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temple.
"Hold it," he directed, then turned off the nukelamp and the trip wire was
gone, invisible in the darkness.
"Okay," J.B. said, turning the lamp back on. "But watch your step."
"First person through that door is going to discover a world of pain," Dean
commented, once on the other side of the trap.
Shifting her duffel bag of firebrands, Mildred snorted. "Yeah, for about half
a second."
Glancing at the feeder pipe, Jak saw the wheel was wired to blow, as was the
gren at the door. Whatever else happened, the water shortage in the ville was
going to end this night, that was for damn sure.
"Where is Ryan?" Doc asked, stepping over the trip wire with exaggerated
caution.
Tucking the candle into a pocket, J.B. jerked a thumb at the open hatch in the
roof at the top of the ladder. "Making sure we can leave," he said. But
interrupting those words was a fast series of soft chugs from the hatch.
Drawing weapons, the companions scrambled up the ladder and onto the top of
the temple. The last in line, Krysty caught the stock of the
H&H Nitro on the hatch for a moment, and had to wiggle about to get through.
The damn blaster was over five feet in length, much too long for such cramped
quarters.
Standing in the shadows, Ryan was sweeping the edge of the building with the
SIG-Sauer. He froze as a hand slithered into view near the corner, but did
nothing until the head of the sec man rose into view.
Instantly he fired, and the man fell backward with a bloody crater in place of
a nose. Going to the edge, Ryan fired twice more and another man cried out
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briefly.
"Fireblast! Too bastard many people know about the roof hatch," Ryan growled.
"And somebody with a brain is going to figure out why there's a pile of bodies
in the street, at which point we're shit out of luck."
"Let's get to it," Jak said, passing out the crossbows.
Overburdened with weapons, the companions dropped their backpacks to take the
weapons and got busy nocking the firebrands.
"Think we can reach the motel from here?" Mildred asked, licking a finger to
test the direction of the desert wind. Simple logic dictated what the plan
was. She only hoped they could pull it off. They had been in tight scrapes
before, but this was the first time they were doing a night creep on an entire
ville. One wrong move would expose them, and then it was all over.
"The bows have the range," Ryan said, looking across the ville. "It's just a
matter of can we hit the target."
Stepping on the crossbar of his crossbow to grab the string in both hands,
J.B. pulled it upward until the cord caught on the tongue. Lifting the weapon,
he slipped in a firebrand.
"Ranging shot," J.B. directed, touching the rope with his butane lighter. As
the fuse sputtered into life, he raised the crossbow and pressed the trigger.
The flaming arrows arced over the ville to drop beyond the motel a dozen
blocks away.
"Try ten o'clock, instead of eleven," he said, reloading and lowering the
angle. "All together. Ready, shoot!"
The companions launched in unison, the flurry of arrows soaring high to
plummet down into the open courtyard around the motel. Bursting from the
building, Jed and Sparrow came running out with blasters drawn, both of their
dogs baying wildly.
"Again," Ryan ordered brusquely, as tiny dots of light began moving along the
top of the adobe wall. The sentries had spotted the firebrands. "Shift more
into the wind!"
The crossbows were armed once more, and the next flight went over the motel,
one arrow spiraling away randomly to disappear into the distance.
"The fuse came free and threw off the balance," Doc rumbled angrily.
Suddenly a chorus of voices rose from the opposite side of the temple, closely
followed by a tremendous crash of splintering wood. Then it came again and
again.
"Sounds as if the sec men are busting through,"
Dean said.
"Check the wires," J.B. commanded, running his fingers along the shaft of an
arrow. "This volley has got to be on target!"
Locking his crossbow and reloading, Jak saw a man carrying a longblaster
appear on a roof a few buildings away. Only a sec man would have a weapon like
that, so he fired from the hip. The unlit arrow flew straight and hit the man
in the stomach partially going through. Dropping the blaster, the man clutched
the shaft sticking out of his belly and shrieked in pain.
Squinting in that direction, Ryan chanced two shots with the SIG-Sauer, but
the wounded man was masked by the darkness and kept on screaming. Having no
choice, he slid the Steyr off his shoulder, placed the
crosshairs on the sec man's chest and put a 7.62 mm round through his heart,
ending the cries.
But the crack of the sniper rifle rolled over the ville, and most of the
voices on the streets stopped shouting.
"If they come to this side and find the bodies, we're screwed. There's no
canopy over here to hide the arrows," Ryan growled. "Load and fire at will,
but hit that triple-damn wag right now!"
Fast and furious, the companions loaded and fired as quickly as possible,
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flaming arrows raining all over the area, setting fire to the roof of the
motel and smashing to pieces on the streets. When the wind slowed for moment,
they sent off the last flurry of arrows. Climbing high toward the stars, the
firebrands curved sharply earthward and slammed all over the wag, penetrating
the cab, the hood, and several going through the tattered canvas awning over
the rear.
Only seconds later, a fire woofed out the back of the wag from the punctured
fuel cans, tongues of flame licking from every hole in the canvas. Some sec
man hidden behind the wag started running, but it was already too late.
The deafening explosion illuminated the entire ville in a blinding flash of
light and rattled shutters for blocks in every direction. Caught near the
blast, the sec men were slapped off the ground and sent tumbling through the
air like burning rag dolls to hit the side of other buildings with lethal
results.
Then from the boiling inferno of the barn came a series of sharp bangs and a
new fireball boiled upward, spraying out debris as the cans of condensed fuel
rocketed into the air and detonated above the ville.
By now every window was open and a dozen bells were ringing. Illuminated by
the reddish glare of the rising fireball, the companions ducked low on the
roof of the temple to try to stay in the shadows.
Blaster in hand, Ryan gave a short whistle and jerked a finger at the front of
the temple. Dropping to his belly, Jak crawled to the edge of the roof,
listened and then chanced a peek. Turning to face the others, he nodded and
gave a thumbs-up.
"Okay, they're off to check the explosion," Ryan said aloud, rising to his
knees. "That bought us time but not a hell of a nuking lot."
He paused as another detonation shook the ville, as the main forty-gallon fuel
tanks of the U.S. Army GMC
6X6 added their destructive fury to the growing conflagration.
Still wary, Krysty was maintaining a close watch on the keep. When a guard
appeared on the parapet with what seemed to be binoculars, she swung around
the heavy longblaster, set the crosshairs on his chest and fired. The recoil
kicked her hard in the shoulder, making the woman think she had missed
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