Down: Trilogy Box Set (135 page)

“Sure, go ahead.”

“When this is done will we be able to talk about what we’ve seen and what we’ve done?”

“Not for me to say. You allowed to talk about your other missions?”

“No way.”

“It was the same when I was a Green Beret. Why do you think the army will treat this mission differently?”

“I dunno. Maybe they won’t but I hope they do. There’s been nothing like this before. It’s like Star Trek and we’re on another planet.”

“Why’re you thinking about it?”

“Just trying to picture who’d play me in the movie version, that’s all.”

“Any ideas?”

“Thought about Colin Farrell, him being Irish and all.”

“Shit, O’Malley, you’re prettier than him.”

O’Malley rode off with a smile. The others dismounted and had some water.

“Hey Jack,” Kyle said to Culpepper, “how long have you guys served together?”

“Four years, give or take.”

“Good man in a fight?”

“None better. Always has your back.”

“Good to hear.”

In a few minutes O’Malley came into view, approaching at a blistering gallop, shouting something.

John didn’t need to understand what he was saying. He got the message and cocked his musket.

“Emily, grab the reins and take the horses. Get off the road behind those trees. Jack, you and the sarge have the AKs. Don’t shoot unless I give the order but if I do, make every shot count. Kyle, you got your musket ready?”

“It’s all primed. What do you think’s happening?”

“We’ll find out in a few seconds.”

A shot rang out and then another. O’Malley was the target of the unseen shooters but he wasn’t hit. He rode up and did a swift dismount.

“Some kind of soldiers, lots of them,” he shouted just as the first of them came around the bend.

“Scatter,” John shouted. “Stay low. Sarge, toss your ejected mags to me and Kyle. We’ll reload for you.”

O’Malley grunted and assumed a firing position on his belly. A musket ball whizzed close to his cheek.

A multitude of horsemen appeared, bunched together.

“Fire!” John said.

O’Malley and Culpepper began squeezing off rounds. Their heavy bullets tore into the attackers, tumbling inside their bodies, causing devastating injuries. The soldiers seemed to be in confusion and disarray at the quantity of accurate fire coming from so few men. The riders in the lead would have pulled up and turned if it hadn’t been for the crush of riders coming around the bend to their rear.

Both SAS men emptied their thirty-round mags and mounted their loaded spares while John and Kyle fed loose bullets into the empties.

John had his head down, concentrating on smoothly seating the double-stack of ammo, when Kyle looked up and saw a soldier creeping through the woods, trying to get into sniper position. He was twenty yards away when he stopped to cock and sight his rifle.

Kyle dropped the magazine he was loading, grabbed his musket and in one fluid move, raised it and fired.

At the sharp percussion, John looked up in time to see the man in the woods clutching his chest and falling backwards.

“Jesus, Kyle, good shot,” he said.

The bodies piled up on the road but the soldiers kept coming. Some of them began to ride off the road into the woods, making them harder to hit.

“Watch those guys!” John yelled. “They’re trying to outflank us.”

“There’re too many of them!” Culpepper shouted. “They’re going to break through.”

John made sure he had eyes on Emily. If they were going to be overwhelmed he’d go to her side and make a stand there.

“Here’s a fresh mag,” he shouted to O’Malley. “Maybe a full-auto burst will give them a little shock and awe.”

“At the risk of wasting ammo,” the sergeant yelled back.

There was another volley of gunfire, more distant. Soldiers fell at the back of the attacking pack. Others turned to address an unseen threat. Still others turned their horses into the woods and began to flee.

“What’s happening?” Kyle shouted.

John kept loading an empty mag and replied, “I’m not sure but it doesn’t suck.”

In under a minute the attackers who weren’t cut down evaporated into the forest and the threat was over as quickly as it had begun. Then, from around the bend in the road, a new threat emerged, another fighting force, led by a man with a smart blue jacket and long yellow hair. He halted his horse amidst a pile of writhing bodies and pointed toward John’s group.

“Hold your fire!” John shouted to his people. “Let’s figure this out.”

“Who are you?” yellow hair shouted in French.

John put his hands in the air and took a few tentative steps forward.

“Do you speak English?” John shouted back.

“Yes, a little,” yellow hair replied. “Who are you?”

“We are traveling to Paris on an important mission.”

