“Mighty suspicious folks,” Dean muttered, drying a hand on his shirt before pulling his Browning. “Wouldn’t even open the door for seven people.”
“Seven people in a wag,” his father corrected.
“Could be a hundred more of us just over the horizon.”
As the man touched ground, a dozen more people appeared along the angled walls of the ville, brandishing a wide assortment of longblasters, crossbows and something that could have been either a piece of stovepipe, or a predark antitank weapon. It was hard to tell at this range, which was probably the idea.
As J.B. dug out his Navy scope, Krysty squinted hard.
“Looks real,” she said softly.
“It is,” J.B. added, lowering the telescope and collapsing it back down. “That’s a 70 mm recoilless rifle, sort of a baby bazooka. Packs a hell of a punch. Might not be loaded, but even a homemade rocket could send us into a world of hurt.”
“I’m already in sight,” Ryan said out of the corner of his mouth.
“No problem,” the physician replied, holstering her handblaster.
She took Ryan’s Steyr SSG-70 off the front seat and pulled it into the rear of the wag. Back in her day, the black woman had been an Olympic silver medalist for target shooting, and she was the second-best long distance shooter among the companions. Working the bolt, Mildred checked the clip in the breech to make sure it was fully loaded, then eased the barrel through a slit in the awning and started adjusting the focus on the scope to find the sec man on the wall brandishing the 70 mm recoilless. At the first sign of danger, she would put a 7.62 mm round of hardball ammunition directly into his front temporal lobe, instantly turning the sec man into a mindless vegetable. The second round would go into the firing mechanism of the U.S. Army recoilless, rendering it equally harmless before anybody could get off a shot. There was a scorpion design painted on the weapon that made a fine target.
Surreptitiously readying the rest of their weapons, the companions stayed still while the lone man walked to the low wall and stopped on the other side. He was lean to the point of gaunt, his light-colored clothing tied off at the ankles and wrists, probably to help keep out the windblown sand. A double holster gun belt was strapped around his waist, but only one carried a blaster. The original pistol grip was gone, replaced with a dark wood of some kind, polished bright and cut with the pattern of a trippant scorpion.
Squinting his good eye at the ville, Ryan again approved. Why risk losing two blasters when one would do the job?
“Where did you find our wag?” the sec man demanded, a hand resting on his gun belt only inches from the shiny blue steel of the revolver. “Thanks for bringing it back. Now get out and start walking.”
“You mean our wag, feeb,” Ryan corrected hotly, feeling a rush of fury at the clumsy trick. He pulled out the SIG-Sauer and let the fool look down the barrel. “Now shut the fuck up and bring out the sec boss, we got business to jaw.”
The skinny sec man bared a grin, displaying missing teeth. “That’s me,” he stated, stabbing himself in the chest with a stiff finger. “I’m in charge here.”
Swinging open the passenger side door, J.B. raised the Uzi into sight. “That’s a load of crap,” he said calmly. “You’re the newest sec man the ville has, sent out in case we ace first and talk later.”
“Get your boss,” Ryan growled dangerously, “and stop wasting our time. You aren’t in charge of wiping the baron’s ass.”
Startled by the insult, the sec man contorted his face into a mask of rage and started for his blaster only to freeze at the sound of several hammers locking back on blasters. A few long seconds passed in silence, then the snarling man eased his hand away from the piece and turned to walk back toward the ville.
“I’ll remember you, One-eye,” he muttered hatefully.
His black hair ruffling in the dry wind, Ryan made no comment, but kept the 9 mm blaster trained on the man until he was well out of range.