Remember Tomorrow (25 page)

“Oh yeah, he’s one of Malloy’s all right. And a wild one last time he was here,” Hammick added with a grin.

“Good,” Grant said decisively. “Then we have something we can use to persuade him that there are a few—shall we say—unimportant points to his story. Wouldn’t you agree? After all, we can’t have Xander sidetracked by a legend and soft-pedalling at the expense of our reputation for coming down hard.”

Hammick thought about this. “You’re right. Come and talk to this rider for me, Grant.”

“It’ll be a pleasure,” Grant concurred.

And so, when the outrider from Malloy’s convoy got to retell his story for the fourth time, standing in front of an amused Xander, there were certain elements that he omitted.

Xander waved him away when he had finished and Hammick handed him over to a sec guard on the door.

“Take him away and get him out of his tiny little mind until this is all over,” he murmured to the sec guard, knowing that the biker would be the last to object to such a course of action.

Walking back to where Grant was conferring with Xander, he caught the end of their conversation.

“I think we should allow them in as far as the wag station, and then surround them.”

“Why let them get that far?” Xander countered. “Our first post could knock them out, with no danger to surrounding buildings. Think how much jack they could take to rebuild.”

“I understand your point, Baron, but I would argue thus. With a wider expanse of land in which to make good an escape and with only the outer post forces against them, they could elude complete destruction. How would this seem to Malloy? One show of weakness and word will soon spread. This could be the first crack in what has otherwise been an impeccable reputation.”

“But what if these outlanders they have with them increase their efficiency and firepower? How would that look?”

Grant gave Hammick the briefest of glances before continuing. “You heard the messenger, Baron. These outlanders are probably wounded, tired and being forced against their will. I can’t see that they would be much of a threat, can you? This way, we draw them into a safe, enclosed space and then wipe them out in front of Malloy and his crew. Thus we negate the threat from the inbreeds and also hammer home a message to any who would seek to come up against us.”

Hammick looked from one to the other while Xander pondered that. Making the biker leave out any reference to a one-eyed man made it that much easier for Grant to persuade Xander that his tactical plan was the best. But as sec chief, Hammick would feel the baron’s wrath if things went wrong. He hoped to hell that Grant was making the right call.

Finally, Xander looked up, his eyes going from Hammick to Grant, and he nodded. “Okay, let’s do it your way. Alert the sec force and get the armory onto this.”

J.B.
AND
O
LLY HAD FINISHED
priming the blaster section of the armory when the call came. J.B. was explaining the action of a Weatherby rifle to the younger man, outlining optimum use, when Esquivel found them.

“Yo, J.B., dude, there’s something big going down. This is where we get to see some action.” With which he gestured for the two men to follow.

J.B. raised an inquisitory eyebrow at Olly; the Armorer had been enjoying himself, having not seen a Weatherby—as far as he could recall—for many years. Olly responded immediately.

“Xander likes us to reequip the sec depending on what the task is, and he also likes us to be on hand when there’s a firefight—kind of like we should be there in case something fucks up with the ordnance, kind of that any armorer worth his jack should be able to hold his own in a firefight.” The young man tapered off, but J.B. knew what was unspoken: if he really was the J. B. Dix that Xander spoke of, then he should be a good fighter.

Weird thing was, he really didn’t know what he was like in combat, but he guessed he was about to find out.

The two men hurried down to the lobby of the armory building. As they did so, J.B. queried, “All three of us going?”

Olly shook his head. “Not dad. Xander thinks he’s too old now. And mebbe he’s right—Dad makes a lot of noise about it, but I figure he’s slowing up a bit.”

“Mebbe that’s why he’s not happy about me coming in,” J.B. mused, broaching the unspoken subject. A sharp look from Olly prompted him to continue. “Listen, he knows this armory better than any man. No matter what Xander says, you or me couldn’t do the job without his advice.”

“Mebbe you should tell him that,” Olly murmured in an undertone as they arrived in the packed lobby.

