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  “That’s good to know—wouldn’t want you to think I was lying,” J.B. said, straight-faced. So much so that Xander truly couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic.

  “Well, I tell you, my friend, I think I know who you may be,” Xander said, leaning in slightly to judge J.B.’s reaction. The Armorer remained impassive. Xander, still not knowing what to make of his captive, continued. “Many years ago, my father, when he was alive, used to tell me stories of a man they called simply Trader. He was the best—the smartest, hardest, fastest and the best nose for jack in the game. He was the number-one man until he disappeared. And they used to tell stories about two of the men he rode with. A one-eyed man with a heart of steel who used to ride shotgun.” Xander looked, but there wasn’t even a flicker of recognition from J.B. “Man’s name was Ryan Cawdor. And he had someone who they say traveled on with him, a guy with glasses and a battered old hat—like we found on you.”

  Still nothing.

  “Guy was an expert on weapons. No one knew blasters like this guy. They say it was his life, that he was obsessed and that he had a gift for it. He could figure out what blasters people used just by the sound. He could strip and rebuild blindfolded, mebbe even with one hand behind his back. Always carried a lot of shit around with him. That’s kinda like you.”

  J.B. felt uneasy, but his impassive face let nothing show. Behind the mask, however, something was stirring. The way in which he’d reeled off a list of weapons without even thinking about it earlier…and, come to think of it, he did know a lot about ordnance. This much he knew without even really thinking about it. And he was really pissed off at the way they refused to return his canvas bag. But, for all that, he could dig nothing else out of his memory that gave him clues to his life before a few days ago. All that Xander had told him sparked nothing in the way of memory, only the uneasy feeling that this man knew who he was more than he did himself.

  Xander could determine none of that, so he used the last throw of the dice. “I can tell you that man’s name. It was Dix, John Barrymore Dix, called J.B.”

  The baron paused, waiting for it to sink in. J.B. looked at him and shook his head.

  “You figure that’s me, right?”

  “Is that what you think?” J.B. paused and considered his answer. If he said no, then the baron may take him at face value; he may be in line for a chilling. On the other hand, if he said yes, then he may be in line for a chilling anyway, depending on what this J. B. Dix had done. The truth of the matter was that he had no idea if he was this man Dix or not. Yeah, there sounded to be some similarities, but so what?

  “What I think,” J.B. said slowly, “is that you reckon I’m this Dix guy. And mebbe I am. I know that I know a lot about hardware and the glasses and hat thing fits. But that ain’t a whole lot to go on and I don’t know shit about Dix. I don’t know shit about anything before I woke up in this room.”

  Xander glanced behind him toward Grant. J.B. saw the gaunt, gray-haired man nod, almost imperceptibly. Xander turned back to J.B.

  “I think you could be. So does Grant. And we also figure that you’re being straight when you say you don’t know. So what I’m gonna do is give you a little test. Follow me.”

  Xander turned and left the cell. Grant beckoned J.B. to follow and the Armorer rose from his bed, wincing at the stiffness and aching in his body as he began to walk.

  He followed Xander into the corridor, with Grant falling in behind. Once beyond the door to his cell, J.B. could see that there were two sec men accompanying the baron, one of whom he recognized as the sec man on watch. The other had to be the baron’s personal bodyguard. He, like the heavyset sec man, was wearing fatigues and carrying an AK-47.

  They walked along the corridor of the secure block. The walls were painted a dull white and reflected the overhead light dimly. There seemed to be eight rooms in the block, all leading off the one corridor, which terminated to the rear in a solid wall. J.B. glanced back over his shoulder to check and was ushered on by Grant; but not before confirming his suspicions.

  One thing for sure, even though he had been brought in unconscious and given medical treatment, they hadn’t wanted to risk his escaping. It was a windowless hellhole and made him wonder why Xander found such a block necessary.

  He had the feeling he would have to tread very carefully.

