Precipice

by Thomas Webb

Scarlet used her own climbing tool and hooked onto the edge of the railing. Scarlet ran, shot, and climbed with the best agents the Department had to offer. She prided herself on her ability to not just keep up but to excel, but hauling herself and her suit up the short length of pole was no simple task. River had made it look easy.

  By the time they were onboard and her suit was off, Scarlet’s black head scarf was soaked with sweat. Waves of steam rose from her body despite the biting October air rolling off the chill waters.

  When all were onboard, Carlyle’s sailors quickly got to work shedding their iron diving suits in favor of the black combat uniforms they wore beneath. They lashed the suits together, secured the line to the railing, and then dumped them overboard. The only thing marking the presence of their equipment was a rope, specially colored to blend with the waters of the river. They cut their rifles from the watertight sheepskins, loaded them, and made them ready. Scarlet hefted the familiar weight of her Chassepot, a glint in her eye. With the stock of her trusted rifle in her shoulder, she almost felt like herself again.

  Carlyle’s sailors formed up, a single line a few feet off the bulkhead. Scarlet stepped smoothly into the stack. Then, like some bristling, deadly centipede, they began to move as one. They walked heel-to-toe, in unison, rifles held at the entry-ready position, each person close enough to reach out and touch the shoulder of the one in front of them. River took the lead. They reached the ladderwell leading to the upper decks. River’s closed fist whipped up, rattlesnake-quick.

  Halt.

  Scarlet froze.

  River held the fist up, shook it, and then pointed toward the deck above.

  Sentry.

  And there he was. Hard to see from her position in the stack, but when Scarlet eased out a bit she could just make out the sentry’s back. Scarlet watched River sling her rifle and draw a Bowie knife from its sheath. The slight woman crept up the stairs and crouched behind one of the Gambler’s thugs, a thick-necked man easily twice her size, chosen more for intimidation than skill. A second of anticipation and she reached up and sliced his throat clean as a Sunday roast. She let the dying man collapse back into her arms, catching and holding his entire weight by herself. She nodded, and two of her crewmates scrambled up to assist in getting rid of the body. When they’d dumped it over the side, they moved on.

  Scarlet shifted to the front of the stack, switching places with River and taking point, just the way they’d practiced. As promised, Carlyle and company had gotten her this far, but this was her op now.

  Up ahead was the main casino with the Gambler’s private offices in back. They crept along the bulkhead, clinging to the shadows until they reached the gaming room entrance. Scarlet signaled for a breacher, but the young sailor, testing the doors, found them unlocked.

  Scarlet was first through, her rifle up and breaking left as she made entry. No guests filled the normally boisterous room. The craps and baccarat tables were abandoned, the roulette wheels empty and still. They swept the vast space with silent, efficient speed.

  All clear.

  Only a day ago, the boat had been filled to capacity with wealthy revelers, searching for easy cards and free-flowing liquor, but this was a sleepy weekday night. The Gambler had closed the boat to guests for the evening. This was his scheduled time to count the past two weeks’ massive take. The timing of Scarlet’s assault wasn’t random. Nothing ruined an op faster than civilian collateral damage.

  Scarlet stalked ahead to the next set of doors. Carlyle and his sailors fanned out behind her, quiet as graveyard wraiths, before re-forming the stack on Scarlet. River crept toward the front of the line, taking the breacher’s position. A nod from Scarlet and she tried the door.

  Unlocked.

  Didn’t seem like the Gambler was too concerned with security.

  River eased the door open, stepped aside, and unslung her rifle in one smooth, practiced motion. Scarlet moved in fast and low, greeted by a man with a pistol. He leveled the gun and jerked the trigger.

  A bolt of adrenaline shot through Scarlet. Training-honed reflex took over from conscious thought as she plummeted to her rump, landed hard, sat up, sighted between her knees and caressed the Chassepot’s trigger.

  With a look of shock on his face, the Gambler’s man died. Right along with their element of surprise.

