“Time to move,” Mildred said, pointing to the broken windows at the rear of their prison hut.
IT WAS ONLY AFTERWARD that Ryan realized he and the Armorer had made a serious miscalculation on the quantity of gasoline in the tanks. Neither of them had suspected that the containers were much larger than they appeared, with most of their bulk buried beneath the earth, meaning that the explosion was infinitely more devastating than they’d expected.
The massive armored wag was lifted off the ground and blown through the air, crashing and rolling over and over, pursuing Ryan and J.B. across the compound like some vengeful behemoth, windows smashing, paint igniting, lights splintering, tires bursting into smoky flames.
Ryan was stunned by the maelstrom of noise and heat, smelling his own hair smolder, his clothes scorching, the giant fist of the shock wave hurling him violently away from ground zero of the fireball. He was tossed helplessly toward the razor wire of the sec fence.
It seemed to last for an eternity, though it was probably less than five seconds before he lay still, shocked and bruised, staring back at the gigantic globe of orange, yellow and crimson flames, streaked with flashes of silver, threaded with a web of spreading smoke that was soaring high into the night sky.
“That’ll bring all the stickies for miles,” he croaked, but he couldn’t hear himself speaking over the thunderous roar of the gas eruption.
He tried to sit up, but he felt sick and dizzy, so he remained motionless for a moment, fingers fumbling for his weapons, making sure nothing had gone missing. Out of the corner of his good eye he could see J.B’s crumpled figure feebly trying to struggle onto his hands and knees.
The booming was fading away, echoing and swallowed in among the trees. The blazing gas was still making a loud crackling, roaring sound, but compared to the rumble of the explosion, it almost seemed like silence.
Ryan swallowed hard and managed to sit, drawing the SIG-Sauer, looking across at his old friend. “All right?” he yelled, the words just audible to his own fractured hearing.
The Armorer nodded, turning his head blindly. “Living. Seen my glasses?”
His eyes were oddly bare and vulnerable, like a helpless, blinking rabbit, his hands scraping over the blackened, steaming earth around him.
Ryan made it to his feet, stumbling slightly, gasping for breath in the stinking, baking air. He caught the glint of glass a few paces beyond where J.B. was searching.
“There.” He pointed with the muzzle of the automatic.
“Oh, yeah. Thanks.” J.B. wiped crusted dirt and smeared gasoline off the lenses and adjusted them on the narrow bridge of his nose.
Ryan’s hearing was returning to something like normal, and he could hear screaming and yelling.
The destruction of the two huge tanks had sprayed the entire area of the camp with burning gasoline, and the place was a mass of small fires. All of the huts had shattered doors and windows, and most had roofs that were already ablaze. Several of the gun towers had also been knocked sideways by the sheer force of the blast, tipping sec men twenty and thirty feet to the ground.
Several of them were also on fire.
Men whirled like flaming dervishes, arms flailing, pillars of smoking fire billowing around them. Hair had been burned from their flayed skulls, skin peeling and blistering. Mouths were open, screaming for help, lidless eyes rolling blindly as they staggered around, bumping into one another.
There was a sudden, startling explosion as the gas tank of the burning armawag went up.
Ryan and J.B. were both up on their feet, standing close together, looking around at the scene of desolation and flaming slaughter.
Smoke blew around them, thick, hot and choking, making it difficult to see what was happening over on the far side of the fortress camp.
“Get the others out!” the Armorer croaked, brandishing the Uzi in his right hand.
“Watch out for Wolfram and the Magus. They’ll guess we’re in after Krysty and the rest.”
A stumbling figure loomed from the murk, holding a blaster. Smoke seeped from the sec man’s pants and shirt, and strips of blackened skin dangled from his chest. Barely breaking stride, hesitating as his brow furrowed, he hardly seemed to see Ryan and J.B. The barrel of the small automatic started to lift, and Ryan shot him carefully through the middle of the face. The 9 mm full-metal-jacket round blew away a fist-sized chunk of the back of his skull.