Desolation Crossing (11 page)

Now, instead of running a course that would see them hit the road ahead of the convoy, they had been diverted into one that saw them running parallel to the highway, the bikes running interference between them. The seven wags were currently devoting their attention to the bikes, SMG fire raking the ground around the weaving path of both Jak and Ryan. The riders had avoided being hit thus far, but in truth it was only a matter of time before probability dictated such a hit.

The good thing for the convoy was that fire was being taken away from them. Without their attention being taken up by the need to respond, it gave J.B. vital seconds to plan and act, rather than being forced to react.

“Cody, Doc, listen carefully,” J.B. said in calm and measured tones that were far from reflecting how he felt. “We can’t talk to the bikes, and they can’t talk to us. I want to avoid hitting them. But the truth is that we can’t tell what Jak and Ryan are going to do. They’re keeping the wags from firing on us, but that won’t last long. We’ve got SMG capability, and we’re going to use that and not the rocket launchers. I want each of you to pick a target area and stick
to it. Don’t try to follow the wags, just aim at those that come in a hundred-degree angle. Make that the firing area.”

“Okay, you’re the boss…” Cody’s voice was strained. The convoy rider was having trouble grasping J.B.’s concerns—it figured, as the bike riders weren’t his people, and he would have just blasted the hell out of anything in his field of vision. Would he do that anyway? J.B. hadn’t had the time to form an opinion; he could only hope.

Doc’s voice, when it came, was far more reassuring. “My dear boy, I completely agree. Spare the rod and pass the ammo, I say.”

A fleeting grin crossed the Armorer’s face. He had no idea what the hell Doc was talking about—much like usual—but he knew that he could rely on the old man.

“Okay. Pick your targets and fire at will,” J.B. commanded crisply.

There was no further dialogue between the convoy wags. J.B. settled in behind the SMG post to fire at the attacking wags, and knew that his order had been successfully understood by Cody when a burst that could only have come from the second-in-line wag ripped into a clearing space between Ryan and Jak, hitting home and causing one of the attack wags to spin off course, a plume of smoke rising from a gas tank that had caught fire. The wag veered erratically away from its companions, the crew jumping to avoid being consumed by a fire that spread rapidly. Their flight was in vain. At the speed they were going, it was likely that bones would crack and internal organs tear on impact. That was assuming they could escape the blast that ripped the wag apart. The gas tank caught fully and exploded, triggering a chain reaction in the ordnance they
carried. The sound of the explosion was loud enough even to be heard above the steady roar of the convoy engines, sounding a second after the flash of the explosion assailed their eyes.

“Good shooting, Cody,” J.B. said into his mic, wanting to keep the man sharp and on his side with due praise.

As he spoke, he took aim for a wag that had come into his field of vision. It drew level with the LaGuerre’s armored wag, then used its lighter weight and comparatively stronger horsepower to pull ahead, starting to alter course, so that it was moving out of parallel and into an orbit that would take it in front of them. Jak and Ryan were farther back, engaged in weaving between the five wags that still moved straight.

“Nice try, but no way,” the Armorer murmured to himself. He admired the boldness of the move, figuring that it was probably how he would play it under such circumstances. Which was exactly why he knew it needed to be snuffed out before it became a threat.

Pulling clear of the melee at their rear, the attack wag crew knew that they were opening themselves up to attack, which was why they laid down some fire of their own. Chattering SMG fire was echoed by the dull clanging of the shells hitting the armorplate of LaGuerre’s wag. If they thought such ordnance would have an effect on the wag, they were soon disabused of the notion. J.B. knew it was now time to see what else they carried with them. If it was heavy and could cause damage, then he didn’t want to see it. So he had to act swiftly.

The attack wag was pulling forward and across, making any angle of fire from the leading wag more and more difficult to attain with accuracy. If they could pull out and come straight on to LaGuerre’s wag, they would hit a blind
spot. There was a cannon mounted for firing ahead, but the Armorer knew from its design that it was a long-distance weapon. Sighting it for close in firing would be difficult if not impossible. Further, if the attack wag was heavily armed, then blowing the bastard out of the road could lead to damage from the blast.

