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  "There's two ways they can come," Carter said, pointing as he spoke. "One by land, one by sea. If they cruise up in one of his yachts, we know Poseidon himself is aboard. Supposedly he rarely steps onto dry land. Prefers the feel of the ocean beneath his feet We joke he's part Dweller."

  "Mebbe he is," Ryan said.

  Carter pressed on. "However, he hasn't done a per­sonal appearance in a long time. Too busy, I guess. If there's no boats on the horizon and a land wag pulls in like the pattern for the last few months, we can totally discount the Admiral's presence. He's not as inclined to show off anymore. He just wants his men to pick up his offerings and bring them back to the base."

  "Fifty-fifty odds," J.B. mused.

  Ryan grunted in reply. "Either way, we can take the bastard out. One method just takes a little longer, that's all. Doesn't matter much to me. I've got all the time in the world now."

  As the two old friends talked, Mildred glanced around, trying not to betray any sign of nervousness. While she had never been frightened of heights be­fore, the openness of the tower was beginning to get to her peace of mind. The sensations of falling were only increased tenfold when the wooden tower creaked and swayed in the stiff sea breeze that flowed in from the nearby ocean.

  "Got a plan?" J.B. asked.

  "Yeah," Ryan responded tersely, but didn't elab­orate.

  J.B. wasn't convinced, but the Armorer took the intonation of Ryan's voice and the loss he'd endured into consideration. What kind of plan was needed, really, beyond the healing power of playing avenger? He thought about asking Ryan to elaborate on the plan, then thought the better of it. His friend would explain what scheme he had in mind when ready.

  "So, we know where they'll be coming from now," Mildred said. "How about we discuss our next move down on the ground, where it's safer?"

  "Don't you worry none, Dr. Wyeth," Carter said. "This tower might seem shaky, but she's here to stay. We check her out on a regular basis. Being so close to saltwater and all, we have to."

  "When do they come? How often?" J.B. asked.

  Carter squinted his eyes as he scanned the sky. "Usually midmorning, before noon," he said easily. "Comes once a month during winter months, but dur­ing summer and early fall, they show up once a week. Mebbe ten days. There's no real accurate way to pre­dict it. Since heat tends to spoil meat faster, he'll be sending men out or coming himself within a hand of days, I'd say. The good Admiral prefers his seafood fresh. Likes it raw, from what I hear."

  Mildred made a face of distaste. "Likes sushi, does he?"

  Carter, not really comprehending the reference, smiled and said, "I'm sure he does, Doctor. He seems to enjoy everything else."

  "Can you keep a lookout up here during the day?" Ryan asked.

  "Why?"

  "I need to know exactly when this Poseidon is go­ing to arrive. Even a warning of a few minutes is better than nothing."

  "Shouldn't be a problem. I'll discuss it with Shauna."

  "Nothing to discuss," Ryan told him bluntly. "Here's the plan. If Poseidon floats in by sea, we go on board his ship and take him out, face-to-face, no mercy. If he sends a gathering party in by land, we take them out and ride back in style to his base, where again, we meet him face-to-face and chill him. Either way, we win. Simple as that."

  Ryan turned and started to climb back down the ladder to the ground. The others watched him go. Suddenly the air on high didn't feel nearly as good.

  OVERHEAD, THE NIGHT SKY was crystal clear, reveal­ing the facets of each and every star. Evidence of past storms and conflict had once again vanished in a space of days.

  Ryan was sitting alone in a naturally created nook near the rocks and sand of the beach at the far edge of the primary encampment of the commune when Shauna approached him with a covered plate of hot food and a battered bottle of tea. His back was to her, so she tried stepping lightly to keep from startling him. No go. He heard her in time to whirl around with his blaster. He pointed the weapon directly on a sight between her eyes and wordlessly waggled the barrel of the SIG-Sauer.

  "Hello to you, too, Cawdor."

  "Take the hint."

  "Missed you at dinner," she said.

  "Wasn't hungry."

  "Bullshit. You're hurting and didn't feel up to con­versation. I know the signs."

  Ryan turned and stared at her. To her credit, she stared right back.

  "You would make a hell of a great pirate, Cawdor. You already have the look."

