“Damned fool!” shouted the woman in that Eastern European accent of hers.
Lazarus was stumped. There appeared to be just the three of them in the carriage. He stood up slowly, holding his gun away from him in the universal signal for truce, but gripping it tight enough should he suddenly need it. “I don’t know what the devil is going on here, but I’ve no interest in killing either of you.”
“Bloody idiot...” began the woman.
“Holster it, lady,” said Vasquez. “He ain’t one of them. Come forward, partner, but if you try anything, we’ve enough firepower between us to give this carriage a nice new red coat. Now what say you tell us what you’re about?”
“My name is Longman.”
“You’re a limey, ain’t you?”
“I am in the service of Her Majesty, yes. I am here to escort you to the Confederate government on a matter of utmost importance.”
At this Vasquez broke out into guffaws of laughter. “I sure am the main attraction, ain’t I?” he hooted, slapping his grimy britches and holstering his gun. “Here I was in manacles on my way to Great Salt Lake City for a pow-wow with President Blake, when this fine young thing bursts in here to seduce my guards right where I can see it all. Just when I thought my luck couldn’t get any worse, somebody starts shooting at the train and all but one of them get up and high-tail it out of the carriage, leaving their comrade to guard me and have this fine lady all to himself. Lucky fella, I thought, until she shot him, of course.” He indicated a body shoved behind a seat. Blood pooled under it. “I thought my number was up but then she cut me loose and gave me back my gun. Now you’re here.”
Lazarus glared at the woman. “What’s your story? First you take a shot at him on the Mary Sue and now you’re handing him his gun back?”
“There was a change in my orders,” she replied, her tone curt.
“Orders from whom?”
“You work for your government and I work for mine.”
“Which is?”
“That of His Majesty Tsar Alexander, the third of that name.”
“She’s a goddamn Russkie, friend,” added Vasquez with a grin.
“I should have guessed as much,” said Lazarus. Are you Okhrana?” The Okhrana were the Tsar’s secret police, tasked with hunting down revolutionaries and anybody else who displeased the powers of Saint Petersburg. This did not limit them to Russia’s borders. “What is Russia’s interest in Vasquez?”
There was the sound of gunfire further down the train.
“Do you want to discuss our foreign policy, Mr. Longman, or do you want to get off this train alive?”
Vasquez hooted. “I like this one! Now if my ears don’t deceive me, that was a Golgotha rifle. Too heavy for ordinary men to carry. Is my pal Hok’ee aboard?”
“He got aboard some time ago,” said the Russian. “But his horse was shot in the process. I saw it from the window. He managed to get aboard the last carriage.”
Vasquez gave a low whistle. “He’ll be mighty sore at that. He loved that horse.”
“Well that throws a spanner in the works,” said Lazarus. One horse between three... have you brought your own, Miss?”
“No.”
“Well how did you get on board? And how were you planning to get Vasquez off?”
“I was already on board as a passenger before the train left Yuma. And I read the cargo inventory, which apparently you did not. The second to last car is loaded with horses.”
“So your plan was to leap from a speeding train on horseback?”
“We’ll have to uncouple the carriage and let it slow down, but yes, that was the essence of it.”
“Sounds like a good enough plan to me,” said Vasquez, drawing his revolver. “But we ain’t gonna see it through if we stand around here jawing. Hok’ee is coming this way—I can hear his rifle talking—so the bounty hunters will be trapped between us.”
“Agreed,” said Lazarus.
“I didn’t intend on carrying any extra weight off this train...” began the woman.
Lazarus smiled. “And I didn’t intend on being carried, Miss...?”
“Katarina,” she replied and pushed past him, flinging open the door.
The passengers were still in a state of terror in the next carriage, and the one following that. The fifth carriage was crowded, as if all the passengers from the next one had been herded in into it.
“Are you the law?” asked an elderly woman in a wide hat.
“No, Ma’am,” replied Lazarus. “We’re better than that.”