  The sec man in front of Xander led them out into the light. J.B. was surprised. For no reason he could explain, he had assumed it had to be some time during the day, but as they walked out into the air, it was cool. Dusk was falling and there was a glow of ambient light starting to come from the surrounding ville. The blocks he could see were similar to the one he had just left, apart from the fact that they had windows. Duma looked dull and functional. And although the air was cool, it wasn’t sweet. Smoke from fires, the smell of smelting and of old chemicals being mixed with natural oils and herbs, the stink of hot, sweaty people fueled on brew, jolt and sex—it all seemed to hit him in one.

  As did the noise. The secure building, fenced in by wire, had been soundproofed by the thickness of its walls and its lack of windows. But beyond its borders, the hum of people and machinery, the sounds of an overcrowded and busy ville, seemed to close in on him.

  J.B. slowed, trying to take it in. A sharp push from Grant reminded him to move quickly.

  Xander strode ahead, flanked by both sec men, leaving Grant in sole charge of the Armorer. They either felt that he was no threat or that Grant could handle him. In truth, J.B. was too sore to fight, and where could he go?

  He followed dutifully, trying to take in as much of the ville as possible. He wanted to get some kind of idea of the place he had landed in. So far, it just seemed to be thriving—beyond that, he couldn’t tell. And he wasn’t about to get the chance to find out. Xander had already turned into another building, this one guarded by two more sec men, dressed similarly despite their wildly differing builds. Both shouldered AK-47s and from some distant part of his mind, J.B. found himself wondering how Xander had managed to gather so many of those blasters in one ville. He had to have traded for a bulk order…for a moment, something nearly came back to J.B. Something about trading, blasters and grens…

  “Move,” Grant grated, prodding J.B. once again. The Armorer had slowed as he had tried to gather his thoughts and Grant’s intervention had distracted him.

  J.B. moved, following Xander into the building, which was larger than the secure block and had windows that were protected by iron and steel bars driven into metal and concrete frames. This building was a bleached-out brownish red, and was two stories high. J.B. looked up at the ceiling as he walked into the building, past the sec men on duty. It was lit by artificial light once again and not by oil lamp or naked flame. Whatever else, Xander had to have found himself a good source of fuel to power generators.

  Inside, the building was divided into rooms leading off the main hall, which was open to a staircase leading to the upper story. Two sec men patrolled along the mezzanine, with another one seated on a wooden chair in the hall. He sprang to his feet when Xander entered. Unlike most of the sec men J.B. had seen so far, who were either Caucasian or black, this one looked Hispanic, which struck J.B. as odd. He wasn’t sure why, but he had a vague idea that he’d traveled around a lot, and rarely seen someone Hispanic in this central part of the Deathlands. Then another strange thing hit him. How did he know where he was? Xander and Grant hadn’t mentioned the geography of Duma to him; perhaps things were starting to seep back into his empty memory.

  “Esquivel, where’s Budd?” Xander snapped.

  “Sir, he’s just out back, sir,” the sec man snapped back, but with more respect in his voice than he’d been shown.

  “Dammit, why isn’t that old bastard here when I want him,” Xander growled.

  “’Cause it don’t matter who you are, when nature calls you gotta answer. You want me to shit on your lovely clean floors?” grumbled a grizzled old man, with a halo of black and gray hair surrounding a tanned
pate that bled down to a leathery, weather-beaten face. He was skinny and still pulling his belt tight as he entered the hallway from the rear of the building.

  Xander laughed, short and explosive. “You old bastard, always trying to wind me up.”

  “What d’you mean, ‘trying’?” the old man replied. “Anyway, I’m here now.” He stopped short when he saw J.B. He examined him with a quizzical eye. “So this is him, is it?” he queried softly.

  “Could be,” Xander replied in equally soft tones. “Let’s see what he’s got.”

  J.B. was angered by the way they talked about him as though he were a pack horse, as though he wasn’t even there. But he kept it caged up. There was nothing he could do at this stage except keep calm and see what they expected of him.

  Budd beckoned to the Armorer. “This way,” he said simply.

  Casting a glance at Xander, Grant and their accompanying sec men, J.B. followed the old man as he opened the double doors leading into one side of the building.

