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  "Chill anything that moves. Chill anything, anyone! Full power, Hun, through the main gates. Let's get the sweet Hades out of here!"

  They took a running count as they headed north out of Towse ville. War Wag One had eight chilled, three missing and a half dozen with serious wounds. At least half of the rest of the crew had some kind of injury, but nothing bad enough to stop the wag from functioning.

  The voice crackling over the intercom told everyone the toll on War Wag Two.

  "Nine chilled. Four missing, but there's dispute about two of them. Some say two were caught in tracer cross fire near the church. Three critical on board. We got trouble with an axle running ragged, but the temp's okay. We're doing good, Trader."

  "Acknowledged." He switched off his handmike.

  "Not far to the gorge bridge," Beulah called.

  Ryan hadn't been able to snatch a moment to talk to the Trader about what had happened, and about their course of action. The miles had been eaten up with status reports from both wags, detailing every aspect of logistic multifunctions.

  Now, with no sign of any pursuit behind them, there was a moment of comparative peace on the command deck.

  "Trader?"

  The craggy face turned to him, still smeared with blood and smoke. "What is it, Ryan? No, don't tell me. You want to know where we're going and what we're going to do when we get there. That it?"

  "That's it," Ryan replied.

  "Two miles to gorge," Beulah said.

  "I don't know. Got to get my mind clear. Revenge can be a bastard costly thing to dine on, Ryan. Soon's I decide, you'll know about it."

  "There's a block on the highway," Hun reported. "Looks like a couple small wags. Half a dozen blasters behind it. Could go around it, cross-country."

  "No. They'll have talkies with them. Slow down. J.B.?"

  "Yeah?"

  "You see them?"

  "Sure. Nightscope on the gren-launcher works real well. It's like Hun says."

  "Slow it down to a walk. See any other sec-men, away from the block?"

  "No."

  "Fine. Stop around one-fifty yards, Hun. Wipe them away, J.B. Hardest with the mostest."

  Ryan knew that the Trader was deadly serious. The forward gren-launcher also fired a small rocket. They only had three of them left, and to consider using one on a piss-ant roadblock showed that the Trader wasn't going to mess around.

  The war wag jerked to a stop. The sec-men ahead of them had fired half a dozen ranging rounds that pinged off the armor. J.B. was working the cross-calibrated comp-sight, whistling softly under his breath.

  Nobody spoke.

  "Ready. Sure you want to use this big baby on six sec-men, Trader?"

  "Do it."

  The blaster absorbed the detonation, and there was only the faintest noise inside War Wag One. At such short range, the impact was almost simultaneous.

  "Got 'em!" Hun yelled. "Triple ace on the line, J.B.!"

  They rolled forward, slowing past the blazing trucks. The ragged remains of five corpses lay crumpled on the ground. A sixth man, terribly burned, was still making feeble movements. Everyone on the port side of the war wag could see him clearly.

  "July."

  "Yeah, Trader?"

  "Chill him."

  Despite their strict discipline, the crop-headed blonde still queried the order.

  "Chill him?"

  "You getting deaf, or stupid? You chill him or move the fuck out and let someone else pull down on the trigger."

  "He's near dead, that's all."

  "Near dead…he might still use a talkie back to the ville. Do it."

  The light machine gun spoke in a brief burst of a dozen bullets.

  "Chilled, Trader," July reported, her voice carefully unemotional.

  "Now we know the bridge is safe. Hun."

  "Yeah?"

  "Turn her around."

  "South?"

  "You got it."

  Ryan hesitated, then asked the unnecessary question. "We're going back to the ville?"

  The Trader smiled like a starving wolf. "Yeah, Ryan. We're going back."

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  A HALF MILE from Towse, the Trader ordered Hun to pull off the snaking blacktop. All driving lights on both war wags had long been extinguished, and they'd been making cautious progress by the light of the moon.

  The ville was just out of sight in a shallow decline in the land.

  Ryan was stunned by the Trader's instinctive flair for combat strategy. To actually return now, barely an hour since they fled the treacherous attack, would be the last thing that Baron Alias Carson would be expecting.

