1635 The Papal Stakes (10 page)

Tom pulled out his revolver, checked that the priming caps were snugly seated. Not long now.

Having just settled his squad within the trees one hundred yards west of the extraction zone—about a third of the distance to Villa—North tilted his head to listen. Yes, that was a musket report, which came across the sluggish water like a sighing
pop!
“Damn it.”

The colonel’s batman, Finan, scuttled over. “Sir, what is it?”

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what, sir?”

North closed his eyes, remembered a particularly apt American exchange, reprised in so many of their movies. “I have good news and bad news.”

“Sir?”

“The good news is that Captain Simpson and his party are still alive, and are, in fact, quite close.”

“And the bad news is—?”

“That we’re not alone. Send a runner to Hastings: positive target identification before firing. It’s going to be close.”

As Finan disappeared into the murk, another two shots came faintly over the water.

Very close indeed.

Harry Lefferts stood. “Okay,
that
wasn’t ‘just my imagination.’ Did you see the flashes?”

Miro nodded. “At the western end of the wide part of the river, near the Piz Gallegione cataract.”

Harry turned. “Listen, we’re not going to be able to run over there in time to save them, not if we land here at the extraction site.”

Miro nodded again:; Lefferts’ assessment was inarguably correct. “So where’s Colonel North?”

“If he’s here, he’ll be somewhere between the extraction zone and the anticipated contact point.”

Miro peered at the thin woods. “I don’t see anything there.”

“Of course not. North is good: you won’t see him until he wants you to.”

“So what do you recommend?”

Harry frowned, considering. “North will stay under cover until we signal. But with a firefight in progress, we’d be stupid to follow the original plan to hover out over the river. And he’d be stupid to give away his position before seeing us. So we have to change the plans.
We
have to send the first signal. We shoot the first whistle-bolt.”

Miro met Harry’s eyes. He saw eagerness but no
berserkergang
, no indication of a battle lust that might impede judgment. He looked over Lefferts’ shoulder at Matija. “Shoot the bolt.”

Tom couldn’t see the Spanish approaching, but he could hear them. Muttered orders, whispered acknowledgements, occasional rustling and soft footfalls: the sounds of a stealthy platoon advance.

The only other two shots the Spanish had fired were blind misses, meaning that the first shot’s proximity had probably been the result of luck, not skill. Probably a Hail-Mary discharge in the general direction of the voices heard at the ford.

Which the last of the group had almost traversed. The cardinal had cleared the rocks on the other side, hanging like a drowned rat between Rita and Arco. Melissa was finally picking her way out of the churning white melt-waters, too—and then she went down, quick and hard, with a most improper and biologically implausible oath.

The timing was unfortunate. James had just turned to start back and help Tom across. Hearing Melissa’s sharp cry, Nichols spun and caught her arm before the rush of water could carry her under and away.
Pretty damned spry for a guy in his sixties
, thought Tom. But as James helped Melissa hobble up out of the frothing current, he glanced back over his shoulder. His eyes—desperate and apologetic—met Tom’s.

Tom Simpson nodded his understanding and approval; a man’s first duty was to his woman. Nichols faded into the trees on the far bank, working as a human crutch for Melissa. It was obvious that her ankle was at least sprained, maybe broken.

Tom looked at his black-powder revolver, wished it was any one of a half dozen up-time weapons he had used in the past three years. But that kind of armament had been deemed both unnecessary and too unsubtle when they set out on this journey. Back in safe, sunny Padua. Back before they were given the additional task of rendezvousing with a renegade cardinal who had the physique of a couch-potato.

Tom hunkered down behind the largest rock he could find, took the cap-and-ball revolver in both hands—and heard a strange bird call over the water.
Wait: was that—?

North held up his hand. “Was that a—?”

Finan nodded. “Sounded like a long-winded whip-poor-will to me, Colonel.”

The signal. The dirigible was here.

“Fire our bolt,” he hissed urgently at his batman. “Right now, out over the water.”

