Axler, James - Deathlands 64 - Bloodfire Read online

  "Fucking traitor!" Gaza screamed, clawing for his handcannon.

  But Kathleen moved first. Firing from the hip, the slim redhead put a full burst into the busty teenager, stitching her from knees to neck, just as the doors opened and she fell outside.

  "We got 'em!" a biker shouted, and started racing for the open rear of the APC, his sawed-off blowing thunder at the startled people trapped inside the dead war wag.

  IN WAR WAG ONE, the ceiling speakers crackled with static, then came back loud and clear.

  "We found Gaza!" Blackjack cried. "His wag is busted, and we're going in…" His voice faded away.

  "Get him back," Kate directed sternly, hunched forward in her chair.

  "Working on it, Chief," Eric said, and suddenly the ceiling speakers rushed with a background hum of full power.

  "…trap," Roberto coughed, his voice distorted from pain. "Repeat…fucking trap. He's got a 25…blew us to hell. Forget us… Use the—" Static took away the transmission of the hand comm, and there was only crackling silence.

  "Shitfire, Gaza and Hawk have joined forces," Kate raged, slamming a fist onto the arm of her chair. "That APC armed with a 25 mm cannon would chew us to pieces!"

  "Want to send a rescue team?" Jake asked, turning from the control board. "We can send Two east, and we go west, and catch him between us? Mebbe save our guys?"

  "They're already chilled," Jessica stated. "No sense wasting more lives to rescue deaders."

  Frowning at that, Trader started to speak when the radio crackled with power, mumbled words barely discernible over the atmospheric hash. Then the distortion lifted and the signal came in loud and clear.

  "Hello, is anybody there?" A new voice chuckled over the ceiling speakers.

  The control room crew stopped moving, and Kate felt her skin crawl as memory flared at the sound of Baron Gaza's voice coming over one of their own hand comms.

  "Your sec men are dead, bitch." Gaza laughed, then there came the sound of a blaster shot. "Correction, now they're all dead. Let's end this today, slut. Right here and now. Come get me! I'm staying right fucking here!"

  There was a crackle of static that blocked the next words, and Kate made a slashing motion. The techs cut off the speakers, but the Trader waited until the indicator lights of the transponder had gone dark before she spoke.

  "Ready a missile!" she ordered. "If the radar can find that APC, then the missile should blow him to hell!"

  "On it," Jake replied, both hands busy.

  A few seconds later there grew a loud rustling from above, and then thunder shook the war wag as flame raced by overhead, flying straight into the heart of the smoke above the preDark city. Long moments passed before the radar screen blossomed with a patch of white. Seconds later a low rumble rolled in from the distance.

  "Got him!" Jessica cried, raising a fist.

  "Well, we hit something at least," Red Jack muttered, watching the screen clear back to normal. Then he frowned. "Black dust, the goddamn APC is still there!"

  Straining to see something through the rising smoke of the city, Jake scowled. "We missed?"

  "Must have hit a sand dune," Kate gritted through clenched teeth. "The range is too far, especially with all this shit in the air blocking the warhead. We gotta get closer."

  Then the radar screen gave a single loud beep, closely followed by another, and then a mounting series.

  "Holy shit!" Red Jack shouted from the increasing noise. "We got incoming!"

  Snapping her attention in that direction, Kate couldn't believe her eyes and ears for a moment. Was their own fucking missile now coming back for them? No, wait, the heat sig was wrong—too small a wash and way too fast. Gaza had to have launched a missile of his own and it was coming faster than jackshit right down their fragging throats!

  "No time to dodge. Eric, fire all guns!" she commanded. "Bring it down!"

  The lights dimmed as the comp drew unlimited power from the electrical system. Now the servomotors on the front .50-cals whined into life, the comp linking the weapons onto the signal of the radar screen and filling the air ahead of the rocket with hot lead.

  The noise was deafening. This was why they had a comp and Eric to nurse it. To give them an edge like this. But was it enough? Would it work? There had never been a chance to try their missile defense system before, and now it was all or nothing. Aces or diamonds, as the river folks liked to say. Life or death.