  The orders snapped out—who would be in command of War Wag One and who would be responsible for Two; who looked after the wounded and how many men and women would stay; what sentry pattern they would run; who'd check out both wags for any unsuspected damage; ammo count and blaster service, and what their strategy would be when they reached Towse.

  One thing that Ryan had spotted as they rumbled southward was a number of shadowy figures moving down onto the plain from the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo. Scattered groups on horseback headed in a looping curve toward Towse.

  "Apaches," he told the Trader. "Must scent the ville's in trouble, and they're coming out of the mountains to see what they can scavenge."

  The Trader nodded. "They wait a short while, and they might get themselves the best pickings they ever imagined."

  The attack plan was simple. The Trader drew a big circle on a rough pad—three arrows, one at the back— J. B. Dix and a small group. Second arrow on the right flank, the Trader with the main attack. The third arrow was going directly in the front, to the heart of the defensive complex.

  "Through the gates?" Ryan said, peering at the scribbled diagram.

  "No gates there. They won't be looking for us coming back. Leastways not tonight. They'll be treating wounded and laying out the dead. We blasted the gates to hell and back. Come in at an angle, from the side here. Keep behind the walls. Then straight in. Moment you open fire I'll bring in my force. J.B.'ll wait ninety seconds and then go for the rear wall. Easy as that. Questions?"

  J.B. cleared his throat. "Yeah, Trader. I got a question."

  "What?"

  "Tell us about what we do inside."

  The Trader's deep-set eyes were like chips of obsidian. "Children and women… not this time, friends. Once was enough for that. But the men."

  "All?"

  He looked at Ryan. "You use your blaster for a baron, then you rise or fall with that baron. He dies, they all die."

  J.B. had another question. "If any escape… do we follow them?"

  "Why? There's a hundred miles or more of Apaches out there. They'll pick up any scraps that fall off our plate."

  "Slow Eagle," Ryan said. "Yeah. Be the kind of meal he'd enjoy."

  Ryan had six handpicked gunners with him—Ben, Otis, July, Francis, Lou and Hunaker.

  Despite J.B. urging him to take one of the machine pistols from the war wag's armory, Ryan stubbornly insisted on sticking to his Ruger. But he eventually, and reluctantly, took along one of J.B.'s personal favorites, something they'd picked up from the basement of a blaster freak's ruined house on the outskirts of old Des Moines. It was a Heckler & Kock CAWS model, an automatic 12-gauge, ten-shot scattergun.

  Searchlights illuminated the interior of the ville, and they could see shadowy figures rushing around. The wrecked gates hadn't been replaced, and there was no sign of any sentries. As they drew closer, Ryan and his small group could hear shouting and cries of pain beyond the adobe walls.

  "Not got the wag back on the wheels," Hunaker whispered.

  "There were a load of kids dead, as well as some of the mothers," Ben said. "Be digging graves for a week."

  "Make it a month if we get in there first," Ryan contradicted.

  It was absurdly simple.

  Preoccupied with the results of Baron Carson's disastrous ambush on the two war wags, nobody was on g
uard anywhere around the ville's defensive perimeter. Ryan took his group along a draw, which led in turn to a row of old outbuildings. From there it was easy to cross a hundred yards of mesquite to reach the shelter of the walls.

  The moon had almost disappeared, but there was no trace of the first hint of light in the eastern sky that would herald the false dawn. It would be full dark for some time.

  "Everyone ready?" It wasn't really necessary to whisper the question. All six had ridden with the Trader long enough to know what was going down, and how they were supposed to act.

  "Can we wait just a minute?"

  It was Lou, one of the starboard gunners from War Wag One. He was a chubby young man with the latest in a long line of failed mustaches decorating his upper lip.

  "What?"

  "I gotta fart."

  Otis giggled, partly from the tension. Ryan sighed. "Can't you hold it in, Lou?"

  "Guess not, Ryan. Pork and beans with them green peppers sort of worked on through me."

  "Fireblast! I don't want the life history of your bastard guts, Lou. Just do it and keep quiet about it."