Lefferts was focused in a way that Miro had never seen before. Now he understood why, despite his swagger and reputation for occasional impulsiveness, Harry had been so successful on operations like these. “Franchetti,” the up-timer said, “keep us close to the slope, inside the shadows if you can.”

“
Si
, but where am I—?”

“Look dead ahead, due west, just upslope of where the cataract hits the river. You see that small pasture?”

“Near the abandoned farmhouse?”

“Yeah. Can you put down there?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Do it. Now.” Lefferts turned to the rest of his Wrecking Crew. “Well, folks, it might be a hot LZ. Ready for some fun?
”

Tom Simpson heard a second strange birdsong—the whistle-bolt countersign—respond promptly to the first and allowed himself a small smile
. Well, I just might get out of this alive, after all…

Four shots sputtered from between the buildings in Villa; two more came from upslope, flashes marking their sources within the tree line. Most of the balls missed by a reasonable margin; one thumped into a decayed tree trunk lying in front of the rock behind which Tom had taken cover.

But then again, I might not.

North stood as the runner he sent to the front rank returned. Before the winded fellow could speak, the colonel gave new orders. “Back you go. Tell Lieutenant Hastings that he has a new relief force coming in on his right flank.”

“A new relief force? Where from, sir?”

North pointed upward. “From thin air.” He motioned for the rest of his squad to get their rifles out of their all-weather hide cases. “Ready on the line,” he ordered, as he readied his up-time nine-millimeter pistol.

Franchetti screamed, “Pitch the engines down! Full braking thrust!”

Miro complied, yanking the engine angling bar up sharply. The props rotated into an earth-aimed attitude, slowing the descent. The gondola came to an unsteady halt, a mere four feet off the ground.

Juliet—a short, round woman—looked dubiously at the gap that Lefferts, Gerd, and Sherrilyn had already jumped down.

“C’mon!” hissed Lefferts, before disappearing into the downslope tree line, with the Gallegione cataract roiling and crashing on its downward tumult about thirty yards to his right.

George Sutherland hopped to the ground—lightly for a man of his size—and held up his arms for his wife. “Down you come, dear.” He said it as if she were descending from a coach after a ride in the country—which is how she exited the airship.

Franchetti glanced back. “Don Estuban, we should—”

“Yes—yes, Virgilio; take us back to the extraction point.”

As Miro and Franchetti swiveled the engines into a down-draft position again, and throttled the burner up, the dirigible rose and swung away from the small meadow.

In the back of the gondola, the one remaining passenger started praying in Latin.

Tom let the first tactical probe get within twenty-five yards before he fired four times, quickly. Of the three approaching Spaniards, two fell: one, howling and writhing; the other, silently and limp. Having finally given away his position, Tom ducked, just in time to hear a ragged crackle of musketry from both the hamlet and the upslope trail. Perhaps a dozen balls spattered Tom’s sheltering rock, the rotted log, and the ground nearby. Many more hissed into the white, whirling veils of the cataract and beyond, into the trees.

Tom popped up, saw a thin horizontal line of gun smoke diffusing slowly in his direction. He also saw the last Spaniard advancing on his flank, hunched low, pistol and sword at the ready. Tom fired twice at the skirmisher, turned and jumped into the stream, hopping and struggling his way across. The Spaniard’s pistol, and a more distant musket, discharged behind him; either Tom was not hit, or he did not feel it. Either way, he continued his uneven progress across the ford, wondering how long the gun smoke would obscure the vision of the Spanish line, and how long it would take them to reload.

Harry Lefferts was so focused on finding a way to get closer to the cataract that he was completely surprised by the buff-coated man who rose up in front of him. Jerking to a startled halt, Harry squinted into the near-dark: the man’s weapon was an immediate giveaway as to whose side he was on.

Harry moved the barrel of the down-time box-magazine Winchester away from his belly. “Wondered where you guys were,” Lefferts drawled.

“Waiting for you.”

“Oooh, snappy. I like that. You also just about scared me out of my pants.” He looked the mercenary up and down. “You’re pretty damned good. Wanna work for me?”

The man shrugged. “I like my boss.”

“I pay better.”

“I doubt it. And I’ve got a family. Lieutenant Hasting is just down the slope.”

