Deathlands 117: Desolation Angels (21 page)

He grabbed for his blaster with a gauntleted hand.

“No.” Ryan stepped between him and the bound, supine Angel. “He’s our prisoner.”

“Get out of the way.”

“He’s our prisoner,” Ryan repeated.

“I own you, you mercie filth,” Morgan screamed. “Now get out of my way, or I’ll have the skin stripped off you and roll you in salt!”

“Don’t—”

Morgan drew his SIG.

Ryan was faster. He drew his own and shot the DPD captain through the forehead.

Morgan’s eyes bulged even farther. He fell in on himself like an imploding building.

Ryan looked around. Everyone was staring at him like an alley cat at a stickie.

“What?”

“He wasn’t after you, Ryan,” Mildred said.

“Do I look like I give a fuck?” Ryan said. “Do you?”

She glanced down at the SWAT captain. The color had drained from his face. His blue eyes stared up at the sky past the hole in his forehead.

“I think he looks better that way,” she said.

J.B. appeared in the doorway with his Uzi in his hand. He took in the scene with a glance.

“I guess this won’t help us get out of Detroit,” he said.

“I—I don’t think anybody else saw,” Ricky said.

“The sec men are still fifty yards away,” Krysty said. “They seem to be wary of approaching this place.”

“Good,” Ryan said. He holstered his handblaster, then turned to Leto.

The Angel was staring at him as unbelievingly as his friends had.

“You chilled him? I don’t understand. Wasn’t he your boss?”

“He was an asshole. Anyway, we already gave him one nice little gift we hadn’t intended to. Wasn’t going to do it a second time. And nobody chills someone I take prisoner.”

He leaned over, grabbed Leto by the biceps and hauled him to his feet. The Angel was medium height, a few inches shorter than Ryan, but his bare shoulders were as broad. He stared at Ryan defiantly.

“What are you going to do with me now?”

Ryan turned him around and began to untie the belt he’d used to bind Leto’s wrists.

“Cut you loose,” he said.

“What?” Leto said.

“Ryan, what are you doing?” Krysty asked.

“Playing a hunch,” Ryan said. “And that hunch is, we need a friend.”

“The kid did say his dad wouldn’t give a bent shell case to get him back,” Mildred said.

“Who’re you calling a kid?”

“Listen,” Ryan said, yanking his vest back onto his shoulders and turning Leto to face him again. “This war’s just begun, and you already cost Hizzoner his second-best war wag. You and him keep fighting, you’re both going to just wear yourselves out. Then the rest of the gangs in the Detroit rubble will chill both of you and take over.”

Leto knit his brows.

“Mebbe,” he admitted.

“So I want you to go back and try your best to get your daddy to negotiate.”

“What about your reward?”

“We did the job we were contracted for,” Ryan said. “We get paid no matter what.”

“You can’t trust Michaud. I told you that.”

“Our lookout.”

“I can’t promise I can sway my father. Fact is, I can almost promise I can’t.”

“Will you swear to do your best?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you ride a horse?” Ryan asked.

“No.”

“Best learn fast. That’s your quickest ticket back home.”

“Getting closer,” J.B. called.

Leto ran out. Ryan heard shouts from the slowly approaching DPD forces, then shots and finally a whinny of annoyance and the sound of hooves drumming away to the southeast.

“How’s he doing?” Ryan asked Ricky.

“Well, he’s still in the saddle,” Ricky said. “Mostly.”

“Ace. Time for us to go while everybody’s watching Leto.”

“What about him?” Mildred asked, nodding toward Morgan.

“He died heroically cleaning out a nest of Angels,” Ryan said. “The thing about sec men is, give them a story that sounds good enough, they’ll swallow it so hard they’ll spit it out as the truth.”

“Any notion what that overly Aryan prick was doing out here all on his lonesome?” Mildred asked.

“We’ll never know,” Ryan said. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“And what about us?” Krysty asked.

“We can let ourselves out the back.”

* * *

T
HEY HID IN
the next ruin southeast, staying low and watching while the DPD patrolmen finally approached and secured Leto’s former command post.

Something of a ruckus occurred when they found Morgan’s body. A couple went running back across the field to the reestablished Detroit Police Department to report it. Meanwhile, the battle to the east continued unabated.

