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  J.B. looked at the man and said nothing. He’d heard out Ricky. Now he was busy worrying about all the flaws in the kid’s plan.

  * * *

  THE OPPORTUNITY CAME later, when J.B., Ricky and Jak were well into their seventh hour of bullet sorting. Their original guard had returned about an hour before, and he sat outside the small cavern half-asleep. Even so, J.B. was sure they wouldn’t be able to sneak up on the guy—he never quite drifted into sleep proper, no matter how long they waited.

  Unseen, Ricky had been working the knife at his wrist ties while the others sorted. The cord was frayed now, and he felt certain that it would snap with just the slightest of pulls.

  Jak had his own ideas, his scarlet eyes flicking to the guard with regular suspicion.

  The man snuffled, then shoved the fur-trimmed hat back on his head until it sat low to his skull. “You still working in there?” he snarled, poking his head and shoulders inside.

  Ricky looked at him. “The stench in here is making my head spin,” he complained.

  The sec man smiled sadistically, showing a line of tiny steel tombstones where his rotted teeth had been repaired by someone with little skill. “Yeah, what you want me to do about it, shitface? This ain’t no vacation.”

  J.B. placed another 9 mm bullet into the appropriate storage box before speaking up. “Not mean ruffle feathers, but kid’s young. He’s right—place stinks,” he added, glancing significantly at one of the other workers whose pants showed a damp patch among the urine stains. “Should let kid grab fresh air, clear head. Might croak.”

  The sec man looked at J.B. with a scowl before relenting. “Yeah, whatever. You,” he said, pointing at Ricky, “and you, whiteface. Come with me. No tricks. As for the rest of you, there’s a man posted at the end of this tunnel. None of you are going anywhere. Get me?”

  Ricky rose, stepping out of the cavern and into the tunnellike corridor with Jak following two paces behind him. Warily, the sec man watched them both pass, his hand close to the Colt Anaconda holstered at his hip.

  The kid kept his hands low and, in the darkness of the corridor, snapped the frayed cord that held them. J.B. would have argued that he acted too soon, but Ricky saw his best chance as being before they reached the man at the end of the tunnel. He shifted his sleeve ever so slightly, uncrooking his arm and letting the hidden blade drop into his hand, subtly hidden from the guard’s view.

  “Come on,” the sec man snarled, “keep moving.” He shoved Ricky in the back.

  Seizing his opportunity, Ricky moved like a blur. The hunting knife appeared from its hiding place in his hand, and he lashed out with it at the guard, whipping the blade across the man’s face in a rush of bloody movement. The air around the man’s face streaked with scarlet as Ricky’s blade hacked at his flesh, and he stumbled toward Ricky with a curse.

  “Fuck you,” Ricky snarled in response, driving the vicious little blade behind the man’s left eye socket and wrenching it across his face, both hands gripped on the leather-strapped handle.

  With a screech, the guard stumbled against a wall, his shoulder slamming into it with a clang of metal. Blood poured from his face and he brought his left arm up to try to staunch the flow, holding what was left of his face in place. With his other hand, he reached for the blaster strapped at his waist, drawing the weapon from its holster.

  Jak moved faster, pivoting on one heel as he raised his other foot to kick the blaster out of the sec man’s hand. The heel of his boot connected, sending the blaster flying across the tunnel with a loud pop of discharging ammo. A single bullet ricocheted from one of the metal-plate walls before drumming against the tunnel ceiling in a shower of sparks.

  J.B. was moving, too, charging from the cavern straight at the sec man as his colleagues assessed other threats. The gunshot had echoed through the underground complex and already the sounds of running feet and voices raised in confusion were coming from the nearest tunnels.

  “You two go,” J.B. ordered. “I’ll follow you.”

  Ricky didn’t like leaving J.B. but Jak knew better than to argue. He had partnered with the Armorer for a long time, trusted J.B. to have his own plan of escape. Jak slipped his right hand from his bonds in an instant, compacting the bones and pulling it through the now-oversize loop. Then, snatching up the sec man’s blaster, Jak gave Ricky a friendly shove on the back, urging him back the way they had come. Together, the two friends charged along the corridor that they had just come from, a blaster and a knife between them.

