It was here that they had the advantage. There may be less of them in terms of wags and manpower, but they knew from their recce and spy reports that the wags from each ville weren’t entirely armored. The wag stock of each ville was low, and the very nature of some of the trade to be exchanged would make the use of an armored wag impossible for a quick turnaround. So it was that the Hellbenders could, in theory, take advantage of surprise to cut down wag and man numbers if they hit hard and fast.
It was then that both Baron Al Jourgensen and Baron Tad Hutter changed their own agendas and made the entire matter a whole lot more complicated.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Tulk! What the fuck is going on?” Hutter raged.
Elias Tulk spared himself a small smile as he sat at the wheel of the static wag. “I don’t know, Baron. We appear to be under attack of some kind.” He giggled. His mind was filled with thoughts of revenge, and in part he no longer cared if Hutter guessed the part he played.
Hutter fixed his sec chief with a long hard stare, for a moment forgetting the battle that was raging outside. “This is something to do with you, you son of a gaudy slut,” he hissed, “and I’ll find out when we get back home.”
“If…” Tulk interjected.
Hutter said nothing for a moment that seemed to stretch to forever. The inside of the wag was like a calm eye of the storm that—both in terms of nature and of a firefight—swirled and raged around them.
“We will get back,” he said finally, and in a menacingly quiet tone. “And what’s more, we’ll take the women with us. Screw the rest of this. We’re going to grab them and get the fuck out of here.”
“How am I going to relay orders to the rest of the crew, then?” Tulk pointed out the carnage outside.
Hutter looked behind him at the two sec men who were manning the wag with himself and Tulk. They had their attention seemingly fixed on the outside, flinching at the slugs that hit the armor plating and toughened glass, starring it, but the baron knew that they had been listening intently to the discussion in the front of the wag.
“There’s four of us. In case it escaped your notice, those sluts don’t have any sec with them, and Baron Al and his boys are occupied with the assholes attacking them from the other direction. We just break ranks here, ram into the middle of the convoy, scattering everyone in their surprise, grab the girls and get the fuck out.”
Tulk grinned wryly. “And that’s a plan?”
Hutter was serious. “Got anything better to do, Elias?”
BARON Al “Red” Jourgensen was seeing the color of his nickname—which hadn’t been used by anyone except Correll in many a year, both in terms of his temper, and in the blood that was flowing into the earth outside as both sides counted casualties against the sudden assault group.
“What the motherfucking hell is going down here?” he demanded of no one in particular. “That shithead Hutter thinks he can sell us down the river like this?”
“Don’t think it’s him, Baron,” replied the sec man who had been driving the leading wag. “He’s getting the attack as much as we are.”
Jourgensen shot a look over his shoulder at the men who were manning the blasters behind him. They were rattling off bursts of machine blasterfire at the Hellbenders’ wags as they passed, but were trying to conserve ammo and shoot on sight, their visibility impaired by the storm and the dust raised by the circling wags.
“How we doing?” he snapped.
One of the sec men took his eye away from the blaster sight for a moment to answer. “Can’t see a thing out there, Baron. I dunno if we’re hitting anything or even what it is we’re aiming at half the time.”
Baron Al nodded. “Right. We need those crops, so we’re gonna take ’em.” He picked up the handset of the radio. “Listen up,” he yelled, “all wags head to the opposite camp and try to take the trade. Then get out as fast as you can.”