The sound of shots could be heard from the next carriage. They went out onto the gangway. Vasquez crossed to the next carriage, opened the door a crack and peeped in.
“Three of them,” he reported back.
“One each,” replied Lazarus.
“Don’t be so confident,” Katarina replied. “How are we to get in there and take cover before they shoot us?”
“We go over their heads,” said Vasquez.
“I don’t believe this,” said Katarina.
Vasquez clambered up onto the roof first and Lazarus—always the gentleman—stood aside to let Katarina go next. She shook her head at him.
“And have you gawking at my rear? I don’t think so. You first.”
Lazarus shrugged, and with a vivid image in his head of what her rear might look like through the folds of that dress, he clambered up after Vasquez.
The metal roof was scalding hot and Lazarus scrambled onto his knees and elbows as soon as he could to avoid any skin coming into contact with it. Ahead, Vasquez was on his feet, swaying back and forth in rhythm with the movement of the train. They made their way to the other end and dropped down onto the gangway to find themselves in the sights of a smoking Golgotha rifle.
“Hok’ee, old buddy!” said Vasquez. “This takes us back, eh? It’s been a while since we’ve robbed a train.”
“Well I hope your expertise in the area can get us off this one alive,” Lazarus said, eying the door to the carriage with the gunmen inside. Its surface was peppered with bullet holes shot through from the other side.
“Piece of cake,” replied Vasquez. “The next carriage looks like the horse car.” He poked his head out and looked down the length of the train. “Yep. Last carriage before the post office car. This is where we get off, folks. Alright, start uncoupling the carriage, limey. Katarina, you and I will provide cover if any of those boys gets wise. Hok’ee, you know what to do with the door.”
As the other three clambered onto the gangway of the horse car, Lazarus bent down and inspected the coupling mechanism. It was simple enough, and he soon had the last two carriages drifting away from the rest of the train. Hok’ee blasted through the lock to the horse car with his Golgotha and they filed into the dim, sweltering interior.
Just as Lazarus was about to enter, a bullet ricocheted off the iron banister an inch from him. He hit the deck as two more crunched into the wood. The bounty hunters were firing at him from the doorway of what was now the last carriage in the train and were a rapidly decreasing target. Lazarus thrust his hand into his right boot and pulled out the Belgian snub, cocked it, aimed and sent a slug towards the open door.
It struck the varnished wood and exploded, sending chunks of debris tearing into the gunmen. Smoke billowed from the open doorway, and the screams of wounded men could be heard briefly before the wind carried them away.
“Holy shit, friend!” Vasquez cried. “What does that limey government issue you with?”
“Belgian?” Katarina asked out of professional interest.
Lazarus nodded. “Fresh off the line.”
Lazarus had noticed that Katarina’s own pistol was a Smith and Wesson Model 3 Russian with an unusually long barrel. It appeared to be silver plated and was an exquisite piece, engraved with swirling Art Nouveau motifs. She raised the hem of her skirt to reveal the pale skin of her long, slender right thigh. Lazarus and Vasquez goggled at it but she didn’t seem to care. Strapped to the flesh was a holster,
into which she slid her revolver before sweeping her dress back into place. She caught them looking at her.
“I don’t know why women always carry those silly little snub pistols in their handbags when there is plenty of room for something much more powerful under our skirts,” she said.
“Um, quite,” said Lazarus, knowing that he was flushed from something other than the stifling heat.
They made their way into the horse car, and pushed past the sweating flanks of the beasts towards the door. Hok’ee had already picked out the four best horses for them.
“Alright, crew, this is our stop coming up!” Vasquez said, mounting his horse. The ceiling was low and he had to lean forward over the animal’s neck. Katarina did the same, her attractively curled hair just brushing the ceiling. “Hok’ee, open her up!”
The Navajo slid the wide side door open. The dust whirled into the carriage, making the horses nicker and stamp their feet nervously. Lazarus shielded his eyes.
“Are you sure about this?” he shouted.
“Know any better way off a train, Englishman?” Katarina cried back.
