by Gordon Ryan
They waded in. Felt like ice water. The water was mid-thigh by the time they reached the boat.
The man wore a winter coat and a stocking cap and gloves with the fingers cut off. He pushed the box to the edge with some difficulty, then helped lift it over the edge and onto Niels’s and Tess’s shoulders. She groaned under the weight.
“Now get the hell out of here,” Tess said. “And tell the police or we’re all going to die.”
The man on the boat revved his engine and backed away from the shore. Tess and Niels carried their load to shore, then made their way toward where they’d abandoned the ballista.
They weren’t far, just inside the woods when Kirkov and his men returned to the beach. Niels and Tess froze. The box bit into her shoulder and she desperately wanted to put it down, but she didn’t dare move out of fear of snapping a branch or making some other sound to give away their position.
Kirkov shouted curses and threats at the departing boat. It would already be out of range. “Never mind,” he said after the sound had disappeared. “We’ll deal with that later. We’ve got what we need to break in. The rest will be knife and sword work. Come on.”
After they left, Niels and Tess continued to follow their own path back to the castle, their prize heavy on their shoulders.
Chapter Forty-one:
Jim Grossman turned his friend Dave’s Mainship toward Burlington and pushed the throttle forward. At top speed, the 200 horsepower Perkins engine could do better than 20 knots. Not in this weather.
Heavy swells pushed in the opposite direction. The wind and the waves were so high that it was almost like being on the ocean. He had to pull back on the throttle and ride the swells. Sleet fell from the sky. Even with full lights, visibility was almost zero and he navigated by radar.
Goddamn, what the hell was going on? He’d tried to convince himself that it was all part of a crazy game, a bunch of rich people with more money than common sense, but that woman and her foreign friend had been very serious. The woman especially, looked ready to swing herself onto the deck and lop off his head.
And he believed them. Because Black Horse was nuts.
He was halfway to Burlington before he throttled the boat to idle and stared into the darkness. What happened when Black Horse discovered he was gone? He had a satellite phone, he could call someone in Burlington. And he knew where Jim docked his boat.
Jim flipped open his phone to call his wife. Time to come clean. She’d know what to do. Call the Coast Guard maybe? Or the police to meet him at the docks. How was he going to explain it? The cell phone answered the question for him: no signal.
But who said he had to go back to Burlington? What about Plattsburgh, on the New York side of the lake? Better yet, how about Mallets Bay? He could be there in twenty minutes, just had to round the tip of South Hero island and cut southeast into the bay. He could call his wife and the police from there.
Driving sleet froze against the windshield and deck as thick as icing on a cake. The wipers soon failed. Jim fought the wind and ice to go outside and scrape it clean. He turned the light in all directions but could see nothing. The radar showed South Hero a couple of hundred yards off port.
The water was calmer here between the mainland and the southern tip of South Hero and Jim pushed down on the throttle. He leaned forward and tried to see against the sleet.
Was the rock on the radar? Hard to say. Maybe it was and he was too distracted by the mainland. Maybe it had been covered with a huge swell and then he’d come down in a trough.
The Mainship slammed to a halt with a terrific rending sound that ripped along the hull and vibrated up through the floor. The boat lurched hard to starboard, then bobbed up as it tried to right itself.
The boat came so smartly to a correct position that he thought it had resisted the blow. But then it came down again and water sloshed over the deck and didn’t wash off so quickly this time.
It wasn’t his boat and it took him a second to find the life preserver over his head and unlatch it. He grabbed it with one hand and flipped the distress lights with the other, not that anyone would see them. The boat rolled to port and didn’t right itself. Jim found the radio.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is SuzieQ VTH335, two miles east of Mallets Bay, hit rock, going down fast, one man onboard, going into water with life jacket. SