Ryan watched in admiration as J.B., still leaning with his back to the bar, his coat open, his right hand resting on his belt, drew the Browning with shocking speed. His arm jerked up and the Hi-Power barked and spat, its bullet slamming one of the other black jackets over into a table. The table splintered under his weight and the violent impact of his flailing body. His M-16 clattered to the floor.

That was what saved the last man, who was close to the table and to his heart-shot companion. The last man jumped away from the collapsing table and stumbled, dropped his piece, then with a wild yell leaped for the door.

Ryan hammered a round at him but missed by an inch. Or less. In adrenaline-boosted terror, the guy yanked the door and dived through it, the door swinging shut behind him.

J.B. jumped toward the door. Ryan, running to him, yelled, "No bangs in the street!"

J.B. stopped dead, as though mesmerized by a vision only he could see. Ryan, running up the room full pelt, slowed to a halt, SIG raised.

The door had creaked open; in fact, the guy was pushing it inward with his body. The guy staggered in the doorway as the door swung away from him. He teetered on his heels, his arms half raised, his hands clawing feebly at nothing. He fell backward and crashed to the carpeted floor.

Another figure appeared in the doorway. It was Sam, holding a silenced Walther PP Super in her right hand. She stepped over the body, bent and heaved it away from the door. She slammed the door, kept hold of the Walther.

She said, her voice husky but not panicky, "Main train's gone off the air. We were rapping with Cohn in War Wag One when he suddenly reported the convoy was surrounded. Voice came on the net, demanded to talk to the Old Man. Then there was a lot of interference. We relocated, heard this other guy say they'd nerved the main train, they were all dead, finished, kaput, and unless the Old Man threw in, the convoy'd get blitzed, too. Then there was more interference and they cut out."

She stopped, impassive.

"Dead line?"

"Dead as this goon here." She gestured at the man on the floor. "We tried everything. They're off the air."

J.B. shot a look at Ryan and Ryan sucked in air through his teeth, an icy feeling running up his spine like electricity.

Had Teague copped nerve gas? But where from? Then Ryan thought, if wefound some, why not someone else, somewhere else?

Or was it maybe bluff? Had they merely axed the radio link somehow? But how would they have done that? They could certainly throw in interference fuzz, but not kill it dead unless...

Unless those in the main train really were dead.

And what about the Old Man? Was he dead and those with him, too? On reflection, almost certainly not, and for one excellent reason.

J.B. lit up one of his thin black cheroots, his eyes behind his steel-rimmed glasses narrowed in thought.

Ryan turned to the bar and said, "Do us a favor, Charlie. Get these stiffs outta the way."

"Just like that? I'll wave my wand, Ryan." Then she sighed and said, "Okay, don't panic. We'll fix it. I take it there's more on the stairs?"

"You take it correct."

Charlie's tiny mouth opened and closed.

"You're a real hothead, Ryan." She added, "What if they came in a vehicle?"

"He said he saw them in the street. Across the street."

"Oh, right. Good memory."

Ryan watched as half the bar patrons began dragging bodies toward the far end of the room. J.B. sucked on his cheroot, blew smoke out in a thin plume. He said, "Listen. They used gas on the train. Why didn't they use it on the Old Man?"

"That's a rhetorical question, J.B. You know the answer."

"Hmm. They mortared gas canisters in." He clicked his tongue irritably. "Something we didn't make allowances for. Gas gets in through cracks and tiny holes. So all our people are dead. Nothing we can do there. Say it's a short-term agent. After dispersal they now have to open up all those land wags and trucks and the two war wags. But they can't, because they know that every damned vehicle owned by us is packed with boobies. Everybody knows that. And if they start smashing out window glass or blowing in doors, the whole caboodle could go up and they lose everything. So they're stuck." A dark smile of satisfaction fled across the thin man's sallow features. "They're well and truly stuck."

"So they have to parley with the Old Man," said Ryan. "So they have to take him alive."

"Nontoxic agent."

"Nothing else'd do."

"Yeah."

"So that means," continued Ryan, "the Old Man's out. But he'd have made sure all the vehicles were tight. So that means Teague's goons have got more vehicles on their hands they can't touch, move or do any thing at all with."

"Yeah."

J.B. blew a smoke ring. It sailed up toward the ceiling, shimmying, expanding, drifting out from the center, breaking up.

"And that means," said Ryan, "we're the only free agents in town."

"Yeah."

"But they don't know what we know. No one knows that."

J.B. murmured, "That little extra." He glanced at Ryan. "How long we got?"

Ryan checked his watch. "Rough timing, I'd say about four hours."

"Gotta work fast. What's your plan, war chief?"

The room was now clear of stiffs. Incredibly those who remained in the bar were drinking and talking as though nothing had happened at all in the past ten minutes or so. He caught Ole One-Eye's single orb, pink rimmed, the eyelid fluttering in a macabre and sardonic wink. He stared at Sam, Rintoul, finally at J.B. He thought of those on the main train, maybe a couple of hundred souls all told. All loyal comrades; some, indeed, close friends who'd shared with him a thousand experiences, a thousand dangers, a thousand joys and carousals. He thought of the flame-haired girl, Krysty, with the deep, the luminous green eyes. Extinguished. Snuffed out. Rage was like a sudden eruption of fierce white flame that licked through his entire system.

He said, his voice taut, "We take the war to the enemy. We pay a visit to Jordan Teague."

Chapter Eight

Despite orders, you kept to the shadows. The deep shadows. The deeper the better.

You kept to the shadows despite orders, despite doomy warnings from your unit leaders, despite hideously snarled threats of disembowelment or being flayed alive or having your hands nailed to the wall. Despite all these and more, you kept to the shadows because you were beginning to get... cautious.

A sec man's life in the old days used to be different. It used to be fun, used to be a laff riot. It meant you were top of the pile, king of the ville. Meant you could do what you wanted, when you wanted, for as long as you wanted, and free. Mocsin was open city for the sec men, and you could tool along its streets and whatever you saw was yours. Not for the asking — you didn't need to ask for anything. It was all yours for the taking. Yours by right of conquest. Didn't matter what it was, you had an open license on it. Food, booze, men, women. Whatever was your fancy, it was yours.

And sure, on the surface the situation hadn't changed. On the surface it was still the sec men's paradise. On the surface everything was as it was, as it had always been, since Jordan Teague first hijacked the burg way back when most of today's sec men were brawling brats.

On the surface.

But underneath, paradise was maybe not quite what it appeared to be. There was a tension in the air — something you could almost feel, almost gnaw at — that none of the old-timers had ever known. A population that had once been like rabbits, cowed and submissive, seemed to have changed, seemed to have become insolent. They always seemed to be watching you, except when you looked straight at them and then they weren't watching you at all. Except you always caught that twitch of the face, that nervous flicker of the eyes, that meant they had been watching you. And they always seemed to be whispering about you behind your back, except when you swung around and they weren't whispering at all, their lips were closed. Except you knewthey'd been whispering about you, insulting you. And you got so mad at this sometimes that you took a whole bunch of them — men, women, brats — and herded them into the trucks and took them back to the Cellars and you stopped them watching you out of the corners of their eyes by taking their eyes out. And you stopped them talking about you behind your back by sewing their lips together.