The narrow window of time that he had available to him was closing rapidly. J.B. switched to the rocket launcher, using the sighting device to try to get a closer look at the wag. It was far from perfect—the imaging was intended for heat-seeking and so it was like trying to unscramble a diffused, negative picture. There was a mounted SMG, and something else that looked like an adapted gren launcher…maybe a mortar of some kind. Whatever it was, it was a piece of hardware that could do them some damage if the men in the wag decided to use it.

He couldn’t give them the opportunity. They were pulling ahead quickly, their wag engine obviously tuned to a finer degree than many J.B. had seen. The heavy trader’s wag was fast, but the attack vehicle was lighter in construction and carrying much less weight.

The Armorer’s mind raced as he made the mental calculation to allow for that. He had to get this shot right. The sighting equipment was for heat-seeking, but he didn’t want to rely on it and then find it wasn’t in full working order. He’d do it by eye alone. He trusted himself, if nothing else.

It had to be now. J.B. fired the rocket and heard the whoop of the watching trader even before he registered that he had hit the wag. A blinding flash, followed by a dull crump that registered above the noise of the armored wag’s engine told him that he had succeeded. This was
followed by a shock wave that made the wag veer momentarily from its path before the impassive Zarir righted the course, almost as though he hadn’t even noticed the deviation.

Dark night, that wag had been carrying some serious shit to cause a wave like that, J.B. thought. So was that just a primary attack vehicle, or did the remaining five have a similar ordnance? It was unlikely. The other wags that had blown had been fired with less power.

“Excellent shot, my dear John Barrymore—” Doc’s voice broke his reverie “—but may I suggest that we attend to the remaining vehicles. I fear our friends are running out of time.”

J.B. turned his attention to the battle that was running parallel. The bikes were still weaving, but as they got closer to the five wags, their attempts to draw them out and apart seemed to be doing the opposite. The lines proscribed by their paths seemed to do little more than ensnare them, the dirt around their wheels pocked by blasterfire that came closer and closer to taking them out.

So while it was imperative that the convoy take out the wags first, the very proximity of the bikes made this a harder task than at any other point.

“Doc, Cody, we’ve got no choices here. Keep firing like before, but keep the blasts tight. Short bursts only, and be triple careful.”

“Shit, man. If the wags blow, then they could blast those guys off the bikes,” Cody stated.

“I know,” J.B. said tautly, “but we’ve got no other option. They’re being drawn in too close.”

“It is as Ryan would want it. Young Jak, too,” Doc said
calmly. J.B. knew Doc was right, and he was glad that the old man would voice such an opinion to back him up.

More than that, Doc fired a short burst, the tracer of which was dangerously close to taking off the top of Jak’s head. Yet while nearly chilling him, it also saved his life, for it hit home on the torso of a skinny, toothless attacker who was standing behind his mounted SMG in a semicrouch, laughing maniacally as he tried to swing the long barrel around to bring it to bear on the albino. It was a laugh cut short as the blast from Doc’s SMG sparked off the stanchion of the mounting, arcing across the wag and strafing ragged red holes in his flesh, leaving little more than his splintered spine to hold him together as he flopped over the wildly swinging SMG.

Jak didn’t see the result of the shot: instead, with the finely honed instinct of a hunter sensing a weakness in his prey, he pulled away a fraction, using just the one hand to guide the bike while the other leveled the Colt Python at the head of the wag driver. Through the dirt that smeared and streaked his goggles, Jak could see clearly enough the look of surprise and shock on the man’s face as he turned to stare down the barrel of the Magnum blaster. He was slack-jawed, but was reduced to no jaw at all as Jak fired, the heavy slug taking away the lower half of his face and a chunk out of his shoulder.

