Dark Reckoning by James Axler

Opening the door to the wag, Ryan went behind the seats and got a tire iron, then proceeded to remove the lug nuts off both front tires. Rocks under the wag prevented it from lowering to the ground, and the man had no trouble removing the castle nuts on the axle and sliding off the main bearing assembly.

“Use it sparingly,” he said, proffering the handful of grease to the others. “This is all we have.”

Krysty dabbed in a finger and smeared the cold grease over her cheek, leaving a wide black streak. J.B. followed her example.

“Me next,” Jak said, tying back his long snowy hair. “Need rag for this.”

Krysty passed the teenager a cloth for his hair.

“I do believe that I shall need similar protection myself, madam,” Doc rumbled, brushing a hand over his waves of silvery hair. “This will reflect light like a mirror.”

“Hey, boots,” Jak said to Krysty, pointing downward.

The redhead looked and cursed. The silver embroidered falcons on her blue cowboy boots would stand out in the darkness like a neon banner. Ripping another uniform to strips, she bound her footwear until the silver was properly masked.

“Bombs prepped?” Ryan asked, smearing grease over his face. Strips of cloth were already wrapped around the barrels of their weapons to prevent any reflection. He had passed by dozens of Parkerized automatics in the Quonset hut, and those were perfect for this kind of attack. But the metal also corroded easily, and so he hadn’t taken any. That had been a mistake on his part. Hopefully not a deadly one.

The Armorer patted the heavy bag at his side. “Don’t know how many boilers the ville’s power plant has,” J.B. said, “so I used all of the plas from the Claymore and spare grens to make six bombs. When these go off, the boiler will erupt, taking out most of the ville, and the rest will be washed with steam. Not many folks are going to be alive after that.”

“One should go on the main support column of the dish,” Ryan stated, greasing up his neck, then the back of his hands. “Buckle that and gravity will finish the job.”

“And then we go in and remove any survivors?” Doc asked, tucking another blue cloth into his shirt to hang down like a bib and cover the white linen frills.

“Got it covered,” J.B. said, lifting a squat package. “This one goes on the outside of the Quonset hut, just to the left of the door. It should blow a hole through the corrugated wall and ignite the pile of fuel barrels on the inside. That’ll start a chain reaction among the stores of ammo, finishing the job the boilers begin. Actually, this charge will ignite first so nobody can try and escape through the gateway.”

“If they haven’t already.”

“Yeah, true enough.”

“No danger of that,” Krysty said, stretching her arm out the hole in the rock pile. She crawled partially out of the opening, then came back with an expression of success. In her hands was what appeared to be a retinal scanner. “Looks like they took that gateway apart.”

“To stop us from trying to gain entry again,” Ryan said. “Only do that if they were never coming back here again.”

“Mebbe be gone already,” J.B. observed.

Just then a rain of rubbish crashed into the quarry, starting a small landslide of ruined technology.

“Still here,” Jak said grimly, tying a strip of cloth around the six-inch shiny steel barrel of his .357 Colt Python.

While the others finished their preparations, Mildred placed the med kit inside the crushed wag. She hated to leave it behind, but it was much too heavy for her to carry along with the assorted weapons and explosives. Besides, the companions would be coming back this way. Nice to know it was here to patch any wounds in case they caught some lead blowing the ville to hell.

“Any chance the blast will cause a cave-in down here?” she asked suddenly.

“No way,” Ryan stated, adjusting his bandoleer of loaded rotary clips for the Steyr. “The ceiling is supported by the same metal as the nukeproof door of the redoubts, same stuff that forms the outside armor of the redoubts themselves. These tunnels will hold.”