“All right,” he said. “We’ll go with you and ride. But I say we stop a half mile off and tether the horses. You agree?”
“I agree,” Sleeps In Day replied.
“Excellent,” Doc said loudly, turning every head in his direction.
“Thought you didn’t want to have to climb onto Judas again,” Mildred said.
“What, madam? Oh, that! Well, that is true, but look at this.” He proudly held up a tiny paper model of a Chinese junk, fully rigged.
Dean opened the front door, creating a ripple of wind across the diner, enough to destroy the fragile little vessel in the old man’s hands.
“Sorry, Doc,” the boy said.
“Everything passes.” Doc sighed. “If I have to endure further torture on the back of that mule, then let us begin. Soonest started, soonest finished is my motto.”
THE NUKE STORMS of the past day or so had made the trail more difficult. At one point they had to detour a half mile to the east to avoid a narrow defile where the gray-orange mud lay churned and thick.
There was a brief flurry of further rain, driving in on the teeth of a cold norther.
The visibility was very poor, and Ryan had to keep resorting to the Starlite night scope.
For some time they were riding in silence, along a narrow diagonal valley, with sparse clumps of stunted live oaks standing among the sagebrush. But the trail finally began to wind upward again and, at last, Ryan held up a hand, calling softly for the others to halt.
“I can see it,” he said. “Best tether the horses here and go ahead on foot.”
As he dismounted, Ryan noticed that two or three of the Navaho were fumbling with small leather pouches that they wore around their necks. He knew they contained a mixture of magical, shamanic symbols, different for each mana pinch of sand or a pebble or a bone or the tip of an arrow.
Sleeps In Day caught him watching. “It will be a good day to die, brother,” he said.
“SOMEONE HAS TO STAY with the horses.”
“Why me?”
“Because I say so, Dean.”
“Why not the youngest of the Indians?”
They were around six hundred yards from the stalled war wag, in the middle of a grove of elders.
Ryan bent down so that he didn’t need to raise his voice to his son. “You do it, Dean, just because I tell you to do it. Now, if you don’t like that, then get right on your pinto and ride away from me.”
“Dad!” Dean sounded shocked.
“I mean it. You know I mean it. There isn’t time to discuss what’s wrong and what’s right, son. This is the razor-edge between living and not living. I can’t risk one of the General’s people circling us and taking out our mounts. That happens and we don’t get to win.”
“Oh. So, if someone comes, I chill him?”
“With the blaster. That 9 mm Browning cannon of yours. Don’t wait until it’s too late. Better you shoot too soon and miss and warn us than holding fire and not giving us time to get back here. All right?”
“Sure, Dad.”
Ryan patted his son on the shoulder. “Good, Dean. That’s real good.”
THE WIND HAD FRESHENED, driving away the banks of sullen clouds that had been veiling the moon. The land was bathed in a silver light, making the approach to the bogged-down wag a deal more dangerous.
Man Sees Behind Sun led the way, with the rest of them strung out in a ragged line. Ryan would have felt more comfortable with a proper skirmish approach, pausing now and again for the pointman to go on recce.
But this attack wasn’t in any sense under his command, and he had to force patience on himself.
Krysty was at his side when he voiced his doubts. “Just hope they don’t go whooping in without any warning or word,” he said. “Get us all a slice of the farm if they do.”
“You sound like Trader when you say things like that, lover. A real lack of trust of anyone except yourself and those closest to you.”
“Guess that’s likely true enough,” he admitted. “Is that bad or good?”
She shook her head, her fiery hair almost invisible in the darkness. “Can’t say. Just have to wait and see which way the cards fall.”
“You feel anything?”
“No. You know that a firefight can’t be read like that. Mebbe a doomie could guess at what might happen. Not my skill. Just have to wait.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
It was an LAV-25. Originally built to take a crew of three, it had probably had a lot of its useless comm equipment stripped out to enable it to carry more men.
Just as the young Navaho had said, the vehicle had slipped sideways off the muddy trail, halfway up a fairly steep incline, and slithered down into a quagmire, where the axles had vanished.
It was in no danger, and a digging detail would have shifted it within three or four hours.
“No guard,” Ryan whispered, having checked the surrounding area with the night scope.
“Must figure they’re safe enough, this close to their home base.” J.B. studied the stranded vehicle. “We got two choices.”
“Get them out and chill them. Or leave them in and chill them.” Ryan looked sideways to Sleeps In Day. “You got a preference for how we do it?”
“Preference? That is a word that I do not know.”
“Means having to pick between two ways.”
“I would like to have them outside. It would be good to try and have prisoners to let us take some revenge.”
“Not really time for that,” the Armorer argued. “Just how far off is the General’s HQ?”
“Close. The main entrance to caverns is beyond the next hill.”
“So they could hear shooting?”
The Native American put his head to one side, considering. “I think they would not. The wind comes up to us from the Grandee. It would carry noise away north from here.”
“Shame we got no grens,” J.B. said. “Open the lid and drop one in and watch ’em cook.”
Ryan nodded. “Agreed. But we don’t.”
“We could do what has been done before.”
Ryan looked at the Navaho. “What?”
“Set a fire around them.”
It was an option, but Ryan didn’t like it. “I reckon they must be aware there’s some risk. Might be one of them on watch from the ob slits or inside the turret. Can’t see clearly enough to be certain of that.”
“Four or five inside.” Krysty looked toward the horizon. “Dawn’ll soon be on the way.”
Young Pony Runs coughed to draw attention to himself. “I will crawl close. Then knock on the walls of the wag. They come out and shoot me. I fall and they look to see if I am dead. You hide close by and shoot them all.”
Ryan blinked his good eye. “I don’t You mean to stand there and let them chill you?”
“Yes.”
He considered the idea, deciding that it wasn’t a good combat option, with the likelihood that the defenders of the war wag would choose to stay snug inside.
“No. I can’t let you sacrifice your life just like that. Death in a firefight’s one thing, but not this.”
“You cannot stop him,” Sleeps In Day said.
“Sure. But I won’t support it. There has to be a better plan than that.”
IT CAME from Jak.
“No need big fire,” he said suddenly.
“How do you mean, Jak?”
The teenager nodded toward Ryan. “Important thing is make think fire.”
J.B. slapped his hands together. “Dark night! Kid’s got it. Sorry, Jak. Slipped out.”
Doc had been tracing invisible patterns in the sand with the ferrule of his sword stick. “Forgive me, ladies and gentlemen, but I fear that the young man’s runic comments have quite flown o’er my head.”
Ryan explained. “Jak’s right. A big fire wouldn’t work. Take too long and the risk of it being seen at the base. But if we lit a real small fire”
The old man grinned, his perfect set of teeth floating like a row of ghostly ivory in the darkness. “A little smoke and they will believe we intend to burn them out. The frightening thought of remaining inside a potential oven will work wonders on their depraved minds an”
“Rats from holes,” Two Dogs Fighting concluded.
“Precisely,” Ryan said.
He chose Jak and Man Sees Behind Sun to go with him, leaving J.B. and the others to follow close and pick positions where they could move in support.
Once everyone knew what they were to do, everything clicked quickly into place.
Ryan had emphasized that the day would be lost if anyone opened fire too soon. “Seems like four or five, and we know one of them’s a woman. So, be triple patient. Make sure that they’re all out in the open.”