1634: The Baltic War (61 page)

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Standing in the bow of the barge, Harry Lefferts gave the gun crew a cheery wave of the hand. That might hold them for another few seconds.

Not that he really cared. Not with Julie Mackay across the river.

Still, it'd be handy if they could finish tying up before the shit hit the fan.

He glanced back and saw that Matija and Paul had already hopped off the barge and were taking care of that. Now, he just had to wait until they cleared themselves off to the side. He didn't think the rubble from St. Thomas' Tower would hit the barge itself—although everyone on it was staying as far as they could to the stern or the bow, just in case—but it was sure and certain to land all over the wharf.

In the event, he didn't need to give the signal. The crack of Julie's rifle did it for him.

Harry didn't waste time looking to see if she'd hit her target. Or the next one—by the time he brought the walkie-talkie up to his lips, she'd fired a second round.

And Darryl didn't wait for him, either.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," Melissa Mailey hissed, crouched in the heavy stonework that held the machinery for the watergate below St. Thomas' Tower. All the members of the embassy were crouched there with her. Months ago, they'd decided that would provide them with a safe refuge from the blast.

Darryl McCarthy was the one nearest the entrance to the rest of the tower. He had an electrical detonating device in his hands and a truly disgusting grin plastered on his face. Melissa wasn't sure if the grin was because of the overall situation, which Darryl seemed to view as a great adventure, or the more specifically cheerful fact that the many weeks they'd had to delay their escape had had its side benefits. One of them being that, with the Shorts serving as the couriers and go-betweens, Darryl and Tom had been able to replace the primitive fuses they'd originally planned to use with much fancier mechanisms. Harry Lefferts seemed to be an endless cornucopia, when it came to anything that could wreak havoc and destruction.

Rita Simpson was crouched right next to her. "Never expected you'd wind up in a combat operation at your age, huh? Me neither, tell you the truth, and I'm still a spring chicken."

Melissa shook her head. "No, it's not that. It's—"

She heard a sharp cracking sound, coming from somewhere outside. That had to be a rifle shot. Glancing over, she saw that Darryl was already—

"Yee-
haaaaa!"
he shouted.

The noise was deafening. Even the heavy stonework seemed to shake.

Darryl was up and entering the main part of St. Thomas' Tower the instant the blast ended. "Oh, man!" she heard him shout. "You wanna talk about a beautiful sight!"

Melissa lowered her head. "I can't believe it. We just blew up the Tower of London." Her voice began to rise. "For God's sake,
it's an historical monument!"

But Rita was already hauling her to her feet. "Come on, Melissa. Worry about it later. Besides, there's still plenty more blowing up to do."

"He still hasn't come out, Uncle," said Jack Hayes nervously.

Squatting next to him, in the shadows, Stephen Hamilton shrugged. "His problem, not ours. The stupid bastard was told
not to shit under there."

He gave his young kin a look that was as sympathetic as anything Hamilton could manage. "I'll do it for you, if you'd rather."

Jack Hayes was still peering intently at the big heavy wooden staircase that led up to the White Tower's second-floor entrance. The huge central keep of the Tower of London had been built more than six centuries earlier, and had been designed from the standpoint of early medieval warfare. Having only one entrance, and that one far above the ground, had undoubtedly made sense at the time. But once that staircase was destroyed, most of the Tower of London's mercenary soldiers would be trapped inside the keep, with no way to get out except a very risky jump or using a rope or jury-rigged ladder.

No harm would come to them, of course. Not, at least, so long as they stayed there. And they didn't even need to stay for all that long. Just long enough.

"No!" Jack suddenly exclaimed, almost yelling the word. His hands made an abrupt motion. The White Tower's staircase blew out at the upper corners and, a moment later, collapsed into a pile of wooden rubble. Thankfully for the sake of Jack's nerves, there was no sign of the corpse that had to be lying at the bottom of all that now.

It was the first time the nineteen-year-old had ever killed a man. Difficult, that was. Hamilton could remember his own first killing, which he'd done at a younger age and in a considerably messier manner. It had bothered him, even.

"You go with your uncle Andrew, remember," he told Jack. "He'll be in the dungeons."

