“Got to be a good half ton of junk there,” Krysty said, dusting off her hands. “That’ll slow them down some.”
Busy at a worktable, Doc merely grunted in reply. The old man was busy making firebrands, using bits of stiff wire to attach short pieces of the rope fuse to crossbow arrows. Mildred was stuffing the completed products into a patched duffle bag and Jak was nearby stringing a crossbow, a stack of four more nearby.
“How did it go?” Mildred asked, cinching the duffel closed.
“The door is solid,” Krysty replied bluntly, “but the sec men are already trying to get inside.”
“So soon? Damn.”
“Need any help?” Dean asked the people at the workbench.
“Thank you, but this is the final batch,” Doc replied, handing Mildred the last arrow. “Especially since Ryan took the rest of the fuse.”
Dean looked around to see the huge coils of ropy fuses were missing from the wall pegs. “He took all of it?” The boy frowned. “What for?”
“See yourself,” Jak said, loading his arms with crossbows. “But watch step!”
Heading for the pump room, the friends paused as they spied J.B. on his knees playing a candle along a piece of the copper wire stretched knee high across the open doorway. The flickering flame was slowly turning the red metal a dark brown almost invisible in the dim recesses of the temple.
“Hold it,” he directed, then turned off the nukelamp and the trip wire was gone, invisible in the darkness.
“Okay,” J.B. said, turning the lamp back on. “But watch your step.”
“First person through that door is going to discover a world of pain,” Dean commented, once on the other side of the trap.
Shifting her duffel bag of firebrands, Mildred snorted. “Yeah, for about half a second.”
Glancing at the feeder pipe, Jak saw the wheel was wired to blow, as was the gren at the door. Whatever else happened, the water shortage in the ville was going to end this night, that was for damn sure.
“Where is Ryan?” Doc asked, stepping over the trip wire with exaggerated caution.
Tucking the candle into a pocket, J.B. jerked a thumb at the open hatch in the roof at the top of the ladder. “Making sure we can leave,” he said. But interrupting those words was a fast series of soft chugs from the hatch. Drawing weapons, the companions scrambled up the ladder and onto the top of the temple. The last in line, Krysty caught the stock of the H&H Nitro on the hatch for a moment, and had to wiggle about to get through. The damn blaster was over five feet in length, much too long for such cramped quarters.
Standing in the shadows, Ryan was sweeping the edge of the building with the SIG-Sauer. He froze as a hand slithered into view near the corner, but did nothing until the head of the sec man rose into view. Instantly he fired, and the man fell backward with a bloody crater in place of a nose. Going to the edge, Ryan fired twice more and another man cried out briefly.
“Fireblast! Too bastard many people know about the roof hatch,” Ryan growled. “And somebody with a brain is going to figure out why there’s a pile of bodies in the street, at which point we’re shit out of luck.”
“Let’s get to it,” Jak said, passing out the crossbows.
Overburdened with weapons, the companions dropped their backpacks to take the weapons and got busy nocking the firebrands.
“Think we can reach the motel from here?” Mildred asked, licking a finger to test the direction of the desert wind. Simple logic dictated what the plan was. She only hoped they could pull it off. They had been in tight scrapes before, but this was the first time they were doing a night creep on an entire ville. One wrong move would expose them, and then it was all over.
“The bows have the range,” Ryan said, looking across the ville. “It’s just a matter of can we hit the target.”
Stepping on the crossbar of his crossbow to grab the string in both hands, J.B. pulled it upward until the cord caught on the tongue. Lifting the weapon, he slipped in a firebrand.