Authors: James Axler
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ryan lay on his stomach on cold gray rock and watched through his Navy longeye. The wind had picked up and it plucked at the backs of his pants legs.
The camp was big. He already knew that, but he still felt surprise at quite how big it was. There were dozens of tents of various sizes and shapes, and ramshackle structures cobbled together out of bits of lumber and plank and random scavvy—like a lot of villes across the Deathlands, actually, but even less well put-together.
“Must be a bitch at night,” said Mildred, who had shimmied up beside him. “Trying to keep warm.”
“Yeah.”
They had shifted around to the cliff that walled the southern side of the little cove sheltering the base. The compound was a good ten acres in size, ringed with razor-wire tangles, a couple of rickety-looking guard towers inland and a gate on the single road that led down the slope to the west. As Ryan watched, a panel wag was waved through the barricade by bored-looking guards with remade AKs.
“More captives?” Mildred guessed.
The others had come up to join him, peering over the edge. They were on a brushy outcrop—down from the crest, which sported a gnarled scrub-oak sprouting from amid a jumble of rock that would make ideal cover. Therefore it would be an ace target for scrutiny by suspicious slavers.
But if the slavers in the camp were suspicious or alert the least little pinch, they hid the fact completely from the eye of Ryan Cawdor.
“I think not,” Doc said. “It would seem more likely the trucks bring supplies. So many people have many needs and consume much in the course of a day. And while I cannot say much for the quality of housing provided, they dare not starve their prospective merchandise. Far less deny them fresh water.”
Ryan watched the wag trundle to a concentration of more solidly constructed buildings, possibly prefabs, toward the middle of the waterfront where the freighter had tied up close to a makeshift dock. It was built up at the bow, with the bridge clearly atop that superstructure. A second rose aft. Judging by the stubby stack sticking out of it, it housed the engines as well as a second bridge. The name
Serge Broom
was painted on the chipped black paint of the prow.
Though he had a lot more experience of smaller watercraft than the large seagoing kind, Ryan judged this one at seven hundred feet or so, and it might weigh forty thousand tons fully loaded. You could pack a lot of slaves into that hull, he thought, if you cared as little about their comfort as these coldhearts do.
A group of shabbily dressed men began to unload crates of some sort from the wag’s box under the eyes and blasters of several slavers. They carried them inside a large tent that obviously served as either warehouse or commissary.
“Supplies,” Ryan said.
“You’d think they’d get those from the sea,” Mildred said.
“Didn’t unload anything from the freighter, though,” Ryan said.
Mildred shook her head. She hated slavers like nuke death.
“Who would
trade
with scumbags like that?”
“People trying to get by any way they can,” Ryan said. “Like pretty much everybody is. People who don’t want the slavers just taking what they want by force.”
“So why don’t the coldheart bastards just take what they need, then?” Ricky asked through gritted teeth. The new kid seldom cussed. But the way he felt toward slavers, who had butchered his family before his eyes and carried his beloved sister off to captivity, made Mildred seem all warm and fuzzy by comparison. “Why should they pay when they have blasters?”
“And raise the countryside against them more than it is?” Doc asked.
“Yeah,” Ryan agreed, moving the longeye toward the gangplank that ran from the ship’s deck to the dock. A couple of slavers packing handblasters were sauntering up it. “Ever heard the phrase ‘don’t shit where you eat’? This is their big, long-term base. If they try just raiding for stuff, the people hereabouts will either bushwhack their foragers or take their stuff and go. Leaving the cupboard bare.”
“So it ever has been,” Doc said.
“So what do we know, lover?” asked Krysty, snuggling up close to his other side.
“Well, the slavers have no uniforms to speak of,” Ryan said.
“Slavers got blasters,” said Jak, hunkered down the inland slope watching his friends’ backs.
“Indeed,” Doc said.
“And no women slavers I’ve seen so far,” Ryan stated. “Speaking of women—”
Another important-looking slaver, with a shaved head, an imposing black mustache and a black, fur-collared coat that made his big frame look bigger, was walking from the more-solid buildings that obviously housed the slavers toward the dock. Behind him came a quartet of blasters, who walked surrounding a rather tall but stick-slim captive with a shock of black hair. There was little to see, even through the longeye, to identify the sex of the slave, who obviously had the highest value. But the way the captive walked, with skinny shoulders back and head defiantly up, told Ryan all he needed to know.
