A Triple Thriller Fest (129 page)

Tess grabbed a torch and leaned over the battlement. A crossbow bolt zipped past her ear. She threw the torch. It flew end over end and struck the top of the shed. It burst into flames.

Within seconds, fire engulfed the shed. It lit the battlefield like floodlights and a wave of heat rolled up and over the castle walls.

“Burn, you bastards,” Tess said. She turned to Niels and they shared a grin.

Her triumph was short lived. Two men stepped out from the rear of the shed and grabbed a stick tied to a rope that had been tucked underneath with the men. They dragged it back and the top, diesel and pitch soaked layer came off and with it, the fire.

She directed bolts at these two men, but they were back underneath the shed before she could bring them down. The top of the shed steamed, but those lower, wet layers had not caught fire. The discarded pile of hides and wet canvas burned. How much of her fuel had she wasted?

“Damn, that was smart,” Niels said.

“Again,” she ordered. “But hold back this time, not so much, we’ve got to make it last.” And to Niels, “Get your head down, you fool. You’re going to get shot.”

More buckets dumped over the edge.

Meanwhile, the second shed made an abrupt left turn as it got to the gates. Another minute and they’d be on the east side of the weak spot in the walls.

Peter ducked out of the gatehouse and shouted across, “What are they doing, what should I do?”

“Pull everyone out. Get everything you’ve got, attack that other shed.”

Moments later, men and women in armor came out of the gatehouse toward them, carrying lit braziers, buckets of steaming diesel and pitch, melted lead, and even stones.

“More drills?” Niels asked. “Is that what they’ve got under there?”

“No, look how slowly they’re moving. They’ve got the ram, but it’s not for the gates. They’ll drill along the seams, then hit the weak spot with the ram. It’s a great plan.”

She lit the shed on fire a second time, but they pulled the same trick. What would give out first, her diesel and pitch or the layers of wet hides and tents? Meanwhile, the drills kept churning. She listened and identified four. They must be crouched shoulder to shoulder under the shed. Every once in a while, one of the drills went silent and a spent battery flew out the back of the shed.

The second shed, smoldering, but not yet on fire, fought around the heap of stone to come up next to the first. Both sheds struggled against hooks on ropes, her giant pillows, and now stones that clattered off the top. The drill shed shifted to the left and the other shed pulled into its place. A crack from the ram below that sent a shudder through the wall.

“They’re going to break through,” she said. “We’ve got to pull back from the edges or we’ll go down with the wall.”

She squinted against the sleet. Men clanked and shouted from the remains of the enemy camp, but she couldn’t see more than a tightly bunched mass of men in the darkness. They’d come behind a wall of body-length shields, that was sure enough. But how many? Fifty? Sixty?

Niels grabbed his satchel that they’d loaded in the keep. He handed Tess a pair of black tubes, perforated by holes and wrapped with a green band at the bottom. “We called these flashbangs in the KSK. Clever way to take prisoners. Non-lethal, but they’re serious enough.”

“How do they work?” she asked.

“Just like a regular grenade. Pull and throw.”

She cringed. “You know I, uhm, throw like a girl.”

He laughed. “Hell of an admission coming out of your mouth. You’ll be fine, just drop it in the general vicinity. But listen, we’ve got to spread the word. If you’re near this thing when it goes off, you’ll be useless. The flash—especially in this darkness—will blind you for five, ten seconds. The overpressure on your ear drums will knock you right on your butt, you’ll have no balance for a good minute.”

She tucked four into her belt. “Got it. You go with the men below. You hit the first ones inside, then charge. I’ll drop mine on the outside of the wall as Kirkov comes through. The remains of the wall should shield you from the blast.”

Another wave of heat boiled up from below. They’d finally penetrated to the drill shed. It burned and the enemy couldn’t put it out. She directed crossbow fire and stones from the hoardings. Shortly, the fire would rage out of control and the enemy would have to abandon it, but it was taking a damnably long time to catch. And worse, the defenders had used up their diesel. The ram pressed its assault, untouched by fire.

“Tess,” Peter shouted from the bailey. He’d gathered maybe a dozen men from the gatehouse. Niels and several more came down from the walls to join him.

