Читать книгу Lost Gates - James Axler - Страница 9

Brilliant white light poured into the interior of the wag as the double doors at the rear were flung wide. The sec men inside raised arms to protect their eyes, rifles held at an angle. All of the companions squinted, torn between protecting their vision from being seared and maintaining the ruse of being unconscious. One thing was certain—any chance of taking the guards by stealth had now been eliminated.

“Illuminated,” Doc whispered, the sole exception to the rule, his eyes wide and pupils reduced to pinpricks as he was temporarily blinded. “And the light pours out of me…”

“Yeah, they got to be the right ones—that sure as hell sounds like the crazy fucker,” a voice boomed from beyond the wall of light. It was followed by the sounds of laughter. Three, maybe four, male voices.

“Shit, you got to do that?” one of the sec men whined, his eyes still protected by a ragged sleeve.

“Just want to make sure you got the cargo, and it’s the right one,” the first man said patiently, as though speaking to a child.

“The people of Hawknose don’t double-deal. It isn’t our way,” said another of the sec men in the wag’s interior, his tone as pompous as his words.

“Yeah, sure you don’t,” the man replied, barely able to keep the humor from his voice. “Thing is, it ain’t me you got to convince. Crabbe don’t trust no one. Not even your precious Valiant. Seems a straight enough guy to me—you all do,” he added placatingly. “But it ain’t down to me. I’m just doing my job, just like you.”

The sec man who had complained sniffed hard. It would seem that his pride had been appeased. “That’s okay, then. Chill that engine, no sense in wasting gas,” he added over his shoulder to the wag driver, who complied. “Right, now let’s get these fuckers out of here and get the transaction over and done with.”

The sec men rose stiffly to their feet, no longer shielding eyes that had grown accustomed to the light. They hustled their captives to their feet, none of the companions making the pretence of unconsciousness. Now that their eyes, too, were becoming accustomed to the light, they could see that the sec men who had brought them were also augmented by five men, clustered within the arc of lights that cast such an illumination into the interior of the wag. The lights illuminated a semicircle of dirt that was about five yards in circumference. Beyond that, and the bank of lights, it was hard to see anything. They could be in a ville, or they could be in the middle of nowhere at a randomly chosen rendezvous. Until any of them had any idea of their location, it was best just to play along, a decision that none of them needed to consult to make.

None except Doc. The old man was last to his feet, staring around him in awe and wonder, as though seeing the world for the first time. Which, perhaps, in some ways he was. Mildred, casting him a glance as she was hustled by, wouldn’t have been surprised if he had a slight concussion from the constant banging of his head. Certainly, his dazed expression did nothing to dispel that notion.

The old man was the last to be hustled out of the wag and onto the hard ground. The others had stood idly as the sec men struggled with him—his balance seemed genuinely impaired and he had trouble keeping his feet—trying to scout their position without being obtrusive.

As they became used to the arc lights, the darkness beyond began to slowly coalesce into a series of shapes and shadows. They weren’t in the middle of nowhere—this was a ville. It was quiet, and now that the noise of the wag engine had ceased, they could hear in the background the familiar noises of people going about their business. It was late evening, almost dark. An overcast sky let little light from the moon seep through. Chem clouds hid a near full moon, and only the very occasional shaft of moonlight pierced the oppressive darkness.

The companions were, at a guess, on the edge of the ville. The sounds drifted only from two directions, the others yielding nothing but silence. Was this a compound of some kind where they were to be kept prisoner?

They would find out soon enough. For now, at least Doc’s bewilderment had given them the time to take some kind of stock.

“Line them up and step back, lads. We want to see what we’ve got here.”

Now they could see the man behind the voice. It was surprising. He had the voice of a big man: barrelchested and tall. Yet the man who addressed the Hawknose sec force in such booming tones was actually a short, squat man with a mop of curly gray hair and a straggling beard, almost dwarfed by the battered Kalashnikov he cradled in his arms. Yet despite his lack of physical stature, he had a presence that told he was in charge of the sec men who flanked him, each man standing taller and broader. They looked like a hand-picked team designed to deter any arguments. As they stood, in a parallel arc to the lights that were at their rear, it certainly seemed as though they were having the desired effect on the Hawknose team, who stood back toward their wag a little defensively.

