He paused as another detonation shook the ville, as the main forty-gallon fuel tanks of the U.S. Army GMC 6X6 added their destructive fury to the growing conflagration.
Still wary, Krysty was maintaining a close watch on the keep. When a guard appeared on the parapet with what seemed to be binoculars, she swung around the heavy longblaster, set the crosshairs on his chest and fired. The recoil kicked her hard in the shoulder, making the woman think she had missed completely, but the slug from the Nitro Express crossed the distance in a split second and the man flew backward minus a head, a splash of blood hitting the flagpole. Hopefully, Gaza would think it was shrapnel from the blast.
But as she worked the bolt, a woman dressed in white appeared briefly at a window in the keep, and Krysty got a fluttery feeling inside her head. Hastily, she raised the monster rifle, but the woman was already gone. Her heart pounding, Krysty suddenly knew she had aced the wrong target. The strange female was the source of danger, but whether she was a doomie or a telepath, Krysty had no idea.
“The baron might have a doomie,” Krysty said aloud. “Hawk could be waiting for us at the horse corral.”
Or the front gate. Breathing heavily in the darkness, Ryan said nothing at the news for a few moments. “Okay, too bad for him,” he stated.
“J.B., check out the corral. Everybody else, clear the streets of any sec men!”
Standing in plain view, the companions went to the side of the temple and cut loose at a group of guards inspecting the bodies sprawled in the street. Side by side, they chilled every man, the continuing explosions from the wag drowning out the crack of their rifles.
“Corral looks clear!” J.B. announced, collapsing his Navy scope.
Holstering his piece, Ryan gathered up a thick coil of fuse from the roof and tied the end to the top rung of the iron ladder. Tugging hard, he decided it would hold and tossed the rest of the coil over the edge of the temple. With the others keeping watch, the one-eyed man slid down the rope in one fast motion, landing with his knees slightly bent to absorb the impact.
Instantly, he turned with the SIG-Sauer drawn and checked the street, but there were only the dead and the dying on the cobblestones.
Ryan whistled twice, and the rest of the companions descended one at a time, the process seeming to take forever, even though it was only a few minutes according to his wrist chron.
Once Doc was on the ground, Ryan lit the fuse with his butane lighter and watched it slowly start to burn upward.
“Let’s get those horses,” he growled, and started running through the maze of the ville with the others close behind.
Chapter Fifteen
As they raced through Rockpoint, a crackling noise steadily grew as flames began to spread across the ville following the canopy covering the streets. Soon the flames started to spread to the adobe houses, the compressed mud and straw bricks burning as easily as wood.
People were rushing into the street, clutching their belongings and staring about helplessly. A child got in the way of a running sec man, and he clubbed the little girl aside. With a cry of rage, her father smashed a water jug over the guard’s head shattering his skull. As the body dropped, the rest of the family began kicking and beating the fallen man while cursing wildly.
“Looks like we’ve got that revolution,” J.B. remarked as they ran past the scene. His last view was of the father yanking the blaster from the limp hands of the bleeding corpse and fumbling to work the hammer and trigger.
But as the companions took a corner, a group of sec men were shouting orders to a crowd of people stomping out the burning embers on the ground.
“It’s them!” a sergeant cried out, swiveling his longblaster and pulling the trigger. But the weapon misfired and only a feeble flame came from the muzzle.
As the sergeant feverishly worked the arming bolt, Ryan put a round into his chest, while J.B. fired the Uzi, the hail of 9 mm rounds tearing the other sec men apart.