Chapter Fifteen

One of two things was going to happen, J.B. thought as he crouched behind a heap of concrete chunks. They were either going to get Ryan back, or they were going to piss off the black-armored people in a real big way. He had easily moved into position in the same general area as the sniper, on the south end of Moonboy's main street. No one had fired on him and he'd seen no sign of antipersonnel trip wires.
Down the road, five people in black were hard at work on the missile. They had unscrewed panels along the sides of the nose cone and hooked up cables that connected it to what had to be a launch-control computer across the street. They were getting the white-and-red bird ready to fly.
Where and for what purpose, J.B. didn't have a clue. Furthermore, he didn't care. He knew the target, if there was one, couldn't amount to much. Deathlands had nothing left worth nuking.
In drawing up his spur-of-the-moment attack plan, he had assumed that the black armor that shielded both the people and then- aircraft provided an impenetrable defense against blaster slugs. The cannie sniper might have been the lousiest shot this side of the Shens, but Ryan's skill was triple wicked. And he hadn't been able to do any damage to the aircraft. J.B. had reasoned that if the people in black and their black plane couldn't be hurt by blasterfire, perhaps the white rocket could. This unproved weakness was the basis of his strategy. That and the fact that the missile was plenty valuable. A lot more valuable than Ryan.
J.B. figured they could encourage the bastards to make a trade for Ryan by threatening to ventilate the rocket with bullet holes. In the back of his mind he knew he was grasping at straws, but time was running out, and nobody else had come up with anything better.
The key to running a bluff like that was in making sure the enemy believed you were willing to die in order to win. The Trader had taught him that. He'd also taught him that once you got your edge, once you had the enemy rocked back on their heels, you had to push that advantage to the wall, until the bastards were chilled or otherwise knocked out of the fight.
Sometimes going in like a bunch of crazies was the only way to win.
Sometimes it was just suicide.
None of their short-barreled weapons were particularly accurate past one hundred yards. But the missile was big, and they didn't care where they hit it. Before they had split up to take their attack positions, he had told the others, "If they give us any shit after the shooting starts, aim for the bottom stage of the missile. That's where most of the fuel is. Bastards have to think we're ready to blow them back to where they came from."
J.B. had no idea if Ryan was even still aliveand if he was alive, if there was any way to bring him safely back from wherever he'd been taken. It occurred to him that perhaps this was already a lost cause, that in the great scheme of things there was some other field of battle that John Barrymore Dix was scheduled to die on.
The Armorer looked around. This battleground was as good as any, he decided. Flat. Dry. Lots of broken cover. Still plenty of daylight left. And the cause? Friendship. Rescue. Revenge. Success was well worth a seat on the last train west, if that was what it came to.
When he had given the others enough time to get into position, he checked his Uzi, drawing back the charging lever just far enough to catch the glint of brass that indicated a live round in the chamber. Then he cleared out his mind and let his anger build.
Rage was good.
He drew a deep breath, cupped his hand to his mouth and shouted over to Main Street.
"Hey!" he cried. "Hey, assholes!"

SHORT OF THE SPRAWLING profusion of Moonboy's shacks and lean-tos, Krysty paused and crouched behind a chunk of sloping cinder-block wall, her Smith amp; Wesson revolver in her hand. A step or two back, Mildred dropped to one knee, looking for targets over the barrel of her Czech-built .38.
Twenty yards from the outskirts of the ville proper, the unmistakable scent of death hung heavy in the air. Both of the women had toured the aftermath of massacres before.
They shared a look, steeling themselves for what they expected to find.
Krysty broke from cover, running low and quick to the edge of the ramshackle structures. Doors were a luxury here. The residents used sheets of plastic to cover the entrances or did without. Floors, other than tamped dirt, were a rarity. She looked inside a shack. The reek of death was mixed with something else, a smell so sharp that it made Krysty's throat clamp shut.
There was no tangle of bodies on the ground, only a wide brown patch where some liquid had dried on the dirt. Along one wall was a low shelf made of scavenged brick and a narrow piece of sheet metal. On it sat three crudely fashioned straw dolls, a couple of badly chipped enamel pots, a broken piece of yardstick and a tin measuring cup.
Mildred looked over her shoulder, first at the meager belongings, then at the dark patch. "The foam they used on the cannie," she said softly. "They must've used the same thing on these people after they chilled them. To tidy things up."
"Let's go, Mildred," Krysty said as she pushed on, turning down a well-worn path. She wasn't looking for signs of life, but she couldn't even find signs of death, except for the cloying funk in the air and the earth that seemed to be stained on every side.
As she worked her way down the lane that twisted between the deserted shacks, Krysty avoided stepping on the patches. Though her brain told her what Mildred said had to be true, it was hard for her to believe that all the stains had once been people. Hard for her to believe that in death so many had been so easily disposed of. Even though this had been a pure norm ville, even though these townsfolk would have strung her up from the nearest lamp pole if they had been alive, Krysty felt pity for them. As they approached a firing position that would give them the entire one-hundred-foot broadside of the missile for a target, Krysty saw something on the path that made her stop short. She dropped to one knee so Mildred could see what lay ahead.
Not all the corpses had been liquefied.
In the middle of the lane was a scatter of chunked body parts. Krysty had never seen such systematic destruction of human beings. She and Mildred counted the boots; it was the only way they could even guess how many people had died there.
Six bootsfour large, two smallequalled three people who had been chopped to bits, yet there was no blood to be seen.
"Either these cannies were hacked up someplace else and dumped here, or this is a spot we don't want to spend much time in," Mildred said.
"Mebbe we'd better go around," Krysty agreed.
She took one step off the track and the rattraps snapped. Dirt-colored spheres jumped into the air and started to spin.
Krysty knew what they were. In that split second, she knew.
No.
The negation was more than a thought. Connected instantly, instinctively to her mutie Gaia power source, it was a tangible and awesome force.
Before the laser mines could fire, Krysty's body unleashed a blast wave of pure energy in all directions. It slammed Mildred to the earth and it tipped the spheres out of synchronization. Laser beams discharged according to their program, but they weren't reflected; they shot off into space or sizzled into the ground. Their cat's cradle broken, in less than two seconds the spheres dropped back to earth.
Krysty was so drained by the sudden all-out effort that she could barely breathe. Her skin was on fire, her heart laboring. She staggered back, fighting to maintain her balance, but her legs were failing and darkness was closing in at the edges of her vision. She couldn't let herself pass out. She had to help Mildred get to her feet. They had to fulfill their part of the plan to save Ryan.
But it wasn't to be.
Close to death, she collapsed in a heap beside her friend.