The small, squat sec man stepped forward, squinting at the six bound people now arrayed in front of him as though examining them closely.

“Yeah, they look like it to me.” He stepped back and said over his shoulder, “You reckon as much, boys?”

There was a general muttering of agreement.

Mildred, looking at them, wondered if this was because they really were in agreement, or as part of some process to soften up the men clustered by the wag. To make them more amenable to whatever may come next.

Meanwhile, the squat sec man snapped his fingers, and two of the men bent down, reaching behind them. They each withdrew three sacks, which they tossed into the center of the dirt patch, so that they landed at the feet of the companions with a clinking that betrayed the contents.

Solid jack.

“Yep,” he continued without missing a beat, “I reckon these are the dudes that Crabbe has been looking for. Stupe, really, all those missions he sent us out on, and the bastards roll up down the way apiece without us even having to do anything. Valiant did good, and so did you.”

“Then why have you only thrown in six sacks?” asked the pompous Hawknose sec man. Even if he wasn’t the senior, he had taken it upon himself to be spokesman. Like the others, he was lean of face and grim of demeanor. His face gave nothing away, like his compatriots, though none of the six betrayed by them would have betted that the others weren’t secretly relieved that they weren’t the ones on the firing line should his opposite number not like his tone.

The squat sec man sniffed heavily, growled in the throat, then spit out a phlegm ball that landed with a dull splat by one of the sacks.

“It’s like this. They look right. That’s good. We got—” and he pointed to each in turn as he reeled them off “—Brian Mordor, the one-eyed leader. Jock and Snowy, the old guy and the albino. One’s crazy as a mutie coot. The other’s a shit-hot hunter and real dangerous. Had my way, I’d shackle the little bastard at all times. Can’t trust them… Krysty, the mutie with the weird strength. Gonna have to watch her, boys. Millicent, the one who’s a healer. Don’t let that fool you, boys. Heard she can fight like a man. Kinda looks like one, to my eyes. Krysty looks more my type, though I hear she’s Brian’s woman. And then we got J. T. Edson, the blaster man. They say there ain’t shit he don’t know about weapons. Useful guy.”

“You know a lot about us,” Ryan said slowly. “We don’t know shit about you. Want to tell us?” He kept the irony out of his voice. The man seemed to know something about them, but with a strange twist. Like that old game Chinese Whispers that Krysty had told him about, where information was passed on from person to person, half heard. He wondered what else they would know, but yet not know.

The squat sec man sniffed and spit again.

That’s one hell of a sinus infection the guy’s got, Mildred thought, but held her peace.

“Listen, Brian, I ain’t got nothing against you personally, see, but unless you shut up I’m gonna have to bust you in the jaw. My baron wants you, and he’s got you. But that don’t mean that a little accident don’t happen between here and him getting to see you, especially if you can’t keep your yap shut. You don’t talk unless you’re asked something, you see?”

Ryan bristled at being spoken to in such a fashion. He could see the smug looks on the faces of the surrounding sec men, and he was seized by a desire to wipe it from their faces. But his hands and feet were still bound, and he had no weapons. He gritted his teeth so hard that his jaw cramped as he fought down his temper. Although he knew he shouldn’t rise to the bait, there was something about the squat man that irritated him—an assumption of superiority based on nothing more than the fact that he held a blaster.

And something about the way that sec man looked at him. As though he was sizing him up.

Just what did Baron Crabbe want from them? Want enough to have been searching for them, and to have collated information that seemed to be almost but not quite right? That was a cause for concern. Did he want something that they would be unable to give because they had never had it? Any further rumination, taking his mind off his anger as it did, was interrupted by the further supercilious tones of the sec man who had escorted them this far.

“Are you going to argue with Ryan—” he pronounced the name with emphasis “—or are you going to tell me why you’re not paying up in full?”

“I was in the middle of telling you when one-eye here interrupted me,” the sec man snarled, raising his blaster and checking it pointedly. Behind him, the other guards moved menacingly. “Thing is, Brian and his boys—and girls, if you’ll excuse me,” he directed at Krysty, “have got a little task that Crabbe wants them to undertake for him. Now, much as he appreciates the fact that Valiant sniffed them out, and that you’ve brought them here, he feels that it would be a little remiss of him to pay in full before they’ve undertaken that task. After all, they look right, but if they ain’t, then that’s a lot of jack to throw away. Y’see?”