  "I don't get you."

  Shauna pointed at his eye patch. "Required garb for any self-respecting pirate."

  "Right. As I recall, pirates were also supposed to have hooks for hands and wooden pegs for legs and a talking bird on their shoulder," Ryan replied. "No wonder the poor gimps had to steal—they were crip­pled and half-blind."

  Shauna laughed heartily at that "Your friends said not to bother you."

  "My friends were right."

  "Well, I'm not having my key ally going to bed with his belly empty the night before a fight," Shauna said mildly. "I can hold my anger close just as well on a full stomach."

  "I thought you said Poseidon may not show," Ryan said.

  "He may not. Still, why take chances? Your plan is workable, and I've been wanting to bring down that bastard for a long time."

  "Why do you stay here?' Ryan asked.

  "Why not? Climate's good. Plenty to eat. People who care for me live here. I could do worse."

  "What, with this Admiral you have to bow down and pay tribute to? That kind of extortion shit gets triple old fast."

  "Sometimes…" Shauna's voice trailed off. "Sometimes, Cawdor, it's easier than trying to fight back. You have to remember, when the Admiral first approached us about trading, we were on a more equal footing. I had more men at the commune—good sec men. Couple of years pass, and then suddenly he's got the advantage. Some of our people go missing, or have accidents, or worse yet, join his outfit."

  Ryan turned and looked at her profile in the moon­ligh.t He knew from the pain etched in her face that the woman was telling the truth when she had told him she knew the signs of hurting.

  "What did Poseidon do to you? Besides bleeding off your commune, I mean," Ryan asked.

  "Not my commune. Our commune. Belongs to all of us, even you, if you want to stay." She placed a hand on his shoulder.

  "You know what I mean."

  Shauna sighed and sat down next to Ryan. "The good Admiral says he's a businessman. Once he gained the advantage, he came in here and started telling us how things were now going to be. My husband didn't agree. Poseidon invited him and a hand-picked squad to travel back to Kings Point for a sum­mit meeting."

  She turned and looked Ryan right in the eye, her icy blue pupils locking with his own. "I never saw my husband alive after that."

  "Fireblast," Ryan whispered. The epithet seemed woefully insignificant.

  "I was ready to go after Eric and see Poseidon's head on a post, but I didn't have enough fighting men to support an assault. Poseidon made a point of not coming back around here in person after that. He might have been frightened or cautious or both. I don't know. I kept telling myself that Poseidon was a military sec type, not a fisherman or farmer. The folks here were more in tune with a band of under­water muties, peace and love and harmony with na­ture. Leave us alone, we leave you alone."

  "The pain never left, did it?" Ryan said quietly.

  "I'm as ready for vengeance now as I ever was."

  She took Ryan's hand in her own. "I lost my man three years ago, Cawdor. He was a lot like you— stubborn and pigheaded. I heard the Admiral beat him to death with a whip in a public flogging, as a lesson, as a good old-fashioned example. I'm constantly amazed at how reverting back to the old ways for most seems to entail brutality."

  "Human nature."

  Shauna leaned over and kissed the one-eyed man gently on the lips. Ryan didn't refuse or encourage the gesture of intimacy.

  "Been over three years for me, Ryan,"
she said.

  "Shauna, I can't make love with you," Ryan re­plied. "Timing's all wrong, for now."

  "I figured as much." Shauna pulled back and smiled. "I just thought you could use some company, that's all. You're a leader. I'm a leader. Leaders can't let themselves show weakness in front of their follow­ers, no matter how close they are as friends or family. Part of the territory, right?"

  "Part of the territory," Ryan agreed.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The wag rolled into Shauna's territory at approxi­mately twenty minutes after twelve.

  High noon, and the sky overhead was crisp and clear, so clear that objects as far away as a hundred feet still looked as sharp as if they were directly in front of your nose. The air was silent, precisely so, as if waiting in anticipation for the inevitable sudden sound or motion to appear in a rapid onrush to shatter the serenity.

  The young lookout in the watchtower, flat on her stomach to avoid detection, had spotted the transport well in advance of its arrival. She had signaled the waiting group below with a prearranged motion that the convoy consisted of a single vehicle, just as had been predicted.

