The front door was directly ahead.
“Are we gonna break for lunch?” Bertha joked.
“Nope.” Blade moved to the front door, unlatched the lock, and opened the door. He pointed at a rack of produce to their left. “Get out of sight.”
Bertha limped to the rack, chuckling. “You sure are sneaky, you know that?”
Blade moved behind a rack filled with tin cans. He squatted and verified the Commando was fully loaded.
A minute passed in silence.
From the rear of the building came the sound of muffled voices and the dull tramp of boots on the floor.
Blade tensed, his finger on the trigger of his Commando.
There was a brief commotion at the back of the room. Someone shouted, “Out here! The front door is open!”
Footsteps pounded on the floor, nearing the front door.
Blade waited until he was certain they were clustered close to the front door, and then jumped up, the Commando stock snug against his right shoulder.
Three soldiers were huddled at the door, one of them framed in the doorway as he peeked outside.
Blade shifted the barrel in a short arc as he fired, his bullets tearing into them from a distance of only ten feet.
All three were flung from their feet by the brutal impact of the Commando’s slugs. Miniature bright red geysers erupted from their backs as they were propelled forward and slammed to the floor or, in the case of the trooper in the doorway, to the sidewalk beyond.
Blade caught a motion out of the corner of his left eye, but before he could pivot to confront this new threat, Bertha’s M-16 chattered.
A fourth soldier had just entered the chamber when Bertha’s burst caught him in the head. His eyes and nose disappeared in a crimson spray and he toppled to the floor.
“Let’s go!” Blade directed her. He ran to the front door and stepped out, glancing to his right and left.
At both ends of the block, soldiers and G.R.D.’s came into view.
Blade ducked inside. “Out back!” he yelled.
They were almost to the hallway when the clamor of uplifted voices arose from the rear of the building.
Blade stopped so suddenly Bertha nearly collided with him.
Damn!
The enemy had them surrounded!
They were trapped!
Chapter Twenty-Two
“It sounds like the others are already in the thick of it,” Rudabaugh commented.
“Should we go help them?” Orson inquired.
Rudabaugh debated the wisdom of deserting their post. They had heard gunfire to the west and shots to the southeast, which meant the Doktor was assaulting Catlow from every direction this time. “No,” he replied. “We’ll wait a while and see if any of the Doktor’s troops show up here.”
They were stationed behind a small shed on the extreme northern outskirts of Catlow. U.S. Highway 85 was 11 blocks to the east, Orson hefted his M-16. “I don’t mind telling you,” he said nervously, “I’ll be glad when this is over.”
“So will I,” Rudabaugh admitted, leaning against the shed and cradling his Winchester in his arms.
“Can I ask you something?” Orson queried tentatively.
“What is it?”
“Do you think your boss, Kilrane, would mind if I came to live with the Cavalry after this is done?” Orson asked hopefully.
Rudabaugh eyes narrowed in surprise. “You want to come live with the Cavalry?”
“If they’d have me,” Orson said.
“Why in the world would you want to do that?” Rudabaugh probed.
“I know I don’t want to go back to the Mound.” Orson stated, referring to the huge subterranean city inhabited by the Moles.
“Why not?”
“Because Wolfe will continue to make my life miserable for me,” Orson remarked.
“What’s Wolfe got against you?” Rudabaugh inquired.
Orson sighed. “It goes a long way back to when we were kids together.
You see, Wolfe always was a bossy bastard, even before he became ruler of the Moles. We had a lot of fights when we were kids, because I was one of the few who wouldn’t take his crap.”
“And he’s held it against you all these years!” Rudabaugh commented.
“The man sure knows how to hold a grudge.”
“You don’t know Wolfe,” Orson began. “He’s—”
A booming explosion punctuated his sentence, coming from the west.
“Hickok and Geronimo,” Rudabaugh mentioned, facing in the direction of the explosion.
A cloud of dust was spiraling into the air.
“They may need us,” Orson stated.
Rudabaugh was about to concur, when he glanced at the field to the north of the shed.
It was swarming with troopers and G.R.D.’s, about 200 yards off and closing.
Rudabaugh pulled Orson further behind the shed.
“What is it?” Orson asked.
“Take a look.”
Orson did, and immediately drew back, whistling softly. “Uh-oh. I’d say we’re going to have company.”
Rudabaugh surveyed the buildings to the south, a collection of brick and frame homes separated by marginally tidy yards and narrow streets, a typical residential neighborhood.
“Are we going to stay here?” Orson wanted to know.
“No, we’re not,” Rudabaugh answered. “Follow me.”
They sprinted southward.
Rudabaugh searched for an ideal spot to make a stand. The homes weren’t very practical; they afforded scant protection from a concentrated attack, and he didn’t relish the idea of being caught inside a building.
But there had to be something!
Two blocks south of the shed he found what he was looking for.
“What the hell are those?” Orson questioned curiously.
“I don’t rightfully know,” Rudabaugh confessed, “but they’ll serve our purpose.”
There was a flatbed trailer parked next to the curb on the north side of the street. Stacked on the trailer, and secured by sturdy metallic lashings, were ten huge concrete pipes or culverts.
Rudabaugh abruptly recalled a visit to Pierre many years before, and a construction site he had seen. The Cavalry, because of its reliance on horses as its mode of transportation, wasn’t particularly concerned with maintaining the highways and roads constructed prior to the Third World War, except in the cities where chronic flooding produced by intermittent heavy rains was a problem. “I think they’re called drainage conduits,” he speculated. “Come on!”
They ran around the trailer and started ascending the pile of pipes.
“What’s your plan?” Orson asked.
Rudabaugh was finding the climbing extremely difficult, what with his left shoulder hurting every time he moved. “We’ll get to the top,” he said, “and wait for them to catch up.”
Orson reached the apex of the stack first. He leaned down and extended his right hand to Rudabaugh. “Here.”
Rudabaugh hesitated for an instant, his masculine pride balking at accepting assistance.
“Hurry it up!” Orson urged him.
Rudabaugh took Orson’s hand and allowed himself to be pulled to the top. The concrete pipes were arranged in the shape of a pyramid, with four on the bottom layer, three in the middle, and two forming the point, placed snugly side by side. Although the conduits were circular in form, they were large enough to accommodate a person lying prone on the summit with extra room to spare. Each pipe was four feet in diameter.
Orson took the conduit on the left.
Rudabaugh lay down on the pipe on the right and unfastened his pillowcase from his belt. He took out his pair of charges and his matches.
Orson was doing likewise.
“Would you do something for me?” Orson whispered.