Hamilton rose and hurried toward the Lieutenant's Lodging. The adult males of the family had been in position well before dawn. Now he could see the family's women already coming out, carrying their bundles, with the children following behind. Except for the one infant Griselda, who was being carried by her mother, all the children were carrying bundles also. Even little Jack and George were each carrying one—not very big, of course—toddling on their three-year-old legs.

For the past month, Sir Francis Windebank had ordered Cromwell guarded by mercenaries instead of Yeoman Warders. That had been just another of the many insults that, one piling on another, had led Andrew Short to return to that same dungeon. Not as a guard, but as a jailbreaker.

He was glad of it, now, though. He'd have found it very hard to kill Warders.

"There's an attack on the Tower!" Andrew shouted at the two soldiers, pointing back over his shoulder with his left hand. When their eyes followed, he drew his pistol and shot them both. Twice each. Their halberds clattered to the stone. One blade was chipped; the other, cushioned by landing on its owner's corpse.

All four shots had hit center mass. A bit below the ideal sniper's triangle, as Lefferts called it, but Andrew hadn't wanted to take the risk with an up-time pistol he still hadn't fired all that often. It didn't matter. The men were both dead, and it didn't take Andrew long to find the keys.

By the time he got the outer door open and was starting to work on the door to the actual cell, his nephew Jack had arrived. "Help me with these bolts, lad. There are a damn bloody lot of them, just to hold one man."

They got the ramp up to the great gaping hole that had been blown in the side of St. Thomas' Tower by the simple expedient of tossing up a rope. With one end of the rope attached to one end of the ramp and Tom Simpson pulling on the other end, there it was. Quick as that—all they had to do was help guide it and then anchor the bottom to the wharf with some spikes. It took longer to muscle the damn thing out of the barge in the first place.

Melissa Mailey was the first one to appear at the top, hesitating as she looked down the very steep incline. Gutsy as she might be, she was still almost sixty years old, with the caution that had slowly seeped in over the years when it came to any sort of acrobatics. This was no shallow cruise ship ramp, either. It was more like a heavy ladder, pitched at no better than a forty-five degree angle.

She took her first awkward, gingerly step. Then retreated hastily, when she realized she'd have to go down backwards, as if she was using an actual ladder. She took her first awkward step in that pose, feeling behind her uncertainly for the first of the boards that had been nailed across the ramp to provide footing.

"Christ, this is gonna take forever," Harry muttered. He heard another shot from Julie's rifle, the first one since she'd killed the gun crew. That meant soldiers were starting to appear somewhere on the Outer Wall.

Tom Simpson's huge form appeared at the top of the ramp. The man was so big it was easy to forget he'd also been a top college athlete. More gracefully than Harry could have imagined, Tom eased himself down the ramp next to Melissa, picked her up in a fireman's carry—close enough, anyway—and had her down on the wharf in less than five seconds.

She only squawked once. Harry was impressed. Tough old bird.

As soon as the ramp was clear, Harry raced up. Don Ohde and Sherrilyn came behind him, moving more slowly since they were carrying rifles instead of a pistol.

"Another one," said Alex Mackay. "No, two. To your left, by the Bell Tower."

Julie's aim shifted. Three seconds later, she fired. Three seconds later, fired again.

Neither Anthony nor Patrick was watching any longer for inconvenient passers-by, other than a quick glance every ten seconds or so. No need to, really. In Southwark, by now, any pedestrian who'd been ambling about in the vicinity was long gone.

But they'd probably have done the same, even if alertness had been necessary. Experienced soldiers both, they were simply too fascinated by what they were seeing. The concept of "marksmanship" was by no means unknown, in their day, to be sure. Some of Patrick's skirmishers were very good shots, with their rifled muskets.

But that was by a definition of "good shots" that now seemed as antiquated as the pharaohs. They'd heard the tales of the young American woman's ability to use a rifle, but hadn't really quite believed them.

They did, now. Reaching across an entire river, she was striking down any man who showed himself on the Outer Wall. Seven of them, all told, since she'd taken out the four men on the gun crew. She'd only missed once—and that was if you counted as a "miss" a man whose shoulder was shattered and was as surely out of the fray as if he'd been slain outright.