“We could wait until the carriage comes to a standstill!” he suggested.
“And risk the authorities or more of that bounty hunting gang catching up with us?”
“Quit jawing, you lily-livered cowards and follow me!” cried Vasquez. “If both of you want me then you’ll have to catch me!” and with a chuckle he spurred his horse into a leap that took him out into the sunlight and down and away, galloping hard and fast into the dust. Hok’ee followed, leaving Lazarus and Katarina gaping at the feat they had just witnessed.
“Does it occur to you that they may be making a run for it?” Lazarus mused aloud.
Katarina did not answer but instead leaped forward, her shapely figure astride her mount vanishing into the dust. Lazarus took a deep breath as if he were about to perform a high-dive and took the plunge.
Chapter 4
In which our hero is afforded a bird’s eye view of Arizona Territory
The sun set across the vast flats of Arizona, stretching the shadows of the plateaus long and thin. The blistering heat of the day quickly evaporated as darkness filled the deep valleys. All the cold-blooded creatures that had been sunning themselves on the rocks vanished into their holes to escape freezing.
Lazarus’s face was a mask of sweat and dust. They had been riding for a long time, and both horses and riders were tiring. Vasquez led the way with Hok’ee at his side and the other two trailing behind, unused to such lengthy periods of harsh travel. Katarina, in her thin bodice, was visibly cold however hard she was trying to hide it. Lazarus took off his jacket and held it out to her. She studied him hard before taking it.
“This doesn’t mean we are friends, Englishman.”
“Can you not call me Longman? Or Lazarus, perhaps.”
“Lazarus? What a name!” she said, taking his coat.
“I just don’t want to see you freeze to death before we get to our destination.”
“Wherever that is,” Katarina replied, looking ahead at Vasquez.
Owing to their having no water and empty stomachs, Vasquez had offered to take them both to his temporary lair that lay less than a night’s ride away. Considering that they were both trying to abduct him—and in Katarina’s case, had even tried to kill him once—this was considered a mightily generous gesture by all concerned.
“What does the Tsar want with Vasquez anyway?” Lazarus asked Katarina, pleased to see that she had warmed up a little under his jacket that was two sizes too big for her.
“Nosy. What does Queen Victoria want with him?”
“Well, I don’t suppose Her Majesty knows anything about him. But the people within her government that I work for are greatly concerned that he is kept alive and delivered into Confederate hands.”
“My task is much the same.”
“And yet you tried to kill him only a few nights ago.”
“That was my original brief, yes. But after his true value was brought to our attention, I was given new orders to protect and escort him.”
“As we both appear to be pursuing the same end, wouldn’t you say that Britain and Russia could be allies in this affair?” Lazarus suggested. “No need to threaten each other or stand in each other’s way.”
Katarina smiled. “A lovely thought, Longman. There is just one problem.”
“Oh?”
“I am escorting Vasquez to the Unionist partisans, not the Confederate government.”
Lazarus groaned aloud. He should have known. Relations between Russia and Britain had been poor ever since that debacle in the Crimea. With the Civil War that had raged across the American continent and the ensuing stalemate, it only made sense that they should both support opposing sides. The British Empire needed its trade links with the southern states, and Tsar Alexander had been friendly to the Union since the beginning.
Vasquez, who had been listening to this conversation, hooted with laughter and fell back to join them. “Well, what a pretty pickle this is! Two foreign agents want to be my best friend and I get to sell my services to the highest bidder!”
“Now, Vasquez,” said Lazarus, “there has never been any talk of purchasing your services. My orders are to escort you, by force if necessary.”
“As are mine,” said Katarina. “And to dispose of anybody who gets in the way, got that Longman?”
Lazarus sighed. Vasquez was right. It was a pretty pickle indeed.
They were high above the desert now, amid the peaks and plateaus of the mountain passes. The ground leveled out into the likeness of a gigantic billiard table. The stars were out, and with no cloud cover Lazarus felt the heat rushing out of his body, leaving him with a feeling of nakedness.