“Wonder where the Angels’re getting all that ammo,” J.B. said.

Ryan could only shrug.

“Mebbe they found an armory, too,” Ricky suggested.

“Could be,” Ryan said.

After a while the Commando came snorting and farting up, with a squad of SWAT troopers trotting behind, polycarbonate shields and all. A pair of uniforms loaded Morgan’s limp body into the wag. A SWAT trooper came out with the Dragon launcher. Then the V-100 rolled back toward the DPD lines, with all the foot soldiers trooping behind.

“So that’s it?” Ricky said. “They didn’t even take any more territory?”

“They realized they didn’t lay enough hurt on the Angels to try,” Ryan said. “They don’t even want to try occupying Leto’s old strongpoint because they’re not sure they can spare the force from the rest of the battle to hold on to it. Not with other gangs in the game.”

“Perhaps Michaud and Chief Bone didn’t reckon on facing anyone but the Angels alone,” Doc mused.

“Probably didn’t.”

“So DPD lost?”

“No, son,” J.B. said. “They’ve still got their foothold this side of the highway. Took the Angels’ best shot at throwing them right back across the Seven-Five and hung on.”

“They just didn’t win the way they wanted,” Ryan said. “No knockout punch against the Angels.”

“Which was why you told Leto both sides stand to lose if the war continues,” Krysty said. “But why would you try to negotiate an end to the war? I mean, I’m in favor of it. But—well, I’m more sentimental than you.”

“I’m not a coldheart,” Ryan said. “Well—not that cold. I don’t mind chilling to stay alive or for meds or for food if we need to any more than I ever did. But this isn’t just a raid or even a hit. It’s war, and a lot of people are going to get hurt who mebbe don’t have it coming.”

“Anyway,” J.B. said, “even if Hizzoner makes peace with the Angels, dozens of gangs are all over the rubble, all fighting each other. And a power of them making trouble for Michaud. We could spend the rest of our lives doing this job here.”

“Not exactly what I had in mind,” Krysty said wistfully.

Ryan knew what she meant. His lover had a dream of finding a safe haven—a place they could all lay down their weps, or at least get a respite from fighting, and live out peaceful lives. Building a future, rather than living day to day and just getting by.

It was a beautiful dream. He hoped they could do that, too. He just wasn’t sure when or how.

But it was one of the things that kept them all putting one foot ahead of the other, day after day.

“If we can actually broker a peace deal,” Ryan said, “that right there means Michaud sees the light on why he needs one. So he can also see that’s a bigger service we did him than any amount of blasting bad guys and blowing stuff up.”

“Lot of ifs there,” J.B. said.

“Yeah. I’m not counting on it, either.”

He straightened from where he knelt at a window of the small but mostly intact building. His knees creaked slightly. “But it definitely wouldn’t happen if we didn’t try,” he said aloud. “I thought cutting Leto loose gave us the best shot. And also, like I told him, the time may come when we can use all the friends we can get.”

“It’s always that time,” J.B. said.

“Isn’t that the truth? Let’s get going. Got a long walk back to HQ.”

* * *

T
HEY WERE QUESTIONED
by a weary but inexplicably nervous patrol division lieutenant named Hong. Ryan chose to tell the truth because that was always the simplest lie; he just edited parts of it.

That necessarily meant failing to claim credit for making sure the wag-chiller rocket launcher was no threat, as well as never breathing a word about capturing the heir apparent to the Angel empire. But he’d known that when he’d freed Leto.

Hong just nodded, told them “good job” and sent them on their way back toward the provisional city hall. He had orders that they report in as soon as possible, he said.

Fewer sec men than usual were in evidence when they got back late afternoon, with the shadows stretching long to the east. Ryan wasn’t surprised, except perhaps by how many were still around, with a full-blown battle still going on, plus the need to secure their borders against opportunistic or even simply random attacks by other gangs.

Hizzoner had to have a lot more sec men at his disposal than Ryan had suspected.

The mood in the foyer of the former Masonic Temple was strange: half elated, half deflated. It was as if nobody was quite sure whether they’d won a great victory or had tasted bitter defeat.

Given Morgan’s heroic death in action, Ryan wasn’t too surprised when they were escorted back into the big chapel where they had met Michaud and his sec boss for the first and only time.

