Standing, frozen in shock, by the light of the lamp he was using to work, the saboteur presented J.B. with an easy target. It crossed the Armorer’s mind that it would be good to take one of the saboteurs alive and question them, to find out where they were from, but to do that he would have to disable the man enough to prevent him firing back or triggering the device, and J.B. was too far away to take the chance.
Too bad. The Armorer took aim and let fly with the M-4000. The weapon boomed in the night air and loosed its deadly load. The saboteur was turning at the sound of the charge as the barbed metal flechettes hit him. He went down with a scream of agony as the hot and jagged metal tore into his face and upper body, some of the shot ricocheting off the derrick behind. He died as he lay in agony, the last sound he heard being the approaching footsteps of the Armorer.
J.B. checked the corpse, lest he be able to turn and shoot when the Armorer’s back was turned. Seeing that his enemy had been successfully chilled, J.B. turned his attention to the device, tracing the wires from the charges of plas-ex back to the trigger device. The saboteur hadn’t had time to finish wiring the bomb, and it was a simple task for J.B. to fully disarm and dismantle it.
On the other side of the derrick, Jak had cleared a path through the bodies and blood to where the small brick pump house stood, with its door open. It was lit by the lamp, and he could clearly see the bomb within, and hear the ticking of the timer. Moving across to it, he could see that it was set for fifteen minutes. Although he could risk calling J.B., there wasn’t really enough time for him to do anything but disconnect it himself.
Jak had dismantled explosive devices before, but it was one of the few things that breached his iron nerves. There was always that chance that it had been wired incorrectly. He palmed one of his leaf-bladed knives and took the wire that should be the correct one to cut. He looped the wire around his finger, so that a small loop stood above his white fist, and cut swiftly and cleanly with one sweep of the razor-sharp blade.
The wire parted. There was no explosion. Taking a deep breath, Jak repeated the procedure with the second wire. Only then, when that was done, did he breathe easily.
He emerged from the pump house to find J.B. surveying the corpses.
“They don’t look like anyone from the camp,” the Armorer said simply.
“Outsiders,” Jak agreed.
“Pity we had to chill them all. I wonder if the others can get one alive,” J.B. mused. “Then we might find out who’s behind all this and stop it once and for all.”
DEAN AND RYAN HEADED for the storage tanks, where the squeal of tires and brakes announced that the wag had reached its destination. Both the one-eyed man and his son were some distance away, and were approaching from different angles. With the wag now silent, it was difficult to know where the saboteurs had come to rest, and both Ryan and Dean were only too well aware that they could ride full-tilt into the saboteurs before they had a chance to properly orient themselves.
“Dean, where are you?” Ryan yelled into his handset.
“About three minutes away, the speed this dumb creature is going. I’m to the southwest of the tanks, and I’m taking a roundabout route to try and spot them,” the youngster barked down the crackling connection.
“Okay. I’m in the northeast, and I’m bearing straight down. I haven’t had a sign of them yet, and I’d guess they’re at the back of the tanks.”
“Yeah, they might have left the wag there, but they’ll have to come around to the other side to do whatever the hell they intend to do,” Dean retorted.
“If they want to take out the pipes, yeah. But mebbe they just want to blow holes in the tanks. That’d really put them out of operation.”