Salvation Road

by James Axler

  J.B. was also whipping his mount to as much speed as it could muster, galloping it across the dry, sandy earth toward the derrick that stood upright against the clear night sky. The sound of the wag approaching from the blind side was now clearly distinguishable from the other wag noises. The Armorer reached behind him with his free hand and pulled the Smith & Wesson M-4000 checking that it was loaded and chambered. The blaster was loaded with its deadly cargo of barbed metal flechettes that would spread across a wide area, the jagged metal inflicting a maximum amount of damage to whoever was in its path.

  THE WAG ENGINE cut out, and over the pounding of his mount's hooves, Jak could hear two or three men moving out of the wag and around the derrick. One to the right, and two to the left. Shifting his balance to compensate, Jak held his blaster steady and also spoke into the handset.

  "J.B., wag had three. Two on left side, one right. I take left."

  "Okay," came the Armorer's cracked voice in return. "I have you in sight, about a minute behind. I'll veer right."

  Jak didn't bother to respond. He knew what J.B. would be doing, and he could leave that in the man's capable hands.

  Over the sound of his own speed, Jak could hear the faint voices of the two men. They were making no attempt to disguise their position or actions, which spoke to Jak of an overconfidence that would make them vulnerable.

  One of the men was placing an explosive device in the small brick pump house that housed the valves to control the derrick's flow of raw oil. He bent over the timer, lighting his actions with a small lamp.

  "Watch the lamp, stupe," his partner hissed nervously. "There's only one of the sec coming, all right, but why make it too easy for him? Shit, he looks like a real weirdie," he added with just a touch too much tension in his voice for the saboteur setting the bomb.

  "Shut the fuck up, will ya? I just need to set it for enough time for us to get out of here, and then just chill the fucker, will ya?" he finished without looking up.

  "Whatever you say," his partner returned with anger in his tone. He raised his blaster and took aim at Jak as he rode closer. He raised his rifle—a buttered Heckler & Koch G-12 caseless—and took a careful aim. He wanted to squeeze off one good shot and down the mutie bastard before he had a chance to return fire.

  The only problem for the rifleman was that the lamp used by his partner cast enough ambient light around him to highlight him clearly against the darkness of the derrick. Jak could see that the man was taking aim at him, and bit into the horse's flanks alternately with his left and right boots. The movements made the horse respond by zigzagging, taking Jak on a suddenly erratic course.

  "Jeez, the bastard's moving," the rifleman hissed to his partner, who was still absorbed in setting the bomb's timer.

  "Just shoot, stupe," he responded angrily.

  The rifleman tried to take aim, but Jak was moving too quickly and was outside of the light. He was a difficult target. The rifleman loosed a shot from the Heckler & Koch, but even with such a good blaster the shot whistled well wide of the onrushing albino.

  If Jak presented a difficult target, then there was no such problem for the albino. The rifleman was static, only the upper part of his body swaying slightly as he attempted to follow the line of Jak's course. He was also standing in a pool of light that made him stand out clearly against the background. Jak was able to draw a bead on the rifleman with ease, and he squeezed the trigger of the Colt Python, a heavy .357 shell leaving the barrel of the blaster with deadly intent.

  The round hit the rifleman in the chest, exploding beneath his raised arms as he tried to draw another bead on the rider. The entry wound was small, but had enough impact to lift him up onto his toes and fling him backward. He made no noise, any vocal exclamation of pain or shock being stilled by the waves of pain that swept through him as the soft lead of the slug expanded on its path through his body. It spread out, causing a ripple of damage that spread along his whole torso, ending only when the now distorted slug exited his body, taking half of his spine and ribs with it, the flesh exploding against his shirt, soaking it in his own blood. By the time that happened he had almost hit the ground, and the blood-soaked fabric started to spread its lethal load onto the dirt. The rifleman was chilled before he landed on the desert earth with a wet and obscene slapping sound.

  "Shit, fuck, shit, shit," the bomber cursed loudly, setting the timer running and rising to his feet, drawing a long-barreled blaster of his own from the back of his belt.

