Ryan clapped his hands. “Heads up, people.
We’re moving fast and don’t want to leave anything important behind. Everybody give me an equipment check.”
“Got the bombs,” J.B. said.
Jak patted a pocket. “Garrote.”
Dean raised his butane lighter. “Ready, sir.” With Krysty’s assistance, Mildred shrugged herself into her med kit “Flashlight is fully charged.”
“Lisa, are your people prepared to do their jobs?” Ryan asked. “We only get one shot at this, and we’re behind schedule already.”
“We’ll be there when called,” she stated. “Have no fear about that.”
Ryan looked hard at the slim brunette. “If we fail, you fail,” he reminded her.
Lisa didn’t reply, but stepped closer and placed a tiny vial of milky fluid into his hand. Troy watched the passing with something akin to anguished grief.
Ryan pocketed the vial and moved toward the hidden doorway of the tunnel. “Let’s go kill a baron.”
WHEN THE COMPANIONS were gone, Troy reached into a pocket and withdrew a small packet of cloth. Accepting it, Lisa unfolded the piece of soft linen, exposing a small red piece of plastic with wires.
“We removed it from under the control board,” Troy said nervously.
Holding it by the edges, she lifted the square for a closer view. The details of the workmanship were amazing. “And the armored vehicle won’t start with this missing?”
“So far, yes.”
Troy blurted out, “We should destroy the thing! Whitecoats brought down the sky and killed our forefathers. All science is evil!”
“Perhaps,” she admitted, carefully laying the red square back on the protective linen. “Yet this is how we control the wasteland fighters. They’ll do as we ask, but only for as long as we have possession.”
“And when this is over, then what?” he asked, fighting the urge to smack the thing from her grip and grind it under his sandal. “We just give this to Ryan and let them leave?”
With a neutral expression, Lisa gingerly wrapped the delicate piece of predark technology in the cloth and said nothing.
Chapter Seventeen
“I got him!” cried a dirty slave, bursting into view from the mouth of the coal mine. “Me! I got him!”
In a brick kiosk, the sec man on duty spun at the shout, a hand on his blaster. He scowled at the scrawny man running toward his post. Hopefully it wasn’t another flood. The water that seeped through the stone walls of the mine was the ville’s only reliable source of drinkable water. Filtering by a couple hundred yards of stone removed most of the pollution from the acid rains of the outside world.
“Got what, slave?” he demanded, then gave a start. “Not Ryan?”
“Yes!” the man replied proudly, coming to a halt “We were mucking against the winter damp and there he was! So I shoved over a timber and the tunnel caved in. He’s trapped in a deadhead with no way out. Come and see for yourself.”
The sec man grabbed his long blaster and shoved the slave ahead of him. “Show me, and you better be right”
“The ward promised a reward of freedom for capturing the outsider,” the slave said over a shoulder.
“And you’ll get it,” the guard growled, prodding him with the muzzle of the blaster. “If it really is Ryan, and he’s still alive. If not, your own children will be the first killed.”
“He’s alive. You bet! This way, sir. This way!” At the entrance of the mine, the slave grabbed an oil lantern from a half-filled rack of them and lit the wick with a glowing piece of oakum. Directing the cone of light ahead of them, he scrambled into the main tunnel, with the guard following close behind. They went down several levels, following a zigzagging maze of ever-narrowing tunnels, until reaching a branching intersection of tunnels. Here a dozen lanterns hung from wooden rafters supported by buttressed timbers anchored into the living stone. Milling about was a crowd of slaves clustered in front of a recent collapse, the tools of their lowly trade still in callused hands.
“Here! Right here!” the slave announced, moving through the crowd. He patted the sloping pile of pale rocks, tan stone and ebony-colored coal-bearing ore. “He’s behind this!”