1635 The Papal Stakes (45 page)

John O’Neill was so stunned by the sudden wave of fire—
an ambush! we are betrayed!
—that he almost didn’t feel the two-headed battering ram that slammed through his cuirass and stuck his chest, almost penetrating the buff coat beneath. As he fell backwards, he was vaguely aware that the
lefferti
in front of him were going down in windrows. He felt the overlapping mental and physical shocks combine and verge toward confusion—and then he turned off his mind. He thought only so much as was necessary to get moving, a trait taught by years on battlefields. He started to roll up into a crouch, checking his pistol, and the situation.

Which was not good: three of the Wild Geese who had charged in with him were down. But like him, two were unwounded and rising, thanks to their cuirasses and buff coats. The third man, Fitzgerald, was having a hard time getting to his feet, trailing a useless left arm. His bicep had been torn through, and was probably still attached only because the Spaniards were using loads of multiple, lighter balls. Lethal against the unarmored troops they had evidently been expecting, but much less so against layered armor.

But as O’Neill swayed upright, he saw the real horror of what such double loads could do. The unarmored
lefferti
, who had been given the presumably easy job of securing the bottom level of the loggia, had caught the brunt of the volley; a dozen were strewn across the width of the courtyard, motionless. Three more were rising unsteadily, their clothes tattered and blood-smeared from multiple wounds.

So John O’Neill did what he did best. Tossing his pistol over to his left hand and drawing his sword with the right, he screamed, “At them!” and led the charge toward the loggia.

Sherrilyn looked over the shallow roof peak as the terra-cotta tile fragments blasted skyward by Gerd’s demolition charge ceased to rain down. The explosion had blown open a hole, but not as big as they had hoped or planned. Two at a time could get down into the room below, at most. “Matija, Donald, suppressive fire. The rest of you, follow me.”

She scuttled over to the edge of the still-smoking hole—and almost fell in when her weight prompted a little more of the ruined structure to collapse. “Damn it, this is going to be tough. George, Paul, you’re going to lower Felix and me down for a look-see.”

Paul frowned. “I thought we were just going to jump down and—”

“Nope. We’ve had too many surprises already. So we take it one step at a time from here on; it might just save our lives.” She got her foot in the rope loop that had been prepared for this eventuality, pulled her .357 Smith and Wesson revolver and looked over at the waiting Felix—who had the team’s CQC entry weapon, a sawed-off 12 gauge, ready. She nodded to George Sutherland, who held the rope in his massive hands. “Okay: down we go.”

As John O’Neill charged, Owen winced. But whether the earl of Tyrone called for a charge by chance or design, it had been the right call. The Spanish had obviously fired all barrels, trusting to inflict so many casualties in that first terrible sheet of flame and lead that the intruders would break. John’s charge took them by surprise, and although he had only half a dozen Wild Geese following him, they were in armor and were closing with sword and pistol against musketeers caught in the act of reloading. Owen listened to the battle he could not see; from the sound of it, the lightly armored Spanish were tossing aside their firearms and going for their much smaller swords. So unless they had overwhelming numerical superiority, the battle for the lower level of the loggia promised to be a very one-sided fight. But the upper gallery—

Owen elevated and aimed his pepperbox, securing it with his left hand as Lefferts and North both had counseled. “Fire on the second level, lads. Make ’em corpses or keep ’em busy.”

Owen’s timing was indeed fortuitous. The Spanish musketeers on the second floor had finally sorted themselves out after dodging the oil flames and reloading. They now rose and brought their weapons to bear—but they had not expected four revolvers aimed up at them. The flurry of pistol fire dropped three of the Spaniards—and then another two went down an instant later. A pair of lagging, distant reports announced that the Hibernian riflemen back at the signal building had brought their own weapons into play.

For the moment, the tide seemed to be swinging back in their favor—but Owen put aside the seductive thrill of pushing ahead with the attack.
The Spanish expected us, knew we were coming. If we get the initiative, we should use it to run. As quickly as possible…

With bits of roofing tiles crumbling down around them, Sherrilyn and Felix dipped down into the room adjacent to Frank’s, separated from it by one thin wall. They had a scant moment to survey the shattered finery before two Spanish soldiers swept around the doorway, firing pistols as they came. Another two stayed back, sheltering behind the doorway and discharging their pieces as well.

