It was up to him to move quickly and provide the distraction. Moving over to the wag, which was a jeep like the wag he had seen driving away on their previous encounter, he could see that it was empty. There were no extra blasters or any plas-ex. They had obviously brought what they needed for the job and no more. That suited him fine, for what he had in mind would have entailed a whole lot more trouble if there had been plas-ex on board.
Dean took a piece of material from the wag. It may have been a shirt, or it may have been a piece of cloth that the plas-ex had been wrapped in. He neither knew nor cared. What was important was that it was there.
The youth unscrewed the cap on the wag’s gas tank and prodded the piece of cloth down the hole, stretching it to make it as long as possible. The cloth touched the gas in the tank and began to soak it up. Dean pressed more of the cloth in, then pulled it out. One end was soaked in gas. He reversed the cloth and pressed the dry end down, repeating the action. When he pulled out the cloth, it was dripping gas, which he let drip down the side of the wag, from the open hole to the dusty earth.
He then stepped back, laying the rag out to give him a short fuse, and backed off a few paces before aiming his blaster and squeezing off one shot.
The rag sparked and flamed, the fire spreading up the side of the wag with a thin blue flame and down into the gas tank. Dean turned and flung himself to the ground, covering his head with his arms.
The wag exploded, and Dean felt the heat and shock of the blast sweep over him, rendering him temporarily deaf and scorching his back and legs. But as soon as it had passed over him, he forced himself to his feet, ears still ringing, and was ready to face the oncoming saboteurs.
Because he knew that they wouldn’t be able to ignore this.
RYAN WAS RIDING into the blasterfire, moving from side to side and evading the bullets, although he did feel one tug at his shirt, just above the ribs. A hot pain, like a needle through his flesh, registered momentarily, but the one-eyed man had too much adrenaline coursing through his system, and was too focused on the action ahead, for it to stay his course.
He managed to squeeze off a couple of shots from the Steyr, the heavier ammo from the rifle resounding above the blasterfire from the two saboteurs. The shots hit the tank behind them, causing no harm to them but nonetheless deflecting them from their task. Their firing on the one-eyed man became more erratic, and they hadn’t, so far, been able to leave their package of destruction.
And then the explosion came from behind the tank. For one moment, the area was illuminated by the light of the explosion, and in the strange shadows cast on the side of the tank he was approaching, Ryan was able to see the two saboteurs outlined against the tank. They were both stunned by the explosion, exchanging shocked glances. The ferocity of the explosion, and its appearance out of nowhere, had momentarily stopped then dead in their tracks.
Ryan was startled by the explosion, but he kept bearing down on them, taking the opportunity to straighten his mount’s path for a second and take a proper aim at the two saboteurs. He had been expecting some diversionary action from Dean, although that wasn’t quite what he had expected.
The one-eyed man squeezed off a shot from the Steyr, and it ate into the ground between the two saboteurs. Leave it to the others to maybe capture a saboteur and question them. Right now it was chill or be chilled.
The bullet from the Steyr hit the small package of plas-ex between the two saboteurs, and they disappeared from view in the middle of an explosion that knocked Ryan back and off his mount. The horse whinnied in fright and bolted off into the desert night.