The Forever Engine (18 page)

“Nothing here, Corp,” a Marine called from the door of the municipal building.

“No one alive in the church,” another called from the other side of the plaza. “Ten or twelve bodies in there.”

I heard the pop of a rifle in the distance, from the direction of the waterfront, then another, then a crackling exchange of rifle fire punctuated by the distinct boom of a twelve-gauge shotgun.

TWENTY-FIVE

October 9, 1888, Uvats, Bosnia

I ran.

The downhill slope lengthened my strides, and the buildings flashed by, scarcely noticed blurs of gray and black. I fell on the ash-slippery cobblestones once but scrambled up again, never lost my forward motion, hardly missed a stride.

The gunfire grew louder, and suddenly the waterfront loomed ahead of me. I stopped at the corner of a building, used it for cover, and took a look.

Bodies by the dock, four of them, none in a gray-green riding habit. A jumble of movement at the nearby seawall to the right, occasional heads bobbing up, a couple rifles resting on the edge of the wall and firing across the open ground at targets to my left. I watched and listened for a few seconds—no sign of Gabrielle, and no sound of shotgun fire.

I risked a look farther around the corner to my left—a low boathouse and two sheds. A rifle fired from the door of the boathouse, then another from behind a jumble of crates and nets beside one of the sheds.

I pulled back and heard the pounding of boots on cobblestones behind me, turned and saw O’Mara leading, with Gordon and the rest of the Marines straggling behind. O’Mara stopped at the wall beside me, panting, and I realized I was panting, too.

“What’s the plan, sir?” he asked.

O’Mara looked to me, not Gordon, for leadership. I filed that away to think about later, but I knew it was a problem.

The others drew up beside us, and Gordon pushed his way to the front. I knelt down facing them and drew a sketch in the damp ash.

“We’re
here
. Hostiles are firing from cover in a cluster of small buildings
here
. Our people have taken casualties and are pinned down by fire behind the sea wall
here
. Our people are returning fire and have the enemy’s attention. The enemy is unaware of our presence. We . . .”

I stopped and looked up at Gordon.

“I recommend we use the Bavarians as our base of fire to keep the enemy pinned down, use these buildings to maneuver under cover to the enemy’s flank and rear, and attack using surprise to overwhelm them.”

Gordon knelt down as well, studied my diagram in the ash for a moment as if it contained some hidden wisdom which might have eluded him, and then nodded.

“Corporal O’Mara, we will use these alleyways to get behind the villains. Mr. Fargo and I will go ahead and find suitable attack positions. Wait for two minutes and then follow us.”

I followed Gordon down the alleyway. He stopped at the end, looked around the corner, and then trotted across five yards of open ground to the back of a burned-out house. We made our way past two more buildings before we caught sight of the back of the boathouse. I checked back and saw O’Mara and the Marines hurrying toward us.

“You have done this sort of thing before, haven’t you?” Gordon asked. “Any last advice before the others get here?”

Gordon asking me for advice? That was a switch.

“If you just open fire and bang away at them from back here, it’ll give them time to adjust psychologically to being flanked. Make a quick charge and take them out before they know what hit them. Assign specific men to specific buildings. And a prisoner or two would be nice. I’d like to know what the hell’s going on here.”

Gordon nodded and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. O’Mara and the Marines clustered around us, looking from Gordon to me. Gordon looked at the back of the boathouse, licked his lips, then nodded.

“They’re in those buildings. O’Mara, take three men and secure the shed on the right. I will take you four here,” and he pointed to the Marines closest to him, “and clear the boathouse. Mr. Fargo, you take the last three and capture the shed on the far side. Take prisoners if possible. We’ll make it in one dash, no firing or shouting until we enter the buildings. Is that clear?”

“Don’t forget there may be men between the buildings,” I said. “I saw one behind a barricade.” Gordon nodded, but I wasn’t sure he understood. He looked from face to face and then nodded again.

“Let’s go.”

He turned and started running, leaving the rest of us to scramble to catch up.

