by James Axler
“What sort of work you looking for?” Bass asked.
The little guy took off his glasses and polished them with a hankie from his pocket. “We look like store clerks, Mr. Croom?”
Croom laughed. “No, Mr. Dix. That you do not.”
He laid both his palms down on the cool glass top of the counter. “Happens I’m hiring blasters, which I gather you know already.”
“Were those your people trying to shadow us?” Ryan asked.
“No. Baron Billy’s...sec assets, let’s say.”
“Snitches,” the black woman, Mildred, said. Bass found no reason to differ.
“Good,” J.B. said “Clumsy bunch. Not looking forward to the prospect of having to count on them in a tight place.”
“Small chance of that,” Bass said. “What I’m looking for is trade convoy sec. I’m pulling up stakes and leaving this ville.”
“Headed where?” Ryan asked.
“Cific Northwest.”
“Ambitious,” Ryan replied.
“You seem none too taken aback at the prospect of riding sec for a convoy across two-thirds of the whole North American continent.”
The redhead showed him a smile as dazzling and melting as he expected it would be. “We’ve made a few trips like that ourselves,” she said. “Both ways.”
“Huh. Well, good. Got any convoy security experience?”
“More than a little,” Ryan said. “J.B. and I rolled with the man called Trader, back in the day. And we’ve rode sec on convoys since.”
“Seriously? A genuine Deathlands legend! Dealt with him myself, twice. Long ago. He got the better of both deals, but I can’t say unfairly so. Haven’t heard a peep about him for years.”
“He doesn’t roll any more,” Ryan said.
He seemed to have said what he intended to on the subject. Bass respected that, too.
“Bass,” Morty said from behind him, “you haven’t sent them away yet?”
* * *
DESPITE HIS CUSTOMARY iron self-control, Ryan felt his jaw and brows set a notch tighter. The little pissant with the lank dirty-blond hair and the apron who’d given them the stink-eye when they came in had reappeared. And from the familiar way in which he whined at the master merchant, he had some connection to their prospective boss beyond that of another employee.
The man himself didn’t stop his big face from fisting briefly in annoyance behind his salt-and-pepper beard and brows, but he pulled his features mostly out of the expression as he turned.
“Morty,” he said, “come meet my new friends here. I think I might very well hire them to fill out our sec complement.”
“They look unreliable,” Morty said. “Like coldhearts.”
“And that,” Bass said, “is exactly why I mean to hire them!”
He laughed. It was a hearty laugh, which sounded unaffected. Ryan approved. While he wasn’t a man to give free vent to his feelings, he thought to read it as a sign of strength in the trader. Croom clearly didn’t fear to show his emotions to others.
At least, not unless it served him to hide them. Ryan hadn’t ridden with Trader—the Trader—nearly as long as his friend J.B. had. But more than long enough to know that nobody enjoyed the kind of success Bass Croom showed all around him, in the well-kept, well-stocked store and the size of the fenced lot behind, without being skilled at playing things close to his powerful chest.
The gut hanging below that chest suggested the merchant didn’t miss many meals, which itself told a passel in the Deathlands.
Ryan wasn’t the kind of person who thought too harshly of a person for letting himself go a bit. Croom still obviously packed more than a little muscle behind the flab. The hardwood grips of the handblaster he wore in a shoulder holster beneath his left armpit were well worn. Sure, middle age and years of ease had softened him up—his outlines, anyway. But his face hadn’t got that weather-beaten—nor his knuckles that scarred, nor his wrists so thick—by spending his whole life behind a counter. The man had been well-hammered by this hard old world.
And by the looks of things, he’d done his share of hammering it back.
The oil smudge on one cheek and the stains on the olive-drab T-shirt that was all he wore above the belt despite the day’s early spring chill made clear he had no fear of getting his hands dirty. Likely had some idea how to use them, too. Both counted as pluses in Ryan’s book.
