Ryan grinned at his friend. “Like you said. Old times. Give it our best shot.” He stood like a steel spring uncoiling. “Let’s move it on.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Krysty lay out on the narrow bed, staring up at the ceiling, arms folded behind her head. Mildred dozed on one of the other beds, under the barred window of the hut.
In the next, identical shack along the row, she knew that Jak and Doc would also be resting. There was nothing else for them to do.
They’d been kept locked up ever since the powerful motorboat had delivered them to the landing on the east side of the Sippi the previous evening.
Krysty closed her bright emerald eyes, letting her thoughts go back to the time of their capture on board the Golden Eagle.
It had all been made so easy for their enemy, and she bit her lip in frustration at the memory of how they’d been slipped into the net.
“Triple-stupe,” she muttered.
They had walked through the fog, along the glistening decks, not in the least suspicious of being led into a trap. Only when the half-dozen armed sec men had loomed from out of the mist, blasters aimed at point-blank range, did they realize what was happening.
Jak had been beaten unconscious when he went for his own Colt, and he was thrown into the bottom of the boat. Doc, Mildred and Krysty were disarmed and shepherded into the little vessel and whisked away into the gloom at high speed, bouncing and rocking over the river.
It was all done in professional silence, in a matter of a couple of minutes.
And the reasoning was all too obvious. Their capture gave Wolfram and the Magus a fistful of aces. Four aces. Laid on the table, solid and secure. Undeniably an unbeatable hand. While Ryan and J.B. sat helpless, without even a pair of deuces in their hands.
They’d been escorted to the center of the fortress, which was one of the most heavily defended places that Krysty had ever seen. By then Jak had recovered and he’d looked sharp-eyed around at the sec fences and moats and walls. The watch towers and the power plants operated from water turbines from a wide stream that coursed through the site. He shook his head hopelessly at the overwhelming security he saw.
And the armed men.
Krysty had counted at least thirty before she and Mildred were separated from Doc and Jak and bolted into their own hut. There were eight beds in it, and it had obviously been used for guards rather than for the stickie slaves. It had its own shower room and toilet, with air-conditioning and a small kitchen unit, though the sec men told them that all meals would be brought to them in the hut. They wouldn’t be allowed out even for any exercise until Ryan and J.B. turned up dutifully to carry out the work of setting up the mines and plantations again.
The plan had been explained to them all the following morning by Wolfram and the Magus, who had arrived at some point during the long night.
It was very friendly. The fat man sat back in his winged chair in his private quarters, hands folded across his capacious stomach. A balloon glass of good brandy was at his elbow, and a box of sugary, scented Turkish delight rested on a small table for him to pick at while he explained in his deep, bubbling voice what they wanted.
“And after this, you let us all go free? All of us?” Mildred asked.
“You have my word of honor upon it, my dear Dr. Wyeth. They bring back our ill-advised workers and set us up and running once more. And then you all are free as air.”
“I fear that I would rather trust a rabid coyote,” Doc said. “You and the monster with the metal eyes are notorious throughout the length and breadth of Deathlands for your cunning and evil. For your lies and your butchery. And you admit to this grudge against Ryan and John Dix.”
The Magus was sitting cross-legged on a long sofa beneath a window. He pointed a metallic finger at the old man, his voice like an open razor. “Best way of stopping that bitching tongue from wandering and upsetting folks is to slice it out at the roots, Doc,” he said quietly.