I ran across the open ground, passed Gordon as he pushed open the door to the boathouse with his shoulder, heard a shot, then another. I saw a man turn from the barricade beside the boathouse and fired two shots from the Webley at him, saw him go down. I came to the back of the shed, and there was no door or window. I wasn’t sure what to do.

I ran around the far side—a window. I broke out the glass, fired two shots into the dark, stepped to the side. A Marine following me put his rifle through the broken window. A shot exploded from inside and he pitched back, blood spraying.

I stepped back in front of the window, saw movement through it, fired twice, heard a cry of pain, stepped aside, broke open the revolver and dug for cartridges in my pocket. The other two Marines knelt by the wounded man.

“You, secure the front!” I shouted.

The closest Marine looked up, eyes wide, face white.

“’Ee’s ’urt!” he shouted back.

“Secure the front!”

“’Ee’s ’
urt!”

Fuck!

Okay. Tactical breathing. Get centered again.

I finished loading with trembling hands and snapped the Webley closed. I edged to the corner of the shed and looked around the front, listened.

Shouting, men in rage, O’Mara cursing, someone crying out in pain, a pistol shot close by, then another, but nothing from the interior of my shed.

I took two quick steps to the door, looked at the handle but couldn’t make anything of it. Was it a latch? A door knob? The shape wasn’t familiar, so it didn’t register. I took a step back, kicked the door in, and went through with the Webley up and at eye level.

Movement in the dark corner. I turned, almost fired, but he sat in the corner waving a hand in the air, saying something, no weapon visible. His rifle lay at his feet. I crossed the three steps to him and kicked the rifle toward the door, backed away, scanned the shed for signs of anyone else.

Cordage, nets, wooden buoys, the smell of rotting fish and old kelp, but no one else.

“Clear!” I shouted, and turned back to the fellow on the floor.

He wore a shabby uniform jacket and trousers, hard to tell the color in the gloom of the shed but dark, maybe blue. He held his right arm with his left hand. Blood stained his uniform sleeve black but was bright red on the fingers of his hand. He blubbered something I couldn’t understand.

“Speak Turkish?” I asked him in Turkmen.

“No. Yes. Little,” he answered.

“Stay. Don’t move.”

He nodded vigorously, then shook his head just as vigorously. Pain creased his face and he started rocking back and forth, moaning.

My ears rang with the echoes of gunfire, but outside I heard only harsh orders in English and men talking rapidly to each other—the post-combat chatters. I stuck my head out the door and looked around. Gordon emerged from the boathouse at the same time, looking dazed. He saw me, but for a moment the image didn’t seem to register. He closed his eyes, shook himself, and then walked over to me.

“I . . . is it over?” he asked.

“Looks like it. I have a prisoner here, but he’s wounded and he doesn’t speak much Turkish. Did you take any prisoners?”

“What? Prisoners?”

He thought about it for a moment, face creased in a frown.

“I don’t think so. One of them may still be alive, but he’s in a bad way. Maybe he’ll survive. No, he’s very bad. I don’t know.” His eyes flicked back and forth, up and down.

He looked at the revolver in his hand as if he’d never seen it before.

O’Mara and another Marine emerged into the open area, dragging another of the men in dirty blue. He saw us and started toward us.

“Here’s O’Mara,” I said in a low voice, just for Gordon. “Take a deep breath and get your head together.”

Gordon looked at me, still dazed, but his eyes cleared and he nodded.

I left Gordon and O’Mara to round up whatever prisoners there were and see to our wounded. I started to walk toward the breakwater, saw our people there stand up and begin climbing up onto the dock, and I broke into a run, heart pounding.

Gabrielle was there, a Bavarian helping her up onto the dock, and I saw blood on her face and coat. She looked at me, face pale and eyes wide, still in shock herself. I stopped in front of her, looked for a wound but didn’t see one, touched her shoulder.

“Are you hurt?”

She thought about the question and shook her head, looked around, stared at the bodies on the dock.

“The lieutenant . . . he stood before me when the shots came.”

