After all, unlike the Angels, they were in no hurry.

  “I’m glad we’re not caught in the middle of that,” the youth added.

  “Me, too,” Ryan said.

  Because the Angels were good enough at their peculiar brand of war that even an arrogant man like Morgan had to acknowledge it, DPD’s planners presumed they’d be sending scouts out around the flanks of both forces to get the lay of the land and look for weaknesses in the invaders’ lines—and quite possibly try to work their way into the DPD rear where they could do disproportionate damage themselves. Possibly that could influence the battle’s outcome.

  That was a long shot, of course, but not so long that it could safely be ignored. Despite himself, Ryan had been impressed that the captain-who-would-be-baron had the professional skill and savvy to realize he needed to do something to minimize that risk, as minor as it already was.

  “I want you to go out there, hunt those assholes down and ruin their shit” was how he’d put it in their behind-the-lines briefing before daybreak that morning.

  “This is still outside Angels territory, from the maps we were shown,” Mildred said. “I wonder what the gangs whose turf the Angels are tromping through to get to Hizzoner’s boys think about it.”

  “It would appear they are opting to lie low and await events,” Doc said.

  “They probably don’t feel like paying the price of resisting the mighty Angels and getting beaten down for their troubles,” Ryan added.

  “Maybe they’re hoping both sides will be too worn out and worn down to look for vengeance on those who didn’t actively help them out,” Mildred suggested as they walked down a ramp from an elevated loading area.

  “They may be a little green if they’re counting on that to avoid payback,” J.B. said.

  “Could happen,” Ryan said. “Payback’s probably going to be a lot lighter for not lending a hand than fighting against them—either side.”

  “No doubt the more ambitious among them hope for the chance to seize new territory for themselves,” Doc said.

  “As long as they’re lying low,” Ryan said, “they’re staying out of our way. And not jumping on our backs.”

  Jak waited just inside the far door. He was barely visible in the shadowed gloom, clear of the yellow bars of light, swimming with dust motes like clouds of gnats, that streamed in through windows set high on the northeast wall. He was hard to make out against the relative dazzle from the empty doorway.

  “Close Angels,” he called softly.

  “Need more words here, Jak,” Mildred complained.

  But Ryan grunted. “I know what he means. We’re getting close to actual Angel territory. Things could get tricky fast.”

  “Won’t they be throwing everything they have at the DPD?” Krysty asked.

  “Care to bet your life on that?”

  “Well—”

  J.B. scratched under his hat.

  “We getting paid to invade?” he asked mildly.

  “Point taken,” Krysty said.

  “Let’s swing wide west and head back toward the Seven-Five,” Ryan said. “Then start another sweep closer to the action.” He shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind seeing what’s going on. Wouldn’t really care to get stuck down here if the sec men break and run.”

  “Do you think they might, Ryan?” Krysty asked. “Hizzoner’s forces are so strong.”

  “You’ve seen the Angels in action. They may be coldhearts, but they’re tough.”

  “Sec boss doesn’t usually get cagey and start using strategy and tactics if he thinks he can get what he wants by just bulling in and busting heads,” J.B. observed.

  “I’m convinced,” Mildred said firmly. “But why circle wide? Aren’t we more likely to run into more Angel patrols if we move in closer now?”

  “But that’s the point, Mildred,” J.B. said. “We don’t want those bad boys running up on us from behind, do we?”

  “Oh.”

  * * *

  THE CACOPHONY OF blasterfire, interspersed with occasionally audible screams, got louder. It wasn’t, Ryan thought, just because they were getting closer.

  Part of the reason was that a distinctive blaster had joined the fight. It was clearly a machine gun, and from the higher pitch and faster cyclic rate of its shots, not the burly M240 mounted on the equally burly Commando. It was a 5.56 mm, making it one of several M249 squad Automatic Weapons he knew the DPD had in its armory. That in turn meant it was mounted to one of the lesser war wags.