“What mission?”

“It’s a long story.”

“How you destroy so many dogs with few men?”

“We have powerful weapons.”

“Make low these weapons and approach me.”

“I’ll meet you halfway,” John said.

Kyle told him to watch himself and Emily called out to John from the woods to be careful.

Walking past O’Malley and Culpepper, John told them to keep their weapons down, but to be ready in case.

Yellow hair, clearly an officer, gave his men some orders and guided his horse slowly through the bodies, calmly firing his pistol into one of the wounded men on the ground who had made some threatening move.

As the two men got closer to one another, John saw he had a second pistol in his belt and a sword.

Then the officer pulled on his reins and stopped some thirty paces away from John.

“It
is
you,” the officer exclaimed. “John Camp!”

“How do you know me?”

“We fought the Germans at Drancy. I see you from afar with Garibaldi. Everyone talks about the live general with his new cannon.”

“I’m not a general.”

“But you are alive, no?”

“I am.”

“You found your lady. Did you not return to your land?”

“I did but we had to come back.”

“This mission you speak of.”

“That’s right.”

The officer dismounted and led his horse by the reins to shake John’s hand.

“I am Marcel Rougier, captain in the army of Francia, or should I say, the combined army of Francia, Italia, and Iberia. Such change.”

Rougier explained that his men had been in pursuit of a rogue group of French soldiers who had stolen weapons and horses and had defected from their posts. “Garibaldi says stop them so I stop them, with your help. I would like to see these powerful weapons.”

John called O’Malley over to show him one of the AKs and at John’s coaxing, unloaded it and handed it over for inspection while Emily came out of hiding.

“I never have seen such a musket,” the captain said, admiring its heft. “A marvel from your world, I expect. So, you are going to Paris?”

“To see Garibaldi,” John said. “Is he there?”

“Yes, he is there but the road is dangerous, Monsieur Camp. You will have my protection if you wish.”

Joseph Stalin was cold and miserable. Following his defeat at Boulogne-Sur-Mer where his attempt to capture the fleeing John Camp, Emily Loughty, and the Earther children he so coveted had been thwarted by the surprise arrival of Iberian ships, he had withdrawn to one of Barbarossa’s more gloomy castles in Cologne. Built on a chalky promontory over the Rhine, the castle had been built from limestone blocks with a loose chalk and flint infill between stone faces, a rather ineffective insulation. The wind whipping down the river valley seemed to penetrate the castle walls and from there, penetrated the tsar’s bones. When he discovered that the rooms of his secret police chief, Vladimir Bushenkov’s, though smaller than his, were warmer and less damp, he evicted the man and took possession, sitting by the fire all day wrapped in a blanket.

“Nikita!” he called out. “Come and put more wood on the fire. Nikita! Where the devil are you?”

His young, freckle-faced secretary came running in, apologizing profusely. “I am sorry, Tsar Joseph. I was just speaking with General Kutuzov. What do you need?”

“I need more wood on this fire!”

Nikita sprung into action and stoked the hearth.

“What did Kutuzov want?” Stalin growled.

“He asked if you would be willing to entertain the Slavic ambassador tonight.”

“Am I?”

“Are you what, my tsar?”

“Willing.”

“That is for you to say.”

“I am willing if the Slavs will send me men.”

Nikita adjusted Stalin’s lap blanket and said, “I do not know of these matters.”

“Well, send me those who do. Get me Bushenkov and Kutuzov. And have you seen Pasha?”

“I will find out if he has returned.”

Kutuzov and Bushenkov made an unlikely pair. Kutuzov, Stalin’s field marshal, responsible for planning all military campaigns, looked like a fat and jovial uncle, his tunic spread by his big belly, his rubbery face, more mirthful than threatening. Bushenkov was a one-eyed, patch-wearing, sliver of a man, tough and sinewy, an expressionless cipher.

“So, gentlemen,” Stalin said. “I am getting tired of this damned castle. I wish to return to Moscow full of victory. I despise Germania. When do we attack this pig, Garibaldi? Are we sure the Iberians are firmly with him? Who will join our campaign? Answer me.”

“Allow me to respond,” Kutuzov said, rocking back and forth on his heels, a habit which Stalin despised.

“Stop your rocking. You make me dizzy.”

