Chapter Thirty-Two

Ryan carried a lantern, following Donovan up the rope scaffolding that led to the top of the canyon near the dam. The Heimdall Foundation man carried a lantern, as well, playing his light over the rough-hewn rock.

"Thought mebbe you'd like to take a look at the dam itself," Donovan said. "Give you more of a perspective of what you'll be fighting for."

In truth, the view was awe inspiring. The moon hung orange and full in the sable heavens, reflected in the dark pool of the basin below. Stars glittered around the moon, light glass bits embedded in the night.

"I've got enough to fight for," Ryan answered. "I'd walk through mutie slime pits for that woman back there."

"Knew you would. I saw it in your eye when you were telling me the story."

"Something else you should know," Ryan said. "If you lie to me and don't get help for her the way you said you would, I'll chill you. And that's an ace on the line."

Donovan stopped, meeting Ryan's level gaze without reserve. "I believe you. If that section of the space station wasn't out there in the hands of Barbarossa and the pirates, if I hadn't been told how important it was, I'd probably still help your woman. Mebbe for nothing at all. But I need your help, and I mean to see you give it. Gonna cost me plenty in getting you that help, though you might not believe that right now. I've seen your kind of man plenty of times before, Ryan."

Ryan didn't say anything, feeling the heat of Donovan's lantern brushing across his face.

"Once you get what you need, or what you want, you'll be gone. Won't matter what anyone else needs or wants. You believe in very little outside yourself."

"I've found that's the best way to be," Ryan replied lightly.

"Not up to me to try changing your religion. Just my effort to keep the record square." Donovan turned and headed on up the grade, following the trail.

"I BELIEVE IN THE WORK the Heimdall Foundation is doing," Donovan said when they reached the top of the dam. "Whatever future Deathlands has in store, part of it's going to be guided by institutions like the Foundation, people working hard to look backward so they can look forward again."

"It was institutions like the Foundation that put the world in the shape it's in." Ryan studied the dam. The logs had been hewed to fit, staggered in an alternating double-stacked layer like rounds in an M-16 clip. They'd been bricked up with mud, which helped slow the water's eventual erosion of the dam.

The blocked water stretched out behind the dam for over two hundred yards, at least half that in diameter. The water was still, eddying smoothly, reflecting the sky overhead.

"How long will this water last?" Ryan asked.

"We get lucky," Donovan said, "all year."

"How do you get it to the Foundation?"

"We dam the other end of the cistern before we release the water. When it has nowhere else to go, it flows along the northern channels."

"And one of them leads to the Foundation?"

"Yeah. Pretty much. There's more to it. Most folks wouldn't be able to trail the water. Goes underground in places. It's no easy process, and it took years for us to figure out a way to get it to the Foundation without being traced or contaminating it. One of these days, you'd have to see the Foundation."

"Mebbe." Ryan's wanderlust had driven him the length and breadth of Deathlands, first as a young man, then as a lieutenant on War Wag One with the Trader. When he'd first heard about the Heimdall Foundation while going to check on Dean at Nicholas Brady's school, he'd wanted to journey to the Foundation and see it for himself. That inclination was still in him.

But now wasn't the time. Not with Krysty in the shape she was in.

"How do you release the water?" Ryan asked.

"Same way we close down the other end of the cistern— use explosives. After all these years, we know where to place them."

Ryan filed that bit of knowledge away.

"Got something else to show you," Donovan said, "if you're not too tired."

"What? I've got a feeling morning's going to come bastard early if we're going to get at those pirates."

"You're right. But I think this is going to interest you. Since you've heard of the Totality Concept, I'm certain you've also learned they left redoubts scattered around Deathlands."

Ryan looked at the man.

"We found one here," Donovan said. "Want to go look?"

IT TOOK Ryan and Donovan almost half an hour to trek back farther upstream along the mountain ridge. By that time, he'd worked off most of the small amount of supper he'd eaten back at the campsite. Seeing Krysty sick as she was had left him without an appetite, but it was making up for lost time now.

"Hungry?" Donovan asked, offering a cloth-wrapped bar.

"What's that?"

"Trail-mix bar. Kind of like an old-style journeycake, only this has a lot of raisins, nuts and dried fruits in it. Standard Foundation issue, along with self-heats and ring-pulls. Too much work to chew to put any fat on you, but they keep your energy up."

