“Think it can it take our weight?” Mildred asked, trying not to hold her breath.
“Two thousand yards,” Krysty announced, intently watching the beeping radar screen.
Ryan shifted into low. “Let’s find out.”
At a slow creep, Leviathan gently rolled onto the bridge. The struts groaned as the front tires put their full weight on the roadway, and Ryan slowed. When nothing adverse occurred, he started again, moving even more cautiously. A ghostly wind blew over the tank, moaning softly, and as they reached the middle span the steel girders began to sway slightly under their tonnage. Cresting low on the horizon, a silvery moon flooded the valley with unearthly light. Through the windows and blasterports, the companions could see a tiny thread of sparkling blue stretching along the distant valley floor.
“This is a gorge, not a valley,” Mildred said, touching her heart. The physician disliked heights, but had no intention of showing her fear.
“How deep do you think it is?” Dean asked, craning to get a better look.
“Thousand feet, or so.”
“Spam in can.” Jak frowned.
“I beg your pardon?” Doc said curiously.
“It’s an old armored cavalry phrase, tank soldiers actually, that precisely covers this situation,” Mildred explained, obviously pleased to know something the time traveler didn’t. She mashed two palms together in a smack. “Spam in a can.”
“How graphic,” he said, returning his attention to the world outside.
“At least there’s no way the Ranger can follow us,” J.B. stated, removing his fedora and wiping the brim with a handkerchief. “It’s too big and too heavy.”
“Fifteen hundred,” Krysty said, hunched over the screen as if trying to glean additional informaton by sheer force of will.
His hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel, Ryan said nothing, concentrating on not driving them off the side. A lot of the supporting members of the bridge had rusted completely away, and the guardrail was a thing of the past. One wrong move on his part, and they wouldn’t have to worry about the Ranger, or anything else, anymore.
As their front wheels reached the other side, everybody sighed in relief.
“Goodbye, bridge,” Doc said, tripping the rear submachine guns.
A stuttering stream of shells peppered the bridge, blowing away chunks of steel and greenery.
“Hold it!” Ryan yelled, brakes squealing. “Stop all firing!”
The guns ceased, and Doc turned, wearing a puzzled expression. “What is wrong? Remove the bridge and the Ranger can never follow us.”
“Unfortunately we need that bridge intact.”
“What for?”
“To leave. This is a dead end.”
Abandoning their posts, the companions gathered to look out the front window. Directly ahead was a cul de sac, the road leading into a mountain pass with steeply sloping sides. This once might have been a highway for travelers, but that was aeons ago. Rain and snow had weakened the slopes and the mountainsides had slumped onto the road, dirt and rocks filling in the pass completely.
“That’s why they never feared an attack from this direction,” Shard said. “Who could make it over such an obstacle?”
“Not us, that’s for bastard sure,” Ryan stated, checking the side of possible avenues. However, the mountain range rose straight from the gorge. There was no cliff or ledge for them to drive along.
“Don’t think we could even make it over that on foot,” J.B. commented. “Too smooth. We’d need climbing gear.”
Everybody jumped as Krysty triggered the 75 mm rifle. The shell went deep into the earthen mound blocking the road, and the landslide shook from within, nothing more.
“We’re not going to blast our way through, either,” she groused, levering out the dead shell. It hit the carpet and sizzled on the material.
“Range,” Ryan snapped, undoing his seat harness.
She looked. “Less than a thousand yards.”
“We can go back,” Doc suggested, the lion’s head on his cane peeking between fingers. “Be-damned tank probably only wants Leviathan. It might not even recognize us as suitable targets. We could hide in the bushes and leave on foot after it goes.
“And then how do we get across the gorge to reach the next redoubt?” Mildred demanded hotly.
“Fly?”
“Climb.”
“A thousand feet? Straight down? We might as well jump.”