  Unexpectedly, the machine guns stopped firing, and in the ringing silence the beeping of the radar could still be heard, but different, slower and less urgent.

  "The missile is starting to descend," Red Jack reported in disbelief. "Look at her drop! Nukeshit, the damn thing didn't have the range to reach us this far away! Must have just been a LAW or HAFLA or mebbe something he cobbled together."

  Just a man-portable rocket, not a real missile like War Wag One was packing, Kate realized, easing the tension in her shoulders. Shitfire, she couldn't lock on to Gaza from this distance, and he couldn't reach her. Stalemate.

  "We could use the L-Gun," Jake stated.

  Kate cut him off. "Not with all this smoke," she replied sternly. "That cuts its power by half. I wanna ace the bastard, not merely piss him off.

  "Okay, we have no choice," she continued. "We go in as a group, the wags keep close and chill everything in sight. Send a runner to Two about not using the standard radio channels."

  "Roger that, Chief!"

  "Switch to channel four and use the scramblers," Eric said over the speakers. "No way the baron can hear us then."

  She grunted at that. "Good. Red Jack, stay glued to that radar. You get a blip, don't waste the breath to tell me. Give the info straight to Eric. The closer we get, the less time we have to shoot down one of his rockets."

  "Then we give him missiles up the ass," Jessica spit hatefully.

  "Damn straight," Kate ordered. "We're going in nose to nose with that bastard, and end this now!"

  The control room crew scrambled at their posts, sending messages throughout the wag over the phone lines while a runner hit the salty ground and started racing for the other wags.

  As the tandem engines started revving to full power, the lights of the war wag brightened to full strength and the rig began to roll along, staying a good distance from the crumbling cliff.

  "Here we come," Kate muttered softly, looking across the swirling smoke at their invisible enemy.

  AS GAZA AND HIS WIVES fired another rocket into the billowing smoke clouds, left unnoticed on the ground Shala forced herself to painfully crawl for the safety of the nearby desert. She could see the wide open plains of salted ground only a dozen yards away. She was close, so very close…

  But every motion brought racking pain to her chest, the salt stinging like acid in her terrible wounds, and Shala could see the blood dripping off her arms as she tried to claw another foot forward, just one more inch toward the blessed sands of time.

  Rising from the shifting sands, the women of the Core started for their girl only to see her tremble and die, a single gory finger resting on the clean sand of the true desert outside the forbidden zone. A crimson trail of her blood marked a direct path backward to the machine and the top-walkers near the cliff. Raising a spear, a woman started forward but others held her back. There was no courage in dying. The spears and mindkillers of the men had sadly proved the superiority of the brutal norms.

  Gathering the still child in holy strips of tan cloth, the women brought the little one deep into the heart of the earth where she would lie forever safe and warm. And lying on the ground at that spot was a large leather bag removed from the ruins to the north, the outlanders' water bag. But the polluted contents had been washed out and replaced with mineral water from a clean spring, then laced with enough undetectable jinkaja to cause instant madness, violent seizures and eventually agonizing death.

  It was a hard truth that the Core couldn't match the mighty machines of the norms, but the desert always found a way to balance th
e scales of death.

  Chapter Sixteen

  A fiery dagger came out of the billowing plume of smoke and streaked past the APC to slam into the dune behind. The sandy hill heaved and blew apart, a roiling column of fire rising into the rumbling sky.

  Kneeling over the exposed engine, Gaza still flinched as the concussion rumbled over the dead war wag. Okay, that bitch had the range, but not him. Not him! Feverishly, the baron worked on the diesel, trying to remove pieces of the dead comm system to replace the missing parts and getting nowhere. Damn that girl! The APC engine had been too often repaired and was far too easy to wreck. He had been a fool trying to recruit the girl. But when those rags came off and he saw the pale trembling figure, reason and logic had fled as blind lust took over. Now he was paying the price.

  Standing in the open turret, Allison triggered a long sweeping blast from the 25 mm cannon, angling the barrel ever higher in wide circles. She knew the shells didn't have the true range to reach the Trader, but she would gain valuable distance by shooting high and allowing the shells to arc downward. However, there was no way to see through the smoke of the city, and she was guiding her shots purely on the feelings she was receiving of approaching death. That had to be the Trader. Who else could possibly challenge her husband?

