The Armorer had his shotgun in his hand. “No time to make for the wags.” He nodded upward. “They’re already regrouping.”
“Then we make do with the horses,” Ryan said. “Get out into the forest as far as we can. Mebbe we can find a way to lose ourselves. They may be regrouping, but it looks like they’re starting to fight among themselves, as well.”
Across the top of the wall, some of the sec men had turned their fire on one another. One man fell from the side, screaming the whole way, until he crashed against the ground less than three yards away.
J.B.’s horse spooked. Wrestling with the reins, the Armorer headed the animal in the right direction. “See you on the other side.”
Ryan nodded, wondering how much more his mount had to give. Before he could kick the horse in the sides to get it going, he saw an open-topped wag come around the side of the convention center, throwing out rooster tails of dust and rock behind it.
He squinted his eye to make out the men inside it. The only one he recognized was Vinge Connrad. The baron’s blue-jay earrings fluttered in the slipstream coming in over the wag’s shield.
As Ryan watched, Connrad raised a tube to his shoulder and flipped up the sights. His target was J.B., but the others would follow. There was no way the horses could outrun the wag, and with the homemade rocket launcher, Connrad only had to get close to kill them all.
Ryan kicked his horse in the sides. At first it was sluggish, then gained speed rapidly. The animal didn’t appear skittish about the wag. Ryan figured it was too far over the line of death to even realize where it was headed. Blood came from its nostrils in streams now, spraying across Ryan’s pant legs.
Twenty-five feet from the wag, Ryan opened up with the SIG-Sauer, firing as rapidly as he could. Most of the rounds scored on the vehicle, and he managed to get the guy manning the heavy machine gun mounted on the rear deck.
As the gunner fell, Ryan rode out the end of his interception course just as Connrad turned the rocket launcher on him.
Five feet out, the horse plunging at breakneck speed toward the front of the wag from an angle, Ryan pulled his feet from the stirrups and crouched on the saddle.
A moment before impact, the horse suddenly realized where it was. But it was too late to avoid the collision. The horse gave a gurgling whinny of fear.
Ryan leaped forward, hoping he had enough momentum and strength to clear the wag. He tumbled over in midair, just as Connrad’s rocket jetted free of the launcher to impact against the convention center. The warhead exploded a new hole in the side of the building.
As he continued to turn, seeing the ground coming up at him fast now, Ryan got a brief glimpse of the horse smashing into the wag. At the last moment it had tried to leap over the vehicle.
The horse never came close to clearing the vehicle. The front of the wag struck the horse at the legs, breaking all of them. Lifted by the low bumper, the horse bounced off the hood and crashed into the windshield. The driver had time for one short-lived scream before the horse’s body smashed into him and killed him.
Then Ryan lost the wag briefly, going loose a moment before he struck the ground hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs. He made himself hang on to his blaster despite the pain of the sudden stop. He forced himself into motion, his reflexes working to get his lungs to function again, building a burning pressure in his chest.
He turned, getting his bearings, looking for the wag.
Connrad had kidnapped Dean and brought him to the Big Game. Ryan knew that from the brief conversation he’d had with his son back in the Mirage. He felt the anger work within his flesh and bone. His breath came back, and his legs worked just fine as he sprinted toward the wag.
Out of control, the vehicle had smashed against the bole of an ancient oak tree, gouging the bark. Steam sprayed from the broken radiator, throwing hissing puddles on the ground under the chassis. The horse was lying on the ground behind the wag, torn open and already dead, its intestines wrapped around the dead driver and the rear deck where the machine gun had been mounted.