“It’ll take awhile,” Mildred said in the pump room, gingerly touching the bleeder pipe. It was already coated with condensation from the sheer volume of water going through. “But soon the temple will flood, and the excess will start seeping out the front door. The ville people will go insane.”
“Good,” Ryan panted. “The more confusion the better. Mebbe it’ll start a revolt.”
“Lots of folks would die in that.”
“Lots of folks dying now,” Ryan answered, massaging his wrists. “You better get moving before the water gets too deep in there to work.”
Everybody but Ryan left the room, while J.B. knelt alongside the main pipe and pulled a block of C-4 from his munitions bag. Gently, he molded it under the arc of the pipe were it would be difficult for anybody to find. Then he disassembled one of the concussion grens and inserted the detonator and ring assembly into the soft claylike material of the plastique. J.B. had a few timing pencils in his bag, but those had a maximum limit of five minutes, which was much too short for the companions to get away from the temple.
“Along with the boobie, rig a secondary charge,” Ryan directed. “I know how we can set this off from a distance.”
“Got a radio detonator in your pocket?” the Armorer asked, packing the C-4 firmly around the core of the grenade.
“Better,” Ryan said, and went back into the armory to return with a coil of the dirty rope.
“The water will be reaching here soon,” J.B. scoffed, attaching a length of copper wire to the pull ring of the gren. “We can’t trust that shit to burn when it’s wet.”
“Not a problem,” Ryan said, looking at the ceiling.
REACHING THE FRONT DOOR of the temple, Krysty and Dean paused to listen as sec men shouted outside. Then somebody knocked hard on the door and demanded admittance.
The woman and boy drew their weapons as the person tried the lock several times, but after a while the guard went away. However, both of the companions knew the guards would return soon with tools and a lot more men.
Unraveling the tangle of shackles and chains from the torture tables, the pair wrapped three of the lengths around the wooden bar, locking the shackles onto each other to hold the knot tightly.
“Nobody is getting through that without ex-plos,” Krysty stated in satisfaction when it was done.
“Looks like we finished just in time, too,” Dean said, looking down at the arrival of the first trickle of the water.
Expanding along the floor, the water puddled in front of the massive door, then began to seep outside. Almost immediately there were more shouts and somebody threw themselves against the door, rattling the chains. Then another joined the effort, their curses audible through the slim cracks along the jamb.
“What the hell is that noise?” a man cried out. “Sounds like chains.”
“Why would the baron chain the temple shut?”
“He wouldn’t, ya feeb. Get Hawk, we need a battering ram!”
Moving fast, the woman and boy retreated into the tunnel, and Krysty locked the iron grille while Dean keep guard with his crossbow. Then they both raced back to the temple, closed the set of double doors and looped the last chain through the handles.
Now Krysty held the first and last link of the chain on top of each other and placed a dagger from the armory through the loops. Lowering the crossbow, Dean drew his Browning Hi-Power and hammered the dagger into the wooden door in lieu of a stake. It wasn’t much, but the knife would at least keep the chains from simply slipping off the handles when folks started banging to get inside.
They knew that none of these things would hold off a truly determined force, but all of this would buy them time and make the baron waste a lot of troops trying to get inside and capture them. Hopefully, that would be enough.
Returning to the armory through the iron maiden, Krysty closed the hinged hatch while Dean dragged over an empty wooden barrel. Together, they started to toss in any loose items available, tools, blasters, ammo, grinding stones, until the barrel was heaped high.