“Remember that little mutie girl with the sweet smile and the broken arm?” Finnegan asked. “Old Fletch was carrying her, an’ she reached up an’ plucked his eye out just like picking a fucking grape.”
“I recall the Trader with an old, old woman, near blind, who brought him a watch. Good make, but it was empty. No works. Just the case. Trader took it from her hand real gentle.” J.B. paused. “Never forgot the look on his face. He picked up a dried soya box. Empty one. Figured he was going to give it to her as an exchange. He looked at the old woman, you know the way he had, and he”
“We all heard it before, friend,” Ryan interrupted the Armorer. “It’s time to get ready. Weapon check.”
Each man slipped into the private ritual of checking and rechecking his weapons. Doc Tanner awoke and agreed to stand by the door and keep watch for the janitor. Bolts clicked, and ammunition tinkled on the floor. Then bed sheets were torn into strips to clean and polish the guns. It was fifteen minutes past midnight.
THEY WERE READY a half hour later. Finn led the way, surprisingly catfooted for such a bulky, clumsy-looking man, his HK54A2 with the drum mag and built-in silencer in his beefy hands. Doc came second, clutching the massive hand cannon of the Le Mat. Ryan prayed silently to himself that the old man didn’t need to pull the trigger down on anyone with the ancient blaster. The noise would bring every man and boy in Ginnsburg Falls on the run, thinking their precious gas storage tanks had been blown.
J.B. was third, mini-Uzi braced at his hip, with Ryan, bringing up the rear of the group, holding the 9 mm SIG-Sauer pistol.
The building was quiet, with the occasional creak of settling wood and stone. Outside, through the clean windows facing north, the sky was alight with the distant pattern of lighting from a chem-storm.
They’d been watching the patrols from the dormitory, timing them and checking their frequency. Around eight in the evening, they’d heard wags come lumbering back into the ville, spilling out loads of excited men and tired young lads, exhausted from the day’s ritual of exposing female infants. Since then, Ginnsburg Falls had become quiet. The pairs and triads of sec men had come down the main street, Sissy, making a left along Fourth in front of the dormitory. They had returned once every hour, at ten minutes to eleven, and again at ten to twelve.
“Clear,” Finn whispered, trotting out of the main door and leaving it to Ryan to slide it quietly shut behind them. There was a sharp-edged section of moon sailing low across the mountains over the lake.
Ryan took the lead, moving quickly through the back-lots and yards of stores and large houses. It was a cold night, but not with the same dreadful bite that set cheekbones aching with the sharpness. They passed a house with a row of laurels along its back border. From an open attic window came the unmistakable sound of a woman weeping. A man was shouting. Then there came a flat crack, like the palm of a hand across a face.
And then silence.
Doc Tanner paused. “If there was an amplitude of time, my friends, I vow that it would be a fine cleansing to burn this ville to the foundations. A place of more nugatory worth I never did see.”
“I’d be happy to fucking chill it, Doc.”
“No, Finn,” Ryan warned. “What we want best is to get away quick and quiet and easy. If’n we need to ice some sec men, then we do it. J.B., I reckon it’s time you went down and got the Kenworth ready. Start her up the moment you see us coming. We’ll be moving fast and low.”
“Sure. Shoot to kill, you guys,” the Armorer said, grinning as he ran toward the wag park, his fedora at a jaunty angle on his head.
The other three kept on toward the oblong shape of the old workhouse.
RYAN SAW THE SEC MEN before they had a chance to see him in the darkness. He flattened himself against the chipped brick wall of a warehouse. There were two jeeps there, with a half-dozen men lounging around them. The way they stood made him suspect no officer was with them. They looked as if they didn’t expect to be needed for some time.