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Tom buckled his holstered Model 625 revolver around his waist. From the galley table he picked up his pride and joy, a nine mill Heckler & Koch MP-5 SD-1 silenced machine pistol. The compact blaster had no rear stock. It weighed in at 7.5 pounds with a loaded, 32-round mag. He slipped the weapon’s quick-release lanyard over his neck; thus suspended, its plastic pistol grip hung even with his belly button. He had traded twenty gold-filled teeth for the mint H&K. Thanks to the widespread practice of dentistry before nukeday and the massive depopulation afterward, abandoned graveyards had become the new Klondike. Gold was slowly being accepted across Deathlands as a universal form of jack.
From a hook on the wall he grabbed a duct-tape-patched, olive-drab poncho and pulled it on over his head. The poncho left his arms free and draped low enough front and rear to keep both blasters out of sight. Though his skin was deeply tanned and weathered, he didn’t know if it was tanned enough to pass for native. To keep his face in shadow he donned a sweat-stained, frayed, olive-drab billcap. There wasn’t much he could do about hiding his sandy-colored, handlebar mustache, except to cut the damn thing off, and he wasn’t about to do that.
Shouldering a preloaded pack, he headed toward the bow, climbing the short flight of steps that led to the foredeck. Back out in the night air, he padlocked the forward companionway door behind him. Then he took a handpainted sign from the pack and wired it securely to the hasp.
Crude red letters on a white background read: Peligro. Danger. The middle of the sign was decorated with a childish skull and cross bones under which was another word: Plaga. Plague.
He made for the stern and jumped down into the cockpit. After padlocking the entry door, he hung a copy of the Danger sign on it. Even if the locals couldn’t read, he hoped the symbol of death would make them think twice before trying to break in. If not, anyone opening the door was going to get a big—and final—surprise.
The stash of C-4 was stowed in a secret compartment under the cabin’s deck. To find it, the surviving intruders would have to tear the ship apart, bulkhead by bulkhead. Tom figured to be back aboard long before that happened. Either that or chilled.
Off Tempest ’s starboard bow, the last ship in the pirate convoy was rounding the blinking green light marker and heading into the harbor. Tom untied the wheel and goosed the throttle, steering for the marker buoy. He throttled back again as he cleared the light, slowing to take in the harbor and the glowing city on the far side.
Amazing, he thought as he took in the panorama. Fucking amazing.
Distant horn blasts rolled over the water. They came from the pirate convoy, which was about a mile ahead, motoring along the inside curve of the peninsula at a sedate pace. As it passed in front of the battlements of a stone fort, a flurry of fireworks exploded over the harbor.
Tom took the engine out of gear and let Tempest coast forward. He looked beyond the bursting rockets, beyond the floodlit fort, beyond the tooting convoy, at a four-story industrial complex just north of the city. Nosebleed-high catwalks, huge, bottle-shaped holding tanks, smokestacks, cinder-block buildings—it was all lit up as bright as day.
The seagoing trader’s face lit up, too.
He realized it was a power-generating station, probably of predark manufacture and still going strong after more than a century in operation. Diesel-burning by the looks of the smoke, it had to be the source of the massive quantities of electricity in evidence around him. From his reading of twentieth-century books, Tom knew electricity in abundance was what drove the engine of social progress and material comfort, two things sorely absent in the Deathlands. He also knew that seventy or so pounds of properly placed C-4 could inflict massive damage on the power plant.
Maybe the locals had the technology and skills to fix it, maybe not. If not, it was going to be lights out on Veracruz, forever—every nightfall the murdering bastards would have cause to remember the name of Harmonica Tom.
Inside the harbor, it was much muggier; he found himself sweating bullets under the poncho. Peering through binocs, he saw all the armed men gathered on the stone fort’s dock, waving at the convoy. He also saw the cannon barrels sticking out from the battlements. No way was he going to try to motor Tempest past them. He had avoided a boarding party so far, and that’s how he wanted to keep it. There were no patrol boats in sight, no one to challenge his entering the harbor. That much confidence in their command of the sea made Tom conclude that no one had dared to challenge the Matachìn for a very long time. The other boats under way in the harbor were all moving the same direction he was, but they were more than a thousand yards in front of him, swinging in one by one to join the happy parade following the pirate fleet.
Tom motored closer to the peninsula’s shore, looking for a place to tie up as close to the harbor entrance as possible. If everything went right for him and wrong for Veracruz, getting out was going to be a hell of a lot harder than getting in.
He swung in alongside a ruined freighter dock that jutted into the bay. Pools of light thrown by mercury vapor lamps on stanchions revealed clusters of small boats moored to the inside of the pier. They were a mixture of predark, motor and sail pleasure craft converted to commercial use. And there were shit-hammered fishing boats with peeling-paint, plywood cabins. The boats that couldn’t find mooring space were rafted gunwhale to gunwhale.
Poking ahead cautiously, Tom could see there was no free dock space, so he had to raft up, too. He tossed out his fenders and pulled in beside a shabby fishing boat, then made Tempest fast to its bow and stern cleats.
There was no one aboard the fishing boat; no one on any of the boats that he could see.
Tom shouldered his pack and jumped onto the fishing boat. There wasn’t any C-4 in the bag. If he got caught with the blasters, he figured it was no big deal. But if he got caught with high explosives, his captors would want to know what he intended to do with them, and if there was more.
The four-pane woodframe windows in the side of the homemade cabin looked like they had been salvaged from a house. There were sun-faded girly pics stuck to the insides, facing out, so the crew could see them and be inspired. On the far side of the fishing boat a steel ladder was affixed to the pier. He climbed the last few rungs cautiously, poking his head up to take in the terrain.
The dock area looked as deserted as the boats, except for the rats scampering at the edges of the shadows. In front of him was a wrecked cinder-block warehouse, three stories high. The metal roof had partially caved in, the near wall had collapsed. Someone had started scavenging the fallen blocks, which were stacked on wooden pallets.
When Tom stepped onto the dock, it seemed to move under him. He was still trying to get his land legs when someone shouted at him from the darkness inside the warehouse. Tom saw a pinpoint of light, a tiny red-hot coal. He tugged the brim of his hat down to further hide his face.
A short, stout man in a straw cowboy hat and red sash stepped into view, puffing on a thin black cigar. He held a sawed-off, bluesteel 12-gauge in the crook of his left arm. It was hammerless with a full rear stock and a leather shoulder sling. In the hard light from the mercury lamp Tom could see food stains on the front of the guy’s white dress shirt; they were bright orange, like chili sauce.
The sound of the hullabaloo surrounding the pirates’ arrival drifted over them. As it did so, the guard’s round, brown face twisted into a scowl. He was not a happy camper. He was missing all the fun. Tom caught a whiff of the burning tobacco and it reminded him how long it’d been since he’d had a decent smoke.
The guard addressed him in a guttural growl.
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