“I apologize,” the field marshal said. “Here is what we know. Our spies tell us the Iberians are now led by Queen Mécia. King Pedro was shot through the eye by one of the living men.”

Bushenkov reflexively touched his leather eye patch at the mention. “Not
our
spies, Comrade General,
my
spies.”

“We have also heard,” an annoyed Kutuzov continued, “from
your
spies that the queen has taken as a consort, another of the living men who did not return to Brittania with John Camp and Emily Loughty.”

“What became of them?” Stalin asked.

“We do not know,” Bushenkov said. “Their intention was to return to Earth but we do not know if they succeeded.”

“So,” Stalin said, “we are forced to deal with a troika of powers. Italia, Francia, Iberia, all aligned against us.”

Kutuzov said, “Our might, combined with the might of Germania is not to be underestimated.”

Stalin threw off his blanket and stood, sending his general into a nervous fit of heel rocking.

“A word such as underestimated means nothing to me!” Stalin bellowed. “I require victory. Guaranteed victory. They have more men than we do. An opponent with more men does not guarantee my victory. I want more men. What of the Slavs?”

Kutuzov sought out Nikita with his eyes. “I told Nikita just a short while ago that I thought a banquet honoring the Slavic ambassador would be a good thing.”

“If we fill his stomach with food and get him drunk on wine will we get an ironclad agreement tonight?” Stalin asked.

“I believe we are close.”

“What are the terms?”

“Old King Theodore wants gold of course.”

“Of course he does,” Stalin said contemptuously. “Can we afford it?”

“I believe we can.”

“What else?”

“He wants women.”

Stalin snorted at that. “He can have all the German women he wants. I don’t want them. But not a single Russian lass. What else?”

“He wants a pact of assurance that we will not invade the Slavic kingdom for two hundred years.”

“Fine. Pacts are meant to be broken.”

“That is all.”

“And what do we get? How many men?”

“Five thousand.”

He clapped once, making a sound like an auctioneer announcing a sale. “Okay, make a banquet.”

Bushenkov had been listening quietly, his tense lips stretched into a pale thin line.

“Fifteen thousand men would be better,” he said.

“The Slavs don’t have that many,” the general said with a dismissive backhanded gesture.

“I am not speaking of the Slavs.”

“Who then?” Stalin demanded.

“Alexander,” Bushenkov said. “Alexander the Great.”

“You can make an alliance with the Macedonian?” Stalin asked.

“I can and I did. My operative, Baburin, has returned from Rome where Alexander has been contemplating his next campaign. With Garibaldi away and Italia vulnerable, he was of the mind to continue toward Florence and Milan. However, with the right inducements, he has been persuaded to forgo these smaller conquests and help us to take all of Europa.”

Kutuzov unleashed a furious barrage of criticism, saying it was outrageous that the secret policeman had kept the negotiation secret from him and the Tsar.

Stalin listened and answered on Bushenkov’s behalf. “Yes, yes, but what are the terms? Fifteen thousand men!”

“Assuming we achieve victory and you are able to proclaim yourself Tsar of Europa, he will first, accept you as his Tsar, second, continue to rule Macedonia and his lands to the east as king, third, add Italia and Iberia to his kingdom, and fourth, claim the Slavic kingdom as well.”

“And you agreed to these terms?” Stalin asked.

“I did.”

Stalin smiled broadly and told Nikita to bring a bottle of good wine. “I agree too. Deal is done.”

Kutuzov sputtered, “But we’re already double-crossing the Slavs.”

“Vasily, Vasily,” Stalin clucked, “We did this kind of treachery on Earth all the time in full fear of what could happen to our immortal souls. In Hell, we do what we want without these fears. We are already here. We have worst- case scenario. This is our existence. Let Alexander eat King Theodore’s liver with onions for all I care. If Alexander gets too powerful we give his liver to someone else. Deal is done.

Giuseppe Garibaldi hastened to get out of his bed but his stiff joints always got the better of him in the mornings and this morning was no different. As king of a huge and far-flung empire he could have had all the servants and attendants he wanted but at heart he was just an old soldier who needed and wanted few creature comforts. What he burned for was something to lift his spirits and the spirits of his new subjects. He wanted something that had never before been achievable in the heartless domain of Hell: he wanted humanity.