"Do?"

"Yes. Can you explain your plan to me?"

"Lady," he said, "I don't have the time."

"But..."

"All right. We go out. Attack the bikers and the Motes where they're set up. Hit anyone hard who gets in our way. Try and burn out the old theme park there, then move out. How's that sound?"

Carla looked across at the baron. The old man was sitting hunched over, hands to his face, weeping quietly.

"Can we come with you? I can use this blaster, and I'll look out for Edgar."

"Why take so much trouble over a defeated baron? It happens all the time in the Deathlands. Barons come and go. You don't have to carry on being loyal to him now."

Her voice was very quiet. "He's my father. Is that reason enough?"

"Yeah. Guess so. Sorry that... Fireblast! You know?"

She half smiled and patted his arm. "Course I know. And now you do, too. You still didn't say if we could come with you."

Ryan nodded. "Whatever happens, I figure it'll be better than staying around for the snakes."

"Ten minutes of the hour left, lover," Krysty said. She sat cross-legged, her back against the wall of the room, resting. Her fiery hair was coiled tightly around her head, ready for the combat to come. She looked amazingly relaxed. "Jak!"

"Yeah?" The boy's voice floated up the shadowed staircase.

"Get J.B. up here. You come up, as well."

"Sure."

"You decided what to do, lover?"

"Yeah. I decided fifty minutes ago. Been examining the plan since then, looking for holes. Looking for anything better. Can't think of anything. So this'll be it."

When everyone had gathered in the room, he outlined his idea.

"Throw them off balance. We go down to the first floor and gather near the rear door. We wait and keep silent. They won't be totally sure if we've sneaked out or not. They'll be uncertain. Won't know whether to come in at us or not. Then, as soon as they finally make a move to attack, we go out like the hounds of hell. Make for the draw that runs parallel to Main Street and outflank them. We try to fire the Heroes' base, then double back along the far side of the street and into the brush. And away. How's that?"

The Armorer took off his fedora and scratched at the light brown stubble of hair. "Can't see anything wrong with it. Experienced sec men... they'd see it coming and cut us apart. Not those no-hopers and blankers. Yeah. Let's do it that way."

The passing of the hour was announced by a shout coming from one of the buildings across Main Street.

For the next twenty-eight minutes, nothing happened at all.

Then everything started to happen at once.

Chapter Thirty-Two

"Wag on the way," Krysty announced.

"Can't hear an engine. You sure, lover?"

She nodded. "Being pushed. I can hear men's feet and the sound of wheels on sand. They're aiming to get in the front under cover."

"Then it's time to move. Keep an eye on Edgar. Rick?"

"What? Sorry, Ryan. I was miles away. What is it? Are the black hats coming?"

"Yeah. They're on the way. Take charge of the baron, will you? Just keep him close. And keep your eyes open. It'll likely be kind of busy for the next few minutes."

His eye accustomed to the darkness, Ryan was able to see the armored truck that Krysty had picked up with her mutie hearing, the rectangular bulk blacker against the blackness. The pale faces behind it were heaving it ponderously forward. It was about eighty yards from the rooming house. Ryan could pick out men strung along the far side of Main Street, on roofs and peering from behind curtains.

"This is it," he said. "Let's go."

He led the way, followed by Rick and Baron Edgar. Krysty brought up the rear and quietly closed the bedroom door behind her.

Jak was at the top of the stairs and he turned, catlike, his red eyes seeming to glow with a smoldering fire.

"Now?" he asked, responding to Ryan's nod and taking the lead down to the first floor.

Doc and Lori waited there, one at the front of the long hallway, the other in the entrance to the kitchen, watching the rear of the house.

"Are the redcoats coming?" Doc asked in a hoarse whisper.

Ryan didn't try to guess at the strange allusion. The meaning of the question was plain enough. "Yeah. Out front. Hiding behind a big wag. Be at the front door in four or five minutes."

"Can't we blast some and stop them down?" Lori asked eagerly.

"No. Best plan is to keep them guessing. If it's dark and quiet and there's no sign of any of us, they'll be uncertain. That means frightened. Nobody wants to be first up the ladder or number one through a closed door. It'll slow them."

They padded through the kitchen in single file, past the antique pots of copper and brass and the scrubbed tables. Jak looked at the rack of old knives with bone handles. Ryan caught the glance.

"Leave them be."

Ryan eased the back door open a couple of inches and saw the stocky figure of J.B. standing close to Carla.

"They're coming out front, pushing a wag ahead of them. Still don't figure they're likely to rush at us out of the darkness."

The Armorer grinned, his teeth showing white in the night. "Guess not. I haven't heard a gnat fart out back. If they got it covered, then they're either very good or they're keeping themselves way, way off there."

During their whispered conversation, Ryan had been peering down Ruby's trim garden, past the neat rows of okra and beyond the outhouse to where the brush began. And where the steep-sided draw ran behind Main Street.

"We go now?" Krysty asked.

Ryan hesitated. "What can you hear?"

Krysty shook her head. "Wind's blowing this way. All I can hear's the gas plant. Drowns anything else out."

"Jak, you got the best night seeing of any of us. You make anyone that way?" He pointed toward the desert.

Jak stood silent for a long moment. "Think there's one or two about fifteen feet left of outhouse. Crouched behind heap of cut wood."

Ryan strained his eye to try to see what the albino had spotted. But it was all a dark, swimming blue to him.

There wasn't time for any more doubts. Behind them, at the front of the hotel, the night exploded with the dull, heavy sound of scatterguns and the busy crackling of pistols. And the distinctive chatter of John Dern's M-16.

Glass broke and wood splintered, and above the noise they heard the angry screech of Ruby Rainer's voice protesting the ruination of her property.

"Let's go," Ryan hissed, leading the way with his pistol in his left hand and the eighteen-inch steel blade of the panga in his right.

Jak had been partly correct.

Zombie had placed Mealy in charge of the rear guard. Six men were sitting down, talking quietly, behind the cords of kindling. Two more were crouched at the side, keeping watch for signs of movement in the building.

They had been warned to look out for anyone sneaking quietly out of the darkness, but they weren't prepared for the utterly ruthless speed and violence as Ryan and the others hit them.

"Fastest and hardest," had been another of the Trader's endless number of homilies — most of which concerned better ways of chilling.

Mealy had time to set his finger onto the trigger of his shotgun but he didn't have time to pull it. The long cutting edge of the panga opened his throat in a screaming, red-lipped cry, nearly slicing his head from his broad shoulders. As the biker fell in a welter of blood, Ryan was already among the circle of relaxing men, his steel blade hissing and singing, jarring on bone, ripping through flesh.

J.B. took out one of the men who had been watching the rooming house, his Tekna knife driving forcefully into a soft stomach. The Armorer twisted his wrist brutally hard, letting the saw edge spill the sentry's intestines into steaming coils about his feet.