Ryan took the bar, unwrapping it and smelling it. Satisfied with the odor, his stomach growling in sudden anticipation, he took a bite and began the unexpectedly long task of chewing. It was good, but as Donovan said, it took real work to get it down.

Only a few minutes farther on, they arrived at the redoubt.

The massive steel door was inset in the rock face, sheltered and partially hidden by a low-hanging shelf. Huge boulders and brush around it served to further mask the door's presence.

Judging from the brush and the loose rock in front of the entranceway, it had never been opened. Ryan experienced the familiar excitement thrilling through him when he thought about what might be on the other side of the huge door.

"Been inside?" he asked.

Donovan shook his head. "Only redoubts I've ever seen were blown open or wrecked during a quake. Looted so long ago nothing worth anything was left behind."

Ryan stepped toward the door, wary for any traps that might have been left behind. The Totality Concept staff sometimes left wicked traps behind; other times it was frustrated looters. Satisfied nothing was there, he flipped open the cover on the keypad.

"Keypad's active," Donovan said, "but nobody's ever found a way in."

Ryan punched the proper key sequence. The keypad lights went from red to amber to green. An instant later, the door slid sideways.

"Son of a bitch!" Donovan exclaimed. "How the fuck did you do that?"

"Got lucky." He adjusted the lantern he carried, turning up the illumination. Taking the SIG-Sauer blaster in his free hand, he walked into the redoubt.

Donovan followed him.

THE REDOUBT WAS small compared to many of those Ryan had seen. There were two rooms. One held a mat-trans unit with bright blue armaglass sporting dark green diagonal stripes.

"Is that a gateway?" Donovan asked, pointing at the mat-trans unit.

"What do you know about them?" Ryan asked.

"Read about them in some of the materials at the Foundation. Supposed to transport something or someone from one place to another by a light beam bouncing off a satellite or something. Does it?"

Ryan only gave the man a small smile.

The second room held more promise, turning out to be a small but complete armory. He played the lantern light over the weapons, grinning as he realized J.B. was going to have the time of his life.

"Fuck me!" Donovan exploded, holding his own lantern up and moving closer.

"Ready to go into the pirate-chilling business?" Ryan asked.

"LOVER."

Ryan turned his head tiredly and gazed at Krysty. She was huddled under her blankets, her skin as pale as death. "Yeah."

"I don't remember you coming to bed last night. Mebbe I missed it."

"Didn't get there," Ryan said. He squatted near her, drinking coffee sub from a ceramic mug Donovan had given him.

"What's going on? I thought I heard power tools earlier."

"You did," Ryan assured her. "We've been busy." He gestured out toward the six boats he and J.B. had worked on with volunteers from the dam builders. They'd mounted a .50-caliber machine gun from the redoubt on each boat. The arsenal still contained another six, as well as rifles and handblasters that were being passed out to the Heimdall Foundation people. Ryan had easily let the weapons go, after restocking their own ammo needs, because the companions couldn't take them.

He had, however, locked the redoubt door behind them. The mat-trans unit still offered a back door out of the area—after Krysty was taken care of properly.

Krysty forced herself up to one elbow and surveyed the dock. "What's going on, lover?"

Ryan told her about the agreement to help recover the satellite section from the pirates.

"Shouldn't have done that," Krysty objected, her face going crimson as her hair. "You're trying to take on too much weight to take care of me."

"Has to be done to close the deal."

"That's not much of a deal, lover."

Ryan turned his single eye on the beautiful redhead. "I'd make a deal with the devil himself if I had to."

RYAN RODE WITH Donovan in the lead powerboat, feeling the engines throb through the entire craft and the slap of the river against the hull. Eight other men occupied the boat with them, all of them armed and scanning the river. The early morning sun rose to their right, burning through the thin layer of fog that lay over the water and reduced visibility.

"Reports we've had lately are that Barbarossa has put up a campsite here." Donovan laid a forefinger on the handmade map he held.

The map was well made, and seemed to cover the river's current course, more or less. In the powerboats, the trip back to the river from the cistern took only a couple hours.

On the map, the river cut a lazy S downstream and north of their present position. The pirate base was located on the second hump of the S.

"Are you sure they're still there?" Ryan asked.

"No." Donovan folded the map and put it away. "This is just my best guess."