“But we’ve brought them here in good faith—” the sec man began.

“Ain’t saying nothing against you or Valiant,” the squat man interrupted. “How many times? Shit, get the point. You keep the half no matter what. Turns out that we all made a mistake, then that’s it. If these’re the right guys, then you get the second half of the payment. Look at it my way—you already called out Brian as Ryan. That don’t inspire me, you know what I’m saying?”

The pompous sec man’s voice held a quiver of fear as he spoke once more. “Valiant will not like us returning empty-handed.”

The squat man coughed a laugh that was filled with scorn. “You ain’t returning empty-handed. You got half the jack. You get the other half if the task is completed. Shit, way I see it ol’ Crabbe is being pretty good to you. He’s taking you on trust ’cause he knows you fuckers wouldn’t lie if your lives depended on it. Don’t think you know how,” he added reflectively. “So if it turns out that ol’ Brian here is really Ryan, like you say, and he ain’t the man Crabbe is after, you don’t deserve the full jack. But you didn’t try to deceive him, so you get to keep that half. I’ll say it again, stupe boy—if I had my way, and these ain’t the right people, I’d be after your asses with all blasters blazing. So why don’t you be a good little man and fuck right off before I really lose it.”

There was something about the way that his tone changed over the last couple of sentences that signaled a barely concealed anger. Not one of the companions had to exchange glances with another to know that the pompous Hawknose sec man had overstepped. Without turning, they could hear the shufflings that indicated at least some of their former guards were preparing for retreat.

“Before you go, ain’t there something you forgot?” the squat man asked with a hint of mockery in his voice. From their rear, the companions could hear two of the men move forward. They appeared in front of the group, gathering the sacks of jack before hastily moving back to their wag. They didn’t look at the people they had betrayed, but Ryan could see enough to notice that both guards were sweating with fear.

The squat man watched them, the ghost of a smile playing around his lips. He put the blaster over his shoulder, as though to indicate his lack of fear and knowledge of his superior status. “Something else you forgot?” he added, waiting until the Hawknose men were almost ready to leave. There was a pause, and then one of the long-faced men stepped past the companions, carrying a clutch of weaponry. As soon as they had been rendered unconscious, Ryan and his people had been stripped of their blasters and blades. Even Ryan’s weighted scarf had been taken, and used to bind the weapons together.

They were dropped in an unceremonious heap at the feet of the squat sec boss. He nodded—a barely noticeable approval, whether at delivery or horde was impossible to tell—before speaking again.

“Yeah, that’s it. You can go now. You’ll be hearing from Crabbe if things go well. Don’t come asking.”

The sec man who had dropped the load looked up briefly as he passed Ryan. The one-eyed man caught him in a stare for the briefest of seconds, and was astonished to see the naked fear in the Hawknose man’s face. Whatever Crabbe wanted from them, he would obviously stop at nothing. His ruthless reputation was foretold in that one glance.

While the group stood, still bound hand and foot, facing the semicircle of sec men who covered them, they could hear the wag in which they had been transported start up and leave. Even the pitch of the engine seemed to have a whining note to it, as though it couldn’t get away quick enough. As it faded into the distance, they were left staring at the men who were now their captors.

“You don’t say much, Brian,” the squat man said. He looked quizzically at the one-eyed man, as though trying to peer into his very soul. “Hope for your sake that you say more when Crabbe questions you.”

“You told me to shut up when I spoke before,” Ryan said calmly. “You’re the man with the blaster. What do you expect?”

The squat man sniffed. “Don’t know. More fight, mebbe. But mebbe you’re just biding your time,” he added with a knowing look.

“Mebbe…” Ryan answered slowly. “Meantime, shouldn’t we know what this is all about?”

The sec man laughed. “I’m going to watch you very carefully, Brian…Ryan…whatever the fuck your name is.”

He gestured, and half of the lights went out. It took a moment for the companions to adjust to the sudden change, facing as they did the full glare of the arcs. In that time, the sec men fanned out so that they covered the group from all sides. As their eyes adjusted to the darker night, they could see that they were on the edge of the ville. Behind the lights lay the spread of buildings that housed the ville folk. Looking around for the first time, they could see that to the rear—where the wag from Hawknose was now nothing more than a memory—there was nothing but wasteland.