  They cut east toward the looming, bizarrely cubist sculpture garden of downtown, with its crazily leaning skyscrapers, jagged stumped and occasional intact towers.

  The companions took turns covering one another to reach a building whose southwestern-facing walls were completely gone, as were most of the top two of its three floors. Chunks of the other three walls and much of the top of the first floor remained, upheld by stout rectangular-section columns. The sun had risen high enough so that the interior was mostly shaded.

  When they joined Jak, who had gone ahead to make sure the place was clear, they quickly saw the source of the machine-gun fire and the focus of most of the action, it seemed, on this end of the battle lines.

  The twenty-foot-long BearCat was rolling slowly forward across a broad expanse of weeds and neglected crops. The M249 was spitting fire and noise from the rotating roof hatch. Twenty riot-armored SWAT troopers carrying carbines, submachine guns and shotguns trotted in a skirmish line to both sides and slightly behind the car with their clear, curved shields held in front of them. About thirty uniformed cops followed ten or fifteen yards behind.

  The machine gun seemed to be concentrating its fire on a cluster of three buildings in varying stages of having been smashed to rubble a couple hundred yards to the right of Ryan and friends. Looking that way, he saw muzzle-flashes flickering from windows and broken walls, from ground level to a scrap of remaining third floor at the far end.

  As he swiveled his head back to look at the armored wag, he heard a rushing sound like a quick, violent burst of wind from the Angel strongpoint. Something flashed through his field of view, making a sizzling, popping sound like bacon frying on a griddle, unreeling a thin, bluish corkscrew of smoke behind it. He caught a flash impression of blue lights flickering at its trailing end.

  Then the big BearCat vanished in a sheet of blinding white light.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Black dust!” J.B. exclaimed. “That was a Dragon wag chiller!”

  Mildred barely heard him. The thunderclap that had followed the blinding white flash by a heartbeat had been like steel spikes being shot into both her eardrums simultaneously. She had felt the explosion like a slap in her face, leaving her eyes watering.

  The line of riot cops in their tinted visors and black armor faltered. A horde of fighters rose from the weed field. Some were as close as twenty yards to the stricken vehicle, which was already vomiting orange flames and greasy black smoke from all its windows. They charged, whooping their battle cries.

  Mildred didn’t want to think about the fate of the BearCat’s crew.

  “Anybody see where that missile came from?” Ryan asked, as always focused on what counted most.

  “I did!” Ricky yelled, throwing out an arm as if forgetting the possibility somebody might spot the violent motion. “It came from the near end of those buildings!”

  They were smack in the middle of a massive urban concentration, so from any direction you cared to look you could see what were by definition “those buildings,” even if half of them had been blown up or beaten down. But Mildred knew before she looked what the overexcited kid was pointing at.

  It was the Angels’ strongpoint. Of course.

  Unnerved by the explosive fate of one of their heavy-hitter war wags and the sudden human wave attack rising right in their faces, the black-armored SWAT troops turned and ran. Seeing their elite—and better-protected—comrades running right at them, the uniform division cops behind them promptly routed, too.

  A lone officer, bareheaded and clinging to the reins of a rearing, neighing bay horse, waved a handblaster and evidently shouted at the running men, though Mildred couldn’t hear him. They flowed around him and his panicked mount like water and kept running.

  “Isn’t that Lieutenant—” Krysty began.

  Blood fountained from his neck. He fell over the saddle’s cantle and vanished in the weeds. His horse bolted straight away from the blazing wreck.

  “—Mahome,” the redhead finished.

  “Yeah,” Ryan said.

  Little flashes began to blossom inside the armored wag, accompanied by loud pops, as the heat of the inferno cooked off various munitions.

  “Did it look to anybody else like he got hit from behind?” Mildred asked.

  “Mebbe,” Ryan said.

