“Could be really something,” Ryan agreed. “Never noticed that they got gasoline here.”
“In that small building without windows. Backing onto the kitchens.”
Ryan nodded. “Yeah. Door’s open to it. I can just make out a couple of real big tanks. Could be a thousand gallons each. Could be.”
“Full or empty?”
“If they’re full and we can get inside the camp and at them, then we got us the biggest and best diversion you could ever think of.”
J.B. grinned, his teeth white in the darkness. “Bring every stickie running for fifty miles around.”
“Surely would.”
The two friends watched as the wag was refueled, with a half-circle of sec men standing around it, arms ready, looking out through the brightly-lit wire into the forest beyond.
“Those lights could be a mistake,” Ryan said thoughtfully. “Makes it almost impossible for them to spot us out here. Because of the downward glare. But we can see them easy as turds in a bowl of vanilla ice cream.”
“Only problem is how to get in through the gates. Once we manage that, we can likely take out all the lights. You blow the gas. I’ll whack the sec guards and release the others. And away we all go.”
“Sounds about as easy as falling off a log.” Ryan grinned and punched J.B. lightly on the shoulder.
“Trader used to say that most plans sounded terrific when you made them. And most plans looked terrible after you’d tried to carry them out.”
“Can’t argue with what Trader said.” Ryan stood and wiped his hands on his pants. “Fact is, most of his plans seemed to work out all right. In the end.”
“Yeah. But there was that time way up in the high plains country, with the cesspool filled with dead horses when” The Armorer stopped talking and put his head on one side, listening. “You hear what?”
“Another wag?”
“Think so.”
“Coming this way. Could be the chance we want to get inside. Got to work this out real fast. Soon as the wag stops in front of the gates”
THE SENIOR SEC MAN in charge of the entrance gates to the camp was Balliol Davichaux, a tall, skinny cajun with most of his left hand missing, the result of a tangle in the bayous with a mutie gator.
Both the fat man and Steel Eyes the Warlock had drilled into every man in the fortress what would happen to anyone who captured either of the men who were out in the woods, trying to spring the redhead and the other three out landers.
And what would happen to anyone who neglected his duty and got lazy or careless.
Balliol Davichaux had worked long enough for Wolfram to be certain he didn’t want the second choice. Gert Wolfram and the Magus were both capable of taking punishment and torture to unimaginable deeps.
There was enough light spilling from the towers to reach about fifty yards down the narrow track. The wag was now in sight, about two hundred paces away. Like its predecessor, it carried replacement parts for some of the mining equipment wrecked by the rampaging stickies before they’d upped and abandoned the camp, leaving a dozen corpses behind them.
“Ready the gates!” he called, walking out, his M-16 under his right arm, eyes darting around the fence and into the darkness beyond.
Six men were with him, each knowing his duty, each someone that Davichaux knew that he could depend on if the chips went down.
“Eyes triple-open!”
The wag was less than fifty yards away, slowing, grinding through the gears. The lights reflected off the shield, making it impossible to see who was driving. Davichaux expected it to be the taciturn Kentuckian, Nate Ruell, behind the wheel, with a couple of sec men riding shotgun.
Since the trouble blew up with the stickies, the route through the woods in the armored wags had become a great deal more dangerous. Three vehicles had been terminally taken out in the past four weeks.
Just as the wag stopped and the gates swung open, there was a burst of shooting from among the trees.
Davichaux spun, leveling the carbine at where he thought the shots had originated. Two men were down, yelping and clutching at bullet wounds in the lower legs. It looked as if whoever had done the firing wasn’t all that good a shot and had aimed too low.