  21 Near Louisville, Kentucky - The Worthington Estate, October 1866

  Moonlight bathed the pillars of the Kentucky mansion in its cold, white glow. The light animated every shadow and deepened every dark space as it glinted off the rifle scopes of the men guarding the estate.

  Abe hunkered behind a low hill overlooking the country estate, making himself as small and invisible as possible. Common sense would have said to wait for a new moon, the absence of light naturally lending itself to clandestine work. Abe’s minder, sprawled out prone next to him, had insisted on moving tonight.

  Abe wrinkled his nose. If the guards didn't see them coming, they’d surely smell them. Kingfish reeked of whiskey, the stench of his body odor like rancid meat.

  The malodorous spymaster gestured for Abe’s looking glass. He took it and surveyed the manicured property below. “Change of plans, pup,” Kingfish growled. “You go down and take out those two sentries. I’ll conduct overwatch from here.”

  Abe felt heat rise to his cheeks. “That’s not how we planned it, sir.”

  Kingfish pulled a silver flask from his field kit. “What’s the first rule, pup?” He unscrewed the top and took a nip.

  “Never question your minder in the field,” Kingfish recited, not waiting for Abe’s reply. He made a shooing motion with his hand. “Now, hop to. Those lookouts ain’t gonna disappear themselves.”

  Abe swore under his breath. Having no choice, he waited for Worthington’s clockwerk patrols to pass before breaking cover. He slid down the embankment, silent as a shade, and stalked his way forward, keeping low until he spotted the two men patrolling the edge of the grounds. Abe dropped to his belly and cradled his rifle, lengthwise, in the crooks of his arms. Using the shrubbery as cover, he low-crawled knee to elbow into position. The sentries stood mere yards away, close enough for Abe to catch the scent of tobacco smoke and gun oil on the chill October breeze. The sound of hushed conversation carried in the night.

  “What’s the old bastard up to this time?” one guard asked the other.

  “Same thing as always. Got one in there now. I swear, it’s hard to stomach it sometimes.”

  “Don’t think about it,” the first hired gun said. “Just do your job and collect your greenbacks.”

  His companion spit a viscous stream of tobacco juice onto the lawn. “Yeah. But, Christ the Healer—”

  “Hey, just be glad it ain’t your kid in there.”

  That seemed to satisfy the second man. They nodded to one another and parted ways, continuing on their patrol routes. As soon as the second man was out of earshot, Abe slung his rifle and slipped his Bowie from its sheath.

  He crept up behind guard number one, knife held blade-down, free hand out and ready. He made it quick and clean, covering the man’s mouth, plunging eight inches of steel where sternum met throat. He caught the guard’s weight as he fell.

  Abe killed fast when he had to kill, with as little suffering as possible. It was a mercy, if such a word had any place in the assassin’s business. There was also the added benefit of no inconvenient screaming

  Abe watched the man’s eyes as he went: confusion, panic, and finally acceptance as the spark of life faded away. A blood-filled gurgle and the guard was dead. Abe detested this part of what he did, but the man had made his choice. When you worked for monsters, you paid the same price they did when those who hunted them came calling.

  Abe cleaned his blade on dew-wet Kentucky bluegrass before dragging the man’s body out of sight. Abe hid the corpse behind a manicured bush, shaped with painstaking care to resemble the thoroughbreds Kentucky was famed for.

  With the body safely hidden, Abe traced the
second guard’s patrol route. When he caught up to guard number two, Abe conducted a repeat performance, dispatching him in the same manner as the first, trying and failing not to think of the child the two men had been discussing before he’d killed them.

  They’d observed at least ten paid guards making up Worthington’s private security detail. The two who’d patrolled the outer perimeter were down, no alarms raised. That left a total of eight, not including the clockwerks. So far, so good.

  Abe was finishing up with the second body when he heard a racket, the sound coming down the hill from behind him. Abe dropped in place, heart hammering in his chest, anticipating an onslaught of small arms fire heading his way.

  “Nice work, pup,” Kingfish whispered, managing to speak between labored breaths.

  Abe gritted his teeth. Christ the Healer, all that damned noise! Did his minder want them to die?

