“For the time being, put them all back in the box,” Ryan said. “Hang on to it there, Dean.”
“Sure, Dad.” His skinny arms grappled with the heavy metal container.
J.B. held on to a single grenade with bands of dull green and bright yellow, peering down at it. “Timers on these generally run around fifteen seconds as set. You can alter the setting for anything from ten seconds to ten hours but” He squinted through his glasses. “Yeah, these have a base setting of fifteen seconds. I’ll stick with that. Take it in and throw it down the end of the passage. Give me time to run back out there. Everyone take cover in case there’s any broken glass. Here I go.”
The slim figure vanished past the tumbled sec doors, fedora tipped jauntily to one side.
Dean struggled, refusing any offer of help, and managed to lay the box down in the grass, crouching with the others behind the ruined pillbox.
“Haven’t seen a gren in ages, Dad,” he said.
“Me neither. Found some a while back, and we used to have a decent store of them in War Wag One. Trader found them or bought them, somewhere up in the Darks, I think it was.”
They all heard the sound of running feet and knelt behind the cover, Jak pulling the young native woman by the hand, reassuring her that everything would be double safe but there would be a double-loud bang.
Ryan knelt, hands over his ears, closing his eye, keeping his mouth open to try to minimize the effects of any blast, aware of Krysty pressed against him on the right side.
“Hope you remembered to kiss your ass goodbye,” she whispered, making him smile.
J.B. came out of the doorway, springing hard, arms pumping, knees raised. He carried the Uzi, but he’d left the scattergun outside with Mildred.
He jinked to his right, heading toward the pillbox, his combat boots slipping a little on the damp grass. As he ran, J.B. was shouting out the timing, counting down the fifteen seconds.
“Nine and eight and seven” He reached the concrete emplacement, breathing hard. “And six and five and four and three and two and one and go!”
Everyone winced in expectation of the explosion. Rain Flower had begun to cry, sensing the tension, even though she had no real understanding of what was happening.
“Go,” the Armorer repeated.
“No go,” Jak breathed.
Dean started to get up. “Can I go take a look, Dad, and see whether”
“See whether you get your stupe head blown off, Dean?” Ryan interrupted. “No, on the whole I’d rather you stayed here with us for a little while. Until we know for sure if the gren’s going to blow or not.”
“Not, is my guess,” Krysty said, peering uncertainly around the side of the metal box with the rest of the grens inside it.
They waited in the forest stillness. Ryan glanced at his wrist chron. “Thirty seconds, gone,” he said.
“Sure it wasn’t training gren?” Jak asked.
“Sure. Proper primer and it started to tick as soon as I triggered it.” J.B. stood, straightening creases in his pants, brushing smears of mud from his knees. “Well, it sure seems like they’re duds.”
“Can’t we try some more?” Dean asked eagerly, heaving the box back on top of the pillbox, barely keeping it balanced. “Some might work.”
The Armorer shook his head. “No. Waste of time, Dean. See the corrosion and the leaking stuff.”
“How about this one with purple and Oh, shit!” The box started to slide, falling inexorably to the turf with a shuddering crash, spilling the grens all around the boy’s feet.
Mildred was first to stoop and start picking them up, holding one of the timer grens with its green and yellow stripes, dropping it like a hot brick.
“It’s ticking, folks! Fucker’s ticking!”
Chapter Seventeen
In fifteen seconds a first-class athlete could spring roughly one hundred and forty yards, with a reaction time to the pistol of the starter measured in fractions of a second.
Despite his honed combat reflexes, Ryan took nearly four seconds to register the horror of the situation and decide what was best to do.