It was like some insane video game, Sherrilyn thought as she pounded rounds out of the .357 magnum and wished she had stuck with the nine-millimeter this time: magazine size
was
an entry team’s best friend. She saw the first two Spaniards go down, felt a bullet sing past her ear. She fired through the wall at the third Spaniard sheltering behind it; he dropped screaming into the open doorway, clutching a ruined groin. Felix and the last of the defenders traded shots. The Spaniard went backwards, but so did Felix. Sherrilyn grabbed him, kept him on his rope, yelled: “Pull us up!
Now!
”

John O’Neill came back out from under the roof of the loggia’s lower tier, his sword drenched red. He saw that Owen had killed no small number of the musketeers on the second level. And that he was forcing the rest to keep their heads down, for the nonce. So now—

Having heard the expected breaching charge go off on the roof in the midst of his attack, John looked up expectantly at Frank’s window. Just beyond it there was the sound of gunfire—a lot of it—then silence. Ah, so the Wrecking Crew had gotten inside. Excellent. No time to waste. “Fitzgerald,” he shouted, “with me,” and ran over to the foot of the window from which he expected a rope ladder, and then the hostages, to descend. Any second now.

The irate mob in front of the Palazzo Giove hushed suddenly, hearing the fusillade of gunfire just up the street, as well as one or two reports nearly overhead, evidently coming from the belvedere. Juliet frowned; even though she wasn’t seeing the battle with her own eyes, the pace sounded wrong. The firing should have been very much one-sided, and not so much of it, but now—

The tall doors of the Palazzo Mattei di Giove seemed to emit a metallic bark: the immense lock had been undone. And then the doors themselves seemed to fly inward on their hinges, so quickly that—

This is planned
, Juliet thought, and jumped aside, nimble despite her size.

A split-second later, the doors were fully open, revealing a darkened courtyard…Which suddenly belched out a wall of flame and thunder as a waiting platoon’s musket volley drove straight into the core of the crowd.

For a moment there was no further sound. It was as though, surprised or outraged or both, the world was holding its breath. Then the screaming started: a chorus of agony from shattered bodies lying upon each other, mingled gore spreading across them.

As Juliet moved farther away from the gateway, she heard the sound of hooves, hammering down in a thunder against the courtyard’s flagstones. The riders—armored, swords drawn, pistols ready in fore-saddle braces, crested morions pulled low—swept out of the Palazzo Giove, ignoring the crowd to the south of the doorway, and smashing through the stragglers to their right, to the north.

Six, Juliet counted: no, eight. And behind them, firing occasionally to rout those who did not flee fast enough, were foot soldiers. Who also turned north as one body.

Toward the fountain and the shattered gateway into the embattled courtyard of the Palazzo Giacomo.

They knew we were coming,
Juliet realized,
knew it all along. And they fooled us; they fooled
me
.

Suddenly gripped by terror—more because she had been outwitted than in response to the peril at her heels—she turned and ran for her life.

Sherrilyn handed Felix off to Donald as they got back behind the roof peak. Matija, bleeding from a through-and-through gunshot wound in the upper left arm, hooked a thumb at the belvedere. “I think we got one. Their fire has dropped off.”

Donald almost fell when Felix lost all strength in his legs and collapsed. And Sherrilyn could see why: what she had first thought was a belly wound had actually been a little higher than that. The bullet might have clipped the lower periphery of the right lung.

“What now?” Ohde asked as Paul came over to support Felix.

Sherrilyn shook her head. “We’re pulling out.”

Matija was dumbfounded: “We’re—?”

“Look, if we stay on the roof, we’ll still get sniped at. Harry’s got no angle on their shooters in the belvedere, so no help there. The hole Gerd’s package blew in the roof is too small and the Spanish are all over it, so we can’t get in fast enough, even if we wanted to. And it sounds like the courtyard has become a shooting gallery, with the bad guys doing almost half the shooting. So we’ve got only one option left: we run like hell.”