“May I introduce my younger brother, Mortaugh Croom?” he said. “You’ll pardon him for his hasty judgment, I trust. He’s not led quite so active a life as I have. He has the finer sensibilities of a civilized man who grew up in a well-ordered ville. So he has a reflexive mistrust of coldhearts, and who can blame him?”
“And you don’t?” Mildred asked in a voice that suggested that she could.
Ryan reckoned being called coldheart irritated her. She was funny that way, sometimes. Touchy.
Bass shook his head. “I’ve knocked around a little myself, and I know well that the sort of men, and women, who are going to be of use for the job I need done are going to be pretty rad-blasted case-hardened. Even if they don’t all look it—like the professor, there. And the charming ladies.”
Mildred still looked mulish, but she murmured, “Flattery will get you everywhere.”
Morty Croom looked unconvinced. Ryan reckoned he had his measure now: the sheltered younger sibling, spoiled by an older brother who likely raised him in place of dead parents. There were other explanations, but these were the Deathlands, and dead was a good default. The kid was good-looking, in a ville-rat sort of way. If he wasn’t a total stupe he might be able to be charming, when he wasn’t sniveling to his big brother, which might make him dangerous.
Ryan glanced at J.B. Placing his glasses back on his nose, J.B. gave his head a slight dip to the side. Ryan read that as a shrug.
Which in turn read as, We’ve had worse gigs.
Ryan nodded back slightly. If he had Croom sized up correctly, the man would be one of their better bosses, all found. And if the task he had in mind, shepherding a flock of temperamental, fuel-hogging power wags clean across the Deathlands’ savage heart to the coast, was entirely crazy, well, Ryan and his friends had done crazier.
Another man came in from the back room, so fast and purposeful that he brought a waft of chill air from a back door that hadn’t yet fully closed behind him. This man was built along the lines of Ryan himself, with a shaved head, a gold ring in an earlobe and a close-cropped blond beard. From the black T-shirt, the lean muscles and flat stomach packed into it, and the obvious military-issue 9 mm Beretta M-9 handblaster in a holster slung down his right thigh, he was a sec man. Sec boss, from the way he carried himself.
He stopped just inside the door when he saw their visitors. His lean features hardened.
“Heard you had visitors, boss,” he told Bass. “Came as fast as I could.”
The fact he hadn’t got the word first, and scoped out the visitors first, clearly bugged him. But Bass waved the apology away.
“This is Dace Cable,” he said. “My head of sec. Dace, meet Ryan Cawdor and his crew. I think they’ll be joining us on our trip.”
“Working for me, huh?” Cable gave Ryan a hard gaze with his green eyes. Ryan met his gaze calmly.
Cable looked away first.
“That’s not quite how we work, Mr. Croom.”
It was Krysty who spoke up. As a general rule Ryan spoke for the group, but as always, the rest were free to take the lead when they had the best applicable skill. And Ryan knew full well Krysty was far better at handling sensitive masculine egos than he could ever be.
She handles mine triple well, he thought with amused affection.
Cable’s face predictably got even harder, and he started to swell up—as Mildred would put it, “like a stepped-on toad.�
� But Bass merely looked a bland question at the redhead.
“We’re independent contractors,” Krysty said. “We will happily work with Mr. Cable and his sec team. We answer to you.”
“Listen here—” Cable began.
Bass laughed. “Ease off the trigger, there, Dace,” he said. “I hear what the lovely lady’s saying. You and your crew are ace at your jobs. You’ve done me well in some triple-tight spots. And none of you has just the experience we need for the trip we’re going to take. These people have run the transcontinental roads before.”
“They claim that,” Cable said.
“And I believe them, Dace. Remember, I’ve got more time on the road under this too big belt of mine than any of your people. I know what it takes to survive out there. And I know the look of those who have. So I need to ask you to trust me on this call.”
Cable nodded with no more show of reluctance. Ryan let a brow raise slightly in appreciation at the neat way Croom had managed to rein in his guard dog—without cutting his nuts off in front of strangers, and potential rivals.
