J.B. joined Ryan, and the two old friends walked together. “Not long,” he said.
“No. I wish we could recce some around the baron’s ville.”
“Why not?” asked the Armorer.
“Yeah,” said Ryan. “Why not? I’ll check with the kid and get us a map of the region. They’ve got good ones. Seen ’em. Just you and me, J.B., like old times. What d’you say?”
J.B. rubbed his fingers contemplatively over the darkening stubble on his chin. Then he grinned. “Yeah,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-One
JAK LAUREN WASN’T keen on their going out so soon before the attack. His hair flowed about his shoulders as he gesticulated, waving his hands.
“What the fuck you want to do this? We got maps. You know where the ville is. We’ll be with you. Fucking stay here.”
Ryan shook his head. “No. Ifn you fear us going to ‘tray you to Tourment, we’re leaving Finn and Doc here with you. If we go to fight with you, we want to see what we can first. Be back in good time. It’s only seven now. Our plans are to leave here at eleven, so we’ll be back by then, three hours from now. I want to go and look at what we’re tackling.”
“Too late to change plans,” said the boy, almost reproachfully.
“Why change ’em?” asked J.B. “Fine as they are. Just fine.”
RYAN AND J.B. each carried one of the hand-torches from the Holiday Inn on their belts, as well as their usual armaments. The weather was calm, the air still. Jak opened the maps one more time, showing them where and where not to walk. He pointed out swamps that had risen over old highways or trails that were patrolled by the Baron’s sec men. Both men listened carefully, committing the information to memory.
“Come back safe,” said the boy, patting them both on the shoulder as they left the lobby of the old vid-house. Ryan half grinned, still finding it hard to believe that this war-leader was a lad of just fourteen.
IN SOME WAYS the recce was abortive. They found their way along the abandoned suburban streets, past the entrance to a massive shopping mall, taking the route that the albino kid had shown them. A couple of times they were startled by animalsonce by a massive armadillo, with its family in tow, crossing the blacktop in front of them. Another time they never saw the creature, but they heard it moving through high brush at the back of some houses. They stopped where they were and waited for it to pass.
Eventually they managed to get within sight of the Best Western Snowy Egret, but the area was crawling with sec patrols, moving in groups of five or six, using generator-powered searchlights that cut through the night, making it impossible to approach within a hundred yards.
“Have to take them out first thing,” said J.B. as they crouched in a grove of whitebeams on the edges of a large derelict mansion.
“Easy with this.” Ryan patted the butt of the G-12 with its bulky night sight. “Soon as we open up, they’ll know what’s going down.”
“If the plan works, they won’t have time to do nothing ’bout it.”
Ryan peered at the front of the big building. “No gates.” He was about to crawl back when his eye was caught by something. “Fireblast!”
“What?”
“There. That pole.”
J.B. followed his pointing finger, finally, making out the tall metal bar rising vertically in front of the motel. The lights were dazzling, and it was some seconds before his eyes adjusted to lake in what it was that dangled from a rope some thirty feet in the air. “Man or woman?” he whispered.
Ryan had brought a small, powerful pair of night glasses with him, and be reached from them, his heart sinking. It was undeniably a naked corpse. The rope was knotted around its neck, but the lamps threw it into a sharp contrast of brightness and shadow, making it hard to see it clearly.
He focused the glasses, taking a deep breath to hold them steady. “Bastard,” he breathed.
“not one of the women?”
“No, J.B., it’s not Krysty or Lori. It’s a man up there.”