“Fucking traitor!” Gaza screamed, clawing for his handcannon.
But Kathleen moved first. Firing from the hip, the slim redhead put a full burst into the busty teenager, stitching her from knees to neck, just as the doors opened and she fell outside.
“We got ’em!” a biker shouted, and started racing for the open rear of the APC, his sawed-off blowing thunder at the startled people trapped inside the dead war wag.
IN WAR WAG ONE, the ceiling speakers crackled with static, then came back loud and clear.
“We found Gaza!” Blackjack cried. “His wag is busted, and we’re going in…” His voice faded away.
“Get him back,” Kate directed sternly, hunched forward in her chair.
“Working on it, Chief,” Eric said, and suddenly the ceiling speakers rushed with a background hum of full power.
“…trap,” Roberto coughed, his voice distorted from pain. “Repeat…fucking trap. He’s got a 25…blew us to hell. Forget us… Use the—” Static took away the transmission of the hand comm, and there was only crackling silence.
“Shitfire, Gaza and Hawk have joined forces,” Kate raged, slamming a fist onto the arm of her chair. “That APC armed with a 25 mm cannon would chew us to pieces!”
“Want to send a rescue team?” Jake asked, turning from the control board. “We can send Two east, and we go west, and catch him between us? Mebbe save our guys?”
“They’re already chilled,” Jessica stated. “No sense wasting more lives to rescue deaders.”
Frowning at that, Trader started to speak when the radio crackled with power, mumbled words barely discernible over the atmospheric hash. Then the distortion lifted and the signal came in loud and clear.
“Hello, is anybody there?” A new voice chuckled over the ceiling speakers.
The control room crew stopped moving, and Kate felt her skin crawl as memory flared at the sound of Baron Gaza’s voice coming over one of their own hand comms.
“Your sec men are dead, bitch.” Gaza laughed, then there came the sound of a blaster shot. “Correction, now they’re all dead. Let’s end this today, slut. Right here and now. Come get me! I’m staying right fucking here!”
There was a crackle of static that blocked the next words, and Kate made a slashing motion. The techs cut off the speakers, but the Trader waited until the indicator lights of the transponder had gone dark before she spoke.
“Ready a missile!” she ordered. “If the radar can find that APC, then the missile should blow him to hell!”
“On it,” Jake replied, both hands busy.
A few seconds later there grew a loud rustling from above, and then thunder shook the war wag as flame raced by overhead, flying straight into the heart of the smoke above the preDark city. Long moments passed before the radar screen blossomed with a patch of white. Seconds later a low rumble rolled in from the distance.
“Got him!” Jessica cried, raising a fist.
“Well, we hit something at least,” Red Jack muttered, watching the screen clear back to normal. Then he frowned. “Black dust, the goddamn APC is still there!”
Straining to see something through the rising smoke of the city, Jake scowled. “We missed?”
“Must have hit a sand dune,” Kate gritted through clenched teeth. “The range is too far, especially with all this shit in the air blocking the warhead. We gotta get closer.”
Then the radar screen gave a single loud beep, closely followed by another, and then a mounting series.
“Holy shit!” Red Jack shouted from the increasing noise. “We got incoming!”
Snapping her attention in that direction, Kate couldn’t believe her eyes and ears for a moment. Was their own fucking missile now coming back for them? No, wait, the heat sig was wrong—too small a wash and way too fast. Gaza had to have launched a missile of his own and it was coming faster than jackshit right down their fragging throats!
“No time to dodge. Eric, fire all guns!” she commanded. “Bring it down!”
The lights dimmed as the comp drew unlimited power from the electrical system. Now the servomotors on the front .50-cals whined into life, the comp linking the weapons onto the signal of the radar screen and filling the air ahead of the rocket with hot lead.