I followed her gaze and saw von Schtecker’s unmoving body on the ground. Gabrielle swayed, and I helped her sit before she fainted. I put my arm around her shoulder, and she wept quietly.

We had one Bavarian dead beside von Schtecker and four wounded. One of those probably wouldn’t make it. The only Marine injured was the private shot through the throat. He might not make it either, but you never knew. We had killed five “hostiles,” captured two of them wounded, and one got away in the confusion—the one between the buildings I had winged as I ran by. I was glad he’d gotten away. Pointless, stupid fight.

We had massacred what was left of the local Turkish
Jandarma
.

The realization that this was nothing but a blue-on-blue fight hit the men like hard. A lot of them reacted with anger—anger at the
Jandarma
for attacking without a challenge or attempt to communicate, anger at Gordon and me for leading them into this mess, anger at themselves for what they had done and what they had felt while doing it. Some reacted with grief for fallen friends, some with depression. Any exhilaration they might have felt at a fight won vanished.

The surviving
Jandarma
corporal spoke and read Turkish. When I showed him the letter from Cevik Bey, he cried.

Once he pulled himself together, he told us what happened in the town. The disease was cholera, but a very virulent form, one that struck people down and killed them within hours of the symptoms first appearing. That spooked the townspeople, and so had the wolves coming down from the hills, more aggressive than anyone had ever seen them, attacking in packs in broad daylight in the town’s streets and only retreating in the face of gunfire. Farmers from the hills fled to town, telling wild stories of livestock slaughtered by
azhdaja
. I didn’t know the word’s meaning but it sounded mythic and I translated it as troll for Gordon.

Panic grew as the death toll mounted and finally everyone fled downriver except for a dozen
Jandarma
who had stayed at their post with their captain. That had taken some guts. The captain died that morning of cholera, four others deserted, and we had done for the rest.

What of the platoon of riflemen sent by Cevik Bey?

They were somewhere across the border, patrolling the north bank of the river, trying to find if the Serbs were somehow behind this plague. I had a feeling one Serb in particular was, but I didn’t know how.

“I am uncertain whether to wait here for the return of the Turkish patrol or head out after them,” Gordon said after drawing me aside.

“Yeah, tough call, but I’d say head on. There’s no guarantee they’ll even come back here, assuming they survive. Every day we spend waiting is that much less chance we’ll take Tesla by surprise.”

“Yes, there is that.”

“Also, you’ve got some morale problems. If we sit around for a couple days, with nothing for the men to do but stew about what happened, things aren’t going to get any better. If we keep the men marching hard, they’ll have other things to worry about.”

He looked away, down the river, and squinted as if trying to see something clearly, but what he was searching for wasn’t out there.

“I’ve rather made a hash of things, haven’t I?”

“Nope. You had some bad luck, that’s all. Shit happens. What you do next could screw things up, but so far I don’t know what you could have done differently. How do you feel? How did the fight go for you?”

“Well . . . I don’t know exactly. I mean, it was exhilarating in a terrifying sort of way. I fired a lot of bullets but I don’t believe I hit anyone, even as close as we were. I’m rather glad, actually, now that we know . . . well. The thought that it was all unnecessary . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t suppose you ever ran into anything like this before.”

I laughed without humor.

“Oh, I see. Then what is the best way to avoid this sort of thing happening again?”

“Career change was working pretty well for me until today.”

The Greek word
anabasis
means the march up-country. Twice the Greeks used it to mean a heroic march through enemy-controlled territory: the march of the Ten Thousand under Xenophon and the March of the Macedonian army of conquest under Alexander.

We buried our dead. We loaded our wounded and the two surviving Bosnians in the steam launch, along with one healthy Bavarian armed with his own rifle and my report to Cevik Bey on the incident. Once it came time to explain what happened, I didn’t want the two
Jandarma
to have the only voice.

We had no pack animals, so we left our tents in the steam launch. As it chugged downriver to safety, we distributed our provisions, ammunition, and Cevik Bey’s eight signal rockets among our backpacks and haversacks, determined our march order, and began our own
anabasis
.

