Jack Iron (25 page)

The Cayman lifted his head and gazed at Kit McQueen, focusing all his hatred on the lieutenant who had orchestrated this terrible turn of events. But Navarre did not despair. He’d find a way out and kill the American officer and the conjure woman, too.

“I don’t like this waiting much,” Tregoning spoke up. The British marine checked the loads in his pistols for the third time. He and Nate Russell were peering out the conservatory window. From time to time he’d rub the back of his neck and look over his shoulder where a single dimly burning lamp in the hall washed the two corpses in an amber glow.

Kit had taken up a place by the door and kept vigil at the gunport, which permitted him to take in the entire compound at a glance. Iron Hand O’Keefe was in the sitting room with his daughter, enjoying a heartfelt reunion.

Obregon entered from the dining room behind the conservatory, a glass of madeira in his hand. He raised the glass in salute to Kit, gulped it down, set the glass on the floor, and continued on over to Navarre. The blond-haired Castilian glared down at the half-breed Carib and scowled.

“You are a lucky man, Orturo Navarre. I would nail your cock to a barrel and push you over backwards—if you were my prisoner.” Obregon nudged the Cayman’s boots. “I might do it yet.”

“But he isn’t your prisoner,” said Kit.

“No. But you are a man of honor,” said the Hawk of the Antilles. “Allow my enemy and me to settle what is between us, as men should, with cutlass in hand.” Obregon trembled as he spoke, not from fear but the overwhelming need he felt for revenge. His whole being demanded such a meeting. “Navarre must answer for what he has done: have you forgotten Father Bernal’s accounts of this man’s unspeakable conduct?”

“He will answer for them, on a gallows in New Orleans,” Kit said.

“No. He must die by my hand!” Obregon snapped.

“You’d do well to heed me,” Kit said. He was nearly a decade older than Obregon and had learned the costly nature of hate. “Leave Navarre to my country’s justice. Revenge can be a two-edged sword and as apt to cut both ways.”

“I must be the one!” Obregon retorted.

“For one who still bears the stench of the pit, how quickly you pursue your death,” Navarre said at last. He spat at the Castilian, who drew a hand back to slap Navarre.

“Cesar. Let it be!” Kit snapped. “You’ll do as I say or I’ll have you bound alongside him.”

Obregon turned to glare at Kit. The Castilian’s eyes were wild looking, like a man struggling to contain a fury that threatened to burst him at any moment. Obregon reached for the knives sheathed at his wrist.

“Haven’t you caused enough problems for us?” Raven said from the entrance to the sitting room. O’Keefe was standing behind his daughter, looming over her and fixing the Castilian in a stare as warm as the iron hook he had for a hand. But it was Raven’s words that hit home. Because of his rash deeds she had suffered cruel indignities and almost lost her life. She still might. The Hawk of the Antilles had much to answer for. Confronted with his own misdeeds, Obregon lowered his eyes and, with remorse for his conduct, sheathed his daggers, and glanced from Raven to Kit.

“I am not so blind that I cannot see the truth. I am not so deaf that I cannot hear.” He bowed to Raven and then to Kit. Navarre began to laugh, as if to taunt the Castilian and goad him into action.

“You are all going to die. All of you are my prisoners, and you don’t even know it.” The Cayman looked around at Tregoning and Nate Russell. “However, I will show mercy to my friends.”

“I believe that fellow Tom Bragg was a friend of yours, mate, and you bloody well rewarded him for his troubles by blowing his leg off.” Tregoning shook his head in disgust. “Let’s gag the bastard and be done with it. Though Mr. Obregon’s suggestion about the barrel has merit, if you ask me.”

“Something’s going on!” Nate Russell called out, his face inches from the partly shuttered window.

Kit returned his attention to the gunport. Sure enough, the compound had instantly transformed itself into a scene of frantic activity. Men were awake and hurrying to the walls. Listening, he could hear what sounded like a rumble of distant thunder and assumed a melee had broken out in town. Laffite must have arrived. Kit refused to contemplate otherwise.

The lieutenant turned to his companions. “Navarre’s men are on the walls. Their backs are to us. We’ll make a try for the main gate. If these brigands notice us, I don’t think they’ll open fire for fear of hitting their captain.” In these early predawn hours, the darkness had brightened enough for the front gate to be visible. Kit looked at Navarre. “If we’re stopped, tell your guards that you are taking a small detachment of men to find out what’s happening in town.” The ruse might work, as even Raven was dressed in breeches and a shirt and looked like a young man at first glance. If trickery failed, they still had Navarre, and despite the Carib’s air of unconcern, Kit doubted the man would risk a bullet just to spoil their escape.

