he pushed up…
The sheet fell off him with a crash, tumbling to his left. Ryan gasped and fell
forward, propelled by the sudden lack of resistance to his straining muscles.
Gasping for breath, the one-eyed warrior allowed himself no time to recover, as
there was none. He had to get out of the shack before he was chilled. Gathering
the Steyr and the H&K, Ryan scrambled to his feet and made the few strides to
the back doorway of the shack, the hole gaping open.
He threw himself through it in a forward roll, pitching onto his shoulder and
coming up with the H&K in his hand, leveled for any enemy that may be in view.
“You’re covered, Dad,” Dean said calmly, his Browning Hi-Power in his fist. “I
was worried about you. Murphy’s turned tail and is ready to run.”
“Any wags we can use?” Ryan asked, his mind racing to cover all possibilities.
If they could get on Murphy’s trail in a wag, he could be their ticket into the
redoubt without needing the sec men’s uniforms.
“How much of a head start have they got?” he asked.
The boy grinned. “Nothing yet. Take a look.”
Ryan followed Dean around the alleyway and onto the edge of the center of the
ville. Two of the wags lay abandoned, and through the press of bodies he could
see the uniforms of dead sec men. The mass of bodies, however, was gathered
around the two wags whose engines were whining in high gear, wheels spinning and
kicking up earth at the back, front wheels raised from the ground by the press
of bodies.
Ryan grinned. The superior power of the wags would crush the crowd beneath their
wheels before too long, but the delay might be just long enough.
Jak appeared like a wraith from the crowd. “Ryan, good you alive. Two wags we
use, but need speed.”
Ryan nodded agreement. “Get the others, split between the two wags. I can drive
one, you or J.B. the other. I need to find Abner and Mac, and quick.”
The albino didn’t waste time, disappearing into the crowd without a word. Ryan
turned to his son. “Try and find Mac or Abner, get them to me. Let’s go!”
Dean nodded his agreement and melted into the crowd while Ryan turned his
attention to the sector of the crowd not covered by his son. It wasn’t hard to
spot Abner, as the old baron was relishing the victory over the insiders,
gesturing with his blunderbuss and yelling incoherently at his people. He was a
sitting target if Murphy or any of his men chose to take a shot from inside the
wags. But the sec man didn’t make a move.
Ryan fought his way through the crowd to Abner, grabbing the baron and
unceremoniously pulling him to one side. The old man was so drunk with the
atmosphere that he didn’t even show any anger at being treated in such a
disrespectful manner.
“We’ve got the bastards on the run, friend Ryan,” he yelled, his eyes gleaming.
“They’re dead meat.”
“But we don’t want them to be,” Ryan yelled back, desperate to make himself
heard above the screams of the crowd. “Listen to me—if we follow them back to
the redoubt in the other wags, we can strike inside and destroy them like we
planned. Remember?” He spoke in simple terms to try to bring the old man out of
his blood frenzy, to remember the plans and strategies they had discussed.
Abner paused. For a moment he looked blank, as though assimilating his thoughts.
In that moment Dean appeared with Mac.
“Ryan,” the fat sec man said with a face-splitting grin, “it goes well, my
friend. I understand from the boy that we follow them back and hit ’em hard.
Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Ryan said simply. Dean had done a good job of explaining the situation.
There was nothing else for him to say to Mac. It just remained to be seen if
Abner had caught the drift.
“How many people you want?” the old baron said suddenly, everything falling into
place for him.
“You, Mac, mebbe ten others at most. With us that makes eighteen in two wags.