pistol from its holster, she went for the cowering man with only her long-bladed
Italian stiletto.
Ryan was about to shoot at the Russian, when he saw the danger of hitting the
girl. Also, as clear as day in the light of the phos gren, he saw the man
fumbling with the parcel.
“Fireblast!” he spat. “He’s primin’ a fuckin’ bomb.” He raised his voice to warn
Okie. “Watch it! He’s got a bastard bomb!”
If the blaster heard him, she gave no sign of it. Never deviating from her
attack, she launched herself at the Russian like an arrow. Grom saw her coming
and held up the package of explosives as though it were some holy relic that
warded off evil. “So long,” said J. B. Dix quietly, so that only Ryan heard him.
As usual, the little man was right. Grom’s intention had been to throw the bomb
toward Ryan and the others, but Okie’s unexpected attack thwarted that. He was
taken so much by surprise that he was still holding the ticking bomb as she
landed on him.
The knife struck with practiced, lethal accuracy high at the side of the deaf
man’s neck, just below his right ear, opening the carotid artery in a spouting
gush of crimson. Grom was dying as he fell. His last act was to grab the girl’s
green sweater, clutching her to him in his death spasm.
Before she could free herself, the bomb exploded.
The heavy sound was muffled by the two bodies. Ryan ducked, feeling the shock
wave tug his dark hair. The booming noise echoed across the valley, bouncing
flatly off the dam. When he stood up, his face was wet with gore, and he felt
sickened at the sound of human flesh landing all around him. A thin pall of
smoke blew across the plateau by the ghost town, then was gone. The rising wind
carried with it all trace of the woman whose name had been Okie.
UCHITEL SIGNALED THE REST of the attacking party to retreat. With the element of
surprise gone and his party whittled down to only nineteen men and four women,
he couldn’t risk a frontal assault and an all-out firefight farther up the
hillside where the massive dam loomed over them, dominating the valley. They
assembled at a spot where the river ran fast and narrow, barely fifteen feet
wide, with a thin veil of gray ice growing at its edges.
“What now?” asked Urach.
“They can go nowhere. There is the one road, and we control that here by the
river. We have them trapped, my brother. Let us wait and they will come to us
and beg us for mercy.” His comrades bellowed with laughter.
“SHORT AN’ CURLIES, Ryan,” said J.B.
“What?” said Finnegan.
“Those bastards got us by the short and curlies. No other road out or in. We go
down, and they pick us off like flies in molasses.”
“Mebbe not,” said Ryan.
“I have never ceased to wonder at the enigmatic nature of your discourse in
moments of dire stress,” Doc said, sitting against a stone wall that still
carried a faded advertisement for a canned beer.
“What’s the idea, Ryan?” asked J.B.
Lori moved beside Ryan, staring wonderingly into his face. “We live?” she asked.
“Sure. We live right up to the moment that we start dyin’,” he replied. Turning
to the Armorer, he said, “This missile you found…”
THE LAUNCHER was like a sledge. The red-and-white missile rested on the sledge,
with torn strips of tarpaulin swaddling it like a baby. J.B. and Finn peeled
away the covering, revealing the sleek, elegant shape. It was about the length
of a tall man and had four triangular fins at the rear.
There were letters and numbers stenciled on the casing, black on white, and
white on red: USAF A/T/M SD4 TRD/C 24942 1/1/00. And in a circle, with arrows
pointing to it, there was the single word Active.
“There’s another one without active on it,” J.B. pointed out. “This could take
out a dozen war wags in one go. Never seen a baby this size still juiced an’
ready to go.”
“But it’s not a lot of good against the scattering of Russians down by the