  "Silent but violent." Otis sniggered.

  The joke wasn't that funny when Lou finally lived up to his threat. "I think something's died up your ass, Lou," Hun joked, holding her nose for effect.

  "Come on, guys," Ryan pleaded. "We're going in to do some serious chilling here. Kind of simmer it down."

  Someone screamed inside the ville, a high, terrified sound.

  Ben was the only one to speak. "Hope that isn't one of our people," he said.

  The gateway was only forty yards away from them, to their left. Ryan cocked the Ruger and made sure the shotgun was secure in its sling on his shoulders.

  "Lets go."

  It was an extraordinary feeling. Earlier that night the occupants of the ville had launched a cowardly and treacherous attack on the crews of the war wags. Now Ryan was able to lead the group straight in through the gateway without being challenged. The one damaged sec-door hung from its bent hinge, swinging slightly from side to side. The torn metal squeaked softly.

  At the council of war, before they split into their groups, Garcia had suggested they might go in behind smoke grenades.

  J.B. had vetoed that. "Not going to be that much light. We're going to need to see who we're blasting at. Smoke'll hide too much."

  Now Ryan wondered whether that had been the right decision. He felt like a buffalo in the middle of a frozen lake, totally exposed to any member of the Towse sec-forces who might glance in his direction.

  From where the group stood, pressed together in the mouth of a narrow alley just inside the main entrance, they could see the plaza beyond the looming bulk of the burned church. They hid in deep shadow, but the generating plant of the ville was flooding the central area with bright light.

  "Kids' bodies." Hun pointed with her 10-gauge scattergun at the flatbed wag with at least a dozen small corpses piled carefully on it.

  "Yeah, and there's the baron." Ryan could see Alias Carson, stalking like a gray raven through the scene of carnage. His head was stooped, and he didn't seem to be speaking to any of his people.

  His lizard head swung around, and his glasses glittered in the direction of Ryan and his companions. Though he knew they were safely hidden in the blackness, the one-eyed man withdrew with a shudder.

  There was a strange and sinister mutie quality to the baron of Towse. Ryan could almost believe that Alias Carson could actually see them lurking in the alley.

  But the baron's head turned away again, and the moment passed.

  "Triple-creep bastard," July hissed.

  The baron was beckoning to Ferryman, who appeared magically and stood listening to orders. The long arm of Carson swept out and pointed momentarily to Ryan Cawdor, darting on past him and stopping at the gate.

  "Worried about his front door," Otis said, gripping his M-16 expectantly.

  "Time we started the action," Ryan stated. "Follow me, and chill anything that moves."

  The alley was between the adobe walls of linked houses, winding to left and right, and finally opened into a small square. Ryan figured they were only a block away from the main plaza.

  Hunaker was the most experienced of the six, and she was bringing up the rear. He waited until she'd joined them. Ryan's idea was to get into the plaza and start blasting, take out as many of the sec-force as possible and distract the rest so that the Trader and J.B. could get into the ville.

  "We're going to—" he began.

  "Behind you!" Ben yelled, squeezing the trigger of his Uzi and spraying lead at the doorway of one of the small houses.

  Ryan spun, dropping into an instinctive crouch, and saw five or six sec-men erupting into the dark square. Ben put most of them down in that single burst, but the others were already opening fire at the attackers.

  "Bastards!" Ryan shouted, not even aware that he had spoken. He fired off two rounds from the Heckler & Koch 12-gauge, feeling the kick against his hip. The boom of the powerful blaster was deafening in the confined space, and the impact was devastating.

  The surviving sec-men went down in a jumble of flailing arms and legs, twitching among the other dying bodies.

  The next few minutes were a chaos of tangled images—darkness and dazzling light; dealing and dodging death; hot blood and the cold shudder of controlled fear; threats and begging; moments of startling silence and piercing screams.

  A lot of pain and dying.

  Ryan had seen old vids and read old books that described firefights, and none of them got within a thousand miles of the reality. Fiction made them seem clear-cut and simple. During the five minutes or so that the assault on the ville lasted, he had no real idea of what was going on, or whether they were winning or losing.