There were more men than they had originally thought. Behind the arc lights had been an additional six, who had been operating the arcs and standing in reserve. Now, with the lighting reduced to a level where they could see clearly beyond and around, it was plain to tell that these men were deployed to surround them. They might be unarmed and bound, but their reputation had obviously preceded them.

“Okay, chill the rest of the lights, and keep them covered,” the squat sec man ordered, almost casually deploying his blaster so that it now covered Ryan. The meaning of this gesture was clear to the one-eyed man—the squat sec man considered Ryan his own personal charge.

Three of the six lights operated at half beam. These were pulled down slowly until they were extinguished, allowing the sec force to keep full observation on their charges.

“Okay,” the squat man barked when the lights had faded. “Louie, retrieve the arcs come morning. Pickup accomplished. Keep the bastards covered, and let’s move on out. Aw shit, better free them up a bit,” he added, looking at their hobbled ankles.

One of the sec men moved forward silently, observed by the others who kept their blasters carefully trained on the companions. Quickly and with deft fingers he loosened the knots around their ankles, one by one. Feeling that had been restricted to pins, needles and a dull throb now flooded back into their extremities, making it easier to move and yet at the same time more painful.

The squat sec leader waited until the task had been completed and his man had fallen back into his place in the circle. With a grunt of approval, he gestured that they move.

If being drugged and spirited away to a strange ville while bound and stripped of their weapons could be called a surprise—and Ryan would be more inclined to term it stupe bastard carelessness—then this was the second one to assail them in the space of a few hours. For they didn’t move toward the lights, shapes and sounds of the ville, which was what they had expected.

It was difficult for the companions to move at the pace that the sec men tried to set. Their bonds made it difficult to move with more than the smallest of steps, despite their being loosened. Blood flow to previously numb feet made them tender and treacherous. J.B. stumbled into Krysty, who found it hard to keep her own balance. Doc fell over many times, face-first into the dust before levering himself up by his elbows. Mildred went to help him up the first time, but the barrel of a Kalashnikov jabbed in her ribs dissuaded her. Only Ryan and Jak kept to their feet with any sign of ease. That was deceptive in the one-eyed man’s case. It took all of his concentration to maintain the appearance of ease. Despite the pain and the effort, he didn’t want the sec leader to see that he was struggling. When the time came, he wanted the man to have seen no chinks in his armor. But for Jak, there was no such effort required. The innate skills that made the albino the hunter he was were more than enough for him to compensate for a minor—and temporary—disability.

The guards around them tried to force the pace, but it was of little use. The shackles of returning circulation and the bonds that were still in place made it impossible. Finally the sec leader had to compromise. With a curse and a sigh he stopped the party, directing that the ropes around their ankles be severed. He even allowed them a few moments to massage circulation back into aching ankles.

Krysty’s glance flashed across the circle, catching Ryan’s eye. He knew what she was asking, and shrugged. He had no idea why they were being led away from the ville when the baron had paid for them to be delivered to him. Was this some kind of plot by the sec boss? Or was there something else that they couldn’t as yet know?

Ryan thought that both he and Krysty had been discreet. Obviously not as much as he had thought, for as they shuffled and stumbled to their feet once more, the sec boss spoke.

“Yeah, weird that Crabbe wants to see you so bad, yet you ain’t getting to see the baron’s palace. Am I right?” He paused, then laughed harshly. “Yeah, sure I am. But you’ll see soon enough. And if you’re who he hopes you are, then you’ll understand.”

With a gesture to his men, he ushered the party onward. There was no chance for the companions to communicate in any way, even though that was what they most urgently needed. Thoughts were whirling inside their heads. They were being marched across terrain that was rough and uneven, uncertain under their feet. Their weapons were achingly just beyond their reach, carried by one of the sec men ahead of them in the guard circle. It would be so easy to just make the effort—to stumble the short distance and make a grab—and yet if they did, any one of them, they would all be cut down before anxious fingertips could touch gunmetal.

The sky overhead was dark and unforgiving. Chem clouds scudded across the void, whipped along by winds that were at high altitude, in contrast to the stillness through which they trudged. The near-full moon was only briefly and fleetingly revealed, its wan shafts of light revealing nothing that seemed to matter. The ville lay far behind them now, and ahead there was only wild and desolate wasteland.

