Dark Reckoning by James Axler

Crouching, the companions waited on the wall while Ryan headed to the left, Jak to the right. The masked teenager traveled only a hundred yards before a figure appeared on the wall before him. Without pause, Jak fired the crossbow, the bolt taking the man in the throat. Dropping his blaster, the sec man staggered and almost fell inside the ville, but the albino teenager rushed forward, grabbed the man by the shirt and shoved him over the wall. He toppled over the edge and inside the ville, but Ryan fired a fast four times, the silenced slugs slapping the man backward until he fell outside the wall. The body landed with a crunch, and Jak moved on. Reaching the gap in the wall, the teenager headed back along the top until rejoining the others. A few seconds later, Ryan returned, sliding a fresh clip into his empty SIG-Sauer. Suddenly, the searchlight was coming their way. The companions hurried to exterior edge of the blocks and lowered themselves over the side, holding on by their hands. The brilliant beam swept over that section of the wall and moved onward without even pausing. The companions pulled themselves up and moved to the inside edge. Krysty now uncoiled the colored rope and lowered the knotted length to the ground below. Ryan went first to anchor the rope with his weight, and the rest followed. They reached the scorched earth and spread out so as not to offer a group target to any unseen enemy. Overton had been a sharp military commander, but they didn’t know if Sheffield was any good. Underestimating an opponent was a fast way to taking the forever sleep. Fools thought they were invincible and died, a true warrior feared death and so lived to fight another day.

Stabbing a wooden stake into the ground, Ryan tied off the rope to keep it still, then took a handful of dirt and rubbed some of it between his fingers. The soil was badly burned. Even the roots of the grass were charred dead. Sheffield had to have used the Kite on his own base. If he could do that For a moment Ryan weighed calling off the assault, then decided they would never have another chance to finish the job. In every fight, every battle, an opportunity would come for a telling strike that would end the matter. If the chance was missed, the odds might turn against you. Ryan touched the long scar on his face and frowned, then raised an open hand, closing it into a fist to summon the others.

Passing out the plas charges, J.B. whispered brief instructions on how to set the timing pencils embedded into the huge wads of sticky C-4. Accepting the charge, Jak gave Mildred the crossbow and drew one of his many knives, the steel blade blackened with soot from a candle flame. Then Jak moved off into the darkness and was gone from sight. The young hunter worked best alone on a nightcreep and they all knew it.

Krysty and Doc were assigned the dish. She took the charge, and they headed around the silent slave quarters to swing behind the blockhouse underneath the antenna. Holding the crossbow and a Kalashnikov, Mildred stayed with the rope to act as anchor for the group, while J.B. and Ryan moved stealthily through the night towards the noisy power plant full of sec men.

Chapter Eighteen

In the cool quiet of his private bedroom, Baron Sheffield sat in a comfortable chair and sipped a glass of whiskey. The amber-colored liquid swirled over the miracle of ice cubes from his small electric fridge in the corner. It had been a long day, and the next one would be even longer, but success was spread before them like a path through the woods. Where Silas had so sadly failed, there was no way Sheffield could do anything but succeed.

The table before him was stacked with maps of Virginia, both predark and modern. The civilians and sec men of Green Cove ville were probably still chilling one another, finding an easy release from their blindness. Melt a ville, what crap! Where was the profit in that? Corpses made poor slaves. But blind men could still be chained to a plow, or a waterwheel.