  He could tell that the Trader and J.B. had launched their attacks, because he heard shouts and more firing from other parts of Towse. Toward the end, he also began to see other crew members around the alleys and moving across the bright plaza.

  It was absurd to try to keep his group of six together amongst the maze of lanes and twisting passages. As soon as the brief skirmish was done, he gave them their orders.

  "Split up. Watch your backs. Good luck."

  Alone, he doubled back, reaching the alley that overlooked the main entrance. If it became necessary for a talkie message to go to the wags for assistance, it was important that the defenders weren't given the chance to barricade the open gateway.

  He recognized the sec-man leading the group that was hesitating by the entrance, listening to the noise of the assault and not certain whether to stand or to move.

  It was Long Dog Hodgson, waving his customized blaster in the air. The searchlights caught the ten-inch barrel of the Charter Explorer 3, making it appear like a silver magician's wand.

  The group of two men and three women were less than twenty feet away from Ryan. He slowly brought the shotgun off his shoulder and slipped the Ruger back into its holster.

  He'd reloaded the Close Assault Weapon and it was ready to go.

  The other thing he'd seen in vids of battles was that men were always shouting warnings before they opened fire. That always got a good laugh on War Wag One when the crew was watching an action vid.

  The first blast hit Long Dog in the small of the back, almost slicing him in two. He died not even knowing who'd administered the savage death blow. Fitted with an effective muzzle flash suppressor, the scattergun delivered its deadly gifts from cover. The baron's people had no way of knowing the sniper's position. One by one Ryan picked them off, steadily working the action of the weapon, moving calmly from target to target.

  As the last man went spinning down, blood spurting from torn flesh, a young girl, barely ten years old, ran screaming from one of the houses. She stopped and picked up a heavy pistol that had been dropped by one of the sec-women.

  "Fuckin' bastard!" she yelped, turning to where Ryan stood at the corner of the alley. The blaster was an old Smith & Wes
son 9 mm revolver, much too heavy for her small hands. But hatred drove her on, and Ryan heard the sharp click of the hammer locking back.

  Ryan hesitated, staring at the dark muzzle of the pistol, his own finger slack on the trigger of the shotgun.

  "You dead, dead, dead," the girl chanted. A 10-gauge scattergun round hit her in the side, opening up the fragile bones of her chest, bursting her heart. The blaster dropped to the dirt with a heavy, thunking sound.

  "Wrong, kid," Hun said, breaking her smoking weapon. "You dead." She ejected the spent round and expertly thumbed in another. She looked at Ryan, standing beyond the pile of corpses. "No good chilling all but one, lover."

  "I know it. Thanks, Hun."

  "No survivors!" Francis yelled, eyes wide with the savor of the slaughter, grinning at Ryan as he ran by.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Ryan spotted a familiar figure, dodging across the flat roof of one of the houses by the old church.

  "Ferryman," he whispered.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  NOBODY EVER FOUND OUT who started the fires. The first serious explosion came as Ryan began to chase the fleeing sec-boss. There wasn't any special personal hatred against Ferryman. It was purely business. One thing that the Trader had drummed into Ryan was that a man never ever left an enemy alive. If he did, then one day he'd have terminal cause to regret his generosity.

  As Ryan made his way through a wide lane that ran parallel to the direction Ferryman was taking, a building to his right erupted in a mushroom of orange fire. Huge chunks of shattered adobe flew around him, and he caught the smoky odor of burning gasoline.

  Almost immediately there was a second massive concussion, from further toward the center of the ville. Ryan had to duck and protect his head from tumbling pieces of broken clay and brick.

  Dust and smoke billowed around him, and Ryan paused, trying to clear grit from his good eye.

  The shouts and screams continued, but the noise of the guns seemed to be gradually diminishing. A woman came stumbling from a doorway just ahead of him, holding a little boy by the hand. Both were badly burned around the arms and faces. She saw Ryan standing there, like an inflexible apostle of death, and she tried to cry out. But all she could manage was a faint moan as she fell to her knees.