Stepping forward quickly, Doc took a stance blocking the jamb with his body. “We are safe now, my dear Ryan. They can not follow you with the door askew,” he stated. “And after thirty minutes, Baron Sheffield will not be able to track you at all.”
“Hopefully,” Krysty stated. “But we’ll jam the door open just in case. Silas could operate the mat-trans units in ways we’ll never fully comprehend. Sheffield may know some way to extend the thirty-minute window.”
Dean hauled a crate of canned goods to the door, and Doc stepped out of the way as the boy chocked the portal open to its absolute widest.
“Sheffield,” Jak said thoughtfully. “You go Shiloh?”
Wiping off the sweatband inside his hat, J.B. nodded. “We jumped smack into their warehouse. Stole everything we could before the blues arrived in force.”
“Send back satchel charge,” the teenager suggested, then he frowned. “Forgot, twenty minutes. Shit.”
Ryan understood the complaint. If two groups tried to use a mat-trans chamber at the same moment, there would be a twenty-minute gap between arrivals. That could work in their favor, or against. It was just too big a risk to take at the present.
“Gaia be praised!” Krysty exclaimed, lifting a LAW tube into view. “There’s enough MRE packs for a month, a ton of ammo, grens, Claymore mines Hey, Doc!”
The silver-haired gentlemen turned from inspecting a satchel charge of C-4 plastique. “Yes?” he said politely.
The redhead lifted a cardboard box into view. “Primer caps, black powder, wadding and miniballs. It’s for a .45 caliber, though.”
“I can easily adapt.” Doc smiled, weighting the carton in his hand. “My, my, fifty rounds! It has been quite a while since I last possessed such a plethora of ammunition.”
“Here,” Mildred said, offering the men a canteen, and they both drank their fill. “And take these. I found some aspirin in the med kit. Haven’t seen one of those since the Anthill.”
“Thanks,” Ryan said, wiping his mouth on a sleeve.
“Here, Millie,” J.B. said. Digging into a pocket, he unearthed a small cardboard box and passed it over. “For you.”
The physician took the box and slid it open. It was full of .38 solid steel Maxim Express rounds. Immediately, she began loading her empty ZKR target pistol. J.B. had gone out of his way to get those for her. In her skilled hands, that slim blaster was more deadly than a barrage of predark rockets. What he could do with explosives, Mildred did with her handgun.
“Let’s haul the supplies out of here,” Ryan stated, lifting a crate of grens to his chest and stepping around the military jumble covering the floor. “We have a lot to do before we hit the blues tonight.”
“We going to recce first?” Dean asked, hauling a pack of six LAW rocket launchers to his back.
“Nightcreep,” Jak stated, sliding a knife from its sheath and testing the edge of a thumb.
“Mass slaughter,” J.B. corrected him, carrying a box of Claymore mines into the control room. “Now here’s the plan”
Chapter Sixteen
The predark office building rose five full stories above Green Cove ville in Virginia. It had been much taller originally, until the shock wave of a nuke blast that annihilated a coastal Navy base sheered it off clean at the fifth floor. However, the nameless structure was still the highest building in the ville, proudly dominating the crumbling ruins outside and the dense forest beyond.
Sec men stood guard on top of the structure, smoking cigs and walking patrol around the towering building. From that vantage point, they could see everything in the ville, down the river to The White Ear of God, and over the high rill to the grasslands of the south. There had been reports of outlanders sneaking through the bush toward the ville, but no sign of invaders had been found by a recce team. However, Baron DuQuene had still ordered an increase in the patrols and even a roof watch. It seemed pointless to the troopers, but a lot better than walking the wall, or standing guard in the dungeon where the prisoners wailed and begged to be killed instead of being slowly tortured for their petty crimes.