“That’s our girl,” Ryan said. Relief flooded him in a warm flow he could only compare, with brief amusement, to pissing his pants.
“Ah, thank God,” Mildred said.
Haughty, as if she were already ruler of Stormbreak, Milya marched up the gangplank and into the superstructure. Her coldheart escort was following by a sturdy woman, obviously an attendant, who from her hangdog posture was a slave rather than a slaver matron.
“So, now all we have to do is make our way past two hundred slavers armed to the teeth, aboard a well-guarded ship, and steal away their most valuable treasure,” Doc said with what seemed like relish.
“Ace on the line,” Mildred stated glumly.
Ryan uttered a brief, guttural laugh. They were all keeping their voices low, which wasn’t rational, since the base lay hundreds of yards away and upwind to boot. He approved of the practice, though. Letting yourself slip into bad habits—like poor noise discipline—was an ace way to wind up staring at the stars.
“We got this,” he said.
Mildred shot him a look of disbelief. “Ryan Cawdor, how can you say a thing like that? Have you lost your freaking mind?”
“Lover, are you sure?” Krysty asked.
Ryan lowered the longeye and gazed east across the sea. “Storm coming,” he said. “Gale, by the looks of those clouds. Should start hitting here by nightfall. That could cause us problems, but I think we can use it.”
“But how are we ever going to get
in?
” Ricky asked. He sounded almost ready to cry. Ryan knew the youth hero-worshipped him. Now his faith had to be badly shaken.
Jak laughed softly at their backs.
“Get in easy,” he said. “Slavers care people not get out.”
Ryan grinned. “Right the first time, Jak. I have a plan to get us, if things fall into place, right straight to where they’re keeping Princess Lyudmila.”
“It looks as if they are beginning to rouse the slaves from their barracks,” Doc said. Despite his apparent age, there was little wrong with the sight in those winter-sky eyes. “They are about to commence loading the slaves onboard, it would appear.”
“Ryan, we’ve got to do something right now!” Mildred said from the ragged edge of panic, to judge by her voice. “They’re going to leave.”
And that meant they would take the girl with them. There went any chance Baron Ivan Frost, Milya’s loving father, would hand over J.B. If he was even still breathing.
Yeah, he is, Ryan assured himself. That healer, Rao, knew her stuff. And J.B.’s as tough as wound wire and boot leather.
“No rush,” Ryan said. “They won’t get that many slaves loaded shy of midnight. And that’s only if things go smoother than they ever do. These slavers have a fairly slick operation—professional. But in the end, they’re just coldheart scum.”
He slithered back from the precipice, rasping his thighs and belly against the rough rock.
“But you’re right, Mildred. It is time to shake the dust off our boots and move like we’ve got a purpose.”
“But Ryan,” Krysty asked. “If everything goes as you plan—how will we get out
?
”
He grinned at her. “One thing at a time, Krysty,” he said. “I’m working on it.”
* * *
“A
NUKE
?” J.B.
breathed. He couldn’t believe he’d heard right. Or at least understood.
“That’s it,” Trader said. “You aren’t as dumb as you look, kid.”
“But why?” Johnny asked. “What do you want with a nuke? You wouldn’t sell it, would you? Give somebody else that kind of power?”
He blinked. “Wait—you aren’t looking to make yourself King of the Deathlands, are you?”
“Trader, we got no time,” Rance said, standing on her tiptoes to peer over some crates back at the main cavern. Even as het up as he was, J.B. couldn’t help noticing how sweet-shaped that made her long, strong legs, and the way the apple-round cheeks of her backside peeked out under the hem of her shirt....
“Got time for this,” Trader said. “I won’t ask a man to risk throwing his life away like I’m about to without giving him some idea why.”
He fixed a surprisingly calm and steady gaze on J.B.
“It doesn’t work that way, kid,” he said. “I’m not looking for power. If I wanted that, I’d have it already. I’m just looking to travel around and do deals.”
“And mebbe help people get going again,” Rance said. “
Doing
. Instead of just slowly sinking into nothing.”