  Kingfish pointed toward the house with his rifle. “Time to move, boy. You take point. I got rear security.”

  Abe rose to his feet and shouldered his rifle, biting back the stinging retort that hovered on the tip of his tongue. Swallowing his objections, he checked his surroundings one final time before making for the parlor entrance to Worthington’s manse. His guts turned to ice water at the thought of Kingfish watching his back. Abe hadn’t been in this line of work for long, but what few instincts he had developed screamed that everything about this op felt wrong.

  Abe picked the parlor door lock with practiced ease. He nudged the door open and entered the darkened area of the manse, each movement measured and precise. His eyes roved right and left over the sights of his rifle. Abe completed his sweep of the parlor and checked left, expecting to see his minder on his six. Instead, he saw nothing but empty, un-cleared space. When Abe spotted his minder, Kingfish was just making his way into the room. Kingfish shrugged and offered a half-hearted smile. A feeble apology for leaving him completely exposed, Abe assumed. If there had been a guard or a clockwerk in the corner Kingfish was supposed to have cleared, Abe would be dead.

  Abe turned toward the interior of the home, a look of disgust on his face. No way he could trust Kingfish, not if he wanted to keep breathing. He’d have to watch his own back the rest of the way in. From here on, he’d have to behave as if this were a one-man op.

  Abe stole a look out into the hallway of the mansion’s main floor then ducked back in and whipped up a fist.

  Halt.

  He held up two fingers, made a fist again, and shook it.

  Two sentries. Approaching.

  Get in, get the target, extract him with as little contact as possible. That was the mission. If a shooting match broke out, they wouldn’t stand a chance against the combined might of Worthington’s human and clockwerk forces. Abe took a deep breath and tightened the grip on his rifle, hoping they could finish this night with no more bloodshed.

  Still an accountant at heart, he calculated their odds of success at less than fifty-fifty, and that was even if he’d had a minder he could rely on.

  Abe and Kingfish crouched in the shadows, their breathing even and slow. A pair of clockwerk guards passed, so close Abe detected the clack and whir of mechanical joints and smelled the machine grease that lubed them and the aether that fueled them. When they were gone, Abe gave the signal, and he and Kingfish crept from the parlor. They crossed the marble tiles of the entryway and slipped up the main stairs to the second floor, where Worthington maintained his private suite of rooms.

  Abe and his minder reached the landing at the top of the staircase without incident. Abe prowled forward, senses hyper-alert, every nerve ending taut. Ahead in the darkened hallway, he made out a right-hand turn. According to the plans he’d stolen from the Washington county clerk’s office, Worthington’s bedroom door lay several hundred feet past that turn.

  Abe cleared the corner slowly, repeating the combat mantra in his mind.

  Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.

  Abe slid back behind the wall. Two human guards stood watch outside Worthington’s suite. Smart of Worthington, stationing them there. If someone wanted to do the Pious Man harm, where else would they come looking for him in the middle of the night if not his bedroom?

  Abe turned to Kingfish, pumping his fist and holding up his pointer and middle fingers in a “V.”

  Enemy spotted. Two.

  Kingfish nodded then slunk away, back down the stairs they’d just climbed.

  Abe wrinkled his brow in confusion. What the hell is he doing now?

  Seconds stretched into minutes. Abe’s skin crawled, feeling more exposed with every tick of the clock. Abe crept ahead to a doorway on his right. He turned the knob gently.

  Locked.

  Abe swore to himself. The locked room was his only avenue of escape. If anyone spotted him, if things in the hallway went bad, there was nowhere he could go.

  Abe heard a crash, the sound like a shot in the dead quiet of the night. It came from the far end of the hall, opposite the two sentries.

  “What the hell was that?” one guard whisper-shouted to the other.

  “Probably that damn cat again,” the second sentry answered — a woman’s voice, even and low, sounding not quite convinced.

  Kingfish.

  Had to be. He'd snuck around and created a nice distraction for them. Abe grinned. Finally, his minder had done something helpful. Maybe he wasn’t as useless as Abe thought.