  J.B. let out a low whistle. It was the only sign he gave of being impressed, but it was enough. And there was certainly something to be impressed by. This was the main blaster armory for the ville, presumably to arm the sec force. There were crates of AK-47s—confirming J.B.’s suspicions—and also racks of SMGs, mostly Uzi and Heckler & Kochs, as well as a variety of automatic and semiautomatic pistols, old revolvers that were both Colt and Smith & Wesson of twentieth-or even nineteenth-century vintage. There were crates of ammo for all of them and there were even quantities of less-common weapons, such as Thompson SMGs—J.B. could recall learning somewhere that these had an early twentieth-century vogue—and derringer pistols of an earlier vintage. There was also a small crate of Vortak precision pistols, which ran on a gas system and struck some kind of memory in the Armorer that he couldn’t pin down.

  J.B. walked around, naming each blaster as he handled it, checking the condition and rooting through the ammo.

  “What else you got?” he asked. He’d figured it out. If he was this J. B. Dix guy they assumed him to be, then he would know all this shit. And to his surprise, he did. Seeing the weapons triggered memories and familiar feelings, and he found that he knew about everything he saw. Dark night, mebbe he actually was who they said.

  Budd led J.B. from the room and across the hall. While Xander and Grant watched, J.B. checked the heavier antipersonnel and antitank rocket launchers, mortars and bazookas that Xander’s Armorer had amassed. He figured that this old guy Budd knew his business, as they were a good selection and were well-maintained. There was enough ordnance here to knock out a ville twice the size of Duma.

  And the old man wasn’t finished yet. He led J.B. up to the second story. Up here were supplies of plas ex, old gelignite kept in stabilizing conditions and grens of all kinds: shrapnel, concussion and gas. J.B. detailed all their effects, now aware that he was being tested in some way. It came back to him easily.

  He and Budd walked back down to the hall, where Xander and Grant were waiting.

  “Tell you something,” the old man said, before Xander even had a chance to ask, “if he isn’t the man your father used to speak of, then he sure as hell has spent a long time learning how to copy him. The looks fit and he told me a couple of things about some of these blasters that even I didn’t know.”

  “So you are J. B. Dix,” Xander said simply.

  “Guess I must be, if you all reckon. Still can’t remember much about what happened to me before a few days back, but then again I didn’t know I remembered that much about ordnance until I was faced with it. So I guess I’ll say, yeah, I am.”

  Xander nodded slowly. “Okay, but if you are J. B. Dix, you and Ryan Cawdor—the one-eyed man—were virtually joined at the hip. When you left Trader, you were both together. He’d be as much of an asset to me as you are.”

  J.B. wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that, but knew he was in no position to call the shots. “Look,” he said slowly, “I don’t know when I last saw this Ryan Cawdor. In fact, I don’t remember him at all right now. I may have been with him when this happened or I may not have seen him for years. Hell, he could have bought the farm, for all I know.” He shrugged. “It’s not my problem, is it?”

  Xander eyed him, trying to work out if he was holding back. “Listen,” the baron said finally, “I’ll cut you a deal. I cut deals, that’s what I do. They’re hard, but I always abide by them. And I expect the other side to do the same, right?”

  J.B. nodded.

  Xander continued. “I want Duma to be the biggest ville in these lands. I get the best convoys through here and we have good things, make a lot of jack. That’s good for me and it’s good for everyone here. And that’s also good for me, right? The happier everyone is, the easier it is to be baron and the less I have some chickenshit after my ass. But to keep that steady, I need the best sec force and the best armory. Budd is good, but he’s getting old and this is a big place. It takes more than one to run it and I want you to take over from him, run it with him till he chills—” the baron didn’t see, or ignored, the expression of anger and outrage on the old man’s face “—then run it yourself with your own, hand-picked underlings. It’s good jack, but you do it right or I’ll have you hung out to dry.”

  J.B. paused. It was an offer he couldn’t turn down. It sounded good and he knew he wasn’t likely to fuck up and bring down Xander’s wrath on himself. But he still had an underlying feeling that he’d like to have seen more of Duma before blindly accepting. All he knew was the secure block, the armory and what Grant and Xander had told him. How much of that was true?

