There was a desperate yell, muffled by the thick hide cover over the tent, then it sounded like all hell had broken loose outside.
Dean sat up, wincing as the rawhide thong around his throat tightened. He recognized the individual weaponshis father’s SIG-Sauer, its explosions echoing and loud in the damp, humid air; the ripping sound of the Uzi; the short, sharp shocks of what he figured had to be Trader’s Armalite.
The firefight lasted less than sixty seconds from beginning to the end, when Straub’s voice rose over the bedlam, ordering a cease-fire from the brushwooders.
Dean waited, his body as tense as a coiled spring, unable to believe what he was hearing. From the whooping and excitement, there could only be one possible interpretation.
Unbelievably the raid seemed to have failed.
“THAT WAS YOUR FATHER’S friends and sec men,” Straub said, kneeling in the shadow darkness of the tent. “Why were they out here?”
“Don’t know.” Dean shook his head.
“They couldn’t humanly have gotten the ransom demand. I believe they were on a routine patrol and decided to chance their arm against us.” He shuffled closer and took Dean’s bruised jaw between long finger and thumb, squeezing bard so that the boy cried out in pain. “What do you think, Jamie Weyman?”
The beads of raw turquoise on his necklace rattled as he leaned closer. His breath was sweet and dry, like a warm cattle barn, but it still revolted Dean. He tried to turn his head, but the weird eyes bored into his.
“Don’t know,” he gasped.
Straub squatted back on the heels of his snake-embroidered Western boots. “I think I believe you. But when I look into the shallow well that’s your puny little brain, I see ripples below the surface, boy. If I had time I would dive below the surface and explore down in those murky waters. I think you’re trying to hide something from me?”
“No, sir, I’m not.”
“You promise, boy?”
“On my mother’s grave, sir.”
Straub stood, brushing dust from his black, silver-riveted jeans. “You interest me, Jamie Weyman. I had looked to find a vapor-headed little boy and I find” He shook his head. “What do I find? But time passes. These muddied fools wish to terminate the life of one of your sec men that we’ve taken prisoner. You may come and watch.”
DEAN HAD BEEN LED out by one of the older women, his wrists tied behind him. His face still felt sore, and his teeth seemed to have become loose in his jaws. He walked out into a scene of great excitement.
A stake driven into the ground close to the main fire of the settlement. The smooth wood already bore a number of old, dark stains.
A man was tied to it, while the younger women were gleefully hacking his dark green uniform from him. They were careless with their short-bladed, pecking knives, and streaks of blood marred his pale skin.
Dean thought he might have recognized the sec man, but he couldn’t be sure, as many of the ville’s guards were elderly and stout.
Ditchdown was parading proudly up and down in front of the yelping mob, grinning from ear to ear, an AK-74 on his right shoulder.
Dean’s attention was drawn by a pair of taunting boys to two raggled, naked corpses, lying on the village’s garbage heap. It looked to his experienced eyes as though the wretched men had already been dead before the knives had done their work.
“Come and watch one of your father’s proud sec men enter the long darkness,” Straub called, leading Dean to stand in front of the doomed man.
“It’s Micah, Master Weyman. Can you do nothing to make them spare me?” the sec guard pleaded. He had been stripped naked by the women’s blades and stood quivering like a great pink-streaked white jelly, wrists and ankles bound to the stake. He had already lost control of both bladder and bowels, and was smeared with his own wastes. His eyes were like plums, protruding from their sockets in terror. They suddenly focused on the boy. “They said that you were”
Dean saw the chasm that suddenly gaped in front of him. If the man betrayed him, then his life would be of no value to the brushwooders and they would make his passing long and painful as a revenge for fooling them.