If he’s as straight as he seems, Ryan determined, he’ll be one of the best we’ve ever worked for. If he’s a snake inside, he’ll be one of the deadliest.
He looked at Krysty, who smiled encouragingly at him.
Ryan had an ability to read her. That smile wasn’t without a shadow of doubt. She sensed something deep inside Croom that troubled her.
But Ryan didn’t know of one single person alive—except perhaps somebody as young and cherry as Ricky Morales—who didn’t have some deep, dark secret. Least of all Ryan Cawdor.
“This chain of command thing, though—” Cable said.
Bass nodded. “Understood. Think of these folks as specialists we’ve hired to work with you. They’ve expressed a willingness to work with you and our people. I’m sure they’ll prove most cooperative.”
“We’ll all be on the same side out there,” Ryan said.
“True,” Cable agreed. He stepped up to Ryan and stuck out his hand. The one-eyed man took it.
He tried the hand-crushing game. Ryan had hoped for more from the man, but he’d expected this. He had no doubt Cable was more than good at his job, or he wouldn’t be working for a man as shrewd as Croom. But once a sec man, always a sec man.
Ryan knew a dozen ways, top of the head, to deal with the hand-crushing game, ranging from the discomforting to the crippling.
He needed none of them. He merely matched the sec boss, pressure for pressure, until the sec boss grinned in acknowledgment that this was a game he couldn’t win. Nor did Ryan miss the way he swung his hand behind his hip to loosen it when they let go of each other.
“So,” Croom said, with a lopsidedness to his grin that suggested he knew perfectly well what had just taken place, “that’s settled, then. All that remains to discuss are the terms.”
Chapter Seven
“Those are pretty generous terms the big boss signed off on,” Mildred said as the group stood in the warehouse being used as a fleet garage. She was relieved they’d dropped their packs by the door. Her shoulders still ached from toting the damn thing all over the Ouachitas. “Kind of surprisingly so.”
“Mebbe too generous,” J.B. said, rubbing his jaw. “I’m smart. Ryan’s smarter. We learned more than a thing or two about negotiating from a master.”
“Trader,” Ryan said.
“The one and only. And one thing we learned was, as good as we were at dealing, we were gonna get outdrawn eleven times out of ten throwing down against a man like this Croom dude.”
“What do you mean?” Ricky asked.
“That Mr. Croom is paying us better than we could normally hope for,” Krysty said.
“If he plans to honor his compacts,” Doc said.
“I believe he does,” Krysty replied. Both Ryan and J.B. nodded. Mildred wasn’t so sure, herself, but she had to admit the others knew way more than she did about commerce.
“So that means he’s scared,” J.B. told Ricky.
The kid’s black eyes went big. “He’s scared of what we’re going to run into?”
“Don’t worry, kid,” Ryan said. “That just means he really knows what we’re getting into out there.”
“Oh.” Ricky smiled. He hero-worshipped Ryan. The pack leader’s calm assurance soothed his fears.
Momentarily. Then he clearly realized what Ryan had really said. Mildred couldn’t suppress a snicker as his eyes turned to circles again, his jaw dropped and the olive color fell out of his cheeks.
“So I hear you’re our new convoy sec,” a young man said, walking up to them scrubbing his hands on a shop rag.
“That’s right,” Ryan said.
Mildred’s first impression was that the newcomer looked like Jesus—or Charlie Manson. He was a little guy as well as long-haired and bearded, but he had an affable manner and lacked that crazy cult-leader gleam to the eye. Also, since they were clearly going to be working together, Mildred just naturally preferred to think of him as looking like Jesus.
“This is the fleet you’re going to be escorting to the Northwest,” the little dude said. “I’m Dan Hogue, and I’m the man in charge of keeping them running. Aren’t they beauties?”
“Cool,” Ricky said. He was standing next to Jak.
The albino had his arms folded over his chest and a disdainful look on his face. Nonetheless his new friend’s unabashed admiration for machines seemed mainly to amuse him.