  Shit, what else could he do?

  “Okay, I’ll take it.”

  Chapter Six

  Ryan Cawdor felt the slug burn as it ripped through the scant protection offered by his jacket and shirt. The burn was like ice, cold and numbing rather than hot as the metal pierced the upper layers of skin. It was only in that split second after, when the nerve endings were severed by the brutal trajectory, that he felt the pain begin to bite.

  It hurt. But his adrenaline was pumping hard and the one-eyed warrior was focused on staying alive. There would be time to worry about the wound to his upper arm later…or else it would be too late to care, as he would have been chilled in battle. All that mattered now was forging forward, driving the enemy back. He didn’t even feel the blood as it trickled down his sleeve, soaking the cloth and dripping onto the hand that clutched the Sig Sauer, slippery in his palm.

  Instead, Ryan yelled defiance and kept firing, running forward, driving the enemy back.

  The companions had no idea who had been able to gain entry to the redoubt or where they had come from. They only knew that in their weariness and their grieving for the lost J.B., they had allowed themselves to be run like rats in a maze, pushed into this corner where they had nothing to do except come out fighting or curl up and wait to be chilled.

  No way that was going to happen.

  The barricade they had built for themselves in the redoubt office was flimsy and wouldn’t last long against any kind of concerted attack. They knew that they had enemies on either side of the doorway, waiting for them to put their heads above the battlements and pick them off.

  Or mebbe—just mebbe—whoever had run them to ground here wanted to keep them alive. Otherwise why not pick them off when they were exposed in the corridor? Why pen them in if not as a prelude to an offer of surrender?

  If there was to be any hesitancy about chilling them, then it gave them a slender advantage. Because they didn’t care who bought the farm if they got in the way.

  Without J.B., the companions had little in the way of spare ammo apart from what they carried with them and no plas ex or grens of their own to augment their blasters. They would have to blast their way out rather then prepare the way by using explosives. They could sit and wait, but how long would that give them? They had few supplies and they couldn’t afford to rest. Time was a precious commodity at best; now, it was at a premium
.

  Tactics were simple because there was no alternative. They had to do the unexpected. Instead of sitting there and waiting for the end, they had to come out firing. The hope was to take the enemy off guard, to hit them when they were least expecting it.

  It was a risky stratagem, to say the least, but the only one that was open to the companions.

  Knowing that there were groups of the enemy on each side of the doorway and that they were shooting occasionally into the room, the companions timed the frequency of the shots. They were desultory, designed to pin down rather than to damage. There was at least half a minute between each shot. In this enclosed and confined space, a half minute was a long time.

  To the right of the door, the enemy group would be back up against the closed sec door. The companions hadn’t heard it open, so it made that group a sitting target with nowhere to run. To the left, the enemy would be able to flee up the corridor and around the dogleg bend. This made the group on the right the more dangerous, backed into a corner and literally fighting for their lives.

  Ryan whispered his plans to the others, Jak chipping in ideas. It was simple in essence and relied on speed and the ability to keep going, even if caught by blasterfire. The first they could guarantee, the second was down to the fates.

  The only thing to do would be to break cover between the containing fire laid down by the enemy. They would then have a few seconds to make the space between the barricade and the doorway, coming out firing. Ryan would opt for his Sig Sauer, as this was a battle for handblasters.

  Ryan and Jak would make the initial break. They were faster than any of the others and Ryan felt compelled to lead by example. Jak would veer to the right of the doorway, taking out the enemy backed against the sec door, while Ryan sought to drive back those who could escape up the corridor. Doc would be third out, using the shot chamber of the LeMat to deal with the group gathered by the sec door, while Mildred and Krysty would join Ryan. If not for the fact that his erratic pace couldn’t be relied upon, Doc would have been in the vanguard with Ryan. There would be no time for the enemy to tap in the sec-door code and at such close quarters the spread of the shot would be just enough to ensure maximum damage to the group, no matter how many it constituted.