“Look at this,” J.B. said as he indicated the area between. “In the dark night there are blind spots where even the most alert of sec patrols could be avoided.”
“Even if the saboteurs used wags like the one we saw the other night? Surely the sound would carry across the desert and alert us,” Dean said.
“Yeah, but any wag could outrun those horses, so the speed would beat the noise factor hands down,” Mildred pointed out.
“That’s true,” Ryan agreed. “If we leave the work camp to Myall and his men, to keep it sealed at night, that still leaves us a lot of ground to cover with just the seven of us.”
“Then may I suggest, my dear Ryan,” Doc said as he removed one of the maps and let it fall to the floor with a gentle flutter, “that we completely forget about the area between there and here, and concentrate instead on the work sites themselves.”
“Problem there is that we’ve got the pipeline between to cover,” Krysty said, running her index finger along the line on the map that represented the pipe system linking the well to the refinery and the storage tanks.
Ryan examined the map closely. It was a relatively large area, and an extremely awkward shape to cover from all angles.
“J.B., what do you reckon?” Ryan asked his old friend. The Armorer had a mind like a steel trap when it came to sec matters.
“My opinion?” J.B. pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “I don’t think we can actually cover the whole area completely with just the seven of us. And I don’t think we can trust the sec here to help us. Not,” he added hurriedly as he saw Crow’s expression, “because they aren’t any good, or might be behind this, but because they’re not used to being with us, and it’d be more difficult to manage if they were just running around out there trying to second-guess what we were doing.”
“You’d have the radios,” Crow said simply.
“Yeah, but we know how to fight together. They’d get in the way and make it hard. They could end up getting hurt. More important, they could stop us getting at whoever is behind this,” Ryan interjected.
Returning his attention to J.B. he asked, “So how do we quarter this up?”
The Armorer felt in one of his pockets and produced a stub of pencil with which he drew a series of lines swift and straight across the map. “Way I see it, there are twelve points on here where they could stage an attack that would take out the site and cause a lot of damage.” He marked twelve points: two at the storage tanks, three along the pipeline, two at the well and five at the refinery buildings, including the pipes that ran between them. “We need to keep a constant watch on those twelve.”
“Except there are only seven of us,” Krysty added.
Ryan nodded. “So the best thing we can do is take seven of those points on each watch, keep on them for four hours, then move around to another seven points for the next four.”
“That keeps the night watch busy, and covers all points, but leaves five points unprotected for half the night.”
“Not much we can do about that,” Ryan said, “except mebbe to keep those uncovered points staggered so that no two of them are close together, and to stagger them on each night so no one can work out a pattern.”
“Sounds good.” Crow spoke softly but firmly. “Baron Silas will approve.”
“Baron Silas doesn’t have any choice,” Ryan answered shortly. “Now pass me that pencil, J.B., and let’s get the first night’s route planned right now.”
BARON SILAS WAS SEATED at the head of the long dining table in his dining hall, surrounded by his pre-dark antiques. He was brooding darkly on the situation regarding his well and refinery, getting slowly drunk on moonshine brewed on the far side of the walled ville, in a quarter that was allegedly under scrutiny from his sec force. In fact, it was the home of an illicit still that he kept from being closed down because it supplied the best moonshine in this or any other ville. He had a large pitcher in front of him, and it was almost empty.