Mycroft Holmes (38 page)

* * *

That was when the shooting began.

Holmes instantly recognized the sound. So did the mercenaries. They dropped to the ground and covered their heads. The startled businessmen did the same, though they fumbled their way down—Beauchamp did not duck at all.

Losing did not appear to be a part of the destiny the young aide-de-camp had carved out for himself. He glanced crossly toward the brush from whence the shooting came—and was strafed by a dozen bullets. He lurched about like a marionette and was dead before he hit the sand.

Holmes wasn’t the least concerned about the pings that were raising little whorls of dust all around him. He had but one goal—to get to Douglas. Keeping a straight path between himself and his mark, he bolted toward his fallen friend.

As he did so, he drew the surprised attention of one of the guards—the one with the flinty eyes. The man had no notion as to who might be shooting at him, or why. He knew only that a designated enemy was running away. He dutifully rose up on his elbows, took aim at Holmes’s back… and was terminated by a volley of metal.

Holmes, in the meantime, reached Douglas and scooped him up in his arms.

His eyes were closed. He was not breathing.

Holmes frantically felt for a pulse at Douglas’s wrist, then at his neck.

Nothing.

“Help me!” he cried. “Someone help me, please!”

THE SHADOWS CAST BY THE LAMPLIGHTS SPRANG TO LIFE, OR SO
it seemed. They danced and leapt through the hail of bullets. By the time the firing ceased, the shadows had the surviving bureaucrats and the guards surrounded, and were quickly bringing them into mute and awed compliance.

Holmes absorbed these facts as he did everything around him—but opaquely. His focus was on Douglas. He had him in his arms and was rocking him back and forth. If imprecations to the skies could revive the dead, his friend surely would have risen there and then.

The derringer that McGuire had used was a small caliber weapon, one more suited to hand-to-hand combat than to a shootout at greater distance. Were its bullets to have lodged in the thigh or the hip, they would have packed little more than a nasty sting. It was only McGuire’s expertise with firearms that elevated that miniscule piece of hot metal into something lethal.

Holmes ripped open his friend’s shirt and with his thumb began to frantically measure the entry points.

“Help me, please…” he repeated softly, not certain that he was finding what he sought. He measured again, and then again, just to be sure.

The night was growing chilly. A persistent wind buffeted the clouds, revealing a moon as large and as round as the driving wheel of an old locomotive. The gunfire had ceased entirely. As the Harmonious Fists escorted their captives toward McGuire’s boats, Holmes saw the remaining slaves emerge from the brush. This was no surprise to him—he had realized from the first that the volleys were coming from two of three Gatling guns. None but the captives could have mounted them so quickly and efficiently. What did surprise him was how thoroughly their countenances had changed. Though they were no heartier than before—privation had reduced them too much for that—there was a gleam of hope in their eyes. They were at long last on the side of the angels.

But the sense of vindication he felt on their behalf was subsumed by the imposing task before him. Douglas’s color was sallow, his jaw lax. Holmes packed the wounds with what he could find. Soft wet sand to cleanse, spider webs to stanch the flow of blood.

Huan and Little Huan appeared by his side. Huan put a comforting hand on his shoulder, but Holmes shook it away.

“Please, my friend,” Huan said. “You are torturing yourself…”

Holmes would not hear it. He gave Huan a withering look.

“And what of your healers?” he growled. “Capable of mending crushed toes with the touch of a needle—surely there is one among you who can work a small miracle!”

“Only God can revive the dead,” Huan said.

“Stay with him!” Holmes commanded as he rose to gather up seaweed.

Huan lifted Douglas’s limp arm and felt perfunctorily for a pulse. He glanced at his son and shook his head. Little Huan bit his lip to hold back tears, stared for a moment at Douglas, then abruptly stood and walked off.

Holmes returned with the seaweed and began to wrap it around Douglas’s torso, cursing the pieces that tore in twain before he could finish.

Huan attempted to talk some sense into him.

“He has no pulse,” he said.

“Taking his pulse is all but useless!” Holmes snapped. “Trauma has forced his body into a systemic coma to prevent it from perishing in earnest, with breath so shallow that the movement of the chest is all but indiscernible. As for his heart… it is playing a similar trick of hide and go seek.”

“Mycroft, we all loved Cyrus,” Huan responded. “But we have living folk to care for.”

“Go and care for them, then,” Holmes said. “Did you not hear me? I will not leave him here!”

The Harmonious Fists had pushed the two boats knee-deep into the water. Huan went to assist Little Huan, who was shepherding the freed slaves, the three surviving functionaries, and the three surviving guards, moving them into the vessels. They sat numbly side by side, black with white, at long last united under one common objective.

To get off that cursed island.

When the Harmonious Fists climbed aboard, the vessels dipped precariously low into the water.

Holmes watched them, impassive.

Twenty-three men had boarded: eleven in one boat, twelve in the other, on vessels built to carry eight apiece at most. As configured, he put their odds of reaching Trinidad at twenty-three to twenty-five percent.

“Mycroft!” Huan waved and called out. “My brother, you must come aboard now!”

Holmes stood up. Clasping Douglas underneath his arms, he began to drag the body inch by inch along the beach toward the boats.

“Come help!” he called out to Huan.

“We must save room for survivors!” Huan called back. “We will return with proper shovels and bury our dead!”

“
He is not dead!
” Holmes insisted.

