“What ? Set the welkin of my teeth a-ringing with that sturdy buffet.” He touched his mouth, examining the smear of crimson. “And tapped my claret into the bargain.” He grinned lopsidedly at the teenager. “Wandering, was I?”
“Yeah. Sorry about that but didn’t have choice. You all right now?”
Doc nodded. “I am in the very best of health.” He looked out the window. “And ready for anything.”
“READY, J.B.?” Ryan called, lifting his voice above the cascade of lead that rattled against the armored cab.
“For anything.”
“You got a self-light handy?”
“Sure.” A moment later the Armorer was crouched by the open door of the cab, the last few lights reflected off the lenses of his glasses. “Can you take the rifle?”
“Any ammo left for it?”
“Nope.”
It took only a couple of seconds for Ryan to reload the Steyr from one of the capacious pockets of his coat. He struggled in the confined space to sling it back across his shoulders, making sure it wasn’t snagging on anything that might slow him when he had to move.
“SIG-Sauer reloaded?” J.B. asked anxiously.
“Egg-suckin’ time, Granny,” Ryan mocked. “Get that self-light ready.”
“Go like a bomb when it blows,” the diminutive figure warned, ducking as a bullet gouged into the dirt under the wag, splattering him with a mixture of mud and gasoline.
“Best blow it now. Won’t be long before we get us some unwanted company. Not to mention a spark that could put us on the last train west.”
“You ready?”
Ryan braced himself. “Ready.”
“On three.”
J.B. counted it down, the self-light gripped firmly in his right hand, ready for ignition.
“One and two”
Ryan, every muscle tensed, began to move, powering out on the blind side of the cab.
“Three!” the Armorer yelled, flicking at the device with his thumb, producing a tiny, weak flame. He lobbed it into the center of the spreading lake of gas.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Ryan’s feet slipped in the wet, clogging dirt as he leapt out of the cab, following close behind J.B., who had a slight start on him.
He had holstered the automatic, feeling it bounce on his hip as he stumbled and nearly went facedown on the edge of the gasoline pool.
With a desperate effort he fought for his balance, recovering with a sideways stagger, running hard, not even bothering to try to jink.
Bullets might chill him.
Might.
The imminent explosion definitely would if he wasn’t far enough away from it when the flames ignited the cloud of vapor and the whole two tanks went up.
One factor that he’d taken into account with the sketchy and amended combat plan was the theory that the solid bulk of the armored wag should give them a vital measure of protection from the devastating blast.
The Trader often said that theories weren’t worth pissholes in the snow.
The force of the explosion was crushingly terrible, with a blazing power that surpassed in a quantum leap anything that Ryan had imagined.
Fire and heat and shattering light and Christ receive thy soul.
KRYSTY HAD SPOTTED the feeble flicker of fire thrown down by J.B. and instantly saw what would happen. She had a flashing inner vision of the sweeping power of the blast to come and grabbed at Mildred, pulling her to her knees.
There was just time to whisper an urgent warning and cover her own ears against the explosion.
The building rocked under the shock wave, and every shuttered window blew in, covering the two women, and the whole floor, with tiny shards of razor-sharp sec glass.
The front door was kicked off its heavy hinges, leaving it lying across one of the beds at a drunken angle. After the single deafening boom, the whole compound was flooded with silence.
Krysty shook her head, splinters of glass tinkling from her tightly curled hair. “Time to move,” she said, finding that her voice sounded harsh and thin, as though all the air had been sucked from her lungs.
Mildred turned and looked out through the open door, coughing in the whirlwind of dust. “Got us some company coming,” she said.
The Magus was running through the whirling dust and flames with an odd, insectlike gait, half flowing and half scuttling, his feet seeming to barely touch the ground. It was a bizarre and frightening image of clumsy grace. The massive Wolfram, waving a blaster, was lumbering behind him, bellowing out for some of the sec men to join them.