TWENTY-SIX

October 9, 1888, The Lim River valley, Serbia

It was late in the day to begin a march, but we needed to keep the men moving and too busy or too tired to think. We ate on our feet—hardtack, although the Marines called it ship biscuit. It filled my belly but made me thirsty.

We marched southeast until sunset and then kept going, slowly and carefully. Sunset came early this time of year, about five in the afternoon, and with the weather it was full dark less than an hour later.

The Serbian border town of Priboj and its gun batteries lay across the river on the southwest bank, and Gordon and I decided our best move was to use the darkness as cover and make our way past it that night. There was a new moon, and enough overcast we didn’t even have starlight to see by, so our progress slowed to a crawl. We had to move carefully; the last thing we needed was someone with a broken leg.

I expected to be able to pick Priboj out on the far bank by lights on the waterfront, but there was nothing. The town might have been scoured from the planet, its inhabitants struck down or carried off, for all we could tell. The only evidence of life we heard was the crackle of rifle fire drifting across the water, distant and impotent-sounding, about an hour after dark. We paused to watch the distant fireflies of light, and make sure they weren’t firing at us, but it had the sound of a close-in fight to me, people firing as fast as they could rather than taking careful aim.

“Is that the Turkish patrol?” Gordon asked softly as we listened.

“Might be. They’re on the wrong side of the river, but who knows?”

We decided to take a five-minute rest break, and I sat down next to Gabrielle.

“How you holding up?”

“I am fine. My load is small compared to the others. Some of the Marines, they fly too much. They are not so used to the walking.”

She was right. I’d heard some panting from one of the Marines myself. If they were out of shape, somebody wasn’t doing their job back on
Intrepid
. There was plenty of deck space for exercise. With all those companionways up and down, the climbing alone should have kept their legs and lungs strong. It was too late to do anything about it now, aside from keeping an eye on it.

“I was frightened for you back at Uvats.”

“Really?” she asked.

“Yes. When I saw the blood . . .”

“Oh. You thought it was mine?
Non
. It was terrifying and so surprising. We had no warning, simply gunfire and men falling. I did not know what to do at first. Then the lieutenant stepped in front of me, as if to shield me. Otherwise I would be dead instead of him. When I heard the shot, felt his blood on me, I must have jumped behind the seawall, but I do not remember.”

“You got a round or two off from your Winchester, as I recall.”

“Yes. That I remember.”

I patted her hand but could not see her expression in the darkness.

The distant firing died away, and the silence was somehow more ominous after that.

“I wonder who won,” she said.

A bird screeched, and we both started. Hearing a hawk in the distance was one thing, but this one was close, maybe a hundred yards, and it sounded—bigger. The way a tiger sounds bigger than a house cat when it purrs and the purr comes out as a rumbling noise in the back of its throat that could rattle the china in a cupboard across the room.

“Fricken Teufel,”
a Bavarian soldier near us muttered.

Another screech answered him, farther away and from behind us in the direction of Uvats. I stood up and listened. More screeches behind us, and then a murmur of frightened conversation ran the length of the small column. Much of it was in German, and I caught,
“To hell with the British,”
and
“Let’s get out of here!”

“Gabi, better break out that shotgun, but stay down. Don’t run.”

What was the name of the Bavarian sergeant? Müller? No, Melzer.

“
Feldwebel
Melzer,” I called out. “Where are you?”

He called to me from near the back of the column, and I made my way past nervous soldiers rising to their feet and checking their weapons. I hadn’t said much to Melzer since the fight in Uvats, and neither had Gordon. With von Schtecker dead, he was in charge of the Bavarians, and I don’t think either one of us had a good sense of who he was. As I walked in the darkness I tried to reconstruct a mental image of him: average height, stocky, broad jowly face with deep-set eyes, crooked nose, and a pronounced under bite that gave him a defiant, pugnacious look. But he’d never made much noise, and he wasn’t barking his men to silence now. I never know what to make of quiet sergeants.

“Your men are nervous.”

“
Ja.
Who is not?” He looked around even though there was nothing to see in the darkness.

