“Mebbe,” J.B. replied, pulling the Uzi onto his lap and snicking off the safety.
Moving the Hummer to the far side of the road, Ryan carefully watched the oncoming truck. The driver wasn’t wearing a blue shirt. They could just be some folks leaving the area. Or sec men in disguise. The one-eyed man debated chilling the strangers purely as a precaution, and decided against it.
Maintaining its speed, the truck swung away from the Hummer, twenty feet of open space separating the vehicles. As the machines got closer, Ryan nodded and casually saluted at the other driver, and the gesture was returned.
“Big man,” Krysty commented, her revolver in her hand but tucked out of sight. “Looks a bit like Ryan.”
He snorted in reply. “Everybody has scars.”
Almost alongside each other, the truck began to slow, and the driver pointed at the Hummer. The bald man in the passenger’s seat rolled down his window and stared at the companions, first in puzzlement, then shock.
“Nuking hell, it is them!” he shouted, displaying pointed teeth. “Chill them all!” Instantly, the predark wag veered across the road, its engine revving with power.
“They’re going for a ram!” Ryan warned, hitting the gas and sharply twisting the steering wheel.
The M-60 started chattering, and the sec men in the other wag fired back with an assortment of handblasters. The windshield on the truck exploded into pieces, while rounds ricocheted off the sides of the Hummer.
Firing one-handed, J.B. hosed the truck, but it was already too late. The hood blew off the wag, steam erupted from the punctured radiator and the truck slammed into the rear fender of the Hummer in a crash of glass and screech of metal. Jak went flying from his position behind the M-60, and the Hummer spun about from the collision, brakes squealing.
Shaking and bouncing, the damaged truck rattled to a halt, the front bumper crumpled tight onto the right tire, slicing the rubber into shreds.
On the berm, Jak rose and started limping after the Hummer, firing his .357 steadily at the stalled truck. The driver was fighting to start the engine again, but only getting whirring noises. However, the sec men in the rear opened fire on the pale teenager with their blasters. Trapped on flat ground with absolutely no cover, Jak flinched as a hot round scored past his cheek, singeing his skin.
“Cover him!” Ryan shouted, slamming on the gas and racing forward.
The companions opened fire with every weapon they had as the war wag streaked across the road to pass straight by Jak and slam into the truck. The impact knocked the sec men off their feet, the armored Hummer almost flipping over the large truck.
Jumping from the military transport, Doc and Krysty grabbed Jak by the arms and hauled the teenager off the road. Once he was in the Hummer, Ryan backed way from the truck and spun in the dirt, guiding the wag down the road at top speed.
“Those were cannies!” Dean stated, snapping off more shots at the broken wag. The men were stumbling around the vehicle in a daze, firing their weapons blindly.
J.B. slapped a fresh clip into the Uzi and worked the bolt. “Silas hiring cannies as blues?”
“More likely they stole the truck,” Doc stated, blowing flame and thunder at the men with his LeMat. A cannie with a bandaged foot recoiled from the subsonic arrival of the .44 miniball, his left arm gone from the elbow down. “And I sincerely hope they ate the previous owners!”
“Vicious old coot, aren’t you?” Mildred asked.
“Just practical, madam. A dead Silas can do us no more harm.”
As the truck dwindled in the distance, the Hummer rolled around the curve in the dirt road, and Ryan immediately slowed. Directly ahead of them, a flat wooden bridge stretched across a gently flowing river.
“Fireblast! How many rivers do they have here!” Ryan cursed, then ground to a halt. “There isn’t time to defuse another bastard land mine!”
Munitions bag in hand, J.B. hopped from the Hummer and started off at a run. “I’ll check! Mebbe it’s clean!” The companions readied their blasters, as the man rushed to the shore. Wading into the icy water up to his waist, J.B. looked under the bridge and turned toward the others.