Hizzoner came up to meet them, beaming. “Well done, my friends,” he said, shaking Ryan’s hand and clapping him on the arm. “Well done! Come in. We have much to talk about.”

Bone stood up front, by where Ryan assumed the altar would’ve been.

The skeletal sec boss gestured. The sergeant who had brought them back saluted and backed out, closing the doors behind him.

“I hear you all have been doing solid work,” Bone said. “So good it looks as if you’ve put yourselves out of a job.”

“What do you mean?” Ryan asked.

A dozen sec men in full SWAT riot armor emerged from pews to both sides, where they’d waited hidden from view by the pillars of the arcade. They had longblasters aimed at Ryan and his friends.

“I do hope you won’t resist,” Michaud said from behind. “It would be such a shame if we were forced to kill you...quickly.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

“So that’s how it is,” Ryan said, raising his hands to clasp them behind his neck as the black-armored sec men surrounded the companions.

“That’s how it is,” Bone said.

“I’d say I’m sorry how this turned out,” Michaud said, “but, of course, that would be a lie. I don’t really like you. You’re vermin from the outlands. And vermin, always, must be exterminated. Sooner or later.”

“We did your dirty work,” Mildred said as sec men relieved them of their gear, “and this is how you pay us back?”

Bone grinned unpleasantly. He didn’t seem equipped to grin any other way.

“I told you you’d worked yourselves out of a job,” he said. “We may not have the bastard Angels on the run, but we’ve dealt them their worst defeat in a generation. It’s only a matter of time until we crack them open and suck out their life. And you did play a big role in that.”

Ryan was watching like a hawk. But the sec men knew their trade. Some of them bound their captives’ hands behind them, while others stood by with blasters trained on them. They seldom covered one another with their blaster barrels and gave their prisoners no chance to make a play to overpower them.

“Want me to have them chilled?” Bone asked.

Michaud frowned and pursed his lips beneath his mustache. “I think not. We can keep them awhile. We may want to blame them for something and publicly execute them.” He gave a tittering laugh. “We do so much to get blamed for.”

Bone was walking around the group, eyeing them appraisingly. “Is it all right if we...play with them some?” he asked.

“Why not? As long as you don’t leave any marks that show.”

“Excellent,” the sec boss said. He fondled Krysty’s right breast through her shirt. She snapped at his hand. He yanked it back, then ostentatiously slowed it once it was out of range, as if he hadn’t cared.

“Spirited,” he said. “Be fun breaking you.”

“The women might fetch a good price,” Michaud said thoughtfully, “the next time our slaver friends come around.”

“Slavers?” Ricky said. “Maybe you’ve seen my sister, Yami? She was—”

A sec man backhanded him hard across the face with a black-gauntleted hand. He dropped to his knees.

“They don’t know anything about your sister,” Ryan said. “I get the feeling they sell more than buy.”

“Why, yes, of course,” Michaud said. “We have an ample supply of women for our own modest needs.”

He gestured airily. “Chief.”

“Take them out the side way,” Bone directed his men. “Too many of our weak-minded rank-and-file have started looking up to these outland scum.”

“And don’t let anybody see them,” Hizzoner said.

* * *

M
ILDRED CAREFULLY
WATCHED
where she put her feet as they reached the end of indifferently lit stairs that led to a poorly lit basement.

“Maybe it’s true what they always said about the Masons,” she muttered.

A truncheon gouged her in the kidneys. She just managed not to stumble.

“Shut your piehole, bitch,” one of the two SWAT men escorting them snarled.

Mildred glanced back at him. “I love it when you talk rough—ugh!”

The last came out as he shoved her hard from behind. She stumbled the last few steps and slammed down on her knees on the cold concrete floor. Pain shot up through her legs. She only just managed to prevent herself from going down face-first.

Murder flared in her heart.

“Don’t be a stupe,” the other sec man said. “The Fat Man says he wants them kept in prime condition. These two are prime trade.”

“She won’t show no bruises on her legs, anyway,” Mildred’s guard said as he grabbed her by the arm in a thick-gloved hand and hauled her to her feet.

Which she would have taken as stone racist had he not been black. Krysty’s escort was white. Mildred was tempted to see racial complexion in that but realized that was unlikely.

There’s such a thing as too paranoid, she told herself. Even when everybody really
is
out to get you.