taking.”
“It’d be a much bigger gamble to try for Cascade without any fragging proof,” Roberto replied, sipping the tepid brew.
“The proof exists.” Yates spoke in a hollow voice, making a vague gesture. “The box is red, and near a stone of fire.”
“Does that mean lava, or coal?” Jessica demanded, but the doomie would not, or could not, say any more.
Easing the velocity of the war wag to a more manageable level, War Wag One took the lead, and the other convoy vehicles assumed a standard triangular formation as it rolled along the ancient roadway. The median was full of tall weeds, and they passed a car on the side of the berm, the wreck alive with bees. Several miles down the road, the wags had to go around a toll station choked solid with cars, trucks, buses and army tanks smashed together, forming an impassable barrier of rust, weeds and old bones.
The countryside was gradually leveling out, the steep foothills becoming rolling hillocks. Made of concrete instead of asphalt, the highway was in much better shape than expected.
However, a murky shadow began to creep across the world as the red sun slowly moved behind Firestorm Mountain. Suddenly darkness covered the land, yet the cloudy sky was still bright with the orange and purple of toxic chems. It was as if the convoy had gone underwater. Jessica turned on the halogen headlights, and the beams cut bright swatches through the gloom.
“Hold!” Yates said, raising a hand. “It is near!”
Pneumatic brakes hissing, gears grinding, Jake slowed the war wag, and soon it crawled to a gentle stop. The artificial night enveloped the convoy, the only sounds coming from the big diesel engines. With the warmth of the day gone, a phosphorescent mist rose from the ground, moving across the cracked expanse of highway, seeming almost alive.
“Report,” Roberto demanded.
Going to a rad counter, Jessica checked the background levels. “Clear,” she announced. “It’s just mist.”
“Glad to hear it,” Roberto muttered. “Quinn, work the arc.”
Flipping several switches on the control board, the bald man eased the power up on the arc lamp until a searing beam of light stretched ahead of the wag for hundreds of yards. They had discovered the hard way that the electricity had to be increased gradually on the arc lamp, or else the carbon elements blew, and it took days to whittle out new ones. Even then, the lamp had a short life, but there was nothing brighter. The electric arc made the vaunted halogens seem weak as tallow candles.
Using a joystick, Quinn moved the brilliant beam across the wags in a circle, then started exploring farther and farther away, until a pair of massive concrete pylons came into view. Angling upward, the lamp revealed what they had come for—the Bridge to Nowhere.
“Jesus, Buddha and Zeus,” Jimmy whispered, making an ancient protective gesture.
Whatever the bridge had been connected to in predark was long vanished. Now, the colossal structure stood in the middle of a grassy field, the four concrete-and-steel towers supporting a half mile of roadway some fifty feet off the misty ground. Whatever was on top could not be seen, but if the doomseer was correct, that was where the key to the future was hidden, a map to the greatest treasure of the predark world.
Hunching forward, Roberto clenched and unclenched his fists. “Black dust, we can’t see a damn thing from this angle,” the trader growled. “We’re gonna have to do a recce on foot.”
“My boys are ready,” Jimmy said, standing and taking an AK-47 assault rifle from a wall rack. The barrel was actually from an AK-101, the magazine from a Chinese QBZ longblaster, and the stock was hand carved, but the mismatched rapidfire worked fine.
“Everybody take extra brass,” Jessica directed, opening a small box and extracting a flare pistol. The woman passed it to the crewman, along with a couple of waxy cartridges.
“If you see red…” Jimmy began, tucking the items into his pocket.
Interrupting the man, the radio moaned with modulation, and then briefly cleared.
“Tiger Lily to Scorpion,” the ceiling speaker crackled. “Tiger Lily to Scorpion.”
Taking down the mike, Roberto thumbed the transmit switch. “Scorpion, here, Tiger Lily,” he replied. “Spot something moving?” The codes were not necessary in this desolate area as there were probably no other working radios for a hundred miles, but practice made perfect. In a firefight, a single wrong word could ace everybody.
“Nothing important, just wanted to remind you hotdogs that according to the duty roster, this recce is mine,” Diana stated. “And my boys are itching to find out if what the doomie says is true.”
Yeah, mine, too. Privately, Roberto wanted to countermand the woman, but that would only make her lose face in front of the crew. No choice, then. “Confirm, Tiger, the job is yours,” Roberto said, a narrowing of his eyes the only sign of what he was feeling.
Rubbing his chin, Jimmy started to object, and Jessica shut him down with a stern look. Rules were rules, and Roberto was the leader here, end of discussion.
“Move slow, and stay low,” the trader said into the mike. “Anything twisted, have your people run like their pants are on fire. And that’s an order. You savvy?”
“No prob, Chief,” the commander of War Wag Three replied with a laugh. “I even took away their combat boots, and issued ’em sneakers.” There was a brief pause before the woman added, “Any idea what they’ll really find up there?”
Salvation.
“You tell me, Tiger Lily,” Roberto said. “Look for the box, but come back alive.”
“Roger that, Scorpion. Tiger Lily out.”
Releasing the button, Roberto kept the mike in his grip, ready to relay instructions. Then he reluctantly returned it to the wall hook. He either trusted his people or he did not. There was no third option.
“All right, you lucky bastards, Diana is taking care of this one,” Jessica said loudly, looking around the control room. “So you apes stand down.”
Unhappy grumbling filled the room, and several members of the crew shifted their shoulders to glance at the hallway door as if they were going to go outside anyway. Then they relented, flicked the safeties back on and started dropping clips as a prelude to returning the rapidfires to the wall racks.
“And what the frag are you assholes doing?” Jimmy replied, placing his fists on his hips. “Keep that iron in your mitts in case Three needs cover fire!”
The frowns became grins, and the crew rushed to the blasterports. If there was any trouble, Two and Three would do what they could, but any serious chilling would be handled by War Wag One and its heavy weaponry.
Roberto touched the intercom. “Eric, get the L-Gun hot in case Tex has to burn some crystal.”
“Will do, Chief,” Suzette replied. “The comps are running five by five, no glitches or hitches. We’re good to go.”
“Nice to know. Where the frag is your husband?”
“Checking the flamethrower
