“Stop?”
“Do it!”
Sec men were appearing at the ruined gates, the muzzle-flashes of automatic blasters making bright flowers in the night. One big man seemed to be struggling to operate a LAW rocket launcher, which was exactly what Ryan had been worried about. In the background, a Hummer darted from the garage and headed for the new hole in the limestone wall, a .30-caliber machine gun spitting fire.
“We got to keep them inside those walls!” Ryan shouted and cut loose with the cannon. The shells tore the sec men apart, and the Hummer veered out of sight.
“Are we far enough away to survive the blast?” Mildred asked, peeking out a rear blasterport while bolting the rear doors tight.
“How should I know?” J.B. shot back irritably. “I tried to make as big a bang as possible. Didn’t calculate the kill zone.”
Sheffield stared above his gray tape bindings, no longer struggling to get loose. Were they talking about a bomb?
“How much longer?” Krysty shouted, firing her AK-47 out a blasterport.
Reaching into a pocket, Doc glanced at his antique pocket chron and rumbled, “Any second now, madam.”
Chapter Twenty
Buttoning his shirt closed, Sergeant Campbell stared at the outlanders herding the baron into the garage, watching as they drove away in the APC firing weapons in every direction.
“Son of a bitch, they got Sheffield,” he muttered, grabbing a blaster from the wall and running to the garage.
A group of officers and troopers were already there, throwing the cargo out of a Hummer and piling inside the wag.
“Hop in!” a lieutenant ordered, starting the engine. “We’re going to catch them at the gate!”
Along with the others, Campbell’s men started forward eagerly, but he held up a restraining hand. “We’ll be right behind you, sir!” the sergeant told the officer, saluting.
“Good man!” the lieutenant shouted, and threw the Hummer into gear. Revving the engine, the sec men charged toward the gate, steadily firing their blasters.
“Idiots,” Campbell said aloud once the man was gone. “The fucking 25 mm on that LAV will chew a Hummer to pieces.”
“So what are we going to do, Sarge?” a private asked, a longblaster balanced in his hands.
“Head for the slave gate,” Campbell ordered.
“We’ll circle around the whole damn ville and catch them from behind and rescue Sheffield.”
“Grab some heavy weapons,” Campbell directed. “Take that one there, and the LAW, too.”
With the searchlights sweeping the sky overhead, Beta team got busy clearing a Hummer of excess cargo, piled in and took off racing across the ville. Stopping at the slave gate, a sec man hopped out, threw the heavy bolts and climbed back into the vehicle. Campbell nosed the door out of the way with the armored grille of the wag, then hit the gas and powered along the cliff of the quarry, steadily angling westward around the high wall.
“They’ll never see us coming,” Campbell growled, driving with one hand as he awkwardly shoved a 40 mm round into the breech of the M-79 gren launcher held tight between his knees.
AS RYAN WORKED the bolt on the Gatling to clear a jammed round, there was a sharp explosion somewhere within the ville. In slow majesty, the dish started to tilt, then lean and finally to fall toward the ground, building speed. It dropped behind the wall, then broken bits sprayed into the sky.
“That’s the diversion,” Ryan said, dropping inside the wag and bolting the top hatch shut. “Get ready for the big one!”
Suddenly, a blinding light flash filled the entire valley, and boiling flame extended over the wall and stretched out through the ruined gate. The companions opened their mouths and covered their ears just as the concussion of the detonating Quonset hut washed over them like a tidal wave, shaking the world and drowning them in its power. The LAV was slammed sideways for yards by the force of the blast, ripping open the top hatch, as a hot wind tore through the vent and ports, stealing the words from their mouths. Minutes passed in strident fury, but slowly the reverberations of the explosion faded and sound returned with a vengeance as a rumbling mushroom cloud formed over the annihilated ville.
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