“If he gives me a chance to say more than two words, I will,” J.B. replied.

The lobby was already filling up with uniformed sec. A force of about twenty was being deployed in the action. Some of them J.B. recognized, but others were strangers to him. He saw Esquivel work his way through, the sec man detailed to him being looser of limb and gait than any of the others.

“What’s happening, Es?” Olly asked.

“Some weird shit thing, far as I can make out. Something and nothing, but Xander’s turning it into a show of strength. Guess that thing with Simms rattled him.”

Olly looked blank, but J.B. understood. He murmured, “Any baron who gets screwed over has to clamp down hard, show anyone else with ideas that they’re on a one-way ticket to the farm. First opportunity they get.”

“Heads up, guys—it’s my boss,” Esquivel muttered, indicating Hammick as he came through the main doors.

A hush fell over the assembled throng and for the next ten minutes the sec chief proceeded to outline what the outrider sent in by Malloy had told him and what Grant and Xander had decided as a course of action; except that he sold the course of action as his own and said nothing about a one-eyed man in the opposition wag.

The notion that they would let the convoy, with the rogue wag in tow, into the ville caused a ripple of bemusement. But when Hammick told them it was a chance to make a show of authority to let the traders know who they could rely upon, Olly looked across at J.B. with a wry grin and a slow nod. The lad was learning some important lessons, ones that would mean a lot if he did eventually become armorer of Duma.

J.B.’s attention strayed for a second as he realized that thinking in such terms meant that he had the notion to move on, though how he could escape from a shelter that may turn into a prison was something he’d have to consider when there was time.

Right now, there was none. Hammick snapped positional tactics and orders at groups of the uniformed men and told J.B. and Olly the kinds of extra ordnance he wanted doled out. The AK-47s the sec carried as standard were fine for everyday use and show, but in order to neutralize this threat with prejudice he wanted them equipped with SMGs and grens, as well as several of the M-16/M-203 combos that J.B. had noted earlier in one of the blaster racks.

The gren launcher section of the combo needed handling with care, and from what Olly had told him, they were rarely used. There could be some interesting—not to mention dangerous—fireworks if the heavy-duty blasters were put in the hands of sec men who had little or no training in how to use them. He exchanged a questioning glance with Olly, who shrugged.

Nothing for it but to hope that these guys had been trained. Not so reassuring when you were in the firing line, though. As Hammick outlined the plan of attack, once they had cornered the wag and isolated it from the rest of the convoy, it became clear that J.B. and Olly would be almost in the front line, providing ordnance support and fighting.

Dismissing his men to get equipped and into position—current reports gave them half an hour until arrival, as an outlying sec post had sighted the convoy—Hammick left them in charge of Olly and J.B.

Making sure that the SMGs and M-16/M-203s went out with full checks and good supplies of ammo kept J.B. busy, while Olly dealt with the distribution of grens both for hand use, and also for use with the combo. It wasn’t until they were on their way to the wag park being used for ambush that J.B. had a chance to question Olly and Esquivel about the rogue wag.

“No one knows that much about this bunch of inbreeds, just that they’ve been out there since the nukecaust and they’ve never really bothered us before. They like to keep themselves to themselves, if you know what I’m saying,” Olly told him.

“Nasty fuckers, though,” Esquivel added. “You hang out with trade crews, you get to hear shit. They’ve been scavenging for years, mebbe trying to snatch the odd wag here and there. Sometimes they succeed. No one ever sees those crews again…I don’t even want to think about it.”

“So why are they still there?” J.B. asked.

Esquivel shrugged. “Are they a threat to Xander if they do that? No, they’re only a threat to the traders, and even then only if the traders’ own sec are shit. They don’t come near us, we don’t waste time and jack on running them down. Except now they have—”

“Thing is,” Olly interjected, “why are they doing this now, when they’ve had all that time and never tried anything like it?”

