Empire Builders (30 page)
FORTY-TWO
THE DINING HALL was empty, the table still set with food in the dishes and wine in the goblets. The candles flickered fitfully in the draft from the open door at the far side of the chamber.
Dan made his way to the central hall. It was as dark as a cave, not even moonlight sifting through the long narrow windows. Dan knew that the main staircase was off to his right and that Gaetano had probably taken Jane up that way.
More gunshots. Closer. The rattle of automatic weapons. He could hear shouting now, heavy angry voices yelling back and forth. They’re not using tranquilizer darts, he knew. Gingerly pulling one of the automatic pistols from his belt, his palm and fingers raw from their scalding, he realized that he would be firing real bullets. And they’ll be shooting to kill you, pal. Hope Nobo’s team has night-vision gear. I’d hate to be shot by my own side.
He groped across the central hall toward the main staircase, the pistol heavy in his hand. Slowly, carefully, like a blind man without a cane, he slid one foot in front of the other until finally he butted against the first step of the staircase.
He started up the steps. Uncertain of how high or deep they were, he nearly tripped on the first one. Cripes, he thought, if I fall down the gun in my belt might just shoot my cojones off. So he pulled the second pistol out with his left hand and proceeded slowly, gropingly, up the wide stone staircase, feeling slightly ridiculous, like a cowboy gunslinger in an old video with a gun in each hand.
He heard footsteps running against the stone floor up above. A voice, speaking low and swift in Italian. He froze on the steps. If I can’t see them they can’t see me, Dan told himself.
The thin beam of a flashlight lanced through the darkness, sweeping erratically along the staircase. Dan flattened himself against the steps. The flashlight beam swung toward him, hazy with dust motes.
“Eccolo! Fucile!”
Somebody at the top of the stairs sprayed a fusillade of automatic rifle fire at Dan. Bullets whined and cracked all around him. Stone chips flew from the steps and walls, slashing his back, his arms, his cheek. He remembered that the last time he had fired a pistol had been on a target range in Texas , nearly thirty years earlier. And he had been a rotten shot.
Big George had been down in the servants’ quarters, as befits a chauffeur, when the lights went out.
The job Nobuhiko had given him was to make contact with Kate Williams and stay with her, wherever she went. Nobo’s reasoning was that even if Dan and Malik failed to reach Jane, the only reason that Kate had left Alphonsus was to rendezvous with Gaetano. Therefore George was fitted out with a biochip earplug and told to be ready to move at an instant’s notice.
Yamagata personnel tracked Kate from the Nueva Venezuela space station to Milan ’s sprawling busy airport. She boarded a private plane. Satellite sensors picked up the plane as it cleared the airport while Yamagata agents pried its flight plan out of the airport computer. Kate was heading for Cagliari , on Sardinia .
Hasty plans were made. George and a pair of young Yamagata agents, a man and a woman, were picked up from the yacht by a chartered jet seaplane and flown at top speed to the airport at Cagliari . Breathlessly searching the small airport, they found the limousine waiting for Kate’s arrival just a few minutes before Kate’s own plane touched down. So swiftly and quietly that no one noticed, the two Japanese took the driver and security guard away at gunpoint.
That was how Big George, feeling silly in an ill-fitting chauffeur’s uniform, drove Kate to the castle. The original chauffeur, together with Gaetano’s security guard, remained at the airport under the watchful eyes of the two Yamagata people. He had thoughtfully taped the directions to the castle onto the limo’s dashboard, saving himself an unpleasant interrogation by the Japanese, both of whom spoke Italian.
George did not, but he was counting on the hope that a mere chauffeur would be almost invisible to the people at the castle. He explained to Kate along the way who he was and what was happening at the castle. She said nothing, merely acknowledged his story with a nod that he saw in the rearview mirror.
Big George was hardly invisible. The minute he stopped the limo in the castle courtyard and trotted around to let Kate out, one of the narrow-eyed guards stepped up to the pair of them, one hand on the barrel of the shotgun he wore slung over his shoulder.
He said something in Italian, his voice suspicious.
“This is my driver,” Kate replied. “I brought him with me. Good thing, too. Your people never showed up at the airport.”
The guard said in hesitant English, “What do you mean?”
“You Latin types don’t know how to meet an airplane at the time it’s specified to land, that’s what I mean,” Kate said. “Your people are probably still at the airport bar, ogling the waitresses.”
She strode off toward Gaetano and the others clustered around him, leaving George to fend for himself.
They clearly did not trust him, but George spoke to them loudly in his worst Aussie accent, cheerfully let them search him until he thought they might be falling in love with his body, and finally was grudgingly allowed to go down to the servants’ quarters. He made a strange contrast to the dour, dark, swarthy, silent maids and valets, a massive shaggy red-haired giant who talked loud and nonstop to hide his anxiety at being alone among the enemy.
