Pilgrimage to Hell

jumped, his head jerking up as his hand reached at his coat.

Ryan shouted, 'You're dead first, Strasser. Whatever happens.'

Strasser stared upward, his skull-like face expressionless.

'Ryan. Might've guessed you'd still be loose. But what can you expect when you employ imbeciles.'

J.B. muttered, 'I'll go down. Get Henn and the rest. Get the door open.'

Ryan called out, 'You killed a lot of our people, Strasser.'

The bony man shrugged but said nothing.

'Tell the trucks to beat it, and tell them not to mess up when we come out. Get your men out of the buggy.'

'Why should I do that, Ryan?' Strasser's voice, like his face, was expressionless.

'We got Teague.'

Strasser pursed his lips, then shrugged again and nodded slowly. He began to turn away.

'And don't move from that spot, shithead.'

Strasser stood still, pointed at the trucks, began talking quickly to the two men with him. One of them went to the buggy, his voice a mutter of sound. Ryan watched as goons began climbing out of the buggy, five in all. The trucks revved up, backed off from the house and turned, disappearing down the driveway into the darkness beyond the arc lights' beams. Ryan could see their headlamps cutting into the blackness. The men who had come from the buggy began to back away from the vehicle onto the grass.

'J.B.!'

Below him he saw light spill out from the opening door and he turned and raced back across the room, into the corridor, down the stairs, the SIG still clutched in his right hand.

'Let's go.'

He shoved the SIG at Teague's head, and Teague whimpered as they moved out of the house toward Strasser and the buggy.

'We go to where the Trader is, we go to where the train is, and then we go.'

Strasser said, 'Fortunes of war, Ryan,' His hands came out in a wide-armed shrug. 'So near, and yet so far. Ah, well...'

There was something wrong here, but Ryan couldn't figure out what it was. He knew Strasser. Strasser was too cool — far too cool. Then in the same moment that he saw muzzle-flash from the buggy interior, Teague's head exploded like an overripe fruit, spraying him with blood, brains and homogenized bone. The double crack of the shots came a microsecond later. Teague lurched, collapsed into him soundlessly, and the dead bulk of the man shoved him groundward, knocking the SIG from his grasp. There was another, longer, burst of fire and a crazed yell from behind, then Strasser was screaming, 'Hold it!'

Ryan heaved at Teague, rolled him off, as icy phantom fingers insinuated themselves into his stomach. What a jerk-off, he thought disgustedly. Then Strasser was above him, a handgun gripped in his gloved hand, its barrel inches from Ryan Cawdor's good eye.

'Don't twitch. Shithead!'The gaunt man's voice was a crow of delight and malevolent triumph. 'Thought you had an ace, hmm? Tough titty. Now you're going to be telling me about all those ingenious boobies you have.' He laughed softly. Chillingly. 'Jordan was redundant, Ryan. So are you.'

Chapter Nine

They hadn't bothered to take his watch, and the thought pounded his brain like hammer blows that time was running out... running out... running out.

But they'd take the SIG, the LAPA, his grenades, the contents of his belt pouches and the four sticks for the LAPA. All the obvious stuff. And although they'd left him his belt, they'd checked it thoroughly.

But they had not checked his boots, his thick-soled combat boots, and they had not checked his long fur- lined coat. Oh, sure, they'd gone through the pockets, all of them, the obvious places, but once they'd finished that task, under Cort Strasser's gimlet gaze, they had handed it back to him.

'Where you're going, Ryan, you might get cold. And we wouldn't want that.'

Very funny.

And they had not checked his scarf, the white scarf of thick silk he'd found in a trunk in an attic in an old abandoned house on the borders of the Swamplands down south. It was a fine scarf, an elegant scarf, a scarf that had once surely belonged to a man of substance who had used it for those very special occasions in the old days. Those way back, pre-Nuke days. The silk was so smooth and so thick and so heavy. Especially so heavy. Especially now.

But they had left him that, probably because it had no meaning to his searchers, since the concept of 'dressing up' for those very special occasions was utterly alien to them, something that had no meaning whatsoever. The way they stank, it was clear these guys hadn't washed in years, let alone dressed up.

They had not taken J.B.'s hat, either, an error they might come to regret. While they were being searched — upstairs, here in what once had been the Mocsin City Bank and Loan Facility Corporation building — J.B. had obligingly taken off his old, wide-brimmed fedora, held it upside down, the crown gripped in his left hand, and inserted the fingers of his right hand to flick up the sweatband, just to show there was nothing concealed behind it. The guy pulling weaponry off and out of him, denuding his pouches, groping at the lining of his brown leather jacket, now ran a finger around the inside of the hat suspiciously, peering intently at it, staring up at J.B.'s impassive, bespectacled face, a face made all the more funny looking because the specs had been salvaged from some surviving product dump years ago and distorted J.B.'s features. And shrugged. And watched J.B. press down the sweatband again and plop the hat back on his head. And returned to the far more important business of searching him for concealed cannon, bazookas, a howitzer stuffed down his pants. Shit like that.

Foolish man.

Strictly an amateur.

Even so, even allowing for the stupidity of Strasser's goons, the blinkered comprehension of Strasser himself, Ryan had to admit that this spot was a tight one, and it would need more than merely a modicum of luck and a good stiff breeze to get them out of it.

His ranks now were drastically depleted. That treacherous burst of fire from the concealed marksman in the buggy had left him J.B. Hunaker, Koll and Sam. And as a wild card, Hovac, waiting at Charlie's — though a pretty damned useless one, all things considered, as Hovac had no means of knowing where they were, what had occurred, and in any case was hardly in a position, even if he did discover their whereabouts, to rescue them. All he would know was that they were late for the rendezvous and time was ticking away.

Time.

Ryan had no intention of checking his watch because that would give Strasser the idea that there was some kind of time factor here, some kind of cutoff Ryan knew about that he didn't. But at a rough calculation Ryan figured that maybe two hours had passed since Hunaker had entered Charlie's with the grim news.

And that in turn meant they had roughly two hours to get their shit together and out. Say one and a half, in case of accidents. Not a lot. Not one hell of a lot.

Easing away from the wall he was lounging against, Ryan said, 'You know, we can still come to some kind of deal on all this.'

Cort Strasser laughed.

'You're in no position to bargain, Ryan. You're mine. So is your train. All mine.'

'You got us, but you don't have the train. Touch the train and you lose it. You lose the lot, Strasser. You think we wire up the odd booby here and there to keep off predators? The old spark bomb to give a guy a shock? If you want the truth, every damned vehicle in that train is set to blow if you so much as breathe on it. I tell you, it's like a house of cards. Tamper with one vehicle and the whole lot goes. It'll be the biggest blowout since the Nuke.'

Strasser laughed again, but the laugh was far too loud, far too bouncy.

'What a talent for exaggeration you have, Ryan.'

'Try it.'