So, he took a double shift to watch over the decrepit old tub, and had been on the scene at the wrong time after Ryan’s escape from the redoubt. Coleman’s partner for the evening had been the one who pulled the hardware and fired at the one-eyed man, so the warrior had been faced with no choice but to chill him in his boots. Coleman, however, had been frozen with surprise, so Ryan merely punched him in the face and relieved him of his rifle.
The very same rifle that Ryan had later found to be unloaded.
Coleman didn’t like blasters. They made him nervous. He kept his weapon empty.
So Ryan hadn’t chilled him—that had fallen to Poseidon’s rage when he discovered that his prey had slipped on board the Raleigh. All it took to send Coleman sliding toward death was one shot from a Glock pistol in the stomach.
“Gut shot,” Jak said. “Die soon. Die in pain.”
Mildred’s examination didn’t take long. She shook her head as she looked at the gaping wound. “I’m getting damned sick and tired of being the one to sign the death certificates around here,” she said.
One thing she’d learned in a hurry about being a physician in Deathlands—you had a low rate of patient survival.
“Looking for Ryan Cawdor,” J.B. said. “You see him get on the sub?”
“Don’t know who that is,” Coleman wheezed.
“Big guy with an eye patch. Curly hair. Has a long scar going down his eheek into his chin,” J.B. described, running a finger down the right side of his own face to illustrate. “He was probably a prisoner in cuffs or ropes.”
Coleman managed a weak snicker. “He didn’t look like no prisoner when he kicked my ass,” he said. “The Admiral was royally pissed. Shot me on sight, and took the sub and your man out for a swim.”
“Come on,” J.B. said, “let’s go. We’re going after them.”
“Where?” Krysty asked. “How?”
“There’s got to be a boat around here somewhere. Mebbe this time we won’t hit any more mines.”
DOWN IN THE NUKE ROOM of the USS Raleigh, Ryan pulled the trigger one more time, and the AK-47 still refused to fire.
“Aw, shit,” Ryan said.
“Looks like you’re empty,” the sailor said, lunging with the screwdriver. Ryan swung back with the body of the rifle, using it to parry the man’s thrust. The metal tip of the tool hit the softer wood of the stock and plunged down, leaving a long scratch.
“Should’ve been you.”
Ryan dropped the rifle, as he needed both hands free. He was starting to tire physically. All of the punishment his body had taken in the past few hours was coming home to roost.
Still, the day he couldn’t dust a stupe swinging a screwdriver was the day he’d put a bullet into his own head.
Ryan feinted back, and his foe again lunged for his midriff, trying to bury the weapon up to the handle in the one-eyed man’s stomach. Seizing the opening, Ryan caught the sailor’s arm and thrust it down over one of his uplifted knees, breaking the arm with a loud crack.
The screwdriver fell to the deck.
Ryan kept his hold on his adversary’s arm, twisting as hard as he could while rotating it in the shoulder socket. The sailor fell to his knees, screaming, then slumped limply, his body shutting down from the pain. Ryan felt about the same as the enlisted man looked. He sat down against the wall himself, breathing heavily.
A bosun’s whistle shrieked at the end of the corridor. Ryan stepped over and looked at the comm-system panel that was recessed in the wall near the lozenge-shaped doorway.
“Ryan Cawdor, this is Admiral Poseidon.”
The way things were going, he wasn’t surprised.
“Talk to me, Cawdor, before you do anything foolish.”
Ryan reached out and slapped down the Transmit button.
“Like what?” he snarled at the comm grid. “Blow this nuke engine sky-high?”
“Sub’s out to sea, Cawdor. We’ve submerged, and we’re all continuing to go down,” Poseidon said, his voice crisp from the tiny speaker. “Harm the Raleigh, and you harm yourself.”
“We’re all going down anyway, you stupe bastard! The decks are wet with seawater. This piece of rusty shit is leaking like a fucking sieve. You’ve got men dead and dying down here because the sub’s nuke is leaking radiation right through the protective plating. We’ve got to get off before we’re all chilled with rad sickness.”