Still, it seemed that the sec boss knew where they were going. Whatever his aim, at least it was possible to see that he had one. And, by the pace that he was setting, the goal was still some distance away.

They continued on through the night, their energy sapped by the after-effects of the drug and the cramping, crippling effects of the subsequent confinement and constriction. As the chem clouds became suffused with the light of early dawn, turning from gray and black to a gray that was tinted orange and red as the sun attempted to signal a new day, it seemed that they had walked at least as far as they had been driven. It was almost impossible to determine direction without the map of stars denied by the cloud cover, and so it was ludicrously possible that they may be walking all the way back to Hawknose.

That idea vanished when the sec boss turned to them and, with a sly grin, said, “Well, what do ya know, kids. Looks like we’re here.”

For some time they had been ascending a shallow incline. Now they had reached the summit and could see that it fell away sharply beneath them. At the bottom of the drop was the remains of an old road, a single-lane blacktop that led through the rusted tangle of a chain-link fence until it came up against what had once been a disguised doorway. Concrete, receding into the earth, and roughly seven yards in diameter, it was now as plain as the dawning day—the entrance to a redoubt.

“Thought that might make you jump,” the squat man observed as he closely watched the companions’ reactions. Despite themselves, all except Jak had registered some sense of surprise. The albino teen had remained impassive, as ever, despite his inner feelings echoing those of his friends.

Ryan’s jaw set hard. He should have expected this. There had been hints in what Valiant had said before they had been drugged. Crabbe had pieced together a kind of history. He knew some facts, had made leaps of imagination between others, but had the basic ideas. There had to be a reason why the story grabbed him. Why not because he had found his own, personal redoubt?

So where was this going to lead them?

The squat sec boss’s face broke into a grin. “Yeah, the looks on your faces, I’d say that names and shit aside, Crabbe knew what he was looking for. And that cob-up-his-ass jerk-off Valiant is a lot smarter than I’d give him credit for. Looks like his people are halfway to the rest of that jack.”

With a gesture, he bade them to start down the slope. It was dry and dusty, the loose earth rising in clouds around them and making it hard to keep a foothold. Small rocks and stones turned at their ankles and slipped away from under their feet. Each of them was concentrating too closely on keeping their own footing to notice that the sec force surrounding them had spread out a little to allow them more room.

With good reason—the squat man knew what would happen, and wanted to keep his own people out of the way of the impact. Choked and blinded by the dust that rose around them, ropes pulling at ankles forced apart by slipping feet, balance proved to be an impossibility. Doc was, inevitably, the first to go. His feet shot out from under him and he fell heavily, rolling on his hip and pivoting sideways.

Despite catching him from the corner of her eye, and trying her best to avoid being taken down by his falling frame, Mildred couldn’t move her own feet quickly enough. A combination of uncertain terrain and limbs dulled by constriction made her clumsy where usually she would be sure.

The pair began to tumble down the incline, gathering momentum and dislodging earth and stone as they fell. It made the ground around them begin to move. For J.B., Ryan and Krysty—all of them, like Doc and Mildred, disabled to a degree by the binding and constriction of their limbs—it made things that much harder. The already unsteady ground beneath their feet was now treacherous, and the way in which Doc and Mildred had fallen made it that much more apparent that it would be all too easy for each to follow.

All of the sec men had fallen back so that they were at the rear of the group. They were surer on their feet, partly because they were unshackled, and also because they were able to pick their way around unsettled terrain with greater ease. They took the pace more slowly—no need to hurry when your captives were in no condition to make a break.

The only exception to any of this was Jak. The albino youth was always fleet and sure of foot. Even with the remnants of the drug in his system, and his ankles still partially numb from their binding, he was able to pick up speed, nimbly jumping the larger rocks that sought to disturb his balance. He rode the scree of stone and earth that began to move like a river beneath him, using the currents within it and adapting his own rhythms to run with it. When he reached the bottom of the sharp drop, bringing himself to a halt before he hit the remains of the black ribbon, he turned and looked back up the incline.