  The fact that it was stuffed down the back of his pants for convenience when setting the device, rather in a holster, was what chilled him. The extra fractions of a second it took to reach behind enabled Jak to jump from the horse while it was still in motion, landing with poise and dipping his shoulder to roll into the earth rather than onto it, absorbing the impact and letting it work as momentum to drive him closer to the scene of the sabotage. As Jak came upright, he fell into a combat shooting stance on one knee, bringing up the Colt Python and sighting on his opponent in one smooth motion. His finger tightened on the trigger, squeezing off another shot.

  With one hand behind his back to pull the blaster from his pants, and the other instinctively flung out to balance himself, the bomber left his entire torso exposed. Jak's shot was swift and accurate, aimed for just above the chest area and beneath the throat, flying swift and true to between the bomber's collar bones, driving a bloody hole into the hollow beneath his Adam's apple and traveling on an upward path necessitated by the angle from which Jak fired.

  Almost before the man had fallen to the ground, Jak was on his feet and running toward the small brick pump house, the two chilled saboteurs lit by the light of the lamp, their blood spreading darkly into the earth around them.

  TO THE OTHER SIDE of the derrick, by the edges that skirted the open expanse of the desert and protected from Jak's view by the pipes that ran from the well, the third man was rigging up his own explosive device. It was more complex, and was intended to take out the generator that powered the wellhead, and also the cabling from the generator that would power the pump house. It was a more time consuming task, but the third man had that extra time because he knew he was farther away from the oncoming sec man.

  To stop and consider it afterward would make it obvious that the saboteurs had a complete knowledge of the positioning of the companions. But there wasn't the time to ponder on that now. For J.B. there was only the knowledge that he was arriving when the party had already started, for as he circled out to the right to come around and tackle the saboteur, he heard the first exchange of shots on the other side of the derrick.

  "Dark night," he swore to himself, knowing that he needed to attend to this triple fast in case Jak was hitting real trouble.

  The saboteur had been concentrating hard on getting the wiring of the device right, linking up the charges of plas-ex to the trigger device. So hard that he didn't notice the Armorer until it was almost too late.

  J.B. whipped his mount into a frenzy of speed, foam flecking from the creature's lips and spraying back onto its mane as it charged forward. With the M-4000 ready, the Armorer wheeled it around so that he was approaching the far side of the derrick from an acute angle. He could see the lamplight by which the saboteur was working, and could see the man outlined against the dark metal of the construction as he linked the plas-ex charges together.

  J.B. swung his leg over the back of the horse until he had both feet on the same side, and slid from the horse and it charged forward, buckling to break his fall as the horse moved on toward the derrick. He fell a little awkwardly and hissed curses through his teeth as his body jarred on the closely packed earth. Picking himself up, he moved parallel to the horse's course, and then a little to one side, so that the saboteur would look away from him when the horse's approach attracted his attention.

  The saboteur ignored the sound of the approaching hooves for as long as he dared. He knew he would have to face an attack, but was fighting against time to get the multiple
bomb wired up properly. So when he did finally respond to the approaching hooves and turn with his Uzi raised, he was taken aback to find the horse coming toward him with no rider on its back.

  Standing, frozen in shock, by the light of the lamp he was using to work, the saboteur presented J.B. with an easy target. It crossed the Armorer's mind that it would be good to take one of the saboteurs alive and question them, to find out where they were from, but to do that he would have to disable the man enough to prevent him firing back or triggering the device, and J.B. was too far away to take the chance.

  Too bad. The Armorer took aim and let fly with the M-4000. The weapon boomed in the night air and loosed its deadly load. The saboteur was turning at the sound of the charge as the barbed metal flechettes hit him. He went down with a scream of agony as the hot and jagged metal tore into his face and upper body, some of the shot ricocheting off the derrick behind. He died as he lay in agony, the last sound he heard being the approaching footsteps of the Armorer.

