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Armalite. "Best get tourniquets on those legs or he's going to bleed out on
you."
"Yeah, see to it," Vernel said to his men.
Then to Ryan, he added, "Some other time, One-Eye& "
"Sooner the better."
Vernel snorted, then pushed past his crew and vanished into the milling crowd.
Trader and the others didn't stick around.
As they backed away from the scene, J.B. said, "We cut that pretty fine."
"Too damned fine," Poet grumbled.
"Man!" Hun exclaimed, her eyes wide with excitement, nostrils dilated,
full-blown roses in her cheeks. "Was I ever pumped to cut loose on those
thieving, dickless bastards!
Kaaaa-boom! Kaaaa-boom! Check this out& " She held up her trigger hand for them
all to see. It was trembling violently.
"Better start breathing through your nose," Trader advised her. He nodded for
J.B. to pass her the 'shine. They stopped while she took a long pull on the
jug.
Ryan angled his body so Poet couldn't hear what he had to say
to Trader. "Levi Shabazz must be somewhere close by," he said.
"He never travels without his crew. Not a good sign for us."
"Definitely not a good sign," Trader agreed. "I didn't catch sight of Shabazz
up at Zeal's compound." The tiniest flicker of a smile crossed his
battle-hardened face. "But then again, I wasn't turning over any rocks."
Chapter Six
As Trader accelerated up the dirt road, he checked the mini-wag's side mirrors
to make sure Zeal's sec men hadn't jumped in their own vehicles and followed
them out of the ville.
Behind him, there was nothing but his own swirl of dust on the winding track
that rimmed the dry lake. He didn't really expect to see a bunch of wags in
hot pursuit. The baron knew better than to try something like that. He had to
figure that a man as savvy as Trader would set up an ambush to cover his
retreat from Virtue Lake.
"I never guessed old Zeal would roll over so far on a deal,"
Trader said to Ryan and Poet, who sat grim faced and shoulder to shoulder in
the narrow back seat. "Know damned well it goes against his grain not to be
the one coming out on top. Can't see why he'd be so anxious for the blasters
and ammo that he'd take the screwing I gave him. And what's he think he's
going to do with ten new blasters and a thousand rounds of government,
anyway?"
"Not much," Ryan replied. "Very suspicious, if you ask me,"
Trader said. "We could always just move on," Poet offered. Ryan let out a
snort of disgust.
The older man ignored him and went on, "We can always off-load the
autoblasters somewhere else down the line. Sell them one by one, if we have
to. Plenty of barons be glad to pay top dollar for goods like that, even if
they couldn't afford to take them all."
"That's not an option," Trader said. "Why not?" Poet asked.
"Because I'm not running from Levi Shabazz."
"You really think he's in the ville?"
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"Oh, he's there, all right. He's the tail that wags the dog named Vernel.
Question is, how is he hooked up with Lundquist
Zeal? And what kind of ugly plan have they got hatched?"
"The answer there's easy," Ryan said. "They plan on taking us down, ripping us
off for the whole cargo. Wags, too."
"Mebbe," Trader said. "But then again, mebbe not."
"As I see it," Poet stated, leaning forward in his seat, "we've got two
options. We either uncircle the wags and leave right now, or we sit tight and
see it out. If we stay, we got to go on triple red, shift our wags and mass
their firepower to defend the road. We put the trade goods meant for Zeal
outside our defensive perimeter, mebbe even mine them for a little extra
protection. That way, if we had to, we could always just let them have the
fucking blasters. No way could Zeal and Shabazz take the rest of the cargo
from us."
"What do you say to that, Ryan?" Trader asked.
A glance in the rearview mirror told him what the younger man thought of the
plan. There was a thoroughly disgusted look on his face.
"We've been butting heads with Shabazz for as long as I've been part of this
crew," Ryan said. "He's not much of a trader.
Doesn't have half the brains for the job. He's always made his real living by
robbing and chilling. I don't know about you, but
I'm tired of smelling that bastard's stink every time I turn upwind. I'm tired
of looking over my shoulder for his blaster barrels every time we nail down a
big score. And I'm tired of hearing about how he's fucked over another
dirt-poor ville for everything but the shit in the latrines."
Trader knew what Ryan was talking about. He had heard the
rumors, too. Road scuttlebutt had it that Shabazz had recently taken up
extortion in a major way. As the story went, the trader claimed to have a
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