Down: Trilogy Box Set (95 page)

That night, Trevor escorted Emily and Arabel to the forge to bring food to Brian and John. They sat outside in the cooler air and ate bread, hard-boiled eggs, and cheese. Emily reported on palace activities. The penicillin tea was coming along nicely, bandages had been cut and rolled, surgical instruments boiled. Trevor told them about Tony and Charlie’s progress on the cannon lift. The tower was now just over wall height and the horse-powered winching would begin soon. After they ate, John showed them the barrels of Minié balls, the stacks of rocket launchers, and the crates of Hale rockets. By morning, they’d be ready.

When it was time to return to the palace Emily begged John to get a little rest. Through the forge entrance the furnace cast a wide, orange glow but they found a shadow where they could hold each other.

“Stay inside the palace tomorrow,” John said. “Don’t leave under any circumstances unless I come and get you. Let the wounded come to you.”

“Where will you be?”

“On the wall with the others.”

“Oh God, John, I’m so scared.”

“We’ll be fine. Superior technology always prevails.”

“Not always,” she said. “My superior technology got us into this mess.”

“Stop beating yourself up. Keep Arabel’s spirits up. She’s got to believe we’ll get Sam and Belle back.”

Trevor and Arabel were visible in the arc of orange light. They were holding hands.

“Can you believe it?” Emily asked.

“Of course I do. We’re not the only ones bitten by the love bug. Now go. I’ll see you when I see you.”

She kissed him and said, “Take a nap, all right?”

When they left John took her advice, telling Brian to wake him in an hour. He found a dark, grassy spot on the side of the forge, sat with his back to the warm brick wall and closed his eyes.

The Black Hawk lifted up taking Stankiewicz and Knebel out of harm’s way.

John breathed a sigh of relief when it didn’t pick up any RPG or small arms fire from inside the farmhouse. With the wounded sorted out he turned his attention to the primary mission. He scanned the compound through night-vision goggles. The mud perimeter walls had been largely obliterated by cannon fire and there were no thermal images. The Taliban firing from the wall were either dead or back inside the house. The goats were incinerated.

“All right, listen up,” he said into his helmet mike, “Stank and Doc’ll be fine. Mike’s squad’s going to approach from the north, my squad from the south. Masks on. When we’re close enough, on my order, we hit the house with flash-bangs and gas and make entry. If they’re hostile they get smoked. They put their hands where we can see them, they get cuffed, hands and ankles, and stripped for haji vests. T-baum identifies the HVT. We take him and evac. The others we leave. Alive. We’ll let the rats have them. Understood?”

He got a bunch of affirmatives.

“T-baum, did I hear you?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m good.”

“Okay, take the left flank. I’ll take the right. Everyone else on my squad, straight down the pike. Okay, guys, stay low and move.”

They crawled on their bellies pushing off the rocky soil with their kneepads. When John was about fifty feet from the front door of the farmhouse, Entwistle radioed that he was within range of deploying the flash-bang grenades through the rear windows.

“T-baum, you good to put gas through the window to the left of the door?” John radioed.

“Yeah, got it,” he radioed back.

“All right,” John radioed. “On my mark, Mike, do the flash-bangs and T-Baum, do the gas. Everyone else, on detonation, see you inside.”

John prepared to give his command. On his flank he saw Tannenbaum, green and glowing, rise to one knee and take aim, a gas canister loaded in his grenade launcher.

There was a flash from the front window. For a fraction of a second, John thought that someone had jumped the gun on the flash-bangs but then he saw a green mist erupting from Tannenbaum’s head.

“203s! 203s!” John yelled, calling for 40mm grenade fire. “Smoke them all to Hell!”

Well before dawn, the ramparts of Burgos were fully manned with Iberians and their Italian allies. Jugurtha’s main force was concentrated at the south side of the city where he had also concentrated his cannon batteries, having made an assessment that the city walls were most vulnerable there.

John and Garibaldi passed the spyglass between them trying to see what troop movements had occurred during the night, and as the inky blackness of the night sky faded they had their answer.

“What do you suppose is the distance of their cannon?” Garibaldi asked him.

“No more than three hundred yards,” John said.

“And their infantry?”

