There was no reply.
“Fight me, and it’ll take you weeks to die!” the colonel shouted, losing his patience. “And your bitch will be the first to get aced!”
There was a distant cough as if somebody were clearing their throat to speak, then a 9 mm round ricocheted off the fender of the armored wag, missing the sec chief by less than a prayer.
“Chill the fucker!” Mitchum roared, fanning the tunnel with his handcannon. The twin black-powder machine guns chattered to life, filling the tunnel with a hellstorm of hot lead.
Keeping close to the tile wall, Ryan placed the shots of his SIG-Sauer, then switched to the Steyr and better accuracy. Most of the companions were ensconced in similar locations, blasters banging away as they tried for the headlights. The triple-stupe sec men couldn’t hit what they couldn’t see, but the moment Mitchum thought of using the high beams this battle would turn against them. Privately, Ryan had hoped Mitchum would be stupe enough to try to lower a wag to the tracks. Then they would take it out with their last few grens and the fight would be equal. But the man was too smart, or too cowardly to risk a direct assault.
Sliding in a fresh clip, the Deathlands warrior heard something deeper in the tunnel, then ignored it as the sound got fainter in the distance. Krysty and Dean were moving slowly along the opposite sides of the tunnel, exploring the wall with their hands, trying to find the entrance to the redoubt. Unless the whitecoats used a subway train to move the supplies, the redoubt was right here, hidden somewhere in the dark, maybe under the very gravel they were standing on. But there were no more clues from the dead Protoculte white-coat. They had to find it by themselves, or get flatlined. That was all there was to the matter.
Just then, the .50 cals stopped firing and four brilliant beams of light filled the tunnel with blinding illumination, trapping the companions in plain sight. Diving to the ground, they took cover in the shallow pools of duty water, rats scurrying over their bodies as they crawled backward trying to reach the darkness again. The .50 cals raked the ground, the muzzle loaders adding their firepower to the incoming barrage.
Then a gren bounced along the train tracks from deeper within the tunnel. The sphere stopped near Ryan, and he saw the handle was still wrapped in electrical tape. A gift relayed from Krysty. Reaching out, he tried to reach the gren, but the heavy slugs from the sec men were hitting everywhere and Ryan was forced to duck low again. He tried once more and got a bullet through the hair.
Fireblast! This was triple bad. They were trapped and the next step by Mitchum would be to launch a Firebird and blow them to hell, guided by the tiny pilots in the warheads.
Now they were going to have to try to run for it. Never a good plan, and confined in a tunnel it was damn near useless. But the one-eyed warrior knew to never surrender, never give up. Life wasn’t neat and orderly. Folks made mistakes, got lucky breaks. One lucky break was all they needed. Just one.
Working the bolt to clear a jam in the Uzi, J.B. glanced overhead and saw the ceiling was coated with sleeping bats, thousands of them. They were safe from the blasterfire because of the angle, but maybe he could do something about that.
“Doc, cover me,” the Armorer shouted, switching weapons.
Without pause, the old man dropped the Webley and fanned the LeMat, the smoky discharge of the weapon making a dense cloud of gray fumes in the air.
Immediately, J.B. stood and swung up his shotgun to pump all four shells at the sleeping night flyers. The blasts from the 12-gauge scattergun echoed louder than thunder, and the bats awakened, screaming and squealing. A few took flight, a couple more, then dozens.
Understanding the plan, Ryan whistled loud and sharp, once long and two short, and everybody froze motionless. This was exactly the type of situation they had created coded whistles for, when you couldn’t yell out a warning without letting the enemy know your plans. And the companions never needed to keep their intentions secret more than right now.