Grant unsnapped a pouch on his belt and took from it a small squeeze hypodermic. It contained a pain reliever and metabolic stabilizer developed by the division medics. He undid the seals on Carthew’s right gauntlet, tugged it off and injected the ampoule’s liquid contents into the vein of the upper wrist.
Kane fought to control his rage, to keep from either striking out at Salvo or mounting a suicide charge at Reeth’s blastermen. Two men who had been his comrades, as well as his teammates, were wounded, and now all of them were pinned down, waiting for the jaws of the trap to snap shut. For nothing. From the ridge overhang came a cacophony of taunting hoots and catcalls.
Taking a deep breath, Kane realized that their own arrogance had blinded them from covering all angles, examining all possibilities, no matter how remote. Salvo’s words about expecting the unexpected were true enough, but only rarely had Magistrates ever confronted adversaries as well-armed as they were, at least in living memory. The majority of hard contacts went smoothly due to the advance fear created by their reputations, the fearsome images the Magistrates went to great effort to maintain. It simply hadn’t occurred to Kane that they might encounter serious opposition from outlanders who weren’t terrified of them.
Reeth’s voice shouting over the ruins snapped him to full attention again. “Salvo, you hear me? I don’t want this! The baron doesn’t want this!”
Grant’s head swiveled toward Salvo. “How does he know, sir? The baron authorized this mission. Didn’t he?”
Salvo gestured for him to be quiet. Reeth’s words boomed out into the night, bouncing from the canyon walls.
“Drop your weapons and leave! My people will box you in, and you’ll have no way to escape unless I allow it. But I don’t want to chill you, and you don’t want to be chilled. So give me your answer!”
Salvo, without hesitation, cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Milton Reeth! You are obstructing the duty of authorized enforcers of Cobaltville law. By Code 7b of the Territorial Jurisdiction Act, you must surrender yourself to our custody.”
The .50-caliber stammered from overhead, the slugs chopping clay dust out of the doorway on both sides of Salvo. He dropped flat, turning a bleat of terror into a strangled curse.
The roar of the weapon ceased, and Reeth shrieked, “Then stay there, you treacherous shit ! Stay there and starve!”
Pushing himself to a sitting position, Salvo spit out a mouthful of grit. He said nothing and avoided looking in the direction of the team. Grant and Kane shared a brief glance, then Kane said quietly, “Sir, if I was Reeth, I’d be packing up and moving out while he keeps us pinned down here.”
As if on cue, Grant added, “If that fortress is where he’s processing the outlanders and the ID chips, then there must be a way up there from down here.”
Still not making eye contact, Salvo asked, “And how do you propose to find that way up there from down here?”
Ignoring the note of sarcasm, Kane declared matter-of-factly, “We look for it.”
Salvo pursed his thin lips but didn’t respond. Kane’s anger flared again as the image of the Vulcan-Phalanx gun tower flashed in his mind. He wanted to put his Sin Eater to Salvo’s head and ask why there hadn’t been a reccee of the area before the mission had been ordered.
Instead, he sat and watched Salvo silently assess the situation. Perspiration flowed down his sallow cheeks. Finally the man bit out one short word, “Go.”
Kane and Grant inserted full magazines into both of their blasters. From their belts, they removed black, six-inch-long cylinders and screwed them into the barrels of the Copperheads. They were two-stage sound suppressors, absorbing muzzle-flash and gases. The sound of the shots was reduced to no more than a rustle of cloth. The selector switches were adjusted to fire 3-round bursts.
There was no discussion of tactics, no time to devote to a reccee. They were entering dark territory, and from now on, everything depended on improvisation and reaction.
Grant and Kane duck-walked through the ruins of the building, found a break in a wall and squeezed through it. They kept to wedges of shadow, angling toward the dark areas not touched by the floodlights. Both men threaded their way through the crumbling structures as swiftly as they could, not penetrating a new area of the labyrinth without checking it out first.
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