“Another hundred yards further.”

They made a circuit of the ramparts checking on the encircling forces. There were a few cannon at all compass points and a thin band of troops ringing the city.

“They want to respond to an exodus from the other gates but they’ve put most of their fire power to the south,” John said.

Back at the south ramparts they found Aragon who informed them his troops were assembled and ready in the south-gate square and the streets that led to it.

“Where is Pedro?” Garibaldi asked.

“He is at the palace. He is not fond of the early morning.”

Garibaldi smirked, “Well I hope he’ll be able to stay asleep. It’s going to get noisy.”

John found Brian, Trevor, and Charlie beside the singing cannon. Brian was inspecting the rope work on the carriage.

“What do you think?” John asked.

“The aiming point looks good but I’m a little concerned about the recoil,” Brian said.

“You should be. Unchecked it’ll snap back twenty feet. It was an issue on the gun decks.”

“We need to cinch the stays tighter,” Charlie said. “I think it could punch out the back wall and it’s a long way down.”

“Go for it,” John said.

Just then Jugurtha’s cannon opened up and the wall rumbled with each impact. Showers of stones were thrown into the air.

“Did I say hurry?” John added.

The Moors’ cannon were trained mostly on the south gates, heavy oak doors fashioned with multiple layers of wood, their grains running at ninety degrees to one another for strength. The panels were held together with huge iron studs and the doors were mounted deeply within a protective stone barbican connected to the ramparts with necked walkways. The target was relatively small and the initial volleys were wide of the mark.

“Are we ready?” Garibaldi asked John.

“Give us a few more minutes to tie the cannon down better.”

Soon Charlie ran over, ducking his head below the crenellations.

“We’ve sorted it,” he said.

John shook his hand. “I want to tell you something.”

Charlie looked like he was going to get a scolding but he was surprised.

“I know you’ve been beating yourself up,” John said. “I know you’ve been saying that maybe you could have done this and maybe you could have done that to save your family. That’s all horseshit. You’re here because you were the strongest, fastest, and bravest of the bunch. You’re a good man, Charlie, and I’m proud to have you by my side in a fight.”

“You mean that?” Charlie said, choking on his words.

“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it. Good luck today and keep your head down.”

Garibaldi approached Aragon. “We are ready,” he said. “I would be most grateful if you could give the order to your men to fire. I will do the same in Italian and we shall have a battle.”

Aragon smiled and said, “I have been anxious to see how your new weapons perform.”

“So am I,” Garibaldi said. “Much depends on it.”

Aragon raised his arm and shouted, “Open fire!” Garibaldi did the same.

From the plain below, just behind his line of cannon, Jugurtha saw the dark ramparts erupt in hundreds of points of orange fire. One of the flashes was huge and his horse reared in fear when a shell from the singing cannon shrieked overhead and landed to his rear. The round tore through a dense concentration of Moorish infantrymen and archers leaving a bloody gash in the earth.

At the same time Hale rockets whistled into the ranks of the artillerymen, felling dozens. Minié balls fired by Iberian and Italian sharpshooters pocked the lines.

Jugurtha shouted for his commander, Tariq, to order the cannon pulled back but Tariq was already down on the ground clutching at a melon-sized hole in his chest from a direct rocket hit.

The rocket and bullet fire kept coming and hundreds of frontline troops fell victim. On the ramparts, reloaders and shooters were finding their rhythm and kept the hail of steel and lead coming. Simon and Brian, wadding stuffed in their ears, worked the singing cannon and soon another shell ripped apart the main body of Moors.

Despite Jugurtha’s shouts and threats, the Moors broke ranks and began fleeing, leaving their cannon behind. The infantry, archers and cavalrymen in the rear also panicked in anticipation of a third singing shell exploding in their midst. Then a Minié ball slammed into Jugurtha’s raging, open mouth, shattering teeth and tumbling through the base of his skull. Only a stirrup prevented him from falling all the way to the grass. His horse bolted and raced through the lines ahead of the retreating Moors, his head bouncing on the hard ground.

Through the smoke, Garibaldi saw the disarray. He put down his spyglass and told Aragon the ground attack should commence.