“Yeah, you were always the sentimentalist, Weeden. No, Dix. Nobody on Earth needs that kind of power. And Earth doesn’t need that dreck brought back into it. Aren’t things bad enough without a nuke running around loose? Or in the hands of some crazy-mad blood drinker who’d try to conquer an empire with the threat of that thing? Or set it off to watch the pretty mushroom cloud? Which thank you so much for thinking might be me.”
“No—no—” J.B. caught himself before his tongue stumbled over any more of an apology. He knew in advance anything he could say would be lame. “But what were you trying to do?”
“Buy it,” Trader said, “and deep-six it. Make sure nobody gets it. Ever.”
“What were you gonna pay for something like that?”
Trader chuckled. “Most everything. Except my people and the war wags. I can get more trade goods from different stashes.
“I got a hot tip in Erie that claimed a sunken Sov missile boat had washed up briefly off the old Maine coast. Long enough for some triple-stupe bastard to haul a missile out of it before it slid under again. Hopefully to come up no more. But nothing I can do about that, one way or another.
“So, as you noticed, I hustled our asses here triple-fast. Made preliminary contact and agreed to do the final deal on the docks here at Tavern Bay. I took along the two people I reckoned had the best shot at helping me judge the merch at first examination, plus two shooters—who were mainly there because the people we were dealing with would’ve been suspicious if they weren’t, whether they were on the level or not.
“Four of us was all they’d agree to. So I had the rest of you waiting as backup in the hotel, to help me handle the thing if the deal went down.
“And make no mistake, they got the goods. Nice, shiny missile. Not even any sign of corrosion. They even let me run a Geiger over it, see if it was too hot to handle. It’s not, though I wouldn’t sit astride the son of a bitch for all the tea in China.
“Like I said, I was dealing with norms. Or what seemed like it, anyway. Though there was something a little off about them—but it’s not like that’s as rare as a well-wiped asshole these days. All I can reckon is they wanted to show off their shiny sky-bomb missile before they grabbed us.”
“What was the point?” Johnny asked.
“It’s not like they discussed their evil plans with the man,” Rance said.
“They do in the old vids!” J.B. said. Then his cheeks flushed hot. Control, he reminded himself.
“Reckon they figured to use me somehow to take the convoy. With War Wags One and Two,
and
a nuke, well, they could make a pretty big noise if they wanted. But we’ll never know now.
“And now you know enough to decide. You in, Junior?”
J.B. blinked from one to the other, then he took off his glasses and began to polish them on his shirttail.
“What’s your plan?”
Trader laughed softly. “Free my people. Make sure nobody ever uses the warhead. Power back to the wags and get the hell outta Dodge. Sound good?”
“Sounds double-stupe,” he said, which wasn’t giving in to impulse but his own damn reasoned judgment.
“You in?”
“Dark night, yes!”
Rance yanked the hat off his head and settled it on her own with exaggerated care. Then she stooped to pick up the steel bar from where she’d leaned it against the crate. She didn’t seem to even notice that her shirt fell open to fully expose her body.
J.B. did.
She slapped the inch-thick steel rod against her palm. “Then let’s go bust some mutie heads.”
* * *
W
AVING
HER
ARMS
, sentient red hair flying from more than the wind, Krysty rushed into the path of the wag as it trundled along a well-worn dirt road toward the place where it began slanting down to the slavers’ camp. “You’ve got to help me!” she cried.
It was a well-battered wag, faded from olive green to gray in places to bare metal in others. It was a predark military truck with a covered bed. The fabric cover had clearly been replaced by recently manufactured canvas, though not recently, judging by the holes in it.
There was plenty of room for the wag to go around her. The road had two lanes with a shallow ditch running on either side. No doubt the slavers had made their captives improve the road and keep it from rutting out badly.
Of course, the white-haired driver could have run Krysty down easy enough. But she was nimble and trusted her reflexes to spring out of the way at need.
Just as she was about to do that, the wag shuddered to a stop with a squeal of brakes and a cloud of bio-diesel exhaust.
Inside the cab the younger, skinnier man riding shotgun turned to the red-faced driver. Krysty could hear him angrily shout, “Why’d you stop for, Pa?”