"Now, another. All the way over by the Well Tower."

A few more seconds passed, and the angel of death spread her wings again.

By the time Stephen Hamilton reached the entrance to the Lodging, all the women and children of the family were out and starting to pass through the gate into the Water Lane. And by then, of course—with two deafening explosions, one coming from the White Tower and one from St. Thomas' Tower—some of the Warders were coming out also.

Stephen stopped fifteen feet from the entrance and took out his pistol. One of the wonderful American automatic pistols, it was. Captain Lefferts had given one to him and one to Andrew, and then taken them out into the country a few weeks back to practice with the weapons.

The three Warders who'd come out included one of the other captains of the force, Charles Hardy. With his left hand, Hamilton pulled a small packet out of his coat pocket and tossed it to him.

"Here, you'll need this in a moment."

Confused, Hardy looked down at the object in his hand. "What's in it?"

"They're called sulfa drugs. I had Lady Simpson make up the packet for me. They're good for flesh wounds, keep them from getting infected. Just sprinkle the stuff on."

Hardy stared at him.

Hamilton made a face. "Sorry, Charles. But if you lads don't suffer any casualties at all, it'll look bad." He brought up the pistol and fired. Once, twice, thrice. All three Warders fell to the ground, yelling with shock and clutching their legs.

"They're just flesh wounds. Nasty ones, I admit. Remember—sprinkle the stuff on. Better do it quickly, too."

Hamilton left. Running now. He hadn't shot the three Warders in any hope that would stop the others from doing their duty. He'd simply done it out of a sense of duty of his own, as peculiar as others might think it to be.

The Bloody Tower, next. But when he arrived, he saw that John and William had already knifed the guard and were opening the door with the keys they'd found on him. So Stephen continued on, to check the progress with loading the family on the barge.

"Thank God I talked Windebank into letting her and the kids move into Wakefield Tower, last month, since he was hardly ever using it himself. I got no idea how we'd have gotten them out of the Lodging."

Harry listened to Rita Simpson with only part of his mind, as he peered across the walkway. "We'd have managed, somehow," he murmured. "Damn. I don't think the bastards are going to make it easy for us."

He'd hoped the officers quartered in Wakefield would have come to investigate the explosion right next door to them in St. Thomas' Tower, but no such luck. Cowards, sluggards, simply confused, it didn't make any difference. They'd have to blow their way in.

No problem. Sherrilyn and Don had taken positions to deal with anyone who tried to come into the Water Lane or showed up somewhere on the Inner Wall where Julie couldn't spot them. But their rifles wouldn't have been much use for this, anyway. And, in the meantime, George Sutherland and Paul Maczka had showed up.

Just in time, too. What seemed like a veritable flood of women and children had come up into St. Thomas' Tower and were making their way down the ramp to the wharf below. Felix and Darryl were helping them, while Matt stayed with the barge.

"Okay, guys," he said. "It's shotgun time and you're the two designated trolls." He pointed at the heavy door across the walkway. "Don't know if it's locked or not."

"What does it matter?" grunted Sutherland. "Just let me switch to slugs."

That didn't take long. Two blasts at close range into the door latch and it didn't matter if it had been locked or not. George's great bulk slammed against the door, and that was that. Harry wondered if he'd be able to sweet-talk Sutherland and Simpson into having an arm-wrestling match, just to pass the time as they crossed the North Sea.

Probably not a good idea, though. They might capsize the ship.

"Clear!" George bellowed from inside. Paul had already passed through, continuing into the next chamber. Harry heard him fire two rounds. At whatever, probably nothing. The sound alone, inside the stone walls of Wakefield, would be enough to stun anybody for a second or two.

"Clear!" Maczka shouted.

"Okay, Rita, let's go."

Once inside Wakefield, with George and Paul blasting their way ahead—they still hadn't actually shot anybody yet, since the Tower seemed to be deserted—Harry let Rita guide him.

"Here," she said, stopping at a door. "The poor woman's probably frightened out of her wits."