第98节

ioned at the gate, gossiping with passing

farm-girls and bargaining with pedlars anxious to sell their wares to

the patrons of the cantina.

The buckets, with their aromatic contents, were part of his disguise.

Many Mutes in Ne-Issan were permanently employed on what captive

Trackers termed 'the shit detail'. With a full load, he was unlikely

to arouse the suspicions of any guards, but even if he was stopped he

would only be subjected to the most cursory examination. That was what

he was counting on. During one of the earlier nightshifts, before they

had been outnumbered by the present crowd of dinks, Steve had fashioned

two planked circles that fitted inside the buckets, creating a false

bottom. Hidden underneath, wrapped in transparent plasfilm, was a

hefty charge of plastic explosive plus two gas grenades. Both packages

were primed with one of AMEXICO's special detonators, and they were

guaranteed to spoil the day of anyone unlucky enough to be crapping

into either bucket when it exploded.

Steve had reckoned that most of the resident Iron Masters would be on

the field in front of the hangars at the far end of the workshops, or

seated in the grandstand, leaving only a skeleton staff inside the

compound. Apart from a handful of Mutes working on various chores, the

place looked deserted. But Steve knew the guard-house would still be

fully manned. In order to stand a chance of seizing the three aircraft

needed to make their getaway, they had to eliminate as much of the

opposition as possible. That meant taking out those who were closest

to the action first, and using that blast to draw in others to where

they could be caught in the second strike.

Approaching the rotting dungheap, he emptied both buckets and rinsed

them out in the stone trough. The false bottoms had now been in place

for a week and were indistinguishable from the real thing. Provided

nobody compared their weight with the genuine article, no one would

guess they'd been rigged.

Okay. Here goes . . .

Steve skirted the gravel punishment area and carried the buckets up the

path fronting the Tracker bunkhouses, then turned left along the edge

of the parade ground. As expected, some of the guards were loitering

by the gate, and he saw some others on the veranda of the cantina.

They were all dressed up for the big day but, like all soldiers

throughout the age, they knew precisely when they could relax and just

how far they could go.

It wasn't hard to imagine what they were laughing and joking about. On

a day like this, when the top brass were busy enjoying themselves,

those who had been relegated to guard duty could afford to take it

easy. Unlike those poor fools from the palace who had had to march all

the way from Ba-satana in parade order and now had to stand in line,

under the gaze of their officers, watching a bunch of even bigger fools

shoot across the sky in all directions like dragonflies with their

tails on fire.

At the rear of the guard-house, under an overhang of the roof, was a

screened four-hole privy. The Iron Masters had a relaxed approach to

bodily functions. On his journeys as a roadrunner, Steve had often

passed people of both sexes cheerfully urinating in public sometimes

without interrupting their conversation.

Faeces, on the other hand, be they horse droppings, cattle turds or the

human variety, were a collector's item, and this, again according to

Cadillac, had led to the communal bench and bucket system.

Higher-ranking Iron Masters made use of private indoor closets in which

the wooden bucket was replaced by a similar container made of glazed

porcelain. Besides its more elegant shape, it had the added advantage

of not smelling after it had been washed. Fortunately, this luxury had

not percolated down to the lower ranks - otherwise Steve would have

been well and truly shafted.

Having made sure that the privy was empty, Steve entered and replaced

the buckets at each end with those he was carrying. He then emptied

and rinsed the middle ?air, picked up his load and left. As he started

to walk away, someone behind him shouted out the Japanese command to

halt - a sound all slaves soon learned to react to. Instantly.