few kills, but there were guys out there that they hadn’t needed to ice, they
were so doped up. In one of the houses every sec man they could see was higher
than a bird on happyweed. So high, in fact, that the girls who were also there
were utterly redundant, were playing cards and drinking to while away the time.
Decay, thought Ryan moodily, his silenced SIG-Sauer now grip-held in his right
hand. The decay of empire. Look back through history and there it was, clearly
to be seen. Yet no one seemed to see it. It happened time and time again. Yet
nobody ever seemed to learn the lesson. And the chilling thought was that it
could happen even to the Trader and his empire, such as it was. All that had to
happen was to say the hell with it once in a while, ease up. That was all it
needed,
Hunaker muttered in his ear, “Why don’t we just take out the light system
altogether? Be easier for us.”
“Too risky.”
“Hell, Ryan, no one’d ever know. It’s shot to hell already. Way those damned
arcs’re blinking on and off…”
“Too risky.”
“You’re the boss.”
Ryan checked his watch. Roughly three hours forty minutes to go. It seemed a lot
but wasn’t. Not if they got caught up in something, met stiff opposition and had
to shoot their way out. It wasn’t very long at all.
There was one barrier to success. It was known—it must be known by now—that
their little group was outside the net. The guys on the barriers at the edge of
town would surely have reported back to Teague or Strasser—probably the
latter—that Ryan’s buggy had entered Mocsin, unless communications were very
sloppy and the guy hadn’t bothered to report in. But no, thought Ryan, he must
discount that, work on the assumption that right now the alarm was out and
Strasser’s goons were searching for them. Speed was therefore of the essence.
And not only for him but for Strasser, too.
Strasser would need time to think, to plan. A couple of miles outside Mocsin he
had a dozen vehicles in a circle— two war wags and land wags, trucks, container
rigs—full of stiffs, full of hardware and weaponry and food and all kinds of
trade goods, and he couldn’t touch them. He had them in his hand, they were his,
but they might just as well be on the moon. The only way he was going to be able
to get inside them was if someone gave him the key, someone told him how to
bypass the boobies and render them harmless. Without the key, the poor fucker
was basically up the creek.
Except that he also had the Trader. That was a powerful card. Everyone knew that
the Trader’s men were fiercely loyal to the Old Man. Strasser’s idea would be
either to break him or torture him so that someone else would break to save the
Trader. What Strasser didn’t know was that the intense loyalty of those who
worked with the Trader extended into virtually a vow of silence if anything ever
went badly wrong. It was impressed into every man and woman never to blab, about
anything. Sure, there were probably weak links in the chain—in any large
organization there were bound to be—but Ryan, running through those who were now
spark-out in the miniconvoy, couldn’t think of any.
And the Trader himself wouldn’t talk. He was one tough old buzzard. The Trader
wouldn’t talk even if devils from Hell were peeling his skin off inch by inch,
layer by layer. As he’d always said, “If they get me, forget me.” That applied
to any situation.
Strasser didn’t know any of that, of course, and even if he did he would never
credit it, would never be able to understand it.
Bastard was in for a shock.
Bastard was gonna pay for so casually destroying so many lives, exterminating
without a thought so many good men and women.
And as he thought that, his face bleak, his mouth a thin, tight line, Ryan saw
images of the girl, Krysty, in his mind and bared his teeth in a soundless