The sec force were three-quarters of the way down, picking its way carefully over the wake of the companions’ descent. The sun had now risen enough to light their way with ease. They were strung out in a line, with the squat, bearded sec chief in the center.

He stopped short when he saw that Jak was glaring at him. Their eyes met, and in the early light of morning the albino’s red eyes glowed with a passion that he usually kept masked. A shiver ran down the squat man’s spine. The albino teen had said nothing, and his face remained fixed. But those eyes said it all—if ever he had the chance, he would take vengeance for this humiliation on himself and his friends.

By the time the sec force had reached the bottom, Jak had long since turned away. He helped Ryan to his feet, and then between them they assisted the others to right themselves. Limbs ached and were bruised, there were a few contusions, but there was no major damage. Mildred murmured that she would tend to the wounds when her hands were freed. Ryan wondered why the sec men had been content to watch them fall.

When he looked toward the exposed concrete of the redoubt tunnel, there was an answer. There was a wag to one side that hadn’t been there before. As the area around was flat and open, and they had seen nothing approaching for several miles from their initial vantage point at the top of the incline, it could only have come from inside the redoubt. That impression was reinforced by the way in which the men standing on either side of the wag were dressed. There were three of them, two on the left, one on the right. Two cradled Kalashnikovs, while the third was carrying an SMG of some sort. At this distance, even J.B. couldn’t tell the model. But it was a blaster, nonetheless. As was the canon mounted on the back of the wag. No one was manning it at present, but it looked capable of serious damage over serious distance.

No wonder the sec force following them was in no great hurry.

The sec men from the incline reached the bottom and fanned out to cover them once more. The three men by the wag, two with rifles, began to move forward to reach their compatriots. The man with the SMG slung it and climbed up onto the back of the wag, covering them.

“You’re taking no chances,” Ryan observed wryly as the sec boss approached.

The squat man shrugged. “You should be proud, Brian or Ryan. Shows we take you seriously.”

“I’ll remember that next time I see a shitload of blasters ready to take me out when I’m unarmed. Makes me feel real proud.”

The squat man grinned. “I could grow to like you, Brian…if I could be bothered. Now get moving.”

He gestured to them to move. Slowly, the captive group moved toward the entrance to the redoubt. Seeing that their guards were in control, the two sec men from the wag returned to it, one of them getting behind the wheel and firing up the engine. He maneuvered the vehicle so that it faced the redoubt entrance, the SMG on its back swiveling with the movement so that it always kept the captives covered.

The companions walked slowly up to the redoubt doors, which stayed resolutely shut.

“So what now?” the one-eyed man asked, turning to the sec boss.

“Little test for you,” he called. “See if you’re who we think.”

“I thought you knew that,” Ryan countered.

The sec boss laughed, a short, barking cough. “Reckon I do. But mebbe Crabbe would like more proof. He suggested this, and who am I to go against my baron? Now stop fucking about and open the doors. If you are who we think, then you’ll know how to do it.”

“And if we’re not?”

“You’d be triple stupe to try and bluff it out, if that’s what you’re thinking. We’ll just chill you now, and not waste any more time.”

Ryan surveyed the sec force facing them. All were armed. And then there was the SMG.

They’d do it, all right. He was certain of that.

“J.B.,” Ryan muttered.

The Armorer stepped forward, raising both bound hands so that he could remove his glasses and wipe the dust and dirt from them before placing them back on the bridge of his nose.

The keypad, discreetly hidden, was directly in front of him. He punched in the three-digit entry code that was common to all redoubts.

The doors groaned into action, opening to reveal a tunnel that sloped gently down to a dogleg corner. The brightly lit interior was clean and empty. It looked like any other redoubt they had seen.

Except it was far from empty farther down.

Baron Crabbe was waiting for them.

“Move on in. Slowly,” the sec boss ordered. “Wait,” he added as the companions began to enter. “Four in front. We don’t want them to be pulling down any of those other doors and leaving us on one side, them on the other, do we,” he added.

“Smart. Wouldn’t get us anywhere when you’ve got people in there already,” Ryan said, as four of the black-clad sec men moved in front of them, reversing so they could move backward, keeping the companions covered all the while.

“Mebbe. Wouldn’t want to look stupe in front of the baron, though,” the sec chief replied. “Now you can go.”

They moved down the tunnel and into the interior of the redoubt.