  After the high sign had been given, there was noth­ing to do but wait. As they took their positions in the trench alongside the dirt-and-gravel roadway—a trench that had been widened and deepened to accom­modate the lean and lethal attack force—Ryan had to wonder if such a simple plan of battle would work.

  "Simple's sometimes the best way," J.B. said as he waited with Ryan in the ditch alongside the road­way. The Armorer's eyes wandered over enviously to the ordnance Shauna and Carter were carrying. Earlier Carter had led J.B. and Mildred to a secure place hid­den away in a seaside cavern about a quarter mile from the cluster of shacks and tents that made up the commune.

  From a grease-stained canvas bag, Carter had pulled out twin Calico M-955AS light submachine guns, complete with full shoulder butts and forward hand grips all molded in stark black metal and plastic. The Calico was a unique little weapon that was a cross between a machine pistol and a full-blown rifle.

  "PDWs," J.B. had said in admiration, his voice echoing slightly in the cave. The cave was a natural formation fortified with large wooden beams jammed every few feet along the walls in a basic yet effective effort to prop up the ceiling and avoid the possibility of having the roof fall down around a visitor's ears.

  "Pee Dee whats?" Carter responded.

  "PDWs. Quick-speak for Personal Defense Weap­ons. They emerged in the predark days right before the nukecaust for nonsoldier types to use, you know; whitecoats, engineers, comm men, techies, drivers. Those guns you have there were made by Calico In­corporated of Bakersfield, U.S.A. First appeared in 1989, by the old calendar," J.B. rattled off with con­viction.

  Carter glanced at Mildred with a cocked eyebrow.

  "One thing John knows is guns, Carter," she said. "He's probably the greatest weapons expert left alive in Deathlands."

  "Do tell," Carter said. "I'm smart enough to know these are good guns, but I didn't plan on being quizzed."

  "The Calico is a modular system, which allows a longer or a shorter weapon to be assembled from in­terchangeable components. You're got the full pack­age there," J.B. said, pointing at the guns Carter was carrying. "Best of all is the Calico's amazing large magazine capacity. A small mag holds fifty rounds, the large one a hundred. You can always tell a Calico magazine by the shape of the mag."

  "Really," Carter said. "And why is that?"

  "Calico is the only PDW to use a cylinder mag. Either the large or the small will clip down right on top of the gun, storing the cartridges in two helical layers. Ammo feed comes down from the top, while the spent cartridges eject underneath instead of out the side. Sweet little guns."

  "Glad you approve. These are in good shape, but unfortunately what you pointed out about the ammo is true. We've got a 100-shot load and a 50-shot, and a backup fifty, and that's it. Most of the better stuff was lost the first time a group of us took Poseidon on."

  "What else you got?"

  "In guns? Not much." Carter took another of the insulated sacks and revealed the remaining stockpile of hardware.

  J.B. eyed the rest of the weapons dump. Carter wasn't understating the loss. A few 6-shot Colt re­volvers, a rifle that looked as though it was an antique when Doc was still young and an astonishing lack of ammunition.

  "Might as well toss these in the ocean," the Ar­morer said.

  "Don't believe in that around here, Dix," Carter replied. "Guns don't belong in the sea."

  "Anything else?" Mildred asked hopefully. "Some plastique? We're going to need it to go through with the plan."

  "Doctor, I wouldn't have brought you all the way out here if I didn't have more,'' the tattooed man said. He flipped up a blanket revealing a green crate he'd been sitting on.

  "Besides the Calicos, my private stash has one other distinct advantage going for it," Carter noted, pulling it out to the center of the cavern.

  Hidden away inside the big rectangular metal stor­age container painted olive green was the "advan­tage." Thick white letters and numerals were sten­ciled on the sides of the container, which was roughly the size of a traditional footlocker. On the top of the box were smaller letters and numbers, all in a coded jumble beneath a torn red, white and blue decal of the American flag.

  "These boxes are never the same twice. What's in it?" J.B. asked, recognizing the style of standard mili­tary-issue container from his many searches of re­doubt supply rooms. The boxes could be used for any­thing from drab camouflage clothing to the near inedible delight of rations of self-heat cuisine. However, more often than not, the boxes were also dumps for ammunition, grenades or guns.

