They had traveled a short distance when, behind and way above them, Ryan heard the sound of steel scaping concrete. Someone was dragging back the sewer grate.
He stopped long enough to dig into his pack for a few slap charges. As he resumed walking, he dropped them at intervals behind him, tossing them into the sluggishly moving water, where they couldn’t be seen. When he had dispersed them all, he ran to catch up with the others.
As he chased after the bobbing light ahead, he wondered if the mines would “stick and kick” if they were submerged. He’d rejoined the others, and they had put another fifty yards of sewer behind them when something went whack far to the rear.
One whack became seven, in a row.
Thrill Bill instantly shut off his light.
“It was me,” Ryan told him. “I dropped some mines back there. Thought it might slow them up.”
“You thought right,” Damm said. “They’re dead slow, about now.”
“There’ll be more of them,” Thrill Bill stated as he switched the light back on. “You can bet on that.” He picked up the pace.
After another fifty yards, the channel rounded a bend and Bill’s flashlight found another row of rungs.
“This is it,” the warlord said, shining his light up the vertical pipe.
Ryan looked up and couldn’t see the top. The rungs just faded into darkness at the edge of the light, about two hundred feet up.
“It’s a long climb, so let’s get cracking,” Thrill Bill said. He started up the pipe first.
Damm went next, then Nara. Ryan moved in behind her and the two sec men came last.
They climbed much farther than two hundred feet. Ryan tried to keep track of the rungs, but he lost count. Above them, there was a familiar roaring noise; it came in waves. The higher they went the louder it got.
Finally, Nara stopped climbing ahead of him and he had to stop, too.
His curses muffled by the flashlight in his mouth, Thrill Bill shouldered aside the grate that blocked the top of the pipe. Weak yellow light bathed them. Ryan recognized the sounds, which he’d heard earlier. They came from high-speed traffic.
Holding on to his rung, Ryan leaned to one side, trying to see around Nara and Damm. He glimpsed Thrill Bill as he stuck his head out of the opening, and ducked it right back. A roar passed over the hole and a gust of gritty wind whipped their faces.
“Shit,” the warlord groaned. Then he popped his head up again. After a pause, he scurried out.
Ryan had the problem pretty much figured out by the time it came his turn to exit the pipe. So it wasn’t a big surprise when he poked his head up over the rim of the drain and saw a fireblasted ten-ton wag bearing down on him at a hundred miles an hour. He dropped back down; it was either that or get beheaded.
What he’d seen verified his suspicion. The manhole opened smack in the middle of fifty lanes of freeway.
Ryan raised his head again, checked the oncoming traffic, and seeing he had a good chance, jumped up and out. The sec man behind him thought he had an opportunity, too. Ryan saw him scramble halfway out of the hole, then a burst of green light from below swept through him like he was made of mist. The sustained beam gouged a hole in the freeway tunnel’s concrete ceiling, showering Ryan with fat yellow sparks.
He instinctively reached for the man’s outstretched arms and caught him by one wrist.
“No!” Nara shouted. “He’s dead. Leave him.”
Ryan pulled on the man’s wrist, and there was no weight to him. Nothing remained of him below the waist. When Ryan let go, the weight of the sec man’s pack drew him back toward the hole.
As the one-eyed man turned away, the sec man’s torso slipped down the pipe and vanished.
Nara had already abandoned the scene. She was running across the lanes of traffic to the big pileup of wrecked wags where Damm and Thrill Bill waited. Ryan measured the distance and timed his dash. He’d crossed three or four lanes when he realized the oncoming drivers were speeding up and changing lanes in an attempt to cut him off and run him down. He sprinted the last forty feet, and even then had to make a panic dive to the pavement to keep from being clipped.