Crouching low, he readied the panga. The arc of the knife was perfect for slitting throats. Then Ryan reconsidered and drew the silenced SIG-Sauer instead. The man knew he was tired when such simple decisions had to be debated. Perhaps he should leave and come back in the morning with fresh troops.
But Overton might be doing the same, and instead of them hunting down the escaped baron, it could be full warfare between their sec men. More important, if the bastard had an LAV 25 hidden in the ville and carried AK-47 assault rifles, what other military hardware might he have access to come dawn? No, better to strike now, while Overton was wounded and on the run.
As the darkness coalesced into a man-shaped figure, Ryan waited until he saw the Kalashnikov and blue shirt, then chilled the sentry on the spot. Moving along the wire, Ryan found six more perimeter guards, and each followed the first into death.
Past a stand of trees, Ryan found a crude roadway with tripods made of sharpened tree trunks. Oil lanterns hanging from poles washed the path with deadly illumination. Clearly, that wasn’t the way inside if Ryan wanted to keep breathing.
Knowing that the sentries would be missed soon, Ryan retreated a hundred feet, then cut through the lowest section of the concertina wire with the serrated spine of Krysty’s knife. Already the weapon had proved its worth. Sliding through the small opening, he eased past the trees. Soft light was shining ahead, and Ryan went to ground, crawling closer until he reached the edge of the bushes encircling a huge clearing.
A low hill protruded from the ground, the curved crest of the natural limestone hill lush with plants. He spotted a satellite dish, and the sight chilled his blood. There were no more working satellites that he know about, and the few the companions had ever encountered had always been trouble in spades, though one had once saved their lives. Sighting through the scope of the Steyr, Ryan relaxed a notch when he saw loose cable dangling from the dish. It wasn’t working yet.
The mouth of a small cave fronted the hill, the opening squared off with timbers and some fresh brick work. Inside were stacks of crates in neat rows, as if organized into categories.
A mint-condition LAV 25 was parked outside, its angular prow pointing outward so the men in the hill could climb safely into the rear doors of the wag. That was when Ryan spotted another of the deadly war wags off to the side of the clearing. Both were fully armed assault platforms, Piranha class, with electric chain gun, cannon and minirockets. They were two horribly lethal juggernauts from another time, their armored bodies clean and rust free, the tires shiny black. In their present positions, the machines would give optimum cross fire on any enemy coming through the break in the trees.
Directly across the clearing, squaring off the cave, the LAV and the dirt road, was a granite outcropping, or perhaps a boulder, set in a small indentation in the forest. It was a perfect spot to spy on the campsite.
Avoiding the area completely, Ryan crawled through the tangles of thorny bushes until reaching the second APC. He shimmied underneath the chassis, watching for antipersonnel mines or sensors. But there was only the smell of dirty grease and lubricants from any transport used to cross wild country.
Peering out between the heavy studded tires, Ryan observed a crackling fire hidden in a low pit. Squatting around the flames was a platoon of sec men, sipping coffee sub brewed in a huge steel pot suspended over the fire by a metal grid. Their conversation was low and unhurried, as if they had nothing to worry about.
Ryan quickly abandoned his plan to try to capture or kill Overton. This wasn’t a campsite; it was a military outpost. Whatever Overton was doing here would have to wait until morning when Ryan could return with more troops from Front Royal.
Backing away under the predark vehicle, Ryan froze as Overton limped out of the cave. The man was wearing clean clothes, and using the stock of an M-60 machine rifle as a cane.
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