“No time to find him. How are you deployed?”

“Loose skirmish line from here to the river to cover Captain Simpson’s group as they come up the track.” As if to emphasize the harried approach of that group, a clatter of musketry rose above the dull thunder of the cataract.

“Any force closer to the ford?”

“No. None to spare. We’ve only got two squads.”

“You’re only one squad, here. Where’s the other?”

“Landing zone security and uncommitted reserve.”

Harry scowled a little. Frequently, the word “reserve” translated as
the hiding place for cowardly commanders
. “I see Colonel North is sitting this one out.”

“That’s not how we see it.”

“Well, we can debate that over a beer some time. We’re going in.”

“In? In where?”

Harry pointed in the direction of the recent fusillade. “In there.”

“You’re going to attack the Spanish?”

Harry smiled and waved for the Wrecking Crew to follow him southwest, angling to follow the upslope limit of the woods. “Not directly.”

Tom reached the other side of the ford just as the muskets started sporadically barking at him again. However, from the sound of it, most of the Spanish were giving chase, not stopping to reload. In the dark, any gunfights at ranges greater than ten yards were pretty much pointless.

Feeling solid ground under his feet, Tom up and sprinted forward, following the cart-track. The pain of his reopened wound returned sharply, now reaching up into his lower back. When the shooting had started, adrenaline had swept the discomfort away, but that relieving rush was gone; soon, he’d start limping, stumbling—

He heard movement upslope, some yards beyond the trees linking the track.

Impossible. There had been no way to cross the cataract higher up; how could the Spanish have anyone on his northern flank?

Desperate, and experiencing true panic for the first time in many years, Tom Simpson found another surge of strength which sent him dashing forward along the track.

Lieutenant Hastings watched the man and woman help the little priest stumble past his position, and right behind them, an odd couple indeed: a fit, yet clearly older woman with a useless, dangling foot, being almost dragged along by a fit, but equally aged Moor. And, still farther back along the track, another very large silhouette was emerging from the darkness…

Corporal Eugenio Morca de Torres clambered out of the frothing current, cocked his miquelet musket, aimed after the fleeing figure, then lowered his weapon.
Coño
, the big American was fast, even when wounded. He waved for his men to follow and ran in pursuit.

Harry skidded to a halt, five yards from where the woods ended at the cart-track. He saw a figure running down there, heading towards North’s forward skirmish line. A big figure. Tom Simpson. Had to be.

Catching a tree branch to slow himself, George Sutherland readied his up-time shotgun, tracking back along the route of Tom’s retreat. Troop sounds—a platoon or more moving quickly—were growing loud enough to rival the cataract back there.

Harry shook his head. “Not yet.”

Lieutenant Hastings saw that the approaching figure was the large up-timer, Tom Simpson. He was limping and staggering, now, probably both wounded and exhausted. And behind him, only twenty yards or so, the first of the Spanish were visible. And one, in the lead, was stopping, raising his arms…

…drawing a bead?

Lieutenant Hastings brought up his Winchester and yelled, “Get down, Simpson. Squad, fire at will!”

Tom heard the British accent, almost sobbed in relief, and dove forward with the same gusto and abandon that had propelled him into Ohio State’s end zone when it had been fourth quarter, two minutes left on the clock, and fourth-down-and-goal-to-go from the three-yard line.

Corporal Torres felt the men on either side of him go down, and discharged his musket in the direction of the small and ominously rapid muzzle flashes. Up-time weapons or copies—no doubt about it. But the range was close, and he had fifty men. And since one of their quarry was obviously a Moor, it seemed only right to cry, “Santiago and at them!” Dropping his spent firearm, Torres sprinted forward. Drawing his sword, he swept it back in readiness…

“Now,” said Harry calmly.

Five yards beyond the upslope trees that lined the cart-track, the nine members of the Wrecking Crew unleashed a near-uniform volley from their trademark pump shotguns. With the center of the ragged enemy column now directly abreast of the Crew, the carnage was startling. More than a dozen Spaniards sprawled, theirblood black in the early moonlight.