The food was good, at least. Lunch was large and tasty with pasta and actual veal and plenty of strong red wine to wash it all down. George avoided the wine almost altogether. He was shown to a narrow little room with a cot in it, and gratefully took an afternoon nap. Soon after he woke up the women were
setting the table again for dinner.
setting the table again for dinner.
The meal was almost finished when the lights went out. George knew immediately that the Yamagata assault team had arrived at last. He got up from the table amid the babble of the Italians’ voices, and headed through the sudden darkness toward the courtyard.
Sure enough, the sky outside was fairly filled with shimmering black parasails gliding in, bearing armored helmeted figures beneath them, each of them bristling with weapons. There was firing from the windows and the invaders fired back while still soaring earthward, knocking chips of stone from the walls and parapets.
One of the first men to land and disencumber himself from his parasail ran up to George. In his armor and helmet and night-vision goggles he looked more like a robot than a human being. A small robot, George thought. The warrior barely came up to his shoulder.
“You are George.” The warrior’s voice was muffled by his visored helmet.
Thankful for the bioluminescent paint that had been smeared across his forehead, George said, “That’s right, mate.” The paint’s luminescence was too faint to see with unaided eyes; only those wearing the low-light-level goggles could see it.
“Find a safe place and stay there,” said the warrior. “We will take care of the rest.”
George gave him a grunt that might have sounded like assent, but he had no intention of keeping out of this fight.
Guided by wavering pencil beams of flashlights, Gaetano’s guards had rushed Kate and her sister up the main staircase and past the bedrooms on that level, and up a narrow winding staircase into a bare circular room at the top of one of the castle’s turrets.
“You stay in there until we tell you it’s safe to come out,” one of them said. He slammed the door and shot the bolt home.
Kimberly clung to her sister. “What’s happening?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
They heard gunfire.
“Rafe is a crook, Kim,” Kate said. “He’s a murderer and he’s kidnapped Jane Scanwell. Dan must have set up this rescue attempt.” “Attempt? What if it doesn’t work? What if they set the place on fire? We’re locked in here!”
“It’ll be all right, Kim,” said Kate with an assuredness she did not feel. She held her sister close and kept murmuring, “It’ll be all right.”
Blood was running down Dan’s cheek from a stone chip that had nicked him. His back tingled from other cuts. But the firing had stopped and the flashlight gone out. Total darkness and total silence. And he was still alive.
Whispered voice from the top of the stairs. A couple of footsteps. Dan started to slither down the stairs
as quietly as he could, trying to get away from the two men up above. He heard muttering and the metallic sounds of an empty magazine being replaced by a full one.
as quietly as he could, trying to get away from the two men up above. He heard muttering and the metallic sounds of an empty magazine being replaced by a full one.
The flashlight winked on again and caught him in its feeble glow. To Dan it seemed like the brightest spotlight in the history of the world.
Pffh. A yell and the flashlight beam went awry. Another pffh somebody at the top of the stairs grunted as if he’d been hit in the gut. Then Dan heard the soft thudding sounds of a body falling, tumbling down the stairs. It came rolling toward him, arms flailing lifelessly like a rag doll thrown away by a thoughtless child. The body hit Dan’s flattened form and stopped, its sightless eyes staring at him. Before Dan could yell or move or catch his breath he felt hands pulling at him, helping him to stand up. “Mr. Randolph-san?”
“Hal!” he said gratefully. Yes. He was facing a pair of figures all in black, barely discernible in the darkness even though they were hardly six inches away.
“We have control of the lower floors,” the man told him in swift Japanese, “and the courtyard and outer walls. We have not yet found Mrs. Scanwellsan.”
“They took her upstairs,” Dan said.
“So.” The armored figure handed something to Dan. “These will allow you to see in the dark.”
Dan bent down and placed both his useless pistols on a step, then took the goggles and slipped them over his head. He wormed them into place, blinking. Night did not turn into day, but the scene before him now looked as if he were watching it on a computer display screen. The two figures that had been barely discernible in the darkness now showed a clear but sickly green against a flickering gray background. He saw that they wore helmets and armor, and had assault rifles in hand. The guns were muzzled by silencers. More robotlike figures were scurrying across the floor of the central hall to join them on the staircase. Looking up, Dan saw the slumped figure of another man, his flashlight lying beside him. The assault team leader motioned to his men and they swarmed up the stairs in swift deadly silence. Dan started after them, but the team leader put a gauntleted hand on his shoulder.
“We will handle this,” he said in Japanese. “There is no need for you to risk yourself any further.”