  "You're so smart, you tell me," Carter replied eas­ily as he lifted the box and placed it on a makeshift tabletop near the entrance of the cave.

  "Could be nothing but an empty box, Carter. I've seen the package a thousand times before, but the present inside is usually long gone," J.B. remarked.

  "Not this time, Dix," Carter said, working the combination of a moldy lock that kept the lid of the container shut down tight. "This time I've got party favors for everybody."

  Carter lifted the lid with a proud flourish.

  J.B. and Mildred both leaned over and peered down inside.

  "Good Lord!" Mildred gasped.

  "Dark night!" J.B. said.

  Carter reached inside and removed a silver-and-red concussion grenade. He tossed it lightly in the air over to J.B, who calmly reached down his right hand and caught the lethal egg before it could hit the ground. Mildred involuntarily flinched.

  "No need for worry, Dr. Wyeth," Carter said. "These things can't hurt anyone until they're armed."

  "Old as those grens are, they could blow right in our faces!" Mildred retorted angrily. "I don't like taking chances!"

  J.B. returned the explosive device to the metal and wire rack in the bottom of the steel container. "I count eight. Two burners, one concussion, one frag and four high-ex. Decent mix. Timers seem to be tight and clean. The outsides don't look too badly cor­roded, either. Last batch of grens we found, they were leaking like hell."

  "I remember," Mildred said with a grin. "Dean knocked the box over and the entire lot nearly went off in our faces. Did a ten-second run to safety in nine seconds flat to outrun the timers."

  "This time we're keeping the kid out of the grens," J.B. said.

  Carter closed the container but left the lock unfas­tened. He then picked up both of the Calicos and slung them over his left shoulder. The extra magazine went into one of the numerous pockets of the blue jumpsuit he now wore.

  "Grab one end of the box, Dix, and I'll carry the other. We'll divvy up the grens back at the commune. Shauna and Ryan will probably want to decide which ones we're going to use."

  J.B. had already known that Ryan would say to take them all.

  The rumble of the wag they had been warned about shook the Armorer from his memories. The hum of the inter
nal eight-cylinder turbocharged engine was clean and uninterrupted, a muted throb that grew louder as the vehicle approached.

  The wag was a familiar sight to both Ryan and J.B. From the flat-backed rear-access hatch to the bullet-shaped blunt nose and angled headlights, the vehicle was a near twin of the type they had recently liberated from a cache found inside an underground complex in Dulce, New Mexico. The primary difference was that the earlier wag had been factory new, with barely a hundred miles logged on the odometer. It had been fully loaded, too, with a barricade remover, a Watt-Olsen spotlight and a twin-speaker mounted public-address system.

  There were no extras on the wag now approaching their hiding place, and the wag was in poor condition. The paint was nearly gone along the sides and front, revealing the thick armor plating that secured the pas­sengers within safely. One side rack of headlights was shattered, a reminder of a past collision.

  "Hotspur Hussar Armored Land Rover," J.B. breathed. His keen eyes quickly took in the superficial damages to the battered wag. "Seen better days. I'd say she's going about thirty miles per hour. Driver will have to slow up at the curve. I'd take the shot then."

  Ryan nodded and raised the SIG-Sauer.

  Originally Mildred had been the one chosen to make the shot, until Shauna had stressed the need for silence for her plan to work. Mildred's aim with the Czech target revolver was uncanny, but the blaster was explosively loud. Ryan had offered the SIG-Sauer to her, but she declined. It wasn't that compli­cated a shot, and Ryan's familiarity with his own blaster would make him the logical shooter.

  The plan was indeed a simple one: take out one of the Land Rover's enormous rubber tires and make the men inside believe they were the unfortunate recipi­ents of a blowout. With luck, they would all leave the wag to change the tire, eliminating the need for a firefight that would probably end up with casualties and a damaged, possibly inoperable wag.

  Ryan wanted the wag intact. He wanted the way inside to Poseidon.

  "Trojan horse," Doc had said when told of the plan. "A proved winner for centuries, Ryan. I see no reason why it should not work again."