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"Yeah?"
"You see them?"
"Sure. Nightscope on the gren-launcher works real well. It's like Hun says."
"Slow it down to a walk. See any other sec-men, away from the block?"
"No."
"Fine. Stop around one-fifty yards, Hun. Wipe them away, J.B. Hardest with the
mostest."
Ryan knew that the Trader was deadly serious. The forward gren-launcher also
fired a small rocket. They only had three of them left, and to consider using
one on a piss-ant roadblock showed that the Trader wasn't going to mess
around.
The war wag jerked to a stop. The sec-men ahead of them had fired half a dozen
ranging rounds that pinged off the armor. J.B. was working the
cross-calibrated comp-sight, whistling softly under his breath.
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Nobody spoke.
"Ready. Sure you want to use this big baby on six sec-men, Trader?"
"Do it."
The blaster absorbed the detonation, and there was only the faintest noise
inside War Wag One. At such short range, the impact was almost simultaneous.
"Got 'em!" Hun yelled. "Triple ace on the line, J.B.!"
They rolled forward, slowing past the blazing trucks. The ragged remains of
five corpses lay crumpled on the ground. A sixth man, terribly burned, was
still making feeble movements. Everyone on the port side of the war wag could
see him clearly.
"July."
"Yeah, Trader?"
"Chill him."
Despite their strict discipline, the crop-headed blonde still queried the
order.
"Chill him?"
"You getting deaf, or stupid? You chill him or move the fuck out and let
someone else pull down on the trigger."
"He's near dead, that's all."
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"Near deadhe might still use a talkie back to the ville. Do it."
The light machine gun spoke in a brief burst of a dozen bullets.
"Chilled, Trader," July reported, her voice carefully unemotional.
"Now we know the bridge is safe. Hun."
"Yeah?"
"Turn her around."
"South?"
"You got it."
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Ryan hesitated, then asked the unnecessary question. "We're going back to the
ville?"
The Trader smiled like a starving wolf. "Yeah, Ryan. We're going back."
Chapter Thirty-Four
A HALF MILE from Towse, the Trader ordered Hun to pull off the snaking
blacktop. All driving lights on both war wags had long been extinguished, and
they'd been making cautious progress by the light of the moon.
The ville was just out of sight in a shallow decline in the land.
Ryan was stunned by the Trader's instinctive flair for combat strategy. To
actually return now, barely an hour since they fled the treacherous attack,
would be the last thing that Baron Alias Carson would be expecting.
The orders snapped outwho would be in command of War Wag One and who would be
responsible for
Two; who looked after the wounded and how many men and women would stay; what
sentry pattern they would run; who'd check out both wags for any unsuspected
damage; ammo count and blaster service, and what their strategy would be when
they reached Towse.
One thing that Ryan had spotted as they rumbled southward was a number of
shadowy figures moving down onto the plain from the foothills of the Sangre de
Cristo. Scattered groups on horseback headed in a looping curve toward Towse.
"Apaches," he told the Trader. "Must scent the ville's in trouble, and they're
coming out of the mountains to see what they can scavenge."
The Trader nodded. "They wait a short while, and they might get themselves the
best pickings they ever imagined."
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The attack plan was simple. The Trader drew a big circle on a rough padthree
arrows, one at the back J. B.
Dix and a small group. Second arrow on the right flank, the Trader with the
main attack. The third arrow was going directly in the front, to the heart of
the defensive complex.
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