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up, holding the
Steyr to his shoulder.
"Jak, when I say 'now,' I want you to throw the gren straight up, over our
heads. Try to put a little effort into it so it'll land on the top of the
wall, but it doesn't matter if you do.
Just make sure you throw high and straight."
J.B. flattened himself against the rock and fitted his eye over the scope. He
waited, watching and listening. There was a faint clink of metal against rock
and he said softly, "Now."
Jak lobbed the bomb up in a straight line. J.B. followed the gren's vertical
flight through the scope, and when it lost its momentum and began to drop, he
waited until the small object was level with the edge of the canyon wall
before squeezing the trigger. He was right on target.
The blast of the detonating gren echoed across the canyon and back like a
thunderclap. A
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fireball bloomed, and tongues of flame curled in all directions. Everyone
below felt the slamming concussion. As the echoes of the explosion still
reverberated, clattering rock fragments and screams of agony added to the
noise.
Shielding his eyes from the falling rock chips, Jak looked up and said with a
grin, "Flash-
fried 'em."
A pair of automatic rifles began chattering from the opposite wall, striking
and ricocheting from the outcropping. J.B. hitched over, saw the men on the
facing edge of the canyon and fired the Steyr at them. After one man fell,
arms windmilling, and the other dived for cover, J.B. said, "Time to move.
I'll lay down a covering fire."
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As the friends broke from their granite hiding place, J.B. propped his Uzi
atop the boulder and depressed its trigger, sending a steady stream of bullets
to chew up the topmost edge of the opposite wall. He kept the sec man up there
pinned down, afraid to raise his head, until the five people had reached the
bottom few feet of the stone staircase.
J.B. grabbed his sack and scrabbled out on the ledge, climbing, crawling and
sliding. He heard voices shouting from the mouth of the canyon, and he
recognized one of them as
Hellstrom's. Evidently he had sent a scout force ahead, holding back the
remainder of the sec squad.
Fleur, Krysty, Doc and Jak had taken cover behind rock tumbles beside the cave
entrance the moment they'd jumped from the stone staircase. J.B. slid down to
join them, hopping from ledge to ledge. Although the exchange of gunfire and
the gren explosion had happened in a very short span of time, he feared that
whoever or whatever lurked inside the cave had been alerted. He expected a
swarm of beetles to swoop from it immediately.
At the very least, he expected Hellstrom and his sec men to charge down the
canyon, weapons blazing.
J.B. managed to join his friends behind the rocks on the right side of the
cave opening before either one happened. He didn't have to wait long before
six shaven-headed, X-
scarred men raced down the canyon, blasters flaming, heading straight for
them. They fanned out and took cover without hesitation. The sec men kept up a
cone-shaped firing pattern. Bullets whined from their stone shelter and
exploded against the rocky wall over their heads, sprinkling them with dust
and gravel.
"As long we stay down, we're safe," Krysty said. "But if we try to make a run
for the cave, we'll make excellent targets."
A bullet dug a gouge in a rock very close to Doc's head. The shot had come
from above, and Jak returned the fire with a double blast from his Colt
Python.
Krysty and J.B. exchanged hard-eyed, knowing looks. It was only a matter of
time before the sec men got in position to lob grens at them, or the sniper
above would pick them off.
Doc chuckled mirthlessly, peering out between the open spaces in the rocks at
the men shooting at them. "This reminds of the time I took my daughters to see
Buffalo Bill's
Wild West Show."
Fleur stared at him as if the white-haired man had suddenly decided to turn
senile, but
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