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pushed out from under the tank at once, and found Hun and Poet standing in the
shadows with grim expressions on their faces.
"What's going on?" Ryan asked them as he straightened. "The whole damned
convoy just drove by," Poet said. "Looks like they're on their way out of the
ville."
"I stuck my head out the door when no one was watching and got a real good
look at some of them," Hun said. "It was our wags, all right. And they were
all running light, too. Way up high on their suspensions, like their cargoes
had been unloaded."
"Fireblast!" Ryan swore.
"We're in a world of hurt now," Poet said, shaking his head.
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"We can't hostage the refinery for the wags if they're gone who knows where."
"Zeal might be selling them off," Hun suggested. "There're lots of barons
who'd pay large for something like the MGP. Baron could already have his
buyers lined up."
"We've got to go after them," Ryan said.
"Yeah!" Hun said. "Chase and chill."
Poet frowned. "We've got to figure they're gonna have a good lead on us. The
shift doesn't change for a while yet."
"Don't worry," Ryan told him, "whatever time we lose, we'll damned well make
it up on the road."
The next half hour was one of the hardest in Ryan's life.
Like his companions, he had to just sit there, waiting for the time to wind
down so he could get out of the plant. This, while every fiber in his body
screamed for him to haul out the
Blackhawk, blast his way free and catch the convoy before it left
Virtue Lake. The reason he didn't was simple. He could see the value of having
the refinery secretly mined. Even if they couldn't use the explosives the way
they'd planned, and there was still a chance that they might, he could foresee
a time when the mines could be useful. For payback, if nothing else. Ryan knew
he couldn't shoot his way clear because that would've given away the fact that
they had been inside, messing around.
It was harder still for Ryan to hang back and let a good third of the workers
file out before he and the others slipped into the largest part of the exiting
mob.
"I'm driving," Ryan said as he trotted up behind the commandeered sec wag.
Hun was already at the trunk, popping the lid and pulling out the
longblasters. Tossing her 10-gauge side-by-side into the back seat, she
quickly passed the other two weapons through the front passenger's window to
Poet. Laying his CAR-15 across his lap, he leaned the scoped Remington muzzle
up between the front seats.
Ryan started the engine with a roar.
Before Hun got the rear door shut, Ryan stomped the gas pedal and the wag
peeled away from the curb.
"Where're you going?" Hun said.
"We've got to get the crew out of jail," Ryan said, steering out of a wild
sideways skid. "We might not be back this way."
"You're right," Poet told him. "We've got to try to free them now. We're not
going to get a better chance."
Finally able to take some aggressive action, Ryan ripped a page out of Hun's
driving manual, pushing the wag to the limit, smoking the tires around
corners; on the straightaways, he highballed it, engine howling for mercy.
As the prison came into view over the low rise ahead, Ryan could see the
jailers scattered around the site. Two of them were taking turns jabbing long
sticks down into the second row of cells long sticks with sharp metal points.
Two other jailers were leaning against the hut; it looked like they were
resting. The fifth was nowhere in sight.
Without hesitation, and without slowing, Ryan veered the wag toward the pair
doing the poking. It crashed over the curb, went airborne and came down hard
on the unfenced border of the prison grounds, thirty feet away.
The two jailers looked up from their fun, astonished to see the sec wag leave
the road and roar straight for them. When Ryan drove over the first row of
cells, the wag was traveling better than sixty miles per hour. Tires juddered
on the bars for no more than an instant before they were on top of the second
row.
Ryan aimed for the jailer on the left. The guy was too panicked to even try to
run. The wag caught him dead amidships. With a crack, the poking pole snapped
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off against the bumper; with an almost simultaneous thud, the jailer hit the
grille, then bounced sprawling over the hood. His head rammed through the
glassless windshield, his face contorted in agony. For a second, the guy's
nose was practically in Poet's lap. Then the war captain reared back with one
foot and, before the man could even start to bleed, booted him onto the hood.
As he did so, Ryan raised his Ruger. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]