“Looks clear,” Kate said, lowering the binocs to tuck a loose strand of hair behind an ear. The woman wore her pale hair tied off in a ponytail with a piece of rawhide to keep it out of her face. She wore no jewelry of any kind, although there was a junk box full of the stuff in War Wag One, items for trade at the various villes they encountered. The pretty baubles were sure to catch the eye of a baron’s woman.
“But that don’t mean shit this close to the Core,” Roberto stated, checking the load in the sawed-off shotgun that he used as a handcannon.
Clicking the breech shut, he slipped the blaster into the low holster strapped to his thigh. At that height, his right hand hung exactly alongside the grip of the deadly blaster. Fat, greasy shells filled the loops of his wide belt, and a long curved knife was tucked into a sheath at the small of his back. Among his many jobs in the convoy, the first and most important was to watch the Trader’s back. Some feebs thought he loved the woman, but it was much more than that, more than friendship, a deeper emotion based on respect. Recruiting him from a brutal ville, the woman had given him back a measure of self-pride, and that meant more to the man than any fleeting tug of the heart or sweaty roll in the hay. Twice so far he had stepped in the way of lead flying her way, and would do so again without hesitation. The day she crossed the dark river, he would follow her into hell to help plan the escape.
Placing the binocs aside, the frowning Trader pulled out the hand comm and thumbed the transmit switch. “Jake, it’s me,” she said. “Anything on radar?”
“All clear, Chief,” a man answered over the comm, his voice oddly free of the usual distortion.
“Roger,” she replied in old mil lingo. The woman knew that this kind of clear reception was only possible within a hundred feet of War Wag One; after that it got worse with every step taken. But with all of the crap still in the atmosphere from the nukecaust, even the most powerful radio could only broadcast for a few miles in ideal conditions. The military handheld radio the Trader carried had a shorter range than a mile, but still gave her a vital link to every wag at the same time in a firefight. The radios helped turn five wags into a single unit, which closed like a fist around an enemy to crush them with a coordinated strike.
War Wag One had started life as a big rig, but over the years had been built up with armored sides, another engine, machine gun blisters, sleeping bunks, a kitchen, additional fuel tanks, more wheels, missile launchers, flamethrower and even a working comp to control everything on board the big complex machine.
She stole War Wag Two from a warlord, and it was roughly the same size as One, but without a comp and it carried more armor than blasters, making it a place to fall back to in case of deep shit. Although now six big Harley motorcycles were strapped to the sides as sort of additional armor. The big bikes were loot taken from the Blue Devils. Kate used the motorcycles for recce missions and flank attacks. They were sturdy and fast, able to outrun even the big cats that infested the western plains. But the machines took a lot of time to learn to ride properly, and were as noisy as a bar fight, absolutely useless for a night creep.
Only Roberto rode one constantly, rolling ahead of War Wag One as it crossed the burning desert, testing the ground for boobies and salt domes. Once they blew a tire hitting a big dome—bastard thing was almost a yard deep—but the domes were more annoying than dangerous. Still, it never hurt to have a pointman riding as an outrider in unfamiliar territory.
Behind the two armored transports were the cargo vans, trucks with only minimal armor and a few rapidfires. Those carried the spare tires, machine parts, ammo, food and such, along with the trade goods: barrels of shine, dried sausages, planting seeds of gene-pure plants and such. There were even some lux items salvaged from the ruins: toothbrushes, jewelry, shoes, dinnerware and books. Lots of books. Those the Trader gave away as a gift after each successful barter with the peaceful baron. The more people knew about rotating crops, fixing plumbing, fixing wags and such, the more prosperous the ville became, yielding an even greater profit on the return trip. More food, better shine for the lanterns and bikes, and with fewer graves filled each year.