“Lars said they’re hitting the north wall. They’ve got ladders and they’re trying to break into the vault.”

“How long till they’re inside?”

“I don’t know. We don’t have enough people down there to hold them out, not if you want my guys down here, too.”

She stumbled under another blow to the wall. Stone chips burst into the bailey. “Where’s Nick? In the keep?”

“Yes, upstairs,” Peter said. “Should I move him?”

She was afraid to leave him in the keep with the enemy attacking the basement, but where could she put him? The gatehouse wasn’t safe, the manor hall wouldn’t hold if the enemy broke in.

“No, we don’t have a choice. Hold on, I’m coming down.”

She grabbed the first person she found. It was Daria LeFevre. “Take these,” she said as she pulled the stun grenades from her belt. Quickly, she explained what she and Niels had planned.

“How many, all of them?” Daria asked.

“Yes, all of them, don’t save them, whatever you do. Kirkov breaks in, there’s no other battle. You remember what that means.”

Tess didn’t wait for her response, but turned to go. She met Peter and Nick in the bailey. Nick was wrapped in a blanket, crying. He grabbed for her leg. It was hell to pry him off and turn a stony face to his screams.

“Stop it, you’ve got to be a big boy,” she told him. “Listen to your dad. Everything will be okay, I promise. And if neither of us are around and anyone tells you what to do…” She hesitated, thinking of Yekatarina and Kirkov taking this beautiful boy. “Anyone, I mean, you do what they say. Please, don’t fight them.” A deep breath, a fight to control her emotions.

“I’m so sorry, Tess,” Peter said. “I didn’t mean—”

“Not now, Peter. For god’s sake, not now.”

Chapter Forty-three:

Eleven explosions rocked the Druzhba Pipeline in Kazakhstan, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. It was just before 6:00 A.M. Moscow Time, 3:00 A.M. in London, and ten at night in New York City. A technician in Samara first noticed an urgent blinking light on his console, but by the time he figured out that it was not a malfunction and called headquarters, local police had noted the attack in several municipalities and a Ukrainian news team based in Kiev had caught wind of the attack and loaded a van to drive to the site of one of the explosions.

At 6:43, a nervous secretary awoke the Russian President, who placed an urgent call to the Russian Oil Minister. Alexander Borisenko, it would seem, was out of the country. The deputy minister, Anton Kirkov, was allegedly in Istanbul, but could not be reached, either.

Someone in the Oil Ministry called his broker in Tokyo and within an hour an early buzz stirred through the speculators of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Currency and commodity traders in Frankfurt, London, and New York were still asleep. Several huge oil and gold plays were set to execute the instant the exchanges opened. Many latecomers would pile on.

Chapter Forty-four:

Kirkov choked on a noxious mix of powdered stone, burning diesel, and sweat. The scream of drills was deafening. He crouched on the ground with his own cement drill, attacking the wall. He’d used up four battery packs already and his second drill bit was dull and nearly useless. He didn’t have another. His newest battery was already starting to labor.

It was dark in the shed, with occasional bursts of light. Stones thundered across the roof of the shed. A shout from the man to his right, then two men yelling at each other over the whine of drills.

“Will you two shut up?”

“He drilled my goddamn hand.”

“It’s dark in here, what do you think was going to happen?”

“Yeah, but I told him twice to watch it.”

“I’m going to shove a drill bit through your head if you don’t shut up.” Kirkov grabbed another man by the arm. “You, stop for a minute. Wait, everyone back, move.”

He ran his hand along the wall. It felt like Swiss cheese. A shudder ripped through the wall to their right, as the ram pounded the wall from the other shed. Their blows had slowed to once every fifteen, twenty seconds.

The shed burned, crackling and spitting over their head. They had to abandon it, quickly.

“That’s it, we’re done.” he said. “Pull it back. The whole shed, now!”

Once they’d retreated from the castle walls and the missiles and fire raining down on them, they fled out the back of the shed while it burned. The second shed, with its ram, remained behind to bear the full brunt of the attack. It had opened a breach in the wall and the last bits of drilled stone sheared off with every additional blow. Four, maybe five more strokes and they’d have their opening.