  Going to the rear doors, Kathleen extended a LAW tube and started to open the lock. Rushing close, Gaza slapped the weapon from her hand and it hit the metal floor in a clatter.

  "Stop that! Save ammo!" the baron ordered brusquely, towering over the startled woman. "They're too far away for the rockets. Even the fifty can't reach them."

  Against the wall, Kathleen raised two fingers and quickly brought them toward each other.

  "Yes, I know that!" he raged, clenching both fists, the greasy wires from the engine still dangling impotently in his grip. "She's coming fast, and with everything they got on the trips."

  Reaching out to touch the tangle of wires, the woman asked her husband an urgent question with her eyes.

  "Useless!" Gaza cursed, throwing aside a fistful of assorted wires. "Without the proper parts, the same damn parts, we're not going anywhere in this tin box."

  Stomping her boot, Allison got everyone's attention and pointed around at the LAV 25, then raised two fingers and pointed one into the fiery ruins. The landscape shook once more as Gaza raked stiff fingers through his hair, but was forced to agree. Their only hope of surviving was to be mobile, use the greater speed of the APC to outmaneuver the Trader's lumbering war wags and strike from the dunes. A night creep in broad daylight. Hit and git. Which left him no options at all. He would have to go after the wiring in the second APC below the cliff.

  "Stop firing! Mebbe they'll think we've moved!" Gaza ordered, going to a rack and grabbing an M-16 recovered from the convoy in the park. He worked the bolt, chambering a round, and slung the blaster over a shoulder. "Kathleen, you're coming with me. Allison, prepare the land mines. Lay 'em out in a diamond pattern around the wag. That may buy us some time. Don't bother to bury them. The damn things may not work, but at least it'll scare the Trader into going slow if she sends more bikes."

  Closing the top hatch of the war wag, the doomie waved both hands in a mime of driving a Harley to ask about the motorcycles outside.

  "After you're done with the mines, try and find three that work," he decided, stuffing his pockets with spare clips and grens. "If I can't find what we need in the other APC, then we'll ride out of here and mine the war wag to blow."

  Ducking under the empty framework of a radar unit long gone, the baron grabbed some canvas gloves with a box and tossed Kathleen a pair.

  "Stay razor," Gaza ordered, stuffing the other set of gloves into his gun belt. "Allison will be busy up here, so we'll be on our own down there."

  Sliding on the gloves, the slim redhead nodded, and collapsed the tube on the LAW rocket, making the sights retract. Expertly, she hung it across her back and grabbed an AK-47 from the ville armory. It was her preferred blaster and most of the ammo was hand loaded by her, or the other wives. She considered homemade ammo much more dependable than the preDark stuff, no matter how well it was preserved inside sealed plastic boxes.

  Stepping to the turret, Gaza grabbed his first wife by the scruff of the neck and pulled her close for a hard kiss.

  "Don't you fucking die on me," he muttered softly. "Worse happens, set the ammo bins of the wag to blow and slide down the cable to join us below. This is far from being over."

  Brushing some loose hair from his face, Allison nodded at her husband, then turned to do the same to her sister standing by the aft doors. The women shared a moment of understanding, wishing the other goodbye. In spite of what their beloved husband said, the chances of this working were virtually zero, but they would stand by him to the end.

  Pushing past them both, Gaza threw open the rear door and stepped outside. The air was murky with smoke and the drifting dust from the missile hits. Hurrying among the sprawled forms of dead sec men and their bikes, Gaza reached the winch and checked the nuke batteries on the electric motor. He was relieved to find the machinery working perfectly. At least that much was going his way.

  Kathleen joined him at the winch. Stuffing his hands into the stiff gloves, Gaza freed the cable and together they dragged it to the edge of the cliff and started to snake it down. When it reached the bottom, the baron locked the winch tight and Kathleen started over the edge of the cliff to grab the cable. She started to slide down, using her boots to brake the speed. The gloves grew uncomfortably hot in only a matter of yards, but the woman kept going and gratefully released the hot woven steel upon reaching the ground.