  “I don’t think those are all Angels,” Ricky said. He transferred her pointing finger to the figures running in pursuit of the fleeing sec men. “I think I see those Punks, Rock City—”

  One of the pursuers paused to strike a pose, hand on hip, right side turned toward the enemy, a big cowboy six-shooter held out straight. Just like an Olympic target-pistol shooter, realized Mildred, who had been one. He cranked the hammer back with his thumb and fired.

  “And I think that one’s a Dead Elvis.”

  Mildred saw that his face looked an unhealthy and unnaturally gray beneath his shiny black pompadour. He wore a bulky white canvas jacket with what looked like random shards of mirror and polished metal sewn onto it. Not to provide a sort of personal suit of barbed wire, like Jak’s jacket, but to mimic the trademark glitter of the gang’s namesake.

  The awful complexion was a sign that his bunch used face paint, like Rock City, and not that he was an actual zombie. Mildred hoped.

  He was too spry to be a rottie, which was the closest thing to the genuine item she and her friends had encountered in the Deathlands. Anyway, as far as they knew all of those who had been infected with the horrible sickness had been chilled for real.

  “So the other gangs aren’t all lying low after all,” Ryan said. Mildred was starting to hear better as the ringing in her ears subsided. Also, the battle noise wasn’t interfering as much with comprehension because the chase was moving away. “The Rock City bunch must be heated up way past nuke red at Hizzoner if they’re allying with the Angels. Plus, they say the Elvises don’t like anybody.”

  “It would appear that they dislike the Detroit Police Department more than anybody,” Doc said. “At least for the day.”

  “Right,” Ryan said. “Let’s go.”

  “Where to, fearless leader?” Mildred asked.

  Ryan jerked his chin toward the Angel strongpoint. “There. Wag-chiller rocket’s a high-value wep. You’re not going to entrust one to a random numb nut. That means whoever fired it is a high-value target himself.”

  “How do we know he’s still there?” Krysty asked.

  “We don’t,” Ryan said. “For sure. But nobody’s come out of those ruins to join in the chase, have they?”

  Krysty gave a look of green-eyed surprise to Mildred. “No, not that I’ve seen.”

  “They may be concerned about the whole rest of the DPD line,” J.B. pointed out. “They haven’t gone anywhere.”

  If anything, the shooting from farther east had increased in volume. It was still nowhere near as loud as the recent battle close by.

  “Enough jawing,” Ryan said. He turned and headed southeast.

  * * *

  JAK HELD UP a white fist. Then he opened it into five wide-spaced fingers.

  Ryan and the others waited in the shell of a factory whose nature couldn’t be determined or even sensibly guessed at, given that much of the three-story structure had fallen in on itself, leaving the bottom floor a perilous maze of heaps of yellow brick and other crud durable enough to survive a century of decay, if not necessarily in identifiable shape.

  Jak squatted by the southwest wall of the huddle of ruins the Angels, including the rocketeer, had holed up in. It was yellow brick as well and consisted of the roofless remnant of a single story, with walls knocked into fanglike shapes, though they still mostly blocked view from without from shoulder height or more. Jak, however, had found a peephole into the interior.

  No traffic from either direction was visible on the street. Leaving Ricky and Doc to cover them, Ryan led the others across it and a five-foot strip of weeds and low brush to join Jak. From inside the ruins came the sound of men conversing in normal tones. As the remaining pair joined them, Ryan moved alongside Jak.

  Inside, as Jak reported, five men in Angels colors stood in what had been a corner room. The back wall, to Ryan’s right, was largely gone. The far wall was largely intact, complete with a doorway. No door, unsurprisingly.

  Two men stood by gaps in the front wall where they could watch for enemies approaching and fire on them as needed. Two more stood nodding and listening as the fifth pointed out something on a map he held.

  Crucially, nobody was looking this way, much less guarding it. The Angels were good, remarkably organized for a street gang, but not good enough to avoid giving into the common battlefield condition of getting tunnel vision toward the most obvious threats.

  Ryan pulled back.

  “How many more?” he mouthed to Jak.

  The albino held up five fingers, then closed his fist. A pause, then five fingers plus one from his other hand, followed with a shrug.