Little Huan was just stepping into the vessel when he abruptly changed course and set foot on the beach again.

“He has no heartbeat, he is not breathing,” Huan quietly admonished his son.

Little Huan nodded. “I know,” he said, “but still we must return him to Trinidad. We must bring him home. If we drown, we drown together. ‘To fools,’ remember?”

Huan shook his head, exasperated. “We are certainly that,” he muttered under his breath as he followed his son down the beach.

“Take his other arm,” Holmes commanded the moment they joined him. “Gentle! Move more slowly—keep his torso upraised.”

The pockmarked guard shook his big head as he watched the men drag Douglas’s body along, inch by torturous inch.

“McGuire, he do not miss,” he said in a thick Russian accent. “If your friend is alive, it is…
stikhiynoye bedstviye
.”

The two guards in the other boat nodded solemnly.

* * *

Besides Douglas, the passengers aboard Holmes’s boat were Huan and Little Huan, two Harmonious Fists, the three surviving bureaucrats, the pockmarked guard, and three ex-slaves. The latter were so thin that the outlines of their bones were visible through their threadbare clothes, casting shadows in the lamplight. They were shivering in the night air, but there was no more clothing to be had, so Huan gave them the burlap tarp that covered the boat when it was moored. They gratefully huddled together and wrapped themselves in it.

Holmes, at the prow, arranged Douglas as best he could, his head resting against a seat, his long legs stretched out before him.

As they prepared to shove off, he stared at the third-quarter moon. He gauged that detail, along with the temper of the ocean.

A fair fight was what he needed.

A fair fight
, he told himself by rote,
is the essence of competition
.

He turned to Huan.

“If we are to stand a chance against the waves all the way to Port of Spain,” he said, “we must balance the vessels.”

“To Port of Spain?” Huan said. “We cannot go so far. We must touch down in Moruga.”

“There are no proper physicians in Moruga,” Holmes objected.

Huan shook his head. “Mycroft…”

“
Huan.
With the way you have arranged things, your odds of drowning are seventy-five percent. If you let me help, even sailing further, you greatly decrease those odds.”

“Are you saying you will not help, and increase our odds, if we go only to Moruga?”

“I appreciate that there are lives aboard, and I am quite fond of you and your son. But I must also say that your lives, to me, are not worth his, and, since everything has a price…”

Huan hesitated only a moment. Then he gave him leave. Holmes calculated individual and combined mass and rearranged the passengers accordingly. And although they all did as they were told, minutes still flew by—precious minutes that he knew were of the essence for Douglas.

The tiny vessels shoved off. Holmes could have done better if he had had more time, but their odds of survival had increased by some fifty percent.

It would have to do.

And still he could not rest.

“Mycroft,” Huan whispered as the latter began to systematically massage Douglas’s hands and feet. “My brother!” he insisted when Holmes appeared not to be listening. “That devil pierced his heart. Even a heart as big as Douglas’s must cease when two bullets enter in.”

Holmes did not reply but kept up his toil and silent vigil.

* * *

The wind was blowing in their favor, the moon creating a passable light by which to see. The four designated rowers on Holmes’s boat—Little Huan, his father, and two Harmonious Fists—were moving the vessel away from the coastline at no contemptible speed, considering the added weight.

When they reached open ocean, though conditions were still favorable, Holmes’s vessel began to take on water. Not enough to drown them all, but enough to be of alarm. It was no easy feat to bail her out while attempting to keep her steady. Passengers passed the buckets back and forth as delicately as could be managed.

Only Holmes abstained, continuing to work on Douglas.

The pockmarked guard glanced over at him.

“Why you not help?” he asked in his thick Russian accent, indicating the buckets.

“His blood is not circulating properly,” Holmes muttered. “This is the only way to preserve his extremities. You understand?”

The guard looked at him cynically.

“
Nyet.
If he lives…
stikhiynoye bedstviye
!” he exclaimed.

Holmes had had enough.

“I have no notion what you mean by that,” he snapped.

A voice beside him rasped out the translation.

“Act… of… God…”

* * *

Within minutes, Douglas’s breath had grown discernible. His chest was rising and falling—if not altogether smoothly, then at least consistently. The other passengers’ initial shock and elation aboard gave way to puzzlement.

“How is this possible?” Huan asked. “It is true, then—it is an act of God!”

“It was not an act of God,” Holmes replied. “It was a kick to the head!”

Then he turned to Douglas and whispered, “Very good, Douglas. You are breathing quite well. Now pray keep it up, for I shall not return to England without you.”

THERE WERE NO PROPER HOSPITALS IN PORT OF SPAIN—NOT IN
Holmes’s estimation—nor surgeons competent to do the fine work of extracting bullets from so precarious an area of the body. Those little pellets of lead and death would have to remain where they were, in Douglas’s chest, as mementos of a terrible time.

Holmes paid for a comfortable room, along with twice-daily visits from a well-regarded local physician, Dr. George Curlew. As there was still danger of infection, or of bullets migrating and causing additional damage, he kept a personal vigil and left his friend’s bedside only when strictly necessary.

While Douglas recuperated, Huan and Little Huan led a contingent of Harmonious Fists and Merikens—relatives of those who had perished upon the island—to a steamship that had been abandoned at its mooring off the coast of Venezuela. With permission from the government, which Holmes had secured, they clambered aboard and led more than two hundred emaciated men, women, and children down the gangway to safety.