And they did.

John O’Neill, looking up, saw no immediate progress at Frank Stone’s window. His gaze turned to the empty pepperbox revolver in his hand, and he realized the moment of truth had come: reloading. Under pressure. In combat.

However, the weapon
had
made a fine mess of the Spanish who had been in the loggia. Particularly since the Wild Geese had loaded their first cylinders with double shot. The two Spaniards who survived the subsequent swordplay—the ones closest to the door—had darted through and barred it.

So, staring at the pepperbox as if he might bend it to his will, John O’Neill began the reloading process. He snapped the locking cap into the “off” position, thumbed the hinge release and broke the weapon open. Well, not so bad so far…

Don Vincente reentered the room and nodded to the hall behind. “Ezquerra, I think they have abandoned their attempt to come through the roof. But oversee the guards in the adjacent room. And mind: the up-timer weapons shoot through these walls. With great effect.”

Ezquerra, suddenly neither lethargic nor incompetent, nodded, but paused. “Don Vincente, if I am no longer by your side—”

Vincente held out his hand.

The sergeant gave him a well-oiled leather case of some length.

Vincente nodded his thanks and moved slowly in the direction of the window.

John O’Neill slid a new cylinder out of its pouch and tapped off the wooden band that kept the preseated percussion caps snugly in their places. Then he started sliding the cylinder down the axial arm.

Next to him, Gerald Fitzgerald nodded upward. “Movement overhead, Lord O’Neill. Near the window. But it doesn’t look like—”

A long muzzle flash jetted from between one of the ground floor windows’ shutters. As if side-kicked by the accompanying roar, Fitzgerald fell over with a groan, the shot having punched clean through his buckled cuirass and the buff coat beneath.

John, with the practicality born of long battlefield experience, accepted that Gerald was dead and there was nothing to be done but to reload before the Spanish bastard did.

With the cylinder securely seated on the arm, he snapped it back up into position. Almost ready. And if the first fellow who appeared at the window overhead wasn’t Frank, John would have a nice surprise waiting for him.…

Don Vincente had opened the leather case and removed an up-time shotgun.

Frank gaped. “That shotgun. That’s
mine.
From the bar.”

“Yes.” Vincente cycled the action expertly.

Frank pushed Giovanna away, while squirming back against the wall and holding up his hands. “Hey, now wait a minute—”

But Vincente did not bring it up or even aim it in his general direction. Instead, he walked briskly to the window.

As Owen helped up the last of the
lefferti
, he looked backward through the courtyard gate into the piazza. The once-bold rioters were fleeing past, running for their lives, no doubt driven off by the huge volley he had just heard from farther down the street. Damn it, there was no doubt left: the rescue attempt had been expected and was a failure. Now the only question was if they could escape before it became a full-fledged disaster.

Unfortunately, Owen had been hearing telltale signs that such a dire outcome might indeed be imminent. The discharges of the Wrecking Crew’s up-time arms were no longer coming from inside the Palazzo Giacomo, nor even near their planned entry-point on the roof; instead, they were dwindling, going back the way they had come.

Owen, knowing he’d get an argument he didn’t have the time for, turned to tell John the fight was over, and that he’d bodily drag the earl to safety, if he had to.

That was when Owen saw that the window above John O’Neill was opening. “John!” Owen shouted, and sprinted in his direction.

John replied with an annoyed “What?”
Damn it, why does Owen have to start fussing at me while I’m loading this contraption? I just have to snap down the—there, locked. And loaded
. As Harry always liked to say.

Finished, and feeling a great sense of pride, John swung the weapon upward—just in case the movement Gerald had seen at the window was something other than a prelude to the escape of Frank and Giovanna…

A figure was already in the window above. From which bright thunder roared down at the earl of Tyrone, the same kind of thunder that Harry’s shotgun made.

Driven down to his knees by a torrent of crushing, searing hammers that cut through his body in a dozen places, John O’Neill almost fell, but pulled himself upright again. He raised the pepperbox—