Lonnie, Mik, Tilly, Danny, Dean and Jak were joined by a refreshed Doc, with Mildred along to keep an eye on him. Also in the room were Ryan, Krysty and J.B., as well as a select few of the Hellbenders who were obviously Correll’s high command: Rudi, Travis, Jenny and the injured Cy, who—although still in no fit state for combat— had been a longtime and highly trusted associate of the Hellbenders’ leader. His shoulder was heavily bound, but the fact that he was up and about was a testimony both to the skills of Mildred and her assistant, Travis, and the fact that the redoubt’s med lab had still been well stocked, and the remaining supplies well maintained by the highly disciplined group.
Correll fixed Lonnie with a cold eye. “So tell me about the convoy,” he said simply.
“I will, but first you’ve got to know what happened when we arrived, as it leads on to why we’ve got the extras,” Lonnie began.
And so he began to explain the events of the previous day, beginning with their entry into Charity. He left nothing out of the account, bearing the withering and angry stare of his leader when he explained about Jem, and the reasons why the group became separated. But this was soon forgotten as he got into the details of what they had seen in the old sports arena, and reeled off the full specifications of the amount of wags that would be used in the convoy, and the extent of the armory that they would carry. Correll’s pencil moved rapidly across the paper, making notes. Not many people were able to read and write, for education was the last thing that most needed in order to survive, and so came well down the list of priorities. The fact that Cornell seemed to be able to write so rapidly and fluently suggested that he had, at one time, received an education exceptional by Deathlands standards, and once more Ryan wondered about the full story behind the driven man.
When Lonnie had finished his description of the potential convoy, he handed the account over to Danny, who explained why he had led Dean to Baron Al’s secret stash of old tech—leaving out his explanation to Dean about not trusting Correll to keep his cool in the heat of confrontation—and so to the appearance of Ayesha.
As he explained the agreement he had reached with the girl, and how she had accompanied them back to the rendezvous point, he began to falter, sensing the growing anger in the Hellbenders’ leader, and noticing how Correll’s tightly compressed lips were a deathly white, all color bled from them.
He began to stammer so badly that Lonnie, sensing trouble ahead and wishing to avert it if only for his own sake, as recce patrol leader, took over and detailed the agreement he had reached with the girl, and stressing his view that she could be trusted because she was desperate to get away.
When he had finished, Correll gave the briefest of nods, and when he spoke his voice was strangulated by the desire to keep it even.
“So we know the strength of the Charity force, now.” he began. “We can assume that Summerfield will match that, as they sure as shit have spies in each other’s camps. What they don’t know about is us, and what we’ve got. Jenny? J.B.?”
The Native American and the Armorer exchanged glances. J.B. had spent some time during the day examining the collection of wags housed in the old garages of the redoubt. Some of them were vehicles that had been used by escapees as they drove across the desert and found the redoubt, or had been found by Hellbender scouting patrols, and others were the wags that had been in the redoubt since before skydark. Some of these were just transport wags, which the community had been refitting using weapons from the armory; others were purpose-built attack and defense wags, heavily armored and armed. J.B. expressed his opinion that these would be more than a match for the cobbled together wags of Charity, if—and he stressed the word—the tactics were right. Despite their superior firepower and the element of surprise, they would be outnumbered by the combined convoys of both villes, and so keeping their flanks protected was a must.