LITTLE MORE than an hour later, Donovan's information and guess, however, proved correct.

Ryan lay on his belly, his binocs to his eye as he surveyed the pirate camp. J.B. and Donovan lay on either side of him, field glasses to their eyes, as well.

Dean and Jak stayed behind them with three other men that Ryan had designated as the land-based attack team. Doc and Mildred had stayed at the base to care for Krysty. Ryan hadn't liked splitting their forces, but Krysty couldn't make the trip and he wasn't going to leave her there alone.

The pirate base showed none of the semipermanency of the Foundation base. Few tents stood along the riverbank, leaving men sleeping out on the open ground wrapped in thick woolen blankets or in tattered sleeping bags. They clustered around low-burning campfires, few of which showed any signs of being cared for during the night.

"Sleeping deep," J.B. observed.

"Local hootch," Donovan replied. "Got a small ville called Snockers farther downstream that has a potato-whiskey still set up. Most folks working this river find something Snockers can use and trade for the whiskey. Snockers has overland traders set up to trade farther in-country. To them, Barbarossa and his filth are just another customer."

Ryan didn't comment as he raked the binocs across the riverbank. The land tumbled down out of the mountains, remaining rough and broken all the way to the water's edge. It also provided a lot of cover in the form of brush and tall grasses, which Ryan had counted on after studying the shoreline. He'd left their boat a half mile back, cutting across the land and keeping the river in sight to mark their bearings.

More than two dozen water bikes floated in the harbor area the pirates had chosen, tethered by ropes, chains or leather thongs to boats, rocks, trees and small anchors. Nearly four dozen bigger boats, all of them in deteriorating condition, also bobbed in the water. Together, they constituted an impressive armada.

And Ryan's plan called for direct action, his six boats against the numbers before him.

Scanning the boats, Ryan saw that only a few of them had mounted weapons. The machine guns they'd raided from the redoubt held more firepower than most of the pirate craft. The biggest boat in the group was a sixty-foot powerboat that had faded Montana Lake Patrol insignia on it coupled with State Police running along the bow.

The sixty-footer sported a black flag with a white skull and crossbones that looked handmade. It drooped now in the light breeze, hardly unfurled at all. The sixty-footer was the only craft big enough to hold the recovered space-station section, according to Donovan. A tarp covered a lump taller than Ryan and nearly twice a long. The weight caused the sixty-footer to sink lower in the water than she was supposed to.

Ryan couldn't help wondering how the heavy load was going to affect the sixty-footer's performance. Speed remained a big part of their survival plan.

"Got them outgunned when it comes to quality of firepower," J.B. commented quietly.

"But there's no getting around the numbers," Ryan said. "They'll chase us. And with that load—"

"Well," the Armorer said, cleaning his glasses on his shirttail, "that's what we're planning for. If we get enough of a head start, it'll be enough."

"It'll have to be," Ryan said. He looked at Donovan. "Unless you want to back off on this."

The Foundation man shook his head. "This isn't the riskiest thing I've ever done. If we didn't have the blasters, I'd back us off. But that space station piece is too damn important to just go away. And I'll still line our boat pilots up against theirs anytime."

"Guess you're going to be doing just that." Ryan put the binocs away. "Time to get about it." He turned to Jak and Dean and the three men with them. "We go in quiet. No blasters used until they use them first." He eyed the three Foundation men. "You understand me?"

They nodded.

"You pull a blaster before they do, mebbe risk getting the rest of us chilled, I'll punch your ticket for the last train to the coast myself."

"They understand," Donovan said defensively. He'd picked the men in the party himself, vouching for their skill and their nerve.

"I mean what I say," Ryan growled. "Me, Jak and J.B.'ll go first. I count five guards that are up and moving. We'll go in, take care of those. The rest of you get down to the riverbank. Wilcox, you get on that sixty-footer, make sure you can get the engines started when we need them. Otherwise, we're all dead meat. Dean, you're with him. Cover fire. But only after all hell's broke loose."

Dean nodded.

"When we get to the river," Ryan went on, "the rest of you put as many boats out of commission as you can. Quiet. Slash the gas lines, put river mud in the tanks, cut the electrical wires or any other thing that comes to mind. The fewer of them we have chasing us, the better off we're going to be. Don't know how fast that big boat can go, but those water bikes will for damn sure be faster."