rolled on one knee, steadying his own blaster in both hands. Ryan paused a moment and drilled him through the upper part of the chest, kicking him backward, turning him instantly into two hundred pounds of dying meat.
It wasn't a good place or time to think about reloading the Ruger, and Ryan concentrated on getting to the wags.
Hurdling a corpse with its left arm completely missing, he realized with a shock of recognition that the white frozen face was Rodge, the cook's assistant on War Wag One.
There was Dexter, ace guitarist, one of the nicest guys on War Wag Two, lying on his side, the top of his skull shot away, a mixture of blood and brains frothing out of the gaping cavity. His outstretched hand was on the bottom step of the main entrance to the war wag, and Ryan actually trod on the fingers as he leaped aboard. Bones cracked under his heel, but he had vastly more important things to center his mind on.
"Hun!" he yelled. "Hun, you there?"
"Ready, Ryan. Want me to start her up?"
"Sure. Cohn?"
"Yo!"
"Get onto Two."
"Right. What message?"
"Fire engines. Get ready to roll. Wait for the Trader's word. Or mine."
The engines of War Wag One coughed a couple of times, then the ignition fired. The Trader had made sure both wags turned their engines over every day that they were in Towse.
"Ready!" Hunaker shouted, stooped over the main driving controls, peering through the narrow ob-slit.
With bullets pounding on the armored flanks of the vehicle, it was like being inside a bucket being punched by a crazed stickie.
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The night was filled with screams and explosions and the moans of the wounded being helped up the stairs into the relative safety of War Wag One. Suddenly the Trader appeared at Ryan's elbow, assuming command of the war center. There was blood all down one of his sleeves, and a bruise on his temple.
He saw Ryan look down at the sticky crimson mess on his arm. "Not my blood. Lex. Gut-shot. Engines running? Great."
The vehicle rocked at a near miss from something larger than an ordinary grenade. Ryan glanced at the Trader. "Time we was going?"
"Yeah. They can pick us off here. Ram the gates on my word. Huh. Cohn?"
"I told'em, Trader."
"What about the dead?" Beulah asked, sliding into her seat at the nav-console. Her eyes were wide with shock at the butchery all around her.
The Trader was looking to make sure J.B. was pulling in the last defenders. He turned to Beulah. "Dead and wounded stay here." His face was hewn from the coldest stone, silhouetted against the green light of the command deck. "But I'll come back, lady. Carson pays for this. I swear he pays."
The noise of the engines was rising to a full-bellied roar, but the sound of gunfire was also intensifying. Another mortar went off close by, and someone tumbled from her gun position, hands squeezing at her eyes. Blood gushed out from between the fingers. Ryan didn't see who it was.
"Wait!" the Trader shouted.
Ryan moved to the side of the door, seeing that J.B.'s defense had cost dear. There were at least five motionless bodies there, and the last of several wounded were just coming aboard. Beyond the Armorer, Ryan could see half a dozen sec-men making a desperate charge to try to prevent the war wags from making their getaway.
"Bite on this, bastards!" J.B. shouted, throwing a small implode gren into their midst.
Covered by the sucking burst of the gren, he darted up the stairs and signaled Ben to close the arma-door.
The Trader was leaning over Cohn's shoulder, listening into a spare earpiece, checking that as many of the surviving crew of War Wag Two were aboard and their doors sealed shut. The moment he got the all-clear from them, he gave the order for the two wags to roll.