“Fargo! Damn it, where are you?”

That was Gordon, panic creeping into his voice.

“Back here with
Feldwebel
Melzer.”

The babble of conversation up and down the line grew louder, and Melzer just stood there with his thumb up his ass.

“Ruhig in dem Rängen!”
I barked in my best drill-instructor voice—
quiet in the ranks.
Whether from instinctive obedience or just surprise, they immediately shut up.

“Fargo, is that you? Speak up, dammit. I can’t see a bloody thing.”

“Right here,” I answered, and Gordon joined us, breathing heavily. Walking the length of our short column hadn’t winded him. My money was on fear.

“I don’t know what’s out there, but we need to get away from them,” he blurted out.

“
Ja,”
Melzer agreed, his head bobbing in agreement.

“No!” I said. “Form a firing line with a squad—”

But nobody was listening.

“Make for the foothills to the left!” Gordon shouted. “We’ll take cover there, find some trees!”

Take cover? From animals? Now men began running off to the left, the sounds of jingling and clanking equipment almost drowning out their footfalls, but not the renewed screeching of birds, more birds, a large gaggle on the hunt, except they were on the ground, not in the air. I ran back to where I left Gabrielle, and she was still there, sitting in the grass, waiting for me.

“Come on, Gabi, time to haul ass!” I helped her to her feet.

“You said not to run if the others did.” Fear made her voice shake, and I could feel it tighten my own chest as well.

“Yeah, I just didn’t count on the whole outfit going.”

We ran. I ran to her left and a little behind her, between her and the sound of the animals. When she looked back to see if I was there, I yelled at her to run as hard as she could. I kept up with her.

We passed someone down in the grass, trying to get up, but didn’t break stride to help. Part of me was relieved we weren’t the last stragglers anymore and grateful I wasn’t in charge, because then I’d have to stop and help. Another part of me was ashamed of those feelings, but it was a small part and not a very survival-helpful one at the moment.

I tripped, almost fell sprawling, but kept my feet and regained my stride. From its sound and weight I knew I’d tripped on a dropped rifle, and the sudden surge of anger almost overwhelmed me.
Idiot!
Some jackass dropped his rifle and had almost killed me, not to mention himself and his friends when the animals caught up and he was unarmed.

We’d overtaken at least some of the fugitives, but the sound of something coming through the grass was close now. No one was going to stop on their own, and this couldn’t end well. The ground cover was higher, thicker here. Branches and tree limbs crunched under my feet, and I saw the darker shape of a tree trunk.

“Come on you lot!” I heard O’Mara shout close by. “Keep together.” At least someone was still thinking about their men.

Time to make a move.

“Marines, rally on me! O’Mara, pick a spot for a stand.”

“Right. ’Ere’s as good a place as any to face ’em. Form up, you bastards!”

I knew the emotions struggling in the men. Their legs wanted to keep running, but their heads wanted someone to tell them what to do. It might be too late, though. The animals, whatever they were, were close, streaking through the brush and tall grass.

I grabbed Gabrielle by the arm to slow her, and we found a small knot of men, hard to tell how many in the darkness.

“Form a firing line facing the animals,” I shouted, my voice hoarse. “Do it now! Close up and keep it tight.”

And then the first one of them hit us, rocketing though the air in a leap. I only saw it for an instant, but it was the size of a wolf or bigger. It hit a Marine in the chest and bowled him over into the brush, the two of them rolling in a pinwheel of arms, legs, and feathers—big feathers.

“FIRE!”
I screamed and got a ragged volley of four or fire rounds. I added two quick rounds from the Webley, firing low and spreading the shots, although the noise and muzzle flash were more important than the potential damage.

“Again! Keep it up.”

I heard the bird screeching behind me, the down Marine crying out, fighting for his life. The ragged volley had wiped out whatever night vision I had. Everything was sound and smell now. Sweat and fear, crushed grass and black powder. The crack of more rifle rounds from our firing line, screeches of animals, cries of men going down under them, but not here, farther from the river toward the hills. A wet-sounding thud and the animal on the ground squawked once in pain and fell silent.