Dan shook the man’s hand off his shoulder and started up the stairs. The team leader raced up beside him.
“I’m going with you,” Dan said. “Very well then. But no heroics.” “Me?” Dan grinned. “I’m no hero.”
It was eerily silent at the top of the stairs. The dead man lay beside his flashlight, its beam splashing off the far wall of the long corridor. The night-vision goggles somehow automatically compensated for the light; it was not so bright that it drowned out everything else.
Jane’s up here somewhere, Dan knew. Malik’s with her. And Gaetano.
The first few rooms they looked into were empty. Then they reached the end of the corridor. One of the assault team members warily pushed the door open.
It must have been the master bedroom. It was large and deep, lit by a table full of fat candles off to one side, beneath a painting of the Virgin Mary and a small kneeling bench. Standing in front of the canopied bed was Jane, with Gaetano beside and partially behind her. He had a gun to her head.
“This nonsense has gone far enough. You will all drop your weapons and allow me to leave with Mrs. Scanwell.”
Dan was behind the assault team leader. He saw the tableau over the smaller man’s armored shoulder. Malik was in there too, a pair of gunmen flanking him. Another couple of thugs were on the other side of the room, covering the doorway with their short-barreled shotguns.
Dan took it all in with a single glance. Then his eyes locked on Jane and Gaetano and the pistol he held to her head.
“The shooting’s stopped,” Kate said to her sister.
They had been locked in the tower room for what had seemed like hours. The chamber’s only window was wider than those down below, and unbarred. Kate quickly saw why. In the moonless night she could make out a straight drop down the tower and castle wall to the rocks hundreds of feet below.
The room was absolutely bare, nothing but a floor of warped wooden boards and heavy timber beams half-lost in the darkness of the high pitched ceiling.
Things fluttered and squeaked up there. “Bats,” said Kimberly.
Kate shuddered but Kim seemed unafraid of them. “Is Rafe really a murderer?” she asked.
“He’s a top member of the international crime syndicate,” Kate said. “He gives the orders and other people do the killing.”
“That’s what I thought,” Kim said. She leaned against the rough stone wall and slid down to a sitting position, arms wrapped around her knees.
Kate sat down on the floor beside her. “He’s been using us, both of us.” “I know,” said Kim. “He likes to hurt people, make them feel bad.” “He’s been using you to control me.”
Kim smiled sadly in the shadows. “And I let him do it.” “When we get out of here”
“If,” Kim corrected.
“I hope he’s dead before the sun comes up again.”
“Maybe we’ll be the dead ones.” “What was that?” Kate asked. “What?”
“I thought I heard something.” “More shooting?” “No ... listen.”
Kim heard a grunting, puffing noise. Something scraping, slithering, like a dead body being pulled across stone.
“What is it?” Kim asked.
“It’s your fooking chauffeur,” Big George answered from the window. “Give us a hand, will ya?”
The two women ran to the window where George was trying to lift himself past the sill. They grabbed at his back and shoulders while he pulled with both hands on the edges of the window and finally heaved himself up onto the stone sill.
With more huffing and tugging George squeezed himself through the window—barely—and tumbled to the floor.
“Christ! I thought I was going to have a fooking heart attack. Been on the Moon too long to go climbing like that, that’s the trouble.”
“You’re George Ambrose, aren’t you? The one Dan calls Big George?” Kate asked.
“Friend of Dan’s, right. Been trying to find a way into this bloody fortress that’s not filled with blokes shooting at each other. Climbed up to the parapet and then spotted this window in the tower. None of the others looked wide enough for me.”
“How did you climb it?” Kimberly asked, her voice hushed with awe. “It’s a straight drop!”
Still puffing, George grinned weakly. “Looks straight to you. But I’ve climbed tougher cliffs in my day, believe me.”
“We’re locked in here,” Kim said. “Yes? Well, we’ll see about that.”
George heaved himself to his feet and marched to the door. He leaned against it. The heavy wood groaned slightly.
“Stand back a bit.”
The two women backed away. George sucked in a deep breath, then kicked mightily at the door where the bolt was, on the other side. It sounded like an ox hitting a stout fence at high speed.
“Is it...?” “Not yet.”
George thundered against the door again. And again. On the fourth try the latch holding the bolt against the doorjamb finally pulled loose with a shriek of ancient nails ripping out of the wood.
The door swung open. George, panting, bowed politely to the ladies and gestured for them to leave.
“Christ on a skateboard,” he said as they started down the narrow winding stairway. “It’s blacker than hell in here.”
“Be careful,” Kate said, “the steps are uneven.”
They were almost at the bottom when they heard excited voices and hurried footsteps coming up toward them. They were speaking in Italian. Then George heard another sound: guns being reloaded and cocked.
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