  “Five or six is all?” Ryan mouthed.

  Jak nodded.

  Ryan nodded crisp acknowledgment. If there’d been more Angels in the complex huddle of buildings, they were gone now, likely to join the fight that still continued along the bulk of the DPD foothold.

  “Dude with blond, shaggy hair’s the leader,” he said quietly.

  There had been no mistaking that. Aside from the deferential attitude of the Angels he was speaking to, just standing there being calm he radiated presence. Ryan could feel it, just from a glance. Could he be the famous Leto? he wondered.

  One way to tell.

  “Take him alive, no more damage than necessary. Don’t chill the others unless you have to. Self-defense only.”

  That wasn’t mercy, but because Ryan’s ever-probing mind was considering the possibility that diplomacy might come in handy at some point. He wasn’t sure how, but if this was the son of the Angels’ boss, slaughtering all his comrades out of hand wouldn’t be the prime way of opening the conversation.

  The others nodded. Not even Mildred gave him any back chat. There was too much chance of being overheard, despite the talking and the rattle of battle to the east.

  “Got a little surprise for them,” J.B. said, holding up a gray object roughly the size and shape of a golf ball.

  “Ace,” Ryan said.

  * * *

  J.B. REARED UP in a gap in the wall, just far enough to chuck his little lumpy ball inside. The carefully measured length of safety fuse was sputtering viciously. He deliberately pitched it to land in the far front corner of the room. It wasn’t designed to chill, as such, but you couldn’t be too careful with plas ex.

  The man up front who was nearer to the plas ex turned his head to look, then took a step toward it as J.B. ducked.

  Even with a wall between J.B. and the minibomb, and J.B. prepared for it, the explosion of the little C-4 ball was savagely loud. He grinned. That was the whole point.

  “Go!” Ryan shouted.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ryan sprang through the gap, his panga in hand. Jak was already inside. That was a calculated risk on Ryan’s part—the little albino was not so good at not chilling people. But since the dust-up of a few months back that had temporarily split him off from the rest, he and Ryan had seemed tighter than ever. The one-eyed man had told his friends to chill in self-defense only. Jak would do his best to do what Ryan said, even if his definition of self-defense was broad even by the standards of his companions.

  Holding his shotgun in his right hand, J.B. used his left to vault through the gap in the wall he’d been hunkered near. As he did, he saw Jak rabbit punch an Angel with the studded brass-knuckle guard of his trench knife. He was the most immediate threat, by way of the Mini-14 he held ready.

  The dude on watch was...not so much. He had incautiously taken a step toward the flash bang J.B. had improvised from some of the C-4 they’d happened to have left over and a blasting cap. And it had ripped his leg right off at the hip.

  Could have used a trifle less, I guess, J.B. thought in passing.

  His partner’s head was turned to stare at him, which was what gave Jak a free shot at the guy’s nape. J.B. noted a stream of blood from the Angel’s right ear.

  Then he was rushing the trio in the middle. They stood blinking and clearly stunned by the blast, brutal as it was and out of nowhere.

  Ryan clubbed down the nearest of the three from behind with the butt of his panga. Then he kicked the man on the far side of the evident leader beneath the cast skull buckle of his belt, throwing him back hard against the wall.

  The man with the long blond hair came out of his momentary stupor and threw a punch at Ryan. The Deathlands warrior blocked with his left forearm and head butted his opponent in the bridge of his nose. The blond man staggered back with blood gushing over his mouth.

  The man Ryan had clipped had gone down no farther than one knee. He started up, groping for a handblaster at his hip. J.B. slashed the butt of his M4000 behind the man’s ear and he fell flat on his face.

  “Boss!” an alarmed voice shouted from the doorway. “What the nuke is—! Shit, shit, shit!”

  The last words came out loud but slurred. Probably from the leaf-shaped throwing knife that suddenly sprouted from his cheek and the hand he’d clapped to it. He fell back out of sight.

 

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