“I don’t think she died until her guts spilled out and burned away. It must…”
He stopped, and paused for a few moments before continuing.
“Anyway, that asshole Al decided to save me for the next day. And that was his mistake. They left me alone, figuring that I couldn’t move far enough and fast enough to be a danger. Wrong. I had enough willpower to get the hell out. I was head of sec, y’see. I knew where the wags were, how to hotwire one, when the sec patrols were due and who was on them. But first I had to do something. I went back to the fire and gathered together what was left of Becky. I took her with me and got the hell out. I didn’t know where I was going, and I thought I was on my way to buy the farm…but on my own terms.
“But it didn’t work out that way, did it? Fate will always decide. And it decided for me. It took me up that mountain to meet the end, but instead I found that old tech base. It was fate that then brought the others to me.”
He looked down at the box.
“And it’s fate that has finally brought us here, my love. Fate that has decreed we have a chance to be revenged. And if I buy the farm and join you, then so be it.”
Chapter Seventeen
As the wags approached the outcrop, Correll picked up the radio transmitter in front of him and patched in to the other wags in the convoy, ordering them into the positions they had seen sketched on the map back at the redoubt. His voice was firm and clear, with no indication of the emotional catharsis he had been through just a few minutes before. Ryan and Krysty sat in the wag and observed in silence. There was no way they could communicate their concerns to each other, let alone to their comrades in the other wags. All they could do was sit tight and wait for that opening to occur.
“No sign of the trade convoys yet,” Correll commented as he drove the leading wag through the gap in the outcrop and into what would soon be the arena for the final battle.
“Making good time, then,” Ryan replied, keeping his voice level. Yet there was something about it that made Cy turn sharply, even if Correll didn’t notice.
“What else?” the sec man asked.
Ryan shrugged. “Nothing. The desert was pretty bad in places, so much mud, dust and quicksand. Could have delayed us.”
“Could have delayed them, too,” Cy answered. He seemed to be reassured in some way, but there was a faint querulousness to his tone that suggested he still felt something wasn’t quite right. He just couldn’t define what that may be.
“If they’ve actually set off,” Krysty pointed out. “We have no way of knowing this for sure.”
“They will have,” Correll said with a cast-iron certainty in his tone. “They’ve got no choice. It’s this or a long, hard chill for both of them.”
He drove his wag to the center of the dust bowl that was in front of the outcrop, then veered to the left, taking the wide load through a gap that was so narrow it almost scraped the paint from the side of the wag. As he took this path, the second wag, driven by J.B., went a little farther on and then took a right fork, finding its shelter behind another gap in the rock wall. Two wags followed each lead, and then the wags positioned themselves near the gaps, hidden from view but with an easy access to each end of the outcrop.
“That’s their big mistake, Jourgensen and Hutter,” Correll remarked to Ryan, although it seemed almost as though he were talking to himself. “They haven’t done their research properly. They’ll have their sec look out for something at each end, but they don’t know about these channels. They won’t know that we’re hidden, waiting to circle around and take them out.”
And it was true. Ryan looked out of the side window on the wag door. The gap in the outcrop was barely wide enough to pilot a wag through, but if taken with care it could be achieved. They were approximately halfway along the length of the arena, with the rock channel twisting in front of them and leading out at an oblique angle to the main track the trade wags would be taking. From the approach, that exit was well hidden, and it would be easy for the Hellbenders’ wags to slip out and circle around to close off the entrances. In the heat of a firefight, these would be the only other avenues of escape, and Correll had plans to seal them off.