Ryan holstered his SIG-Sauer and passed Jak his longblaster, then he climbed up into the split and pulled himself out on his belly, crawling into the shadows beneath a shelf of uptilted concrete. After scanning the tree lines above them, he retreated back down the hole.
“No point in going all the way to the end of the pipe,” Ryan told Jak as he took back his Steyr. “We can’t stay the night here. Go back to the entrance. Draw some fire from the snipers so I can pinpoint their hides.”
Without a word, the albino teen turned and splashed off into the darkness.
Ryan crawled back out into the softening light. He squirmed into a comfortable prone position under the angled slab and dug in his elbows. Downrange, a wall of trees loomed in front of him. The snipers could have been hidden anywhere. He opened the rifle bolt and snicked it back an inch, making sure a round was chambered. Then he flipped up both of the scope’s lens caps. With the setting sun behind him, he wasn’t worried about a reflection off his front lens giving away his position.
Ryan didn’t sight through the scope. He needed as wide a field of view as possible to locate the targets. But he did drop the Steyr’s safety and snug its butt firmly against his shoulder. While he waited for Jak to make his move, Ryan listened to his own heartbeat and consciously relaxed, breathing deeply to slow it. He smelled the forest. Clean. Green. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Ryan stretched out the pause between heart-beats, getting the rhythm right, finding the null, the shooting space.
From far behind him came a clatter of boots as Jak jumped out of the end of the pipe.
The snipers were waiting for just such a move.
Bullets screamed over Ryan’s head, then came the flurry of sharp reports. Multiple, tightly spaced shots made the blasters easier to find against the dark curtain of trees. Ryan caught the faint orange wink of a muzzle-blast as Jak continued to draw sustained fire. The hide was a stand sixty feet up a fir tree. Ryan looked through the scope and rested its crosshairs below the erratic flash, adjusting his aimpoint for the distance and the forty-five-degree uphill shot. Then, with his cheek against the stock and his finger curled lightly around the trigger, he concentrated on his heartbeat.
Thud. Pause.
Thud. Pause.
He steadily tightened down on the trigger, taking up the slack, bringing it to breakpoint.
Thud. Pause.
Thud—
With a thunderclap roar the 7.62 mm slug sailed away.
The Steyr punched Ryan hard in the shoulder. Tensing his muscles, he rode the recoil, swinging the scope back on target. In the field of view, fringed tree limbs shivered as a body fell heavily through them. Then they were still.
The other two long blasters continued to rage. Jak’s odds of being hit increased with every passing second.
Cycling the Steyr’s action, Ryan quickly located the second target up the highway to his left on a high outcrop that jutted like the bow of a vast black ship from amid the tall trees. A more difficult shot because of the solid cover.
Ryan settled into position, adjusting his aimpoint through the scope. As his finger tightened on the trigger, as he was about to ice the crossfire and open the way for the companions’ escape, he heard crunching sounds coming toward him.
Footfalls.
Hard, running footfalls from the other side of the highway.
Swinging the rifle barrel down, he looked over the scope and saw three figures dashing along the hump, straight for him.
He snapfired and hit the lead cannie in the midsection, blowing him off his feet and flat onto his behind.
As Ryan worked the bolt to eject the spent shell, handblasters blazed and bullets chipped the concrete rubble on either side of him. The cannies were trying to reach and control the hole in the pipe.
Ryan fired again and the 173-grain, M-118 slug blew through the flesheater’s chest, taking most of his heart with it. The cannie’s momentum sent him crashing, spread-armed onto his face.
The third cannie was undaunted by the deaths of his pals. On the run, he dumped an empty mag. As he slapped home a fresh one, he stumbled on a loose bit of rock. It took only a second for the cannie to regain his balance, but by the time he snicked his blaster’s action closed, Ryan had cycled another live round into the Steyr’s breech and pushed up to his knees.
Before the cannie could bring his blaster to bear, Ryan shot him in the front of the throat, just under the chin, taking out three inches of his spinal column. Instant chill. The body dropped rag-doll limp, its head connected to torso by glistening threads of muscle.
Concrete exploded ten inches from Ryan’s nose, peppering the side of his face. As he ducked, he heard the hollow boom. The sniper up in the rocks was now targeting him, trying to pin him down. At the far end of the pipe, he could see more cannies filtering out of the trees. Swarms of them. They knew where he was, too. Their bullets zinged all around him.
Under concentrated fire, Ryan backed down the hole and hit the water running.
He shouted the bad news to his waiting companions. “They’re closing in quick. Light’s fading. We’ve got to break out. It’s now or never. Move fast, move low. Jak, you take the point.”
J.B. rammed his fedora tight onto his head and pushed his spectacles against the bridge of his nose. “Let’s do it,” he said.
As Jak lunged for the culvert entrance, the distant crash of steel on steel, of breaking glass, and the screech of bending metal stopped him in his tracks. Then from down the highway they heard the rumble and roar of powerful wag engines.
A second later came the unmistakable, full-auto, rolling thunder of an M-60 machine gun.
“It would appear we have company,” Doc said.
Chapter Six
Ryan led the others out of the pipe. They peered over the top of the concrete rubble as the chatter of machine-gun fire and the howl of engines got louder. This while cannie return fire dwindled to nothing.
The wag convoy lumbered uphill toward them. Huge, hulking forms bounced over the ruts, headlights off in the gloaming. The M-60 atop the second wag swept the far side of the roadway, streaming white hot tracers over their heads.
“Keep down,” Ryan warned the others. “They might mistake us for cannies.”
With nothing to distinguish them from the enemy, rescuers could quickly turn into executioners.
It turned out not to be a problem.
The convoy crews had already assessed the situation and singled out the good guys from the bad.
The lead vehicle was a dually tow truck with a high cab and a wedge-shaped steel snowplow attached to its front bumper. Overlapping steel plates protected the cab and windows. The tow truck pulled past the culvert entrance and stopped, giving the companions cover with its broad flank. Then the driver and passenger cracked the armored doors and opened fire over the hinges at fleeing cannies with night sight-equipped, Russian SKS semiauto longblasters.
From the clatter of the sustained gunfire, their rescuers had deduced what was going on up the road. As a rule, cannies didn’t wage all-out war on one another. The wag crews knew what an unfolding ambush sounded like.
A gray-primered Suburban 4x4 rolled up behind the tow truck and parked. The Suburban’s chassis was jacked up for two feet of additional ground clearance. The windows, grille, hood and wheel wells were covered by crudely welded sections of steel plate; gaps left between the plates served as view and firing ports. A hole had been cut in the roof amidships, providing a gunner