“Hell, we could do it right now,” she relented. “There’s nothing Gaza can do in this hellstorm. We’re safe for a while from any more of his rockets. In fact—”
Whatever she was going to say was cut off by a peal of thunder, the ground shaking under the war wag in a minor earthquake. Then it happened again, and again, steady and continuous as if a giant were striding across the world.
“It’s me,” Kate said into her hand comm. “What the hell is going on outside?”
“We don’t know!” Jake replied over the crackling speaker. “There’s a whole lot of explosions on the cliff, and the ground is starting to break about…there it goes!”
As he spoke, the war wag lurched into motion, wheeling backward with the diesels roaring with restrained power.
“Okay, we’re clear,” Jake said, panting. “Christ, that was close. A whole section of the cliff just broke loose and dropped into the city, but we’re clear now.”
Ryan scowled darkly at that and exchanged looks with the other companions. He didn’t know how or why, but he knew it was Gaza.
“All stations report!” Kate snapped, and listened to the familiar voices announcing the status of the department of the war wag, and then the other wags. Only the second cargo van didn’t respond.
“Duncan, have you got a visual on Little Sue?” the Trader demanded into the hand comm. “Duncan, can you read me?”
“It’s gone,” the man said, his voice sounding like something from the grave. “It’s just vanished in a fireball. She’s gone, blown to bits.”
“Missile hit?” Kate demanded.
“Impossible. Radar showed clear.”
“Must have been a lightning strike,” Eric said hopefully.
“Six more chilled,” Fat Pete said woodenly, his face a waxy pallor. “Sue, Jimmy, that new guy, Bones…”
Just then the pounding started once more, moving along the cliff, passing them by in powerful waves that rattled everything in the galley.
“Lightning strike, my ass. That’s cannon fire,” Ryan said, standing. “Better sound the alert, I think we’re under attack!”
“We?” Kate shot back, a hand resting on her boxy rapidfire.
Ryan looked the blonde hard in the face. “If that’s Gaza, then we’re with you all the way.”
A long moment passed while the savage explosions continued, the rig shaking with increasing force.
“Deal,” the Trader said at last. “This way to the control room.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Got ’em!” Baron Gaza cried as the small vehicle on the monitor violently detonated.
“Confirmed,” the tank replied. “That was a kill.”
“There are more, a larger one. Find it!” Gaza demanded, leaning into the vid screen. On the control board was a vid screen with a view of the cliff. The angle was bad, and he couldn’t see much past the edge, but just that glimpse of the wag was enough. The robotic tank responded instantly to his command and blew it apart with the main cannon.
“Second target has been acquired,” it stated in the flat voice, bringing another van into sight, this one only visible halfway up from the desert ground. It seemed to be moving fast from the rain sheeting off its chassis, but the wag stayed in the exact center of the monitor as if nailed there.
“Ready on your command, sir.”
Gaza bared his teeth in a feral grin. “Kill them,” he whispered.
The turret traversed a small arc, and then the main gun fired, the barrel pulsating with a high pitched hum. A split second later the black hole appeared in its side and the wag flipped over sideways as if exploding from within. Bodies and wreckage flew into the storm, a tire going over the edge of the cliff and falling from sight.
“Target has been eliminated,” the machine said, patiently waiting for the next command.
The metal voice was getting clearer constantly, as if knocking off the dust of a hundred years of sleep. That made sense to Gaza. If you built a machine this complex, what the hell difference, was there between it and a living thing? None that he could see.
“Anything else? Is there a large wag, covered with guns and missiles?”
“Wag?”
“Vehicle, truck—is there any other enemy transports? Any further movement on the cliff?”