Mindful of Ryan’s words, Doc chose to speak from the shadows.
“If you will kindly put down your weapons, we will desist from chilling you.”
There was only a fraction of a second of stunned silence, although it seemed to be much longer, before the angry explosion of sound that was an Uzi on rapid fire. The driver rose from his seat to level the fire in Doc’s direction.
It was short lived, as Dean took him out with a single shot from the Browning that took away a chunk of the back of his skull and pulped his brain tissue.
“Fuck it, there’s more than one,” yelled one of the saboteurs to his companion. The two men, having already left the wag, had flung themselves into cover—or what they assumed was cover—against the side of the wag farthest from the direction of Doc’s voice. Which made them perfect targets for Dean.
The man who hadn’t spoken swung himself around in the dirt and rose to run for cover, expecting covering fire from his companion. When it failed to emerge, he swung his own blaster around and loosed a couple of rounds in Dean’s direction.
Doc aimed from the shadows and fired the shot charge from the LeMat, the roar of the blaster being echoed only by the agonized yell of the saboteur as the shot ripped into his body, shredding his internal organs and splintering bone. But the yell itself was lost in the louder sound of an explosion. The saboteur had to have been carrying plas-ex on his body, ready to plant it within the confines of the refinery buildings. The shot from Doc’s LeMat had hit the explosive and detonated it, causing the body of the saboteur to disintegrate in a ball of flame that lit the entire area between the buildings.
“Oh shit!” Dean yelled, throwing himself flat to escape the rain of debris that ensued as the force of the blast detonated plas-ex that was on the saboteur still taking cover by the wag, taking him out in a blaze of flame and causing the wag to explode as its fuel tank overheated and combusted. The triple explosions were so close that they sounded as one, deafening Dean and Doc as they took cover in their respective points and hoped that no stray piece of debris should, by chance, chill them.
It seemed like forever before the world returned to some semblance of normal, but it had to only have been a few moments. The light settled to a level set by the burning wag, and the only sound was the crackling of flames.
Dean and Doc, now both safe from any debris and certainly safe from any threat from the now chilled saboteurs, emerged from their respective covers and met in the middle, standing together to watch the fire begin to die as the fuel was used.
“So much for taking prisoners,” Dean murmured.
JAK HAD ARRIVED at his position with little trouble. Moving silently and swiftly was a matter of instinct and nature for the born hunter, and so it presented him with no problem to find his way along the pipeline with little chance of any approaching agency spotting him.
The pipelines running from the refinery to the storage tanks were straight, with little or no cover provided, particularly at the vulnerable point that Jak was to guard. It was a series of valves and small pipe fittings that joined the two sections, and the shape of the construction meant that the whole piece jutted out into the desert, presenting a plain target with no recesses in which to take any kind of cover.
Within the maze of pipes at this point, there was a small gap that would provide scant opportunity for anyone to take cover. But Jak was small, lithe and supple, and used to keeping still for long periods of time. He forced himself into a tiny gap and settled down to wait, easing his cramped muscles with exercises taught to him by his hunter father that prevented him from either becoming stiff or from having to move out into the open to stretch. He slowed his breathing, making each breath deeper but spaced further and further apart. And he settled to watch and listen, his red eyes sharp in the darkness, his ears alert for the slightest sound out of the ordinary.