When they had reached the center of a plateau, Vasquez and Hok’ee dismounted. Lazarus and Katarina looked around. The plateau was devoid of anything that Lazarus could see might be of interest.
The two bandits crossed the flat area of rock to where a clump of dry bushes grew. With several mighty heaves, they pulled back the foliage—which wasn’t as securely attached to the ground as Lazarus had assumed—and cast it aside. The ground beneath them seemed soft, like a skin on cream. Vasquez and Hok’ee began tugging at it on one side and it came loose, unfurling and billowing up clouds of dust, and Lazarus realized that it was a simple canvas affair.
They walked forward and found themselves standing on the edge of a large basin that had been hollowed out of the rock and concealed by the canvas. In the bottom of the crater was a vessel the size of a small fishing steamer. Its little brass portholes and single funnel made it appear ludicrously out of place in the rocky passes of the Southwest.
They climbed down into the crater, which was many feet deep. Lazarus recognized the vessel as a small military dirigible of the interceptor class. A logo of a corseted dance hall girl had been painted on its side, sitting astride a bomb with the words, ‘Terror from Above!” banded around her. As Lazarus inspected it, he saw that it had been painted over what looked like the symbol for the Confederate Dirigible Corps.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” announced Vasquez, with one foot on the ladder, ‘meet the Santa Bella!”
The interior of the vessel was as unmilitary as anything Lazarus might have expected. A covered cockpit showed the brass knobs, levers and dials involved in piloting the airship, but they were poorly polished. Above the varnished wooden steering wheel was a calendar showing various ladies painted by an artist who apparently hadn’t mastered female clothing and had decided to do away with such frivolities entirely.
The cabin had a table and cushioned bench seating, and beyond there was evidence of two unmade beds. There was a little pot-bellied stove covered in a layer of grease and grime, and many unwashed pots and pans lay cluttered about.
“Home sweet home,” said Vasquez cheerfully, tossing his hat into a corner. “Hok’ee’s getting a head of steam up so we’ll soon be out of here.”
“Wai
t a minute!” said Katarina, following Vasquez back out on deck. “Where are we going? I’m the one taking you into custody, not the other way around.”
“Not on my ship, lady! Here you do as I tell ya!”
“But what’s your plan, Vasquez?” Lazarus asked.
Vasquez grinned at him as he jammed a cheroot into his mouth and lit it with a match. “I know why you’re both on my tail, even if you won’t tell each other. Your respective governments are after that map of ours. Am I right?”
Lazarus eyed Katarina and saw that she was doing the same to him.
“Well, I’m done with the Confederate army,” Vasquez continued, “and I have no real desire to throw in my lot with the Yankees, so I was thinking the best plan was to fetch the damned thing and hold ourselves a little auction. Whoever pays me the most gets it and can take it to their chosen camp without my having to come with! Now don’t worry, we’ll hold the auction on safe ground and I’ll give you both plenty of time to wire your respective governments for money. I’m not sure how things’ll pan out after that. One of you is likely to shoot the other, but once I’m sailing away with my money, it won’t be my problem!”
Lazarus and Katarina stared at each other as their host went about the business of preparing the vessel for its journey. They were clearly thinking the same thing. This whole affair had got wildly out of hand and the future for one of them looked bleak. But which one?
“Either of you two gawking Gladys’s ever been onboard a dirigible before?” Vasquez called over to them as he wrestled with one in a series of six trapdoors set into the vessel’s deck.
They both shook their heads. Lazarus had heard of the devastating effects these craft had wreaked on the unprepared Union troops. It was the Confederate Dirigible Corps that had bombed New York City and Boston into smoking ruins.
“They’re a vast improvement on the old design,” commented Vasquez. “The early ones had a rigid shell and could only travel at five miles per hour. This craft has limp balloons and so is much lighter.” He jerked a lever in the cockpit and there was a loud hissing sound. Balloons began to inflate from the six trapdoors.
Golden Heart (The Lazarus Longman Chronicles) Page 3