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weapons in every direction.
"Son of a bitch, they got Sheffield," he muttered, grabbing a blaster from the
wall and running to the garage.
A group of officers and troopers were already there, throwing the cargo out of
a
Hummer and piling inside the wag.
"Hop in!" a lieutenant ordered, starting the engine. "We're going to catch
them at the gate!"
Along with the others, Campbell's men started forward eagerly, but he held up
a restraining hand. "We'll be right behind you, sir!" the sergeant told the
officer, saluting.
"Good man!" the lieutenant shouted, and threw the Hummer into gear. Revving
the engine, the sec men charged toward the gate, steadily firing their
blasters.
"Idiots," Campbell said aloud once the man was gone. "The fucking 25 mm on
that LAV will chew a Hummer to pieces."
"So what are we going to do, Sarge?" a private asked, a longblaster balanced
in his hands.
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"Head for the slave gate," Campbell ordered.
"We'll circle around the whole damn ville and catch them from behind and
rescue
Sheffield."
"Grab some heavy weapons," Campbell directed. "Take that one there, and the
LAW, too."
With the searchlights sweeping the sky overhead, Beta team got busy clearing a
Hummer of excess cargo, piled in and took off racing across the ville.
Stopping at the slave gate, a sec man hopped out, threw the heavy bolts and
climbed back into the vehicle. Campbell nosed the door out of the way with the
armored grille of the wag, then hit the gas and powered along the cliff of the
quarry, steadily angling westward around the high wall.
"They'll never see us coming," Campbell growled, driving with one hand as he
awkwardly shoved a 40 mm round into the breech of the M-79 gren launcher held
tight between his knees.
AS RYAN WORKED the bolt on the Gatling to clear a jammed round, there was a
sharp explosion somewhere within the ville. In slow majesty, the dish started
to tilt, then lean and finally to fall toward the ground, building speed. It
dropped behind the wall, then broken bits sprayed into the sky.
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"That's the diversion," Ryan said, dropping inside the wag and bolting the top
hatch shut. "Get ready for the big one!"
Suddenly, a blinding light flash filled the entire valley, and boiling flame
extended over the wall and stretched out through the ruined gate. The
companions opened their mouths and covered their ears just as the concussion
of the detonating Quonset hut washed over them like a tidal wave, shaking the
world and drowning them in its power. The LAV was slammed sideways for yards
by the force of the blast, ripping open the top hatch, as a hot wind tore
through the vent and ports, stealing the words from their mouths. Minutes
passed in strident fury, but slowly the reverberations of the explosion faded
and sound returned with a vengeance as a rumbling mushroom cloud formed over
the annihilated ville.
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"Mother of God," Mildred whispered. Then she relaxed, remembering that any hot
ground explosion of sufficient size would form a mushroom cloud. It wasn't a
proprietary symbol of only a nuclear blast.
The winds continued to buffet them for several more minutes, smaller
detonations barely discernible within the roiling hell of the fiery ville.
Daring to open the rear doors, the companions stepped out of the APC and
looked upon the destruction.
The men and wags at the gate were gone without a trace, vaporized by the
blast.
Pieces of the stone blocks were missing, and gaping cracks ran along the
expanse of the limestone wall, the mushroom cloud hellishly illuminated from
below by countless small fires. It was unlike anything they had ever seen.
Only Mildred shivered, recalling the old vid of the nuke blasts at White Sands
and Hiroshima.
Then something bounced off the top of the wag with a ringing clang.
"Fallout!" J.B. cried, and started racing for the LAV. "Back inside the wag!"
The companions followed the man and piled into the vehicle, slamming shut the
doors, just as the first of the debris began to plummet from the tortured sky.
Bits of wood, pieces of brick, body parts, chunks of the dish and assorted
junk rained across the landscape, making the LAV sound as if it were caught in
a neverending shotgun blast. A cooking pot slammed into the wag through the
missing turret hatch, followed by a smoking toilet seat and a brick that
shattered into reddish dust on the dented floor. In desperation, Mildred
covered Jak with her body and cried out as the particles hit her back.
"Move this thing!" Ryan commanded, holding on to a ceiling stanchion.
Already in the driver's seat, J.B. fought to start the engines, but the
diesels were uncooperative. "Come on, you piece of shit," he cursed, adjusting
the controls, as a chunk of burst steam boiler melted doors and gigantic
pieces of foundation slammed around the wag with meteoric force, shattering
the landscape for hundreds of yards.
With a roar, the diesels finally caught. J.B. slammed the ten-ton wag into
gear and stomped on the gas. The LAV rolled straight for the smaller debris,
rolling over
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the pieces, zigzagging its way across the broken landscape.
"John Barrymore, what are you doing?" Doc shouted from the rear.
"I'm dodging the falling debris!" J.B. replied, tugging and shoving the
steering levers frantically. "It rarely lands on the same spot twice. By going
from wreckage to wreckage, we probably wouldn't get flattened."
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"Probably?"
"Best I got!"
"Then haste thy chariot, Hermes!"
Soon they reached the rim of the debris, and the APC charged on a straight
line for the redoubt.
"Goodbye Shiloh," Ryan growled, removing his bandanna and using it to wipe his
face clean. Tossing away the rag, the Deathlands warrior turned to look at
Sheffield.
"Which only leaves you," he said, drawing the SIG-Sauer.
"Chill him later!" Krysty cursed, watching out the rear ob slit. "We got
company."
The starboard ob slit had been hammered shut by concussion, so Ryan went into
the turret to look behind. Sure enough, there were bobbing headlights. A
vehicle of some kind was in pursuit. In the background, the flames of the
burning ville seemed to reach the clouds, the black smoke rising to the
distant stars.
"That's a Hummer," Ryan shouted to the others. "No prob. I'll chill it with
the "
The man stopped talking as he saw what remained of the electric 25 mm Gatling
cannon. The rapidfire was bowed in the middle, almost bent in two.
Just then there was a flash from the Hummer and something exploded on the rear
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doors, making them rattle and loosening several of the hinge bolts.
Sheffield beamed in delight behind his gag, and continued working on getting
the rope around his wrists loose. There was a jagged piece of metal that had
penetrated the seat cushion beside him, and he had managed to steal the sliver
before the others noticed. He had already cut halfway through the safety
harness holding him in the seat and was steadily working on the sticky layers
of duct tape.
His fingers were slippery with his own blood from using the razor-sharp
sliver, but wounds would heal. A bullet in the brain was forever. He had to
get loose quickly, before Ryan turned his attention on the baron for one last
time.
Shoving a Kalashnikov out a rear blasterport, Doc cut loose, spraying rounds
wildly all over the place. He knew there wasn't a chance in hell of hitting
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