“Shit, fuck, shit, shit,” the bomber cursed loudly, setting the timer running and rising to his feet, drawing a long-barreled blaster of his own from the back of his belt.
The fact that it was stuffed down the back of his pants for convenience when setting the device, rather in a holster, was what chilled him. The extra fractions of a second it took to reach behind enabled Jak to jump from the horse while it was still in motion, landing with poise and dipping his shoulder to roll into the earth rather than onto it, absorbing the impact and letting it work as momentum to drive him closer to the scene of the sabotage. As Jak came upright, he fell into a combat shooting stance on one knee, bringing up the Colt Python and sighting on his opponent in one smooth motion. His finger tightened on the trigger, squeezing off another shot.
With one hand behind his back to pull the blaster from his pants, and the other instinctively flung out to balance himself, the bomber left his entire torso exposed. Jak’s shot was swift and accurate, aimed for just above the chest area and beneath the throat, flying swift and true to between the bomber’s collar bones, driving a bloody hole into the hollow beneath his Adam’s apple and traveling on an upward path necessitated by the angle from which Jak fired.
Almost before the man had fallen to the ground, Jak was on his feet and running toward the small brick pump house, the two chilled saboteurs lit by the light of the lamp, their blood spreading darkly into the earth around them.
TO THE OTHER SIDE of the derrick, by the edges that skirted the open expanse of the desert and protected from Jak’s view by the pipes that ran from the well, the third man was rigging up his own explosive device. It was more complex, and was intended to take out the generator that powered the wellhead, and also the cabling from the generator that would power the pump house. It was a more time consuming task, but the third man had that extra time because he knew he was farther away from the oncoming sec man.
To stop and consider it afterward would make it obvious that the saboteurs had a complete knowledge of the positioning of the companions. But there wasn’t the time to ponder on that now. For J.B. there was only the knowledge that he was arriving when the party had already started, for as he circled out to the right to come around and tackle the saboteur, he heard the first exchange of shots on the other side of the derrick.
“Dark night,” he swore to himself, knowing that he needed to attend to this triple fast in case Jak was hitting real trouble.
The saboteur had been concentrating hard on getting the wiring of the device right, linking up the charges of plas-ex to the trigger device. So hard that he didn’t notice the Armorer until it was almost too late.
J.B. whipped his mount into a frenzy of speed, foam flecking from the creature’s lips and spraying back onto its mane as it charged forward. With the M-4000 ready, the Armorer wheeled it around so that he was approaching the far side of the derrick from an acute angle. He could see the lamplight by which the saboteur was working, and could see the man outlined against the dark metal of the construction as he linked the plas-ex charges together.
J.B. swung his leg over the back of the horse until he had both feet on the same side, and slid from the horse and it charged forward, buckling to break his fall as the horse moved on toward the derrick. He fell a little awkwardly and hissed curses through his teeth as his body jarred on the closely packed earth. Picking himself up, he moved parallel to the horse’s course, and then a little to one side, so that the saboteur would look away from him when the horse’s approach attracted his attention.
The saboteur ignored the sound of the approaching hooves for as long as he dared. He knew he would have to face an attack, but was fighting against time to get the multiple bomb wired up properly. So when he did finally respond to the approaching hooves and turn with his Uzi raised, he was taken aback to find the horse coming toward him with no rider on its back.