Kirkov and the others from the shed met more than seventy men who massed behind shields in the darkness up the hill. “Are you ready?” he asked. “Everyone, listen to me. No running, or we’ll be dead on our feet by the time we hit the walls, especially those guys in front with the shields. We’re not going to rush right through that gap, do you hear me?”

“But what about the men on the walls?”

It was a dangerous gamble. Every moment they hesitated near the breach was an opportunity for the enemy to pummel them from above. He had no idea how much pitch and diesel Tess had in reserve. Throw in crossbow bolts, stones, and melted lead and you had a lethal obstacle course.

But what they had was numbers. She’d pull back from the gatehouse, but that left three places to place her men: the castle walls, the bailey, and Yekatarina’s secondary attack on the far side of the castle and through the warehouse. Tess simply didn’t have enough forces.

“That bitch has tricks planned, you can bet on it. What we need is a feint. Make her think we’re charging, so she’ll—how do you say in English?—show her hand. Just follow my lead.”

The rent in the wall was nearly complete. Kirkov took his place in the mass of men and ordered them forward. The front rank braced itself with shields. The men behind drew their swords. They shouted and started toward the castle.

#

There was no easy way to get a message from the castle walls on the north side down into the warehouse below and Tess had to know what she was facing before she went down there. She left Peter and Nick in the bailey, then climbed the stairs of the keep two at a time.

There were no defenders on the very top; she couldn’t spare a single man. Wind and sleep whipped across the top of the tower. Three of her men sat on the wall tower just below her and they heaved stones over the edge to the attackers below.

She could see at once that their efforts were useless. The enemy had ingeniously sloped a plank roof from the ground up to the newly patched place in the wall that led into the warehouse. The angle deflected the full brunt of the stones and even the biggest ones simply bounced once and rolled off the end.

“Hey!” she shouted. Her men craned their heads to look up. “You’re wasting your time. Get down to the bailey, they’re breaking through the wall next to the gatehouse.”

“Who is that?” one of them shouted back.

“Tess Burgess, who do you think? Get down there, you can’t do anything more here.”

Hell of a chance to abandon the defense of the north walls, but there was no choice. The time to stop them was when they were maneuvering those planks into position, not now.

She could hear the enemy working the weak spot with another electric drill. It was freshly mortared and she’d reinforced inside the wall, but that wouldn’t hold them for long, as it was still only a couple of feet thick.

But how many men could fit under those planks? She made a guess, then turned to go. She raced down the stairs toward the dungeon. Moments later and she was through the dungeon and running down the service hallway to the vaults.

Susan Hartford challenged Tess as she crossed the warehouse floor. There were three piles of splintered boxes, and two men worked to pry apart another.

“It’s me, put your sword down.” Tess paused to catch her breath. “Leave that stuff,” she told the men working at the boxes. “We’ve got enough.”

Susan and the others followed her to the far end of the room where the others huddled together. The drill whined on the other side of the wall.

She eyed the small group with dismay. Only five, plus herself. They had a few candles is all; the oxygen down here was in short supply and she couldn’t burn it up with torches.

“What’s going on out there?” someone asked.

“Enemy is breaking into the bailey. Looks like another major attack on this side of the castle. We’ve got a couple of minutes is all, and if we don’t stop them here, they’ll be inside the keep and it won’t matter what happens in the bailey.”

“How many are there?” Susan asked.

“Maybe twenty, maybe more. Yeah, I won’t sugarcoat it, I’m guessing thirty men.”

A collective intake of breath. What was worse, Tess thought, was that most of the defenders—including herself—were disposable. Only McIves had any money. The rest were academics, bodyguards, and the like. Hobbyists. The people who knew what they were doing, not the billionaires.

“Forget the numbers. We’re not here to match swords. Where’s Lars?”

“I’m here.” He spoke from behind her shoulder. Lars plus Tess made seven defenders in all. “Just breaking up some of Peter’s oil paintings for the bonfire,” he said. “Thank god I can’t see what I’m destroying or I’d never be able to do it.”