  Up ahead in the ill-lit tunnels, Jak’s remarkable eyes spotted the guards moving in their direction, their blasters ready. “Back,” he instructed Ricky, shoving the youth against the wall.

  “What is it, Jak?” Ricky asked, keeping his voice low.

  Jak’s eyes flashed to the blaster, checked its ammunition. Just five shots, not enough to hold off all the sec men and get Ryan and the others to safety. “Out of here,” Jak whispered. “Find ’nother way.”

  Ricky nodded, turning back the way they had come. Sec men were appearing there, too. They were trapped like rats in a maze.

  Chapter Eight

  J.B. knew the jig was up the second he spotted the three guards silhouetted against the walls of the mine shaft. The other prisoners had proved as meek as sheep after shearing, much to his irritation, which left everything up to him. He wanted Jak and Ricky to escape. At least with them out in the field, the group stood a chance of getting out of this hellhole they had managed to walk themselves into when they had left the redoubt with Nyarla.

  The bloody-faced sec man had both hands to his head now, screaming himself hoarse as he tried to hold his ruined face in place. There was no question that Ricky could act quickly when he needed to, even if it might not have been the best moment to try to escape, even though J.B. hadn’t told him not to.

  “Best give the kid a chance,” J.B. muttered, striding purposefully toward the sec man with the ruined face.

  The man couldn’t see a thing. Blood was pouring into his eyes, and his left eyeball looked to have ruptured with Ricky’s savage attack. Grimly, J.B. pulled the rope around his wrists taut and stepped quietly behind the sec man, hooking the rope over the man’s throat. Then he yanked, pulling the man back and cutting off his screams in an instant.

  * * *

  RICKY SAW THE TUNNEL up ahead where J.B. was struggling with the bloodied guard. The Armorer had lost his hat, and he was using his wrist bonds as a makeshift garrote, dragging the man’s neck back as he strangled him.

  Jak whispered something from behind Ricky, grabbing the kid’s wrist and drawing him in a new direction. There was a gap between the metal-sheet walls. It was barely visible and doubtless Ricky would have missed it had he been alone. Jak’s night vision, however, was legendary, a compense for the problems his albino eyes sometimes suffered during daylight hours.

  Ricky followed Jak into the new tunnel. Its walls were scrappy and unfinished, and great hunks of debris littered the floor in increasingly messy arrays. It had to be an old mine shaft, Ricky realized, abandoned after its contents were dug up. Behind them, Ricky and Jak could hear the commands of guards as they reached J.B. and the others. Annoyed shouts echoed down their shaft, followed by a single crash like a hammer blow. Ricky winced at that, hoping against hope that it wasn’t J.B. getting a rather brutal comeuppance.

  He and Jak continued up the shaft, ignoring the increasingly irritated cries echoing behind them.

  * * *

  J.B. HAD BEEN STRANGLING the sec man when the others appeared at the bend in the tunnel. There was no room to maneuver in these corridors; it was like trying to head off a rabbit in its warren. The wily Armorer figured that gave him the upper hand for about ten seconds.

  Drawing his strong arms back, J.B. pulled the strangling sec man toward him and turned him around, forcing him to arch his back and using him as a shield as the other sec men targeted him with their weapons.

  “Put him down,” one of the men commanded.
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br />   J.B. eyed the blaster in the man’s hand—a .44 caliber that looked like a mutated Magnum, the kind of weapon Jak would have been comfortable with. If J.B. had the firepower figured right, that blaster could punch a hole right through his human shield. He held his breath, his eyes narrowed as if daring the man to shoot.

  There was a moment’s hesitation, and the sec man seemed to acknowledge for the first time the awful state that his partner had been left in, following Ricky’s attack. Then he lowered his weapon a little, his face blanching in revulsion.

  The man with the bloodied face spoke up then, his voice croaking where J.B. still had his throat held tightly. “Chill me,” he gritted. That was the one thing J.B. hadn’t wanted to hear.