  The second sentry nodded toward the direction of the crash. “Go check it out,” she ordered. “I’ll stay here and keep an eye on the old man’s door.”

  Abe smirked. She must be the smart one.

  Several man-sized potted plants and a larger than life statue of Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of children — resplendent in his robes, staff in one hand, a baby in the other — were all that stood between Abe and the guard. He could move from plant to plant, flattening himself against the oversized pieces of pottery. Then, once he reached the statue, only a few yards with no cover lay between him and her. Abe sighed before he steadied his breathing, drawing his knife for the second time.

  Abe moved from inside the doorway, a shadow among shadows. He cleared the first potted plant then the second, all with the guard none the wiser. He moved, smooth as the cat she and her comrade had mistaken his minder for, from the last plant to the Saint Nicholas statue. There he crouched, waiting.

  The hired guard turned her head, looking in the direction of Kingfish’s diversion. With her distracted, wondering what had become of her partner, Abe made his move.

  He crept from behind the stone statue and into the center of the hallway. The sentry, her back turned, was only feet away.

  The noise came from behind him — a scrape, a sound like a sack of meat dropped from a great height, a muffled grunt.

  Abe froze. The clock seemed to cease ticking, a millisecond stretching to infinity. A backward glance revealed Abe’s minder sprawled out wide on the carpet. Time became liquid, continuing to slow, moving like springtime maple syrup in his native Pennsylvania.

  Abe turned back toward the sentry. They locked eyes. She raised her rifle.

  22 Outside New Orleans, Louisiana - Montclair Estate, October 1866

  Montclair woke with a start. He’d slept fitfully through the heat of the day, his dreams feverish and dark. In the last of them before opening his eyes, he and Randall had been boys again. Their father had ordered them to duel. For most of their actual childhood, Montclair’s father trained both he and Randall relentlessly. “Preparing you for the rigors of the world,” he’d said. In Montclair’s dream, his father had forced the boys to fight to the death simply for his amusement. The image of the dream’s final moment, crystal clear, lingered in Montclair’s thoughts. Randall stood, triumphant, above him. He’d awakened just as Randall had delivered the death blow.

  Still groggy from his haunted and restless sleep, Montclair watched the sun dip low over the swamp. He suppressed a shiver. The twilight time brought with it an unexpected chill. Cold was u
nusual for Louisiana, even in autumn.

  His stomach rumbled, empty and angry. Despite his brother's promise to keep him well fed, he’d had nothing to eat the entire day. He’d been given water in the morning, but since then, Randall hadn’t even bothered sending one of his troops to check on Montclair.

  “Seems I’ll be dueling on an empty belly,” Montclair said aloud.

  They came for him a few minutes later, four of them in Confederate dress grays, armed with rifle and pistol. For a second, he contemplated fighting. Then, he considered the odds — four repeaters and four revolvers vs. one fist and one clockwerk hand. He thought better of it. Better to bide his time. Better to wait for opportunity to present itself.

  Two clockwerks whirred along behind the soldiers. The automatons carried a washtub, a large wooden bathing ladle, and, to Montclair’s surprise, some lye soap.

  The soldiers released Montclair from his cramped prison while the clockwerks set the washtub down. Montclair exited the cage and stretched, muscles popping, ligaments cracking, luxuriating in the feel of it. Several days and nights constricted inside a narrow iron box did wonders for a man’s sense of appreciation.

  He looked at the washtub with longing. Steam rose from the water, hot and inviting. Montclair peeled off the remnants of his evening clothes, now little more than rags soaked with putrid blood and sweat. He stripped down naked, stepped into the tub, and scooped up a ladleful of water. He closed his eyes and sluiced the filth from his body in the open under the watchful stares of the armed soldiers, indifferent to the chill air and his nudity.

  When he was done, they threw him a change of clothes — simple woolen trousers and a cotton shirt. His own boots they allowed him to keep. His brother’s men stood by the entire time, rifles ready, waiting for him to dress. It was the first time he recalled putting on clothes with guns pointed at him. Surprising, given some of the more intimate situations he’d found himself in where he’d been forced to dress and leave quickly.