Chapter Sixteen
A fiery dagger came out of the billowing plume of smoke and streaked past the APC to slam into the dune behind. The sandy hill heaved and blew apart, a roiling column of fire rising into the rumbling sky.
Kneeling over the exposed engine, Gaza still flinched as the concussion rumbled over the dead war wag. Okay, that bitch had the range, but not him. Not him! Feverishly, the baron worked on the diesel, trying to remove pieces of the dead comm system to replace the missing parts and getting nowhere. Damn that girl! The APC engine had been too often repaired and was far too easy to wreck. He had been a fool trying to recruit the girl. But when those rags came off and he saw the pale trembling figure, reason and logic had fled as blind lust took over. Now he was paying the price.
Standing in the open turret, Allison triggered a long sweeping blast from the 25 mm cannon, angling the barrel ever higher in wide circles. She knew the shells didn’t have the true range to reach the Trader, but she would gain valuable distance by shooting high and allowing the shells to arc downward. However, there was no way to see through the smoke of the city, and she was guiding her shots purely on the feelings she was receiving of approaching death. That had to be the Trader. Who else could possibly challenge her husband?
Going to the rear doors, Kathleen extended a LAW tube and started to open the lock. Rushing close, Gaza slapped the weapon from her hand and it hit the metal floor in a clatter.
“Stop that! Save ammo!” the baron ordered brusquely, towering over the startled woman. “They’re too far away for the rockets. Even the fifty can’t reach them.”
Against the wall, Kathleen raised two fingers and quickly brought them toward each other.
“Yes, I know that!” he raged, clenching both fists, the greasy wires from the engine still dangling impotently in his grip. “She’s coming fast, and with everything they got on the trips.”
Reaching out to touch the tangle of wires, the woman asked her husband an urgent question with her eyes.
“Useless!” Gaza cursed, throwing aside a fistful of assorted wires. “Without the proper parts, the same damn parts, we’re not going anywhere in this tin box.”
Stomping her boot, Allison got everyone’s attention and pointed around at the LAV 25, then raised two fingers and pointed one into the fiery ruins. The landscape shook once more as Gaza raked stiff fingers through his hair, but was forced to agree. Their only hope of surviving was to be mobile, use the greater speed of the APC to outmaneuver the Trader’s lumbering war wags and strike from the dunes. A night creep in broad daylight. Hit and git. Which left him no options at all. He would have to go after the wiring in the second APC below the cliff.
“Stop firing! Mebbe they’ll think we’ve moved!” Gaza ordered, going to a rack and grabbing an M-16 recovered from the convoy in the park. He worked the bolt, chambering a round, and slung the blaster over a shoulder. “Kathleen, you’re coming with me. Allison, prepare the land mines. Lay ’em out in a diamond pattern around the wag. That may buy us some time. Don’t bother to bury them. The damn things may not work, but at least it’ll scare the Trader into going slow if she sends more bikes.”
Closing the top hatch of the war wag, the doomie waved both hands in a mime of driving a Harley to ask about the motorcycles outside.
“After you’re done with the mines, try and find three that work,” he decided, stuffing his pockets with spare clips and grens. “If I can’t find what we need in the other APC, then we’ll ride out of here and mine the war wag to blow.”
Ducking under the empty framework of a radar unit long gone, the baron grabbed some canvas gloves with a box and tossed Kathleen a pair.
“Stay razor,” Gaza ordered, stuffing the other set of gloves into his gun belt. “Allison will be busy up here, so we’ll be on our own down there.”