  To his credit, the other sec man didn’t hesitate. He raised his blaster and fired, sending a single titanium-sheathed bullet into his partner’s chest. The man’s chest exploded in a geyser of blood, and J.B. stumbled back with the impact, feeling the force of the bullet strike against his own body even through his human shield. He struck his head against the wall and blacked out in an instant.

  At the lip of the tunnel, the three sec men were rushing toward the prisoners even as another two appeared.

  “Two prisoners are missing,” one of the sec men said. “Find them. Quickly.”

  * * *

  THE MINE SHAFT LED upward in near total darkness. At first the rise was gradual, but after a while Jak and Ricky started to find it more of a climb, with little flights of makeshift steps set up at intervals closer to the surface. Jak led the way, his incredible night vision priceless in such confines. Jak guessed that this had once been a corridor within the military building itself, but the earthshakers had destroyed the foundations and left it lurching at this impossible angle.

  Debris was all over where the roof was unstable and some of it had almost entirely blocked the shaft, leaving the two companions with little room to maneuver. Somehow, Jak found a way through even the worst of it, his movements almost instinctive.

  After what he’d guess was three or four minutes of frantic passage through the dark confines, Ricky spotted light ahead. It was dim, but he checked it by the simple process of looking behind him once before looking back at where he had seen it. Behind it was dark, like a black sheet had been hitched in front of his face; but ahead there was the square of illumination, faint but discernible and getting bigger even as they moved forward.

  “Look, Jak, light!” Ricky whispered.

  In the darkness, Jak’s nod went unseen by his colleague. He had noticed it already, had it figured for an exit and was heading toward it with grim determination. “Man could be there,” he reminded Ricky. “Chillers.”

  Ricky clutched his stolen blade tighter, wishing he had his Webley or some other blaster instead. Jak could handle a knife better than he could, he knew, and he wondered if they ought to trade, blaster for knife. But before he could suggest it, Jak halted right before him, pulling up so sharply that Ricky slammed into him with a fierce expulsion of breath.

  “What is it?” Ricky whispered as he recovered himself.

  Jak’s head twitched left and right as he tried to locate the out-of-place sound he had heard. It was coming from behind them. Footsteps. “Go,” he told Ricky. “Company coming.”

  Ricky picked his way ahead, wishing on his sainted mother’s life that he had Jak’s knack for seeing through the darkness.

  Behind him, Jak remained silent. He was moving much slower now, the blaster held low to his side as he listened to the sounds of the approaching footsteps. Then a flickering gas flashlight appeared without warning, popping into existence as their pursuers rounded a heap of debris. They saw Jak at the same moment he targeted them.

  “There they are,” the lead man bellowed. “Stop them!”

  Jak unleashed a shot from the blaster, deafeningly loud in the enclosed space, hoping to take out the flashlight. The blaster pulled to the left, he discovered, throwing his aim quite considerably. In the light of the muzzle-flash, Jak saw the startled expressions of his pursuers—three of them in all, barely twenty feet behind him down the tunnellike shaft. Then came a crash of metal and plaster as the slug embedded itself in the wall, spewing dust.

  The cloud of dust hung in the air, dotting across the beam of the flashlight as the men continued their pursuit. They were wary now, but they didn’t shoot back. They either wanted their prisoners alive or they wanted to conserve bullets. Either way, it gave Jak an extra few seconds to get moving.

  He found Ricky up ahead, close to the exit to the mine. The teen looked young to Jak, fear gripping his handsome features in the dim light that emanated from the doorway. A frigid breeze was coming from the open doorway, blasting several feet in with an accompanying howl like a wolf in distress.

  “Come,” Jak said, glancing back over his shoulder and gauging the distance to their pursuers. The sec men had fallen back a little. They were twenty-five feet or so away from them now, working their way past a low hunk of ruined ceiling that bulged down like the belly of a pregnant dog.

  Jak saw the opportunity and took it, whipping up his blaster again and firing off two quick shots into the cracking ceiling. The off aim on the blaster would make it next to useless in a firefight anyhow, he figured, so he might as well spend what little ammo he had on a sure thing. The bullets streaked away with a double boom of sound, and Jak was already running to the exit as they struck the ceiling behind him. The ceiling creaked for a moment, then it tumbled down like a vomiting drunk, blocking the sec men’s path and filling the whole shaft with dust and debris.