“That’s done for him,” O’Mara said, his voice ragged. “On yer feet, Williams.”

“Gabrielle, where are you?”

“I am here,” she answered.

An animal streaked past me from a different direction. Gabrielle screamed as she and the bird went down together. I jumped on top, got my left hand into the feathers on its neck, and tried to pull it off, but the son of a bitch was strong! Screeching, ripping cloth, cries of pain. I raised the pistol and cracked the bird on its back—aimed for the head, but it was moving too much. The blow didn’t make much impression through the feathers, but I got its attention. It spun and sank its teeth into my forearm, or at least the sleeve of my coat, shook its head, and I felt its strength all the way up in my shoulder.

Its jaws, its head—too big for a bird.
A bird with teeth?
a remote part of my mind asked.

I didn’t know who might be in my line of fire but had to take the chance. I pushed the Webley’s barrel against its chest and pulled the trigger. Its body muffled the sound. It jerked, let go of my arm, took a step away, and fell over with a whimper.

“Gabi, are you okay?”

“I . . . I don’t know. I . . .”

I felt for her, found her, did a quick check on her face, throat, and hands, and didn’t find anything slippery with blood. She trembled uncontrollably.

“Hold it together, sweetheart. Okay?”

“
Oui
.”

“You carry matches, for your cheroots, right? Dig some out. I need them,” I said.

“O’Mara!” I shouted.

“One moment, sir. Cooperson, is that you on the end? You and Williams, half left, two paces forward, and fire to the south. Space your shots. You others keep up your fire but slow and steady, in sequence right to left.”

Then he knelt next to me.

“Is the lady all right, sir?”

“I think so, for now, but whatever these animals are, they’ll circle around eventually. We need a fire.”

“What the blazes are those things, sir?”

“Fire,” I repeated.

“Right. A fire,” he said, and it was clear it hadn’t occurred to him. “Aye, a fire would be a fine thing, sir, and there’s wood lying about here, but it’s damp from all the rain. It will take some time to get it going.”

“I bet we can speed things up if one of the men has a signal rocket.”

“I’ve got one here, sir.” He slipped his pack off and set it beside me. “I’ll see to some wood.”

I holstered the Webley and felt O’Mara’s pack with my hands. I found the signal rocket lashed to the top, got it free, and took my first close look at it, although by feel. A sheet-metal cylinder with a crimped cone at one end and a bracket for a launching stick at the other. The stick itself was tied to the rocket. I pulled out my sheath knife, cut the lashings that held the rod to the rocket, and started working at the soldered seam by the bottom.

“Here’s some wood, and I’ll get more.” O’Mara dumped an armload of damp brush and branches beside us and hurried away.

I had the bottom open by now and shook out some of the powder of the propelling charge into the brush.

“Got those matches?”

“Here,” Gabrielle answered and handed me a half-dozen and a box with a striker strip on the side. Her hand was steadier now. My own shook enough that I broke the first match, but I took two long, slow breaths to steady myself. The second match lit, and the charge powder sizzled and flared to life, igniting the brush. That got a ragged cheer from the Marines around us.

I worked the top of the rocket tube open, shook out a handful of the powder from the bursting charge, and threw it into the fire, got a nice flash from it and a wave of heat.

I turned to get more fuel, and right there, not more than ten feet away, I saw the eyes of a large hunting bird glowing with the reflected light of the fire behind me, disembodied and seemingly floating in the air. I pulled my Webley out, careful not to make any sudden move, took aim, and fired twice. I sensed more than saw the animal fly back from the impact.

A Marine was down in the grass near me. I could tell at first from the direction of his voice; then I could make him out in the growing firelight. He was praying in a thick Irish brogue.

“Hail Mary, full o’ grace, the Lard is with thee. Blessed art d’ou among wimin, and blessed is the fruit o’ thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary, Mudder o’ Gawd, pray fer us sinners now and at the hour of our death.”

But it wasn’t the hour of our death. Close, but no cigar.