Aragon dropped a red cloth onto the city-side of the wall and they began streaming out the south gates, riding and running toward the fleeing Moors, whooping triumphantly.

With that Aragon announced he was going to the palace to inform the king the battle had turned. “He will wish to attend the dénouement.”

“I will await his arrival with bated breath,” Garibaldi said with a smile.

In the palace everyone milled around Martin’s casualty ward awaiting the first victims. Martin and Tony sat in one corner talking quietly. Alice and Tracy sat on a cot, jumping at each volley of fire, and Arabel and Emily paced the floor in lockstep.

When the doors opened they expected to see stretcher-bearers but instead an armed guard of Iberians barged in. They marched directly to the sisters and grabbed them by their wrists, pulling them toward the door.

“Leave us alone!” Emily shouted. “What are you doing?”

Emily bit down on a soldier’s hand and when he loosened his grip she pulled free and began putting her Krav Maga training into gear. With a kick to the groin and the heel of her hand to his nose, the man stumbled backwards.

“Get away from them!” Tony shouted but when he came forward, a soldier drew his sword, prompting Martin to pull him back.

Tracy and Alice screamed and Emily was about to attack the man holding Arabel when a powerful arm clamped her neck in a chokehold. In seconds she went limp. The soldiers dragged the women away, leaving the others in shock. The door latch was dropped into its slot from the outside and the four of them were trapped.

There was no inside latch. Tony grabbed one of Martin’s surgical knives and began trying to slide it between the door and the frame.

“Please hurry,” Alice cried. “We’ve got to help them.”

On the ramparts the firing had been halted to avoid friendly-fire casualties during the ground assault. Some elite elements of Jugurtha’s brigades stayed to fight but most were already in full flight to the south. As word of the rout spread, Moorish troops encircling the city abandoned their positions and fled too.

John congratulated Caravaggio and Simon and hugged Brian and Trevor.

“Superior technology will win every bloody time,” Brian said.

“Amen to that,” Trevor said.

“Let’s head back to the palace and get the others,” John said. “I’ll talk to Giuseppe to see when he’s going to be ready to head out to Marksburg.”

Then they heard Tony shouting and saw him running along the ramparts toward them.

He reached them panting and breathless. “You’ve got to come!” he gasped. “They’ve been taken!”

“Who?” John said in a panic.

“Emily and Arabel.”

“I don’t know where but they’re gone. Martin’s with Alice and Tracy.”

Simon ran over. “What did you say about Alice?”

“She’s okay, it’s Emily and Arabel,” Tony said.

Trevor was already running for the stairs and John lit off after him, followed by Simon.

Brian shouted that he was coming too but John wheeled around and told him to stay put in case the battle flared.

There were a couple of rifles propped against the wall next to a barrel of Minié balls. John stopped to grab a couple of powder horns, stuffed his pockets with ammunition then picked up the rifles.

John tossed Trevor a rifle and they sprinted through the congested streets of Burgos and into the main palace entrance that was wide open and unattended. Simon and Tony went straight to the room where Alice was holed up and John and Trevor ran through the halls looking for answers.

Near the banqueting hall they saw Queen Mécia sweeping past with Guomez and her attendants.

She raised a hand to stop the procession and hurried over and spoke to them.

Guomez translated, “Her Majesty wants to know how is Senhor Brian.”

“He’s fine,” John said. “Does she know what happened to our women, Emily and Arabel?”

“Oh yes, she most certainly does,” Guomez answered.

The queen began furiously answering the translated question.

“She says that Pedro, may he putrefy in a commoner’s rotting room, seized the women and departed the city with his royal guards. It seems he has reneged on the assurances he gave in conjunction with King Giuseppe’s alliance.”

“Where’d they go?” Trevor shouted.

“She believes it is León. He has a fortified palace there where he enjoys whoring and hunting.”

“Which direction?” John asked.

“West.”

As they sped off, Guomez called after them, “She says she hopes you destroy the filthy bastard.”

In the main bailey they saw some saddled horses at the ready.

“How’s your riding?” John asked.

“It’ll have to do, won’t it?”

Before mounting they quickly loaded both rifles, shouldered them on their straps, then rode from the palace heading for the west gate.