The albino youth had to adjust the bike to the bite of the blaster as it kicked back at him. His attention was diverted, the need to focus on keeping the bike upright meaning that he missed the aftermath of his action. Veering wildly as the chilled driver’s grip loosed on one side marginally before the other—the result of losing most of his shoulder joint from the Python slug—the wag careened
into the side of a wag that was pulling ahead. Catching the rear end, it caused the second wag to go into a spin. As it spun, it clipped the underneath of the first wag, which had tilted up into a flip at the impact.

The wags became entangled as the underneath of each chassis became exposed. The occupants—those who had not bought the farm—found themselves being thrown from the wag and onto hard, unyielding and unforgiving earth. The lucky ones were knocked unconscious. Those who were not so lucky were conscious as the divergent directions of the two wags acted upon each other, the stresses of the opposing forces being too much for the metal to take, rending the bodies of the wags, sparking into fuel tanks that had been ruptured.

The two wags became a spreading ball of fire that engulfed those beneath, those thrown yards away and the land between. Jak threw his bike into a turn that took it away from the fireball, throttle opening wide to outrun the wave of heat and fire that threatened to engulf him. He could feel it at his back, feel the metal beneath him heating up. The front wheel of the bike bucked up under him as he gave it all the power he could.

Somehow—and he wasn’t sure how—the dirt beneath him hit a harder, denser packed patch, allowing his tires to grip as the front wheel hit a surface again. The bike picked up speed and he felt the heat recede at his back.

“BY THE THREE K ENNEDYS, the lad’s a marvel,” Doc breathed as he watched Jak escape by something less than the skin of his teeth. Doc had been convinced that the albino was chilled meat, even given his remarkable skills.
“Truly, whatever may govern this universe is looking down upon him on this day.”

“Doc, honey, stop yakking and fire the fucking thing,” Ramona yelled from the driver’s seat.

Doc allowed himself the most indulgent of grins. “Of course, my dear, you are quite correct.” He fired off a couple of carefully aimed bursts before adding, “The lad is a marvel because he has made it easier for us as much as for his own exploits.”

Doc was right. J.B. was thinking the same thing, and he nodded to himself as he heard Doc’s voice on the comm receiver. The two wags crashing together had left just the three to contend with. Further, the way in which they had collided and then blown had caused the remaining vehicles to scatter, breaking formation to escape the worst of the fireball. The enemy scattered, separated and was much easier to pick off. It was almost a bonus that Ryan and Jak were now distanced enough not to impede their compatriots’ lines of fire.

“Cody, Doc—one each, guys. Let’s take the bastards out once and for all,” J.B. snapped.

“A pleasure,” Doc purred.

“Sure thing,” Cody murmured, an equal pleasure evident in his tone.

It was like shooting fish in a barrel—or would have been, if any other than Doc had a notion of what the old phrase meant. The idea of keeping fish in a barrel to shoot would have drawn blank looks of sheer incomprehension if mentioned at all. This almost irrelevant but amusing thought crossed Doc’s mind as he took aim with the SMG at the wag that was within his angle of fire. A long burst
drew up short of the target, which maintained distance knowing that it was safe while the crew tried to work out what to do next.

No way was the old man going to let them get away. He switched to the rocket launcher, sighted and fired. The wag was engulfed in the explosion of a direct hit.

“Way to go, sugar,” Raven purred in his ear. “Good shooting.”

Doc allowed himself a shrug. “One tries,” he said elliptically.

Meanwhile, Cody’s wag of choice had come within range, and the marksman in the second convoy wag hit a long burst on the SMG that ripped along the side of the attackers’ wag, puncturing the bodywork and the bodies of the inhabitants with equal impunity. The wag careened across the dirt-packed land before the spilling fuel and the sparking metal detonated all within.

One remained, in J.B.’s area, and just right for him. Ryan was ahead of it, drawing it in toward the convoy as it chased him, SMG fire ripping up around his wheels. The guys in the wag were consumed by fury and bloodlust, not thinking about what they were doing.