  Then they were through the doorway and out into the open air, Jak still with two bullets left in the stolen blaster and Ricky with nothing more than a bloodstained hunting knife. Beside them, a man coughed and spit a curse in Russian. A sec man in a thick fur coat and hat sat smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. Surprised, he dropped the cigarette and reached for the Heckler & Koch longblaster he had stashed at his side. Jak shot him in the forehead before he could get the rifle off the ground, and the man sank back against the mine wall, blood and brains mingling with the frosting of ice crystals there.

  Without a word, Jak and Ricky hurried forward, checking for more guards. It looked like they were alone for now. The man Jak had just chilled had to have sneaked off for a cigarette while his colleagues worked. Still, Jak figured they wouldn’t have long before more sec men arrived from one direction or another, alerted to their presence by the blaster’s loud report.

  They took a moment to take stock of where they were. They stood on a steep incline where two trees bowed toward them like hunchbacks, the broken remains of a wire fence visible beyond. Though dark, the sky showed flashes of color, as if some great cosmic artist was washing his brushes in it. Jak figured they were on the far side to the main entrance where they had entered the mines. It was easy to get turned around in the darkness like that, moving underground the way they had been forced to.

  “Where now, Jak?” Ricky asked, snatching up the H & K. “We can’t just leave J.B., Ryan and Doc.” His brown eyes seemed to plead with Jak, deferring to his friend’s greater experience.

  Getting away from the mine was the only intelligent course of action. They could always come back for Ryan and the others, mount a sneak attack either here or at the ville that looked like an icicle. Jak was a fine tracker—he was certain the albino could find it without trouble.

  Jak led Ricky up the slope, fidgeting with the blaster in his hand in irritation. He had one shot left, so he had better make it count.

  At the top of the rise they ran into more trouble. Two sec men were tending to their mutated steeds, the fearsome caribou gorging themselves on the remains of what looked to be a mutie fish, twice the size of anything Ricky had seen in the waters around Monster Island. The men had the caribou—four in all—tethered to a short post that was stuck into the dirt to the side of the haphazard remains of the wire fence.

  Silently, Jak pointed to the right, and Ricky saw a narrow g
ap in the fence there, just out of sight of the sec men. He nodded and began scurrying toward it, and Jak followed a moment later. The men seemed unaware of their presence, most likely the gunshot had been muffled by the lightly falling snow and the snorting of their mounts.

  But as Ricky approached the breech, one of the caribou yowled out a hideous roar and the sec men turned. The beast had scented the blood on Ricky’s knife, and it wanted a taste of whatever meat it had come from.

  Jak turned, scampering backward as he watched the sec men react. Thirty feet away, they were reaching for their longblasters, which had been holstered in the saddles of two of the mounts.

  Ricky was through the gap and running, clambering higher up the slope, his body held low to keep his center of gravity down. It was a good strategy, Jak acknowledged—not only did it help his ascent, but it also made for a much smaller target for the distant sec men.

  A shot rang through the air, swiftly followed by another. Chillers like these had been mining this army base for who knew how long, Jak realized—they weren’t likely bothered about wasting a few bullets if it meant keeping their prisoners in line. And if they died, well, they could always use them as bait for the mutie wolves just like the man he and Ricky had found spread-eagled in the dirt back at the redoubt.

  His head down, Jak ran through the gap in the fence. Behind him, the wire grating of the fence sparked where a bullet struck against it, shaving metal from the structure.

  Ricky was at the top of the incline now, out of the vast crater where the missile had struck. Jak didn’t like where he was headed; all of a sudden he had a feeling that something real bad was lurking out there where the lights smeared the sky.

  Another bullet cut the air behind him, driving Jak on as it clipped against the snow just a few feet away. He weaved, dodging purely by instinct as another bullet whizzed through the air. The sec men were tenacious, and their shots weren’t wide enough to give Jak confidence in evading them for very long.