His assumption was proved correct. As they came within a few yards of the doors, they began to open, scrolling upward to reveal a party of Hellbenders, accompanied by Ryan and Mildred, and headed by Correll himself.
“Weren’t expecting you back so soon,” he said briefly. “Must’ve been a hell of a journey.” Gesturing to the rear of him, he indicated that two of the party go forward to assist Doc, whose will to carry on had collapsed now that the doors were open. The old man was buckling at the knees, and Travis and Rudi rushed forward to support him, closely followed by Mildred.
“Jeez, you old coot, you can’t keep doing this at your age,” she whispered to him as she checked his vital signs quickly before indicating to Travis with a nod that they transfer him to the med lab.
Doc was able to spare her a distant smile. “Not bad for someone breaching a third century, though, my dear doctor…”
“No, mebbe,” she replied, ignoring the puzzled looks of Travis and Rudi. As she said nothing by way of explanation, they put it down to the ravings of sunstroke, and disappeared down the tunnel, transporting the ailing Doc.
Correll watched them go, then turned back to the rest of the recce party. “You’ve done well,” he said briefly. “To be truthful, I didn’t figure on the old man coming back with you. Shows guts. But all that counts for shit if you didn’t get results.”
“Oh, we got results all right,” Lonnie said, replying as leader of the recce mission. “Full details of the wags Baron Al’s sending out, some old tech stuff that the boys picked up—we got separated, and they ended up taking an alternative route—and what’s more, we’ve got ourselves an ally in the convoy.”
Correll tried to stay impassive, but Ryan noticed that he stiffened at this last sentence, as though a raging torrent of conflicting emotions were running through his mind and body, and he was fighting to keep them under control. A vein on the side of his neck throbbed, causing an eyebrow to twitch, and the one-eyed man guessed that Correll’s blood pressure had just shot out there past the bloated, rad-red sun.
But despite this, the Hellbenders’ leader fought to keep an even tone in his voice as he said, “Okay. We debrief in forty-five. You take a shower, eat and drink, then meet me in the office.” With which brief utterance he turned and walked back down the tunnel, leaving the rest of them standing in the hot desert sun.
“Aw shit, doesn’t sound like he’s happy about that,” Mik complained, the whining tone returning to his voice after so long.
“How can you tell?” Ryan queried.
Tilly shrugged. “If he wasn’t pissed, he would have had us debrief without the option of showering and eating first. Guess he needs to cool off and get himself together before tackling this. It’s unexpected, and Papa Joe doesn’t like unexpected.”
“Not even when it’s good,” Danny finished in a flat tone.
Ryan pondered that as the recce party wearily passed him on its way back down into the redoubt. If Correll was resistant to any changes in his plans, that could cause problems later, when they had to go into combat. As Jak passed, at the end of the line and still looking fit comparatively, his red eyes met Ryan’s monocular gaze.
“You think what I do?” he said quietly, knowing that his own observations on the exchange that had just taken place would be the same as those of the one-eyed man.
Ryan gave a brief nod. “We’ll talk about it later, in privacy.”
Jak returned the nod and proceeded down the tunnel without looking back.
Ryan was left standing alone on the plateau in front of the sec doors, the rest of the recce party and the welcoming group having retreated. He stared out at the vast expanse of desert in front, stretching to where Charity lay, beyond the horizon.
It was going to be an interesting debriefing.
IT TOOK the recce party just under an hour to shower, change into clean and cool clothing, and eat and drink enough to bring back up their water and salt levels, both of which had been depleted by the long trek. Doc had showered with them, and then eaten in the med lab, where Mildred had monitored him and put him on a saline drip she had found in the well-stocked lab. That restored Doc’s body, and enabled his brain chemistry to regain its delicate balance. At the end of an hour, the recce party had reassembled in the office that Correll used as his base of operations. The walls were decorated with maps and diagrams, and new ones had been added over the course of the preceding two days as he ran through new plans for staging the attack. As he sat there, behind the large desk that had, at one time, housed the military commander of the redoubt back in the days of the Totality Concept, he toyed with a pencil that had been sitting on a piece of paper on the otherwise bare desktop.