  J.B. checked the corpse, lest he be able to turn and shoot when the Armorer's back was turned. Seeing that his enemy had been successfully chilled, J.B. turned his attention to the device, tracing the wires from the charges of plas-ex back to the trigger device. The saboteur hadn't had time to finish wiring the bomb, and it was a simple task for J.B. to fully disarm and dismantle it.

  On the other side of the derrick, Jak had cleared a path through the bodies and blood to where the small brick pump house stood, with its door open. It was lit by the lamp, and he could clearly see the bomb within, and hear the ticking of the timer. Moving across to it, he could see that it was set for fifteen minutes. Although he could risk calling J.B., there wasn't really enough time for him to do anything but disconnect it himself.

  Jak had dismantled explosive devices before, but it was one of the few things that breached his iron nerves. There was always that chance that it had been wired incorrectly. He palmed one of his leaf-bladed knives and took the wire that should be the correct one to cut. He looped the wire around his finger, so that a small loop stood above his white fist, and cut swiftly and cleanly with one sweep of the razor-sharp blade.

  The wire parted. There was no explosion. Taking a deep breath, Jak repeated the procedure with the second wire. Only then, when that was done, did he breathe easily.

  He emerged from the pump house to find J.B. surveying the corpses.

  "They don't look like anyone from the camp," the Armorer said simply.

  "Outsiders," Jak agreed.

  "Pity we had to chill them all. I wonder if the others can get one alive," J.B. mused. "Then we might find out who's behind all this and stop it once and for all."

  DEAN AND RYAN HEADED for the storage tanks, where the squeal of tires and brakes announced that the wag had reached its destination. Both the one-eyed man and his son were some distance away, and were approaching from different angles. With the wag now silent, it was difficult to know where the saboteurs had come to rest, and both Ryan and Dean were only too well aware that they could ride full-tilt into the saboteurs before they had a chance to properly orient themselves.

  "Dean, where are you?" Ryan yelled into his handset.

  "About three minutes away, the speed this dumb creature is going. I'm to the southwest of the tanks, and I'm taking a roundabout route to try and spot them," the youngster barked down the crackling connection.

  "Okay. I'm in the northeast, and I'm bearing straight down. I haven't had a sign of them yet, and I'd guess they're at the back of the tanks."

  "Yeah, they might have left the wag there, but they'll have to come around to the other side to do whatever the hell they intend to do," Dean retorted.

  "If they want to take out the pipes, yeah. But mebbe they just want to blow holes in the tanks. That'd really put them out of operation."

  "Take a shit load of plas-ex, as well," Dean replied.

  "Exactly, so we need to be beyond triple red for these coldhearts until we see exactly what they're doing," Ryan ordered.

  The horses were now approaching the tanks from their contrasting angles, and in the pale light of the moon reflecting on the old and battered metal, Ryan could see some movement at ground level, down in the shadows. It looked like a couple of men.

  "Got two on my side," he snapped into the radio. "Check yours."

  Hearing this, Dean narrowed his eyes and concentrated hard on the approaching shadows. There was no movement.

  "Nothing," he returned shortly.

  "Okay. You take the route around the back, try and find the wag. Mebbe they've left one on guard. Then work your way around to me. I'll take these fireblasted mercies."

  Dean didn't even bother to reply. His father knew that he would follow this order without question. The younger Cawdor directed his mount toward the rear of the tanks, while Ryan homed straight in on the side where the two moving shadows were visible.

  The one-eyed man could see them pause in their task, and he knew that they had spotted him. Hell, he was hard to miss, charging in on a horse from out of the desert. He pulled the Steyr SSG-70 from where it rested across his back, and readied the trusty rifle for action.

  As he closed in on them, Ryan was acutely aware that the desert and dry ground behind him offered no shelter or cover, and that his silhouette had to be plainly visible from where the saboteurs stood; whereas they were little more than blobs of a different darkness, moving against the shelter of the storage tanks.