  Gaza was already sliding down the cable and landed only a few seconds later. Sliding was a dangerous way to use the cable, but the fastest way to reach the city and time was against them right now. Every moment counted.

  Anchoring the cable in case Allison had to follow, the man and woman readied their blasters and charged into the morass of rubble and wreckage that ringed the burning city, firing sporadically at anything that moved.

  WITH THE SIG-Sauer leading the way, Ryan crawled out of the steep ravine and reached the top of the cliff. Pausing for a moment to recce the area, he studied the tattered bodies of the Core littering the sandy ground.

  Large caliber rounds had chewed them apart, along with small explosions, mebbe that 25 mm cannon he had heard about. But this was no recent fight. The ripe smell of the corpses made it clear that the Core had been chilled a while ago. Hours, mebbe a full day. Odd thing, no buzzards were feasting on the meat, not even the scorpions or the red ants. Mebbe even the fragging insects knew how dangerous that jinkaja dreck was that saturated their flesh.

  Standing slowly, Ryan listened for a minute to the wind blow and the crackling of the fire. If this was the only way into the sinkhole, then it made sense for the Core to be waiting for them to come out here. Black hair whipping about his face, Ryan swept the killing field with the muzzle of the deadly blaster, ready for betrayal from the deaders, or the soil underneath. The airborne salt particles made it difficult to see. But the area was clear. Could be Gaza got them all.

  Finally satisfied, Ryan whistled sharply twice through his teeth and stepped out for the others to ascend. Helping one another up the last few yards, the rest of the companions gratefully reached the floor of the desert and looked over the battlefield.

  "Tire tracks," Jak said, pointing at what appeared to be merely churned sand. "APC was here."

  "A day, mebbe less," Ryan agreed.

  Bending, Dean lifted the spent brass from a .50-cal and inspected the bottom before sniffing the dirty inside.

  "Homemade," he stated. "Not preDark loads."

  Just then a tremendous explosion came from the west, but the drifting smoke and distance combined with the rolling sand dunes to hide the source of the detonation.

  "Could be anything," Mildred said, glancing about nervously. Her arms ached from the hurried climb, and the woman felt vulnerable just standing
there in plain sight.

  A few seconds later another explosion came from within the city, the cornice of a skyscraper exploding into pieces, the entire roof breaking apart to slide off and plummet into the streets below.

  Studying the fiery metropolis, J.B. slung the Uzi and dug out his longeyes to recce the cityscape.

  "The angle of the blast is wrong for that to have come from this side," he said slowly, as the thick clouds thinned for a moment, moving to the force of the northern wind. "It came from across the city, say, about twenty degrees to the…"

  The Armorer's voice faded away, then came back strong. "Dark night, there's a land tank over there! No, wait, there are two of 'em! Big as anything I've ever seen."

  "Alone?" Ryan demanded pointedly.

  "Some smaller wags, too. Couldn't get a good look."

  "Is the war wag an APC?" Krysty asked, squinting to try to see past the conflagration.

  "Converted trucks," J.B. said, lowering the longeyes and compacting it before tucking it away into his bulging munitions bag. "Machine gun blisters, rocket pods on the roof and what sure as shit looks like a radar dish."

  "Just sitting there, or is it turning?" Ryan asked scowling.

  "Turning steadily."

  "That means it's probably working," Ryan muttered, a hard smile coming to his face. "That's gotta be the Trader. He and Abe escaped after all and reached a stockpile."

  "Indeed, logic dictates it to be so," Doc rumbled. Estimating the direction the rocket traveled across the preDark city, Ryan leveled the Steyr SSG-70 and swept the opposite desert cliff with the scope. He had only seen Baron Gaza once with the sun at his back hiding his features. But if there was anybody shouting orders while the others ran to obey, that would be him and Ryan would see if the 7.62 mm long cartridges of the sniper rifle could do what the missile couldn't.

  For just a brief moment, Ryan saw an APC about a half mile away sitting on the edge of the cliff, and then it was gone behind the black smoke once more. The urge came to try anyway as he had before to chase off the Core, but the range finder on the scope told the brutal truth that it was too distant for an accurate shot.