The spent cartridges tinkled against the stone wall of the hut, rattling at the bottom of the open door, a couple of them hitting the iron gas tanks.
Eight seconds.
Ryan had been holding his breath, wincing slightly against the racketing cacophony of the powerful handblaster. Now he relaxed, knowing that he still had four rounds left in the weapon, knowing that all the sec men, and the unlucky driver, were dead or dying, fingers scrabbling in the pools of bloodied mud, limbs moving under and over each other.
The one-eyed man spun on his heel, stooping inside the little hut, reaching with his left hand and opening up the faucet on the bottom of the tank. Gasoline gushed, the noxious fumes making him blink as he backed away.
“So far so good,” he whispered to himself. “Yeah, so fucking far, so fucking good!”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Jak was kneeling by the door to the prison hut that he shared with Doc. He was working intently on the lock, using the blade of one of his throwing knives to try to pick it. Though he’d been searched three separate times, the sec men had failed to find all of his concealed blades.
“Any good luck at all, my cunning locksmith?” asked the old man, who was standing by the shuttered, barred windows. “I feel that time is somewhat of the essence in this matter. Our fat friend, Wolfram, keeps looking over in our direction and calling some orders to the Magus, which, I fear, might relate to some plans involving us.”
“Probably,” the teenager grunted, levering harder at the lock, worried that he might snap off the point of the beautifully balanced blade.
“Should we essay the windows?”
” ‘Essay.’ What’s that mean?”
“Attempt.”
Jak hissed in frustrated anger. “Bitch won’t move. What’s happening outside?”
Doc turned his watery blue eyes back to the gap in the heavy shutters. “Dark has come down upon us. I believe that it might mean that our trusty colleagues have finally op’ed the seventh seal and loosed all of the apocalyptic forces of perdition, pestilence and might.”
“Shooting stopped,” Jak said, sheathing the steel. “Rifle. Then burst from Ryan’s handblaster. What now?”
THE GASOLINE SPLASHED all around the steel tips of Ryan’s combat boots, filling the night air with dense fumes. The faucet on the second tank had been stiff, difficult to turn, but he had finally levered it open. Knocking on the metal sides, he could tell that both of the tanks were full, each holding what had to be close to a thousand gallons of gas.
The last of the dying sec men gave a sepulchral groan and lay still. Away near the main buildings, Ryan glimpsed the contrasting silhouettes of the Magus and Wolfram, scurrying out of sight into their own quarters.
With the gas flooding all around him, it was time to move on.
The one-eyed man crouched low and ducked into the cab of the parked wag, seeing the keys swinging gently back and forth in the ignition. At last the sec men in the towers decided it was time for them to get into the game. The shooting from the woods that had kept their heads down had stopped.
There was a sharp crack of rifles. Ryan heard no hint of a second echo that would have meant the blasters were being aimed away from him and the truck. Bullets began to howl off the armored roof of the cab, and the shield erupted inward, showering Ryan with shards of glass.
The warm engine coughed into instant life, and Ryan, crouched under the dashboard, kicked the gearshift into reverse. The cab door was open on his side, and he was easily able to correct the steering, aiming directly for the locked gates of the big fortress camp.
The powerful vehicle rumbled backward, more shots pinging off the sides and roof. The compound was nearly dark, and the chances of anyone actually hitting Ryan were remote.
The sec gates folded up like wet paper, the chain snapping, locks breaking.
In the sideview mirror, Ryan spotted a slightly built figure, loaded with blasters, come sprinting from the forest and throw itself flat on the bed of the wag. He immediately pressed down the brake and shifted into the lowest forward gear.