AT THE NORTH END of Moonboy, Doc, Dean and Jak stood side by side behind the cover of a partially collapsed porch. They had their handblasters drawn and faced the aft end of the ballistic missile and the backsides of the four figures in black.
"You realize, lads," Doc said in a near whisper, "that if we do manage to perforate the hide of that vile projectile, the resulting conflagration could consume everything within this canyon's walls. Which would surely buy us all passage on Charon's barge."
Jak and Dean just stared at him.
"Styx, lads, the River of No Return. Across which the son of Erebus ferries every child born of woman. You must've heard of it."
"Sure, Doc," Dean said, humoring him.
The teenager frowned. "No river here. Chill time, Doc. Blaster up."
"What?" Tanner said. "Blaster what?"
"Up." Jak used the ramp sight of his Colt Python to raise the muzzle of the old man's pistol. "Keep blaster up."
"Oh, yes, up. Up. Yes, indeed. You are suggesting that I hold a particularly high point of aim, considering the precipitous drop that my .44 will take after fifty yards. A loss of not only altitude but of a good deal of penetration power."
The teen nodded.
"My dear Jak, what a glorious team you and I make," Doc said as he took aim well above the missile. "The incoherent matched with the incomprehensible."
At the sound of J.B.'s shouted obscenity, Doc, Dean and Jak thumbed back their pistols' hammers and steadied their aims.
As he straight-armed four pounds of blue steel, Doc said, "Anyway, past a dozen paces I am afraid these tired old eyes of mine will betray me. Even with your sage advice, I shall be blessed if one of my pistol balls comes within a yard of the target at this distance."
"Shoot straight, Doc," Dean said firmly, "for Dad."
"Fear not, my boy. I have the goal well in mind. And even if my shots fall wide, you can be sure that nine bellows of this hoary old cannon will add considerably to the general tumult and confusion."

HIS CHALLENGE ISSUED, J.B. opened fire with the Uzi, raking the street with a short full-auto burst. The slugs raised puffs of dirt all around the standing figures, but landed well away from the missile, as he intended.
He'd gotten their attention.
The black-armored quartet stopped what they were doing and turned toward him.
"We want our man back," J.B. shouted as the clattering echoes faded away. "Give him back to us safe and we'll leave. Otherwise, that missile is going to get shot up real good."
"That would be a big mistake," said a metallic, amplified voice. "We mean you no harm."
J.B. couldn't tell which of the figures was speaking, but it didn't much matter. He didn't intend to get into a debate. The speaker had just told him what he wanted to know, that the rocket was vulnerable to gunshot damage. It was time to push things to the wall.
"You got to the count of ten," he shouted across the rubble field, "or I'm going to write my name along the side of your rocket with blaster slugs. I got a nice long name, too. You'll want to remember it on your trip to hell. It's John Barrymore Dix."
"Mr. Dix," came the response, "your demand is impossible. We can't possibly produce your friend that quickly. You've got to give us time to work out the details."
"How long?" he called back. "Until daybreak."
The black-armored folk shifted position on the street, not far, but it was the move J.B. had been watching for. It told him they weren't going to deal Ryan for the missile. The question was, could his threat keep them from going for their blasters? There was only one way to find out.
"Ten!" he cried. "Nine! Eight! Seven!" On the count of five, the black-armored folk dropped the pretense and lunged for their weapons. "Shit!" J.B. said, rising above the heap of rubble, pinning the Uzi's trigger and spraying the area down-range with a line of 9 mm slugs.
Before he could walk the autofire to the missile, a green light winked at him from downtown Moonboy. In the same instant, a big chunk of concrete on the pile in front of him exploded like a gren. The thunder-crack shock wave made half his face go numb. As he hunkered back down, three more blocks of concrete on the heap blew up, sending rock shrapnel flying.
J.B.'s bluff had been called, and it didn't take a whitecoat to figure he and the others were overmatched. None of them could help Ryan if they were chilled. The only thing left for them to do was retreat. If they still could.
As J.B. turned to run, he felt the wetness sliding down the side of his neck.