“He’ll do as you say or I’ll carve my name in his side,” Obregon said. “With your permission, of course.”

“You have it.” Kit grinned. He glanced at O’Keefe and Raven, then Nate Russell and Harry Tregoning. They had come a far piece together. Each of them was someone to ride the river with. “Let’s go.”

Kit opened the door and stepped outside. A warm moist breeze brushed across his face carrying the smell of rain and smoke. He looked toward the powder magazine and raised a hand to wave toward the shadowy entrance and the unseen figure of Strikes With Club watching from across the compound. The Choctaw knew what to do: set a fuse burning and escape back down the passage.

McQueen had considered all of them trying for the magazine passage, but if they attracted attention and were discovered, it might jeopardize silencing the battery on the other side of the palace walls. No, the front gate offered the only escape for the rest of them.

Raven and her father were right on McQueen’s heels, followed by Obregon and Navarre, Nate Russell, and Harry Tregoning. The marine glanced back through the open door and saw that the African women who had shared captivity with Raven had congregated on the stairs. Now there was a waste of some comely lasses, the man from Cornwall thought with regret, and he wondered if he should have volunteered to remain behind, sort of as their protector. There was no room for these ebony lovelies in the wagon, and besides, the women’s presence would have attracted undue attention.

Kit climbed aboard the wagon and took the reins in hand and trained one of his pistols at Orturo Navarre as the pirate chieftain joined him on the seat. Cesar Obregon sat behind the Cayman, the point of his dagger nudging the prisoner’s side. O’Keefe, Raven, Tregoning, and the Choctaw, armed to the teeth with pistols and muskets, swords and a pair of Congreve rockets, climbed aboard and settled down in the wagon bed. With a flick of the reins, Kit started the mares toward the main gate. So far so good, he told himself. His optimism lasted all of a couple of minutes, just before all hell broke loose.

NKenai had rounded the wall and was standing on the ramparts above the front gate. He stared at the blossoming muzzle blasts, deeply perplexed by the conflict that had erupted in town. The exchange of gunfire was impossible to mistake. He had heard it many times before.

“
Sifahamu.
I do not understand this,” he said beneath his breath. Men lined the walls now, all of them with muskets. The swivel guns were trained on the road leading up from town; the palace defenders were ready. The African’s keen eyes searched the harbor as the sky began to slowly brighten despite the gloomy canopy of morning clouds ripe with moisture. His brows arched and he cursed beneath his breath when he realized Laffite’s schooner, the
Malice
, had anchored alongside Navarre’s brig. The ship was dimly seen at first, but NKenai recognized the cut of the sails and the lay of the ship in the bay. One thing more made it eminently clear that the schooner meant trouble. The vessel loosed a broadside with its sixty-four-pound carronades into Navarre’s
Scourge.
The brig was manned by a skeleton crew jolted from their sleep as the carronades continued to maul the vessel, crushing the hull with solid shot and raking the decks with chain and grapeshot.

The battery of twenty-four-pounders below the palace walls opened up with a single cannon trying to establish the range. Malachi Quince was exhorting his gun crews to sink Laffite’s ship before the brig went under. The wiry little brigand had a tongue that bit like a cat-o’-nine-tails, and he blasted the tardy crewmen for their lack of speed and erring aim. An unanswered question lingered in the air like trailing gunsmoke… Where were the shore guns? Why hadn’t they opened up and riddled Laffite’s ship? Why no warning rocket from the point? NKenai could only surmise someone had silenced the lookouts as well as the twelve-pounders and their crews.

Indeed, anything could have happened under the cover of such a bleak and moonless night as this had been, NKenai told himself. There but for fortune, Captain Laffite and his crew might have marched right up to the walls. Under cover of darkness, who could distinguish friend from enemy? At night all cats are gray.

NKenai froze and remembered the half-dozen men who had emerged from the powder magazine, a couple of hours past. Their faces had been indistinguishable. But who were they? How much trust had hinged on one man’s casual wave of a hand? Too much, came the answer. He stared at Morgan Town. The cries of men carried to him now, and the clash of cutlass punctuated by pistol shot and musket fire. Some of the buildings were ablaze, and against the flames, the silhouettes of men locked in a life-and-death struggle were made strikingly visible.

“What do we do?” said one of the pirates, worry in his voice. The
Scourge
had lost a mast and was beginning to list to starboard.

