Leaving the Vulcan, Mildred moved to the closed hatch in the floor, not daring to open it for fear of who might be on the other side. “John, you okay?”
Silence. Outside, a black dart riding a column of flame streaked past Leviathan to violently impact on the distant highway, concrete and asphalt forming a geyser.
“They got a bazooka!” Dean shouted.
Backtracking the most likely trajectory, Ryan saw a distant figure crouching on top of a truck, a long tube in his or her hands. The one-eyed man forced the sounds of battle from his mind, concentrating on task at hand. Closing a hatch on the end of the long tube, the figure stood and raised it to his or her shoulder. Ryan instantly emptied the SIG-Sauer, riding the bucking 9 mm rounds into a tight cluster. For a moment, the figure seemed unaffected, then took a step backward, dropped the weapon and tumbled off the truck.
“Not anymore,” he announced, ramming a fresh clip into the blaster. In that part of any warrior’s mind that remained cool during any battle, Ryan noted it was his last loaded clip. Fifteen shots, and he’d have to grab something off the ground. There was a sawed-off nearby, but he didn’t trust the ammo.
Suddenly, a riderless motorcycle soared over a pile of rubble, flying straight for the motionless Leviathan. A sputtering fuse dangled from its lumpy saddlebags.
“Kamikaze!” Amanda yelled, the recovered Thompson chattering nonstop in her grip.
Weapons tracked the airborne assailant and the booby-trapped bike detonated into a fireball, shrapnel raining on the prow of the tank. A handlebar and seat slammed off the iron bar grid, as a red-hot piston smacked into the hardened windshield, sending out cracks but not quite bursting through.
“Not want us whole anymore,” Jak said, reloading his blaster without looking. Snapping the cylinder shut, he took off at a run. “Get bazooka. Cover!”
“Go!” Dean said, ramming in a fresh clip. Careening over the bodies of their fallen comrades, the bikers stubbornly maintained the attack on the tank. One of the tires went flat, then another.
Brutally, Leviathan was pounded under a hail of bullets and grens as the hull was ruthlessly probed for a weak spot.
Crouching behind the smoking ruin of a dead bike for cover, Ryan watched the motorcycles circle the tank like coyotes closing on a wounded animal. They were outgunned and outmanned at this point, but refused to leave. He could feel it in his bones. The Sons of the Knife had something more planned.
Safely masked by the clouds of smoke in front of Leviathan, the gang stopped for a second, a scruffy fellow passing out packs of grayish clay to the others-shaped charges of C-4.
A horn beeped and the bikers turned to see a beautiful redhead in the driver’s seat behind the cracked windshield just as the twin 75 mm rifles spoke in unison. The volcanic hellstorm of AP shotgun rounds blew the attackers off their bikes. Reduced to mincemeat, unrecognizable chunks flew everywhere and the riddled two-wheelers spun away as engines burst into flames, and fuel tanks exploded.
Wary of shrapnel, the friends converged on the sight and did a clean sweep of the wounded survivors. In seconds it was done. The bikers lay sprawled on the pound, pumping out their lives into the weeds.
Holstering his 9 mm blaster, Ryan reviewed the battle zone as he reloaded the empty clip of his Steyr from the loose rounds in his pocket. Four tires on Leviathan were only rubbery tatters, and the tank was listing to starboard some, but nothing serious. Spent brass covered the ground, making walking treacherous. Acrid smoke from the burning bikes was probably the only thing keeping the stingwings away from the mangled bodies. He could see them circling overhead, waiting for the first opportunity to begin their feeding frenzy.
Retrieving the shotgun, Ryan knocked on the side of the hull with the stock. “Hey, J.B.! You alive?”
A greasy hand came into view, and the hatless Armorer crawled out. Struggling to his feet, J.B. dusted himself off with dirty hands. “Well, it’s done. We have a working transmission again.”
“What took so damn long?” Ryan asked in concern.