“That, my friend, is a very good question. One that Xander would do well to ask of Hammick,” Esquivel said softly. “But somehow, I don’t think he has.”

“So we’d better watch ourselves,” J.B. said to the young armorer. “They don’t sound like they’d get this brave unless they had some new trick in their own armory.”

It became difficult to continue the conversation, as they arrived at the wag park and took up positions. Any words overheard that criticized the baron could cause them problems. The time for addressing these issues would be later.

Now they could only wait for the convoy to arrive.

B
OSS
B
UCKLEY CACKLED
with glee as the convoy swept unopposed through the roadblocks leading into Duma.

“Shit, if I’s a’ever thought that they was this stupe, we’s had ourselves a little raid like this years ago.”

The crew in front and back of the wag yelped and cheered, agreeing with the chief. Only Mildred and Jak were dissenting voices, notable in their grim-faced silence. In front, eye glued to the wags ahead, Ryan could do little but concur with the silence of his fellows. This was too easy. The convoy had swept through without any routine checks. That couldn’t be right, not if Duma was anything like the way it was represented.

“Keep it frosty,” the one-eyed man advised Buckley. “We don’t want to get caught off guard.”

“The hell we will.” Buckley cackled, his face lit by the menacing leer that passed for a grin. “We’s home free, Ryan boy. All we have to do is come out blasting.”

In the chief’s insane world, the Duma sec were un-suspecting idiots who would fail to respond when the small war party came out firing, allowing them to take what they wanted and drive out unopposed.

Somehow, Ryan didn’t think it would go that way. It was too easy. The convoy had swept along the blacktop, past the sec checkpoints, and was now approaching a designated area, marked out by wire fencing and strong lights. There was one on each side of the road, which bisected the ville. The one on the right was full of wags. The one on the left was virtually empty and those few wags that were parked in there were around the edges.

Ryan felt a familiar tightening in the pit of his stomach, his guts knotting and telling him that something was wrong here. He glanced over his shoulder at Jak and Mildred. They couldn’t see the wag park from the rear, but both looked tense. As Ryan’s ice-blue orb met Jak’s glittering red eyes, an unspoken understanding passed between them.

It was a setup. Mebbe the sentries had known, recognizing the wag as not belonging to a convoy they knew well. Certainly, the convoy itself had to have realized it had an extra wag, but how could they…Of course, the outriders. One could have gone on ahead.

All this went through Ryan’s head in a moment, but ultimately, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they were being drawn into a trap and of the war party, there were only three of them that understood that. It was up to them to not only get themselves out of it, but also the Nagasaki dwellers. Otherwise there would be little chance of recovering Krysty and Doc.

The convoy rolled into the wag park, the vehicles peeling off to take up positions that were more redolent of attack than of simply stopping. Watching the wags stop, encircling the rogue vehicle, made even Buckley wake up to the fact that something was wrong.

“What the fuck—” he began, bewildered.

Ryan cut him short. “Shut up and listen. They’re on to us. If we’re going to get out with one piece, you listen to me and do what I say. Okay? Fireblast, man, answer me!”

But Buckley was lost, fear creeping over his face as he looked out of the windshield. The other Nagasaki dwellers had picked up on his uncertainty, and were either gibbering or lost in their own silent fears.

Ryan shifted in his seat to face Mildred and Jak. “They know we’re here. They’ve got us surrounded. We’re going to have to blast our way out.”

“Y’know, sometimes I think the rocking chair and the back porch aren’t bad things to aspire to,” Mildred said quietly, almost to herself. Ryan gave her a puzzled look. “Skip it,” she said shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter—mebbe I’ll explain some time—if we get out in one piece. Just tell us what the plan is, boss man.”

S
ILENCE
. N
OTHING HAPPENING
. The sec forces had taken up position around the perimeter of the wag park, using strategically placed wags for cover. Keeping silent, they had waited for Malloy’s convoy to enter the park and circle before peeling off to take up its own defensive positions, leaving the rogue wag isolated.