NKenai had seen enough. He spun around and took up one of the torches that had been set in brackets along the wall providing enough light for men to load by. With every intention of heading for the governor’s palace and alerting Captain Navarre, the African drew up sharply as he spied the wagon approaching from the governor’s hacienda. NKenai noticed the Cayman sitting on the seat and heard the pirate captain call out to the guards at the gate to unbolt the iron-fitted oaken doors while the wagon was still some distance from the main entrance. NKenai frowned and hurried to the steps that led down to the entrance gate, and gave orders along the way for silver-haired Rico Amidei, the shipwright, and several of the cutthroats close at hand to follow him.

“Captain Navarre! It is not right for you to leave us. There is fighting in town!” NKenai shouted. Who were the men with the Cayman? NKenai threw his torch to the ground in front of the team of mares pulling the wagon. The startled animals pawed the earth and whinnied and fought the reins and refused to proceed further. The wagon was about fifty feet from the gate. NKenai was determined to halt its progress until he learned the identity of its human cargo. He snapped another order that sent four more brands spinning through the night to land to either side of the wagon. The wet ground caused the flames to sputter, but they continued to burn and bathe the wagon in firelight.

In the glare of the torches the faces of Navarre’s escort were at last revealed. Kit McQueen stood in the wagon box so that NKenai and his cohorts could see the American officer had the reins in his left hand and, in the other, one of his fifty-caliber Quakers jabbed against Navarre’s neck. Kit swept the walls in a single glance. It seemed just about every musket lining the battlements was suddenly trained on them. Kit’s accomplices in the wagon leveled their rifled muskets at the surrounding cutthroats. Raven checked the loads on the bone-handled pistols she had taken from Navarre. If there was to be a fight, she was determined to prove herself the equal of any man.

“What now?” O’Keefe muttered, eyeing the overwhelming force that threatened to riddle them with lead. He wondered how many slugs it would take to bring him down. He didn’t aim to go gentle.

“We wait,” said Kit.

“Throw down your guns,” NKenai shouted. His voice carried a trace of anxiety. The sporadic gunfire by the water signaled the battle for Morgan Town had just about ended. The twenty-four-pounders outside the walls continued to boom defiance. “
Husikilizi.
You are not listening. Throw down your guns or we will kill you.”

“You are a clever man, Lieutenant McQueen. I offered mercy once. I will not offer it again,” said Navarre. Sweat had begun to trickle down his shaved skull. “Put down your guns. Leave this island. I give you your freedom. Take the girl. And her father. I give you this last chance.”

“And what about Obregon and Father Bernal and the rest of the people on the island?” asked Kit, buying every precious minute he could.

“What happens to them will happen whether I kill you or not,” said Navarre. He stood, braving the pistol at his throat. “I see something in your eyes, eh. Defiance. We are much alike, you and I, Lieutenant. We are not afraid of death.” Navarre smiled and raised his hand to the pistol. “What will you do?”

“Wait,” Kit replied.
Any second now. Please, God, any second now.

“For what!” Navarre snapped. An instant later, he found out. The earth buckled and heaved; explosions followed one upon the other; a cloud of debris, some of it fist-sized chunks of stone, showered the compound. The wagon was thrown over on its side, spilling Kit and his companions onto the trembling ground. The singletree shattered and the startled mares raced off toward the makeshift barracks. One of the mares lost its footing and went down, whinnying in agony. Men toppled from the walls to suffer broken limbs as the magazine continued to rock the compound with one explosion after another. A tremendous fireball erupted into the night sky. The wall overlooking the bay crumpled outward to bury the four-gun battery and its crew beneath tons of rubble. One final blast shook the compound, and black smoke erupted from the pit that had once been the powder magazine.

Kit rose up on his hands and knees and, steadying himself against the wagon, scrambled to his feet and stumbled over to Raven, who had suffered a bruised forehead but was none the worse for the experience. Kit didn’t try to speak. His ears were ringing and he doubted either of them would be able to hear. A bullet clipped the wooden wagon bed and another glanced off an iron wheel rim. Kit ducked, and swung around. Finding his pistol in the dust, he immediately primed the weapon with a sprinkle of gunpowder from his brass flask. The pirates were upon them, materializing out of the smoke. Kit fired and saw a man in a ragged shirt drop his cutlass and clutch at his face. Raven, kneeling, her eyes streaming tears from the grit, searched in vain among the debris for Navarre’s pistols.