  The first shot whistled past his ear, and a second kicked up some dust just in front of his charging mount. Obviously, the two men were using different blasters, one of which had a lesser range. Nonetheless, he was now coming into that range, and it would be better for him to adopt whatever evasive maneuvering he could. Which, he was too well aware, wasn't enough. Gripping the horse between his thighs, he raised the Steyr with both hands, resting the stock into his shoulder and sighting as best as he could. The weaving animal beneath him was making it hard to aim, as the target area moved both from side to side and up and down with the pounding of the frightened animal's hooves on the hard ground.

  Shots were whistling around him with an alarming regularity now, and although the one-eyed warrior didn't flinch, he found himself hoping that a lucky strike wouldn't take him out before he had a chance to retaliate.

  His finger tightened on the trigger, squeezing gently and with seemingly no hurry as he sighted— as best as possible—on his enemy.

  DEAN HAD BROUGHT his mount to the back of the storage tanks. He could hear the shots from the other side, ringing out in the still air. From the sound of them, he knew that none of the blasters in action were his father's, and he figured that just maybe he could raise a little distraction.

  He pulled his mount to a halt as he reached the tanks. The animal bucked and lifted its forelegs, Dean using the momentum of the movement to slide down its back and off, using the flanks of the animal as cover as he drew his Browning Hi-Power and checked that a round was chambered and the blaster was ready for use.

  There was no response from the wag, which he could see sitting by the rear of one storage tank. Dean left his horse, which had calmed as suddenly as it had bucked, and was now wandering off, ignoring the noise from the other side of the tank, and made his way into the shadows.

  Inching his way around, he blocked out the sounds of blasterfire from the other side of the tanks, and focused his attention on the wag and surrounding area. Although he stayed on triple red, every sense alert for the slightest sound or movement, he was soon aware that the wag was standing alone.

  It was up to him to move quickly and provide the distraction. Moving over to the wag, which was a jeep like the wag he had seen driving away on their previous encounter, he could see that it was empty. There were no extra blasters or any plas-ex. They had obviously brought what they needed for the job and no more. That suited him fine, for what he had in mind would have entailed a whole lot more trouble if there had been plas-ex on board.

  Dean took a pi
ece of material from the wag. It may have been a shirt, or it may have been a piece of cloth that the plas-ex had been wrapped in. He neither knew nor cared. What was important was that it was there.

  The youth unscrewed the cap on the wag's gas tank and prodded the piece of cloth down the hole, stretching it to make it as long as possible. The cloth touched the gas in the tank and began to soak it up. Dean pressed more of the cloth in, then pulled it out. One end was soaked in gas. He reversed the cloth and pressed the dry end down, repeating the action. When he pulled out the cloth, it was dripping gas, which he let drip down the side of the wag, from the open hole to the dusty earth.

  He then stepped back, laying the rag out to give him a short fuse, and backed off a few paces before aiming his blaster and squeezing off one shot.

  The rag sparked and flamed, the fire spreading up the side of the wag with a thin blue flame and down into the gas tank. Dean turned and flung himself to the ground, covering his head with his arms.

  The wag exploded, and Dean felt the heat and shock of the blast sweep over him, rendering him temporarily deaf and scorching his back and legs. But as soon as it had passed over him, he forced himself to his feet, ears still ringing, and was ready to face the oncoming saboteurs.

  Because he knew that they wouldn't be able to ignore this.

  RYAN WAS RIDING into the blasterfire, moving from side to side and evading the bullets, although he did feel one tug at his shirt, just above the ribs. A hot pain, like a needle through his flesh, registered momentarily, but the one-eyed man had too much adrenaline coursing through his system, and was too focused on the action ahead, for it to stay his course.

  He managed to squeeze off a couple of shots from the Steyr, the heavier ammo from the rifle resounding above the blasterfire from the two saboteurs. The shots hit the tank behind them, causing no harm to them but nonetheless deflecting them from their task. Their firing on the one-eyed man became more erratic, and they hadn't, so far, been able to leave their package of destruction.