Only a heartbeat behind, sec men burst out the door, and Ryan shot the ground at their feet. The buried charge went off, blowing them to pieces and showering burning gasoline across the front of the building. The desert winds fanned the flames, but instead of extinguishing the blaze, actually seemed to feed the fire with every gust.
Retreating amid the enemy, Ryan knew that was a specialty of J.B.’s, mixing thermite with a Molotov to create an unstoppable chem fire that lasted for minutes even underwater. Nothing but time could kill those flames.
Just then a section of the road exploded, harming nobody, merely throwing sand at the sky. Everybody moved away from that location and the street under them now erupted in a series of blasts, pieces of bodies flying everywhere.
“Rockets!” one man cried, dragging a broken leg. “Run!”
“Land mines!” yelled another, clutching a bleeding arm. “Nobody move!”
Right on schedule, the alley thundered again as lightning flashed, and Ryan and Krysty moved through the shouting men, their weapons chugging steadily, bodies dropping in their wake like harvested wheat.
A corporal standing too near realized what was happening and turned his blaster on the pair. He got off a hasty shot, missing Ryan completely and hitting one of his own men. The one-eyed man chilled the corporal and met with Krysty on the far corner away from the burning bank.
“I’ve got six rounds,” the woman said.
“Four,” he replied. “Time to go.”
“Check.”
Placing their last few shots on just officers, Ryan and Krysty backed away from the baron’s army, and paused to stand directly on a smooth patch of sand between a bare metal mailbox and hydrant.
“Hey! The sniper ran this way!” Ryan shouted, waving to the sec men. Several caught the call and passed along the news to the others. Soon a crowd of the men was coming their way.
“This way! Hurry!” Krysty added, waving.
As the sec men got near, the companions took off fast at a run. Thinking they were chasing the sniper, a dozen sec men charged and reached the smooth section of sand almost exactly as the big ticking bomb buried there detonated.
The men on top of the explosive charge simply vanished, the thunderclap and fireball knocking the rest to the ground covered with flames. Shrieking, the human torches dashed about amid their brethren, setting others on fire, spreading terror until the troops started firing on one another in confusion.
Dropping their stolen jackets, Ryan and Krysty disappeared unobserved into the dying storm.
SMASHING HIS FIST onto the Plexiglas shield of the teller’s cage didn’t dislodge the jammed rounds, and Leonard savagely turned upon his troops.
“Boxes! They used boxes!” the young baron shouted. “I saw it! Blasters inside boxes with strips of cloth to hold them in place!”
“Smart,” Sergeant Jarmal grumbled, bandaging a wound in his arm. He had a good suspicion it was from his own men, but that was a matter for later. The sec men had just gotten their butts kicked and were burning for revenge on the faceless enemy.
“DeLellis, what is the death toll?” Leonard snapped, pointing at the man with a clipboard.
“Sixty-four, my lord,” the corporal reported, brushing sand from his face to read the hastily scribbled list of names. “Mostly officers. Which leaves us thirty.”
“Wounded?”
“Nothing serious. Only minor flesh wounds. The snipers killed damn near everybody they hit.”
The troops murmured uneasily at that news.
“Stack the dead. We’ll bury them later. No sec men go into the Machine.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What about the wags?” the baron asked, crossing his arms and trying to radiate a positive attitude he didn’t really feel.
“Gone. Along with our extra water and all of the fuel.”
“Well, we don’t really need any fucking fuel without vehicles, do we, Lieutenant,” the youth snapped.
“Corporal, sir.”
“Not anymore.” The baron walked among the men. “You’re a corporal now. You are a sergeant, you’re a corporal and you are a lieutenant.”
Beaming faces spread through the motley crowd, and the weary bodies sat upright, holding their bolt-action pieces with renewed determination.
“Let’s kick ass, sir!” a private cried.
Tolerantly, Leonard allowed the familiarity from the lower class drone. Odd, how quickly he was learning to think like his father and consider them as merely workers, tools to be used and discarded, nothing more.