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wariness. It communicated itself to all the wags, where the military remnants
of the old ways gathered their standard-issue Uzis and H&Ks, checking that
they were ready for tiring. No one spoke.
In the lead wag Murphy turned to the four soldiers behind him, who were also
in the process of checking their weapons.
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"Let's go, people. Follow me, with extreme caution. Terminate with extreme
prejudice. I think we can forget breeding stock this time out, unless we get
lucky.
Remember, aim for the head. We want those organs undamaged when we gather the
harvest. Okay, let's go."
He spun the sec lock on the wag's door and slid down onto the dirt floor of
the circle, keeping watch all around him for any signs of life. There were
none, not even the mangy hounds that they raised in this pesthole for
watchdogs, and meat when the animal grew old. There was nothing at all.
Murphy heard the clicking of other sec locks, as the rear door of the wag
opened and the four men in back jumped out, fanning out around the wag to keep
it guarded to keep one another guarded. The men in front and back of the other
wags followed suit, until all twenty-four men were in the circle, surrounding
their wags.
Still there was silence, as though the very atmosphere of the storm itself was
holding its breath, waiting for the first move.
RYAN SETTLED the Steyr against his shoulder, nestling the butt of the blaster
into the hollow. His finger caressed the trigger, while he sighted with his
eye, drawing on the driver of the last wag into the circle as he dismounted.
He'd thought about taking out Murphy first he had a score to settle with the
sec chief from the redoubt but decided against it as Murphy might be useful in
getting
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nds%2051%20-%20Rat%20King.html them back into the redoubt.
The man in his sights looked around slowly, his Uzi leveled, his eyes
glittering and alert. It caused Ryan only a ripple of surprise to see that the
driver was, in fact, a woman. And a ripple of surprise only because she was
larger, heftier and more muscular than any of the men in the detail.
It might be doubly useful to take her out first. He wanted to chill a driver
so that it freed one wag for them to capture. Ryan assumed that the other sec
men in the wag wouldn't be able to drive. He'd gathered enough about the
redoubt to assume that each handed-down position was specialized and jealously
guarded as such.
The woman looked stronger than many of the men, so it would be good to get
such a formidable opponent out of the way.
"Keep staring right at me," Ryan whispered to himself, so much under his
breath that it only emerged as a sigh. Keep staring, keep giving me a great
view of your face, a clean and simple target& "
Ryan squeezed gently on the trigger, shoulder braced for the recoil, squeezed
until&
Ryan was already on the move when the shot hit home, killing the driver. He
tapped the ville dweller next to him on the shoulder to let him know that he
was to maintain the position, then jumped off the roof of the shack and headed
out along the back alleys of the ville.
He heard the burst of Uzi fire, and the eerie scream of a man with no tongue
as the sec man he had left behind caught the ricochet of Uzi fire. There was
no way it would be directly fatal at that range, no way anyone could have got
an accurate shot in with a machine pistol. The poor stupe had to have just
been unlucky.
First blood to Murphy's men.
Ryan had memorized the alleys until he felt that he'd lived in the pesthole
for years. The rest of the companions had done the same, preparing themselves
for when the attack came.
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It wasn't unfolding as he'd hoped. Murphy's men were grouped in the center of
the ville. That much, at least, was according to plan. But they had wags to
protect them, which would make attack much more difficult.
J.B. was waiting for him at the arranged point, by Abner's shack. The Armorer
had been assigned the task of covering the far sector of the ville simply
because he couldn't guarantee his mobility would be one hundred percent. By
dropping back, he protected himself and also decreased the chances of being a
liability to the others.
"Had a look at them?" J.B. asked.
Ryan nodded. "Four wags, six men per wag. Only twenty-three now, though."
J.B. chewed his lip. "Wish we had some plas-ex. The wags give them too much
cover. We need to draw them out."
"If you come with me, that's just what I intend to do," Ryan replied,
instantly changing plans.
MURPHY FELT the cold sweat of fear ran down his back. His eyes stung with
perspiration and dust, but he didn't dare relax his grip on the blaster for
the fraction of a second it would take him to wipe the sweat away.
After he heard the ricochet of the Uzi fire, and the scream from the direction
of the initial shot, there had been nothing. Murphy didn't know that the ville
dwellers, hidden away but watchful, had been itching to fire back, stopped
only by the knowledge drilled into them by the one-eyed man and his
compatriots the knowledge that a war of attrition would have a better
long-term effect than a blind firefight.
If Murphy had known that, he would have gladly told them it was working just
to goad them into some action. He glanced around at his men, who were looking [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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