Then Mildred was struck at the sheer number of people running around inside the big structure. Most of them seemed to be doing...mechanicky type things. She didn’t need to know anything about the specifics of what they were doing to realize, with no little trepidation, the scale of the enterprise she and her friends had got themselves involved in.
Has Ryan bitten off more than he can chew this time? she wondered.
“But how will you find the gas to run them?” Ricky asked.
“Don’t always need gas,” Dan said over his shoulder. He was already walking toward the wags at a bandy-legged roll. Obviously assuming the new crew would follow, which first Ricky and then J.B. did. Then the rest.
“See, I rebuilt the engines and rebored the carburetors so’s they’ll run on anything from high octane to pure alcohol. We can even run ’em on Towse Lightning, comes to a real pinch.”
Mildred shuddered. “Glad somebody finally found a use for that stuff,” she said.
“Plus we got a real live tanker full of gasoline. It’s parked in the yard out back.”
Ryan looked impressed, which in itself impressed Mildred. She knew that even for a prosperous—and obviously resourceful—trader-merchant like Croom to get his hands on either the fuel or a tanker was an incredible feat.
Not as if people’re making either of those things these days, she thought.
Ryan did hang back when Dan bustled forward to show off the engine he’d just been bolting back in one of the wags. So did everyone but J.B. And Ricky.
“I wonder how far that lad’s knowledge extends to motorized conveyances,” said Doc. “He is not evinced much sign of interest in them before.”
“He and J.B. are both completely gadget-mad,” Krysty said with a smile. She herself was anything but, but she appreciated anything that gave pleasure to her friends. Krysty had a generous heart. “Anyway, Ricky’d get interested in breeding slugs if J.B. did it.”
“But not you, Ryan?” Doc asked.
Ryan shook his head. “I’ve seen an engine,” he said.
“So what do you think?” Mildred asked Ryan. “Is our new employer nuts for thinking he can get his precious convoy all the way up to Oregon or Washington or wherever he’s going?”
As she spoke Mildred was struck by the fact that Ryan had no more asked their exact destination than
Croom had supplied it.
“Completely,” Ryan said. He showed a slight grin. “But that doesn’t make him much worse off than the rest of us.”
* * *
“AS YOU CAN SEE,” the little wrench was saying, practically aglow with pride in the wan afternoon sun, “we even installed hardpoints up top of the fuel tanker. Since we know it’s a primo target, and all.”
Ryan and his friends had moved to the yard out behind the garage, which proved surprisingly spacious despite the storage and other buildings of less apparent purpose dotted around the perimeter, inside the fairly impressive fence.
“‘Hardpoints,’” J.B. echoed. It wasn’t exactly a question, then again, it wasn’t exactly not one, either.
The tanker was utterly normal for the breed: a long low steel tube, ovoid in section, a wheeled trailer with a long-nosed Peterbilt tractor hitched to the front. It was bare metal, no longer shiny, but Ryan saw no obvious signs of rust, corrosion or even patching.
He also saw no sign of anything about it he’d describe as a hardpoint.
Dan laughed nervously. “Well, you’re not gonna make a baby like this a war wag, no matter what. But we did set up a couple sandbag nests on top, front and rear, which’ll provide some protection. Right?”
J.B. looked at him with something like pity. He took his hat off and scratched his head. Ryan said nothing at all.
He did hope that Dan knew more about wrenching than he did about battle.
“Moving on,” Dan said, “we got our other big wag.”
“A school bus?” Mildred said. “Seriously?”
The mechanic nodded.
“You got sandbags on top of it, too?” Mildred asked.
“He does,” Krysty said.
Dan shrugged. “Mebbe they won’t be necessary. Since the off-duty sec folks will be riding inside, along with some of Bass’s and my assistants. And me sometimes, likely enough.”
“You’re coming with us?” Ryan said.
“Try to keep me from coming along! Anyway, how would you people ever get these things across a couple thousand miles of Deathlands without me along to keep ’em patched up and rolling?”