“Where’s Huston?” Ryan asked. “Like to have said my farewells and thanks to him.”
“Seems to have vanished,” Wolfram’s senior sec man replied, glancing suspiciously at Ryan and J.B. “You two wouldn’t know anything about that, now, would you? Like you had a score to settle with him.”
The Armorer pushed back his fedora and shook his head. “Not us, friend.”
“I ain’t your friend, Dix. None of us on this boat are your friend.”
“Is,” Ryan said. “You should say ‘is your friend,’ not ‘are your friend.’ Get it right.”
“Fuck you. Won’t be so smart when you get among the stickies. You got your map safe? Wouldn’t want you to get fucking lost.”
Ryan patted his pocket. “Safe and snug,” he said. “Just make sure that no harm comes to Krysty or the others. Or there’ll be a blood reckoning.”
The man put his hand to his mouth in mock concern. “Oh, please don’t. You’re scaring me to death, Mr. Cawdor.” The smile vanished. “Don’t you see that you’re both dead men, Cawdor? Then your slut, the rest of them. All dead.”
“Talk comes cheap,” the Armorer said, fingering the trigger of the scattergun.
“Time you was gone. Down the plank and into the woods. We’ll see you in a day or so, mebbe.”
“If you see us, it’ll mean we’re likely chilled,” Ryan said softly. “But the most likely is that you don’t see us. And that’s goin’ to mean that you’re chilled. Think on that when you go to bed tomorrow. Wonder where we are. How close we are to you. And sleep well.”
He led J.B. down the bouncy plank, picking his way along the narrow strip of beach, turning as the walkway was removed and dragged back on board the Golden Eagle , which gave them a valedictory blast on the whistle.
Ryan and J.B. stood together, watching the vessel depart. “Look,” the Armorer said, pointing with the Uzi at the sealed top deck, where two figures were staring at them. One was immensely fat, wearing a white suit. The other was taller and skinny, turning as his metal eyes reflected the dying sun, converting them into pits of living fire.
Ryan, on an impulse, lifted the rifle in salute, getting a farewell wave from the Magus.
“You and me,” he said to J.B. Dix. “Like old times. Just the two of us against Wolfram and the Magus. All we need is Trader.”
The sun was virtually gone as they walked into the dark, silent deeps of the forest.
Chapter Twenty-Four
From the map it looked as if they had something in the region of thirty miles to cover before they reached the home base of Wolfram and the Magus, through treacherous sections of what used to be the Shawnee National Forest and swamp, on the western flanks of the old state of Illinois. They had to travel past the region where the stickies might be holed up and waiting for any pursuers or intruders, a deserted and mysterious settlement set in a part where the plan showed personnel mines and traps had been scattered.
“Best find somewhere to hole up for the night,” J.B. said. “Lord knows what kind of mutie creatures might be stalking around here.”
Ryan nodded, slinging the powerful hunting rifle across his shoulder. “Take to the trees?”
The Armorer squinted around. “Good as any place. Kindling’s all wet from that storm, so we’d struggle to get a fire lit. Yeah, let’s find a place to get off the ground.”
THE NIGHT WAS MADE miserable by a drizzling storm that started within an hour of their finding a secure place in the fork of an elderly oak tree and continued well into the early hours of the next morning, soaking both men through to the skin, leaving them cold and miserable as the first pale light of the false dawn penetrated through the branches of the forest.
Ryan had managed a few scattered periods of sleep, waking with a jerk that nearly pushed him off balance, though he had taken the precaution, as had J.B., of slipping his belt around one wrist and buckling it around a stout branch.
He stretched, blinking his eye open, groaning quietly at the aches and pains that ravaged the muscles in arms and thighs, shoulders and back.