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them—they all looked to be in a similar state to himself.
    Valiant picked up one of the sweetmeats. “The only part of the meal that was served separately. Yours had an extra, added ingredient. I had to leave it till now so that you could get enough brew in you not to notice.” He sighed. “You know, I really do hate doing this. It goes against all the ways we usually do things here. But Crabbe will pay me big jack for you. I had to keep an eye on you all day, make sure I knew where you were. I can’t mess this up. Pity, though…”
    Ryan wanted to call him a coldheart bastard, wanted to rise from his seat and plunge the panga into his heart. But he couldn’t move. As everything faded to black, he could see Valiant beckon his sec men.
     
    D OC WOKE with a jolt as the wag pulled to a halt. The cessation of blows to his head jolted him back to awareness.
    His head was spinning, the pain enervating as he lifted it up and looked around him at the interior of the wag.
    “Are we there yet?”

Chapter Three
    Brilliant white light poured into the interior of the wag as the double doors at the rear were flung wide. The sec men inside raised arms to protect their eyes, rifles held at an angle. All of the companions squinted, torn between protecting their vision from being seared and maintaining the ruse of being unconscious. One thing was certain—any chance of taking the guards by stealth had now been eliminated.
    “Illuminated,” Doc whispered, the sole exception to the rule, his eyes wide and pupils reduced to pinpricks as he was temporarily blinded. “And the light pours out of me…”
    “Yeah, they got to be the right ones—that sure as hell sounds like the crazy fucker,” a voice boomed from beyond the wall of light. It was followed by the sounds of laughter. Three, maybe four, male voices.
    “Shit, you got to do that?” one of the sec men whined, his eyes still protected by a ragged sleeve.
    “Just want to make sure you got the cargo, and it’s the right one,” the first man said patiently, as though speaking to a child.
    “The people of Hawknose don’t double-deal. It isn’t our way,” said another of the sec men in the wag’s interior, his tone as pompous as his words.
    “Yeah, sure you don’t,” the man replied, barely ableto keep the humor from his voice. “Thing is, it ain’t me you got to convince. Crabbe don’t trust no one. Not even your precious Valiant. Seems a straight enough guy to me—you all do,” he added placatingly. “But it ain’t down to me. I’m just doing my job, just like you.”
    The sec man who had complained sniffed hard. It would seem that his pride had been appeased. “That’s okay, then. Chill that engine, no sense in wasting gas,” he added over his shoulder to the wag driver, who complied. “Right, now let’s get these fuckers out of here and get the transaction over and done with.”
    The sec men rose stiffly to their feet, no longer shielding eyes that had grown accustomed to the light. They hustled their captives to their feet, none of the companions making the pretence of unconsciousness. Now that their eyes, too, were becoming accustomed to the light, they could see that the sec men who had brought them were also augmented by five men, clustered within the arc of lights that cast such an illumination into the interior of the wag. The lights illuminated a semicircle of dirt that was about five yards in circumference. Beyond that, and the bank of lights, it was hard to see anything. They could be in a ville, or they could be in the middle of nowhere at a randomly chosen rendezvous. Until any of them had any idea of their location, it was best just to play along, a decision that none of them needed to consult to make.
    None except Doc. The old man was last to his feet, staring around him in awe and wonder, as though seeing the world for the first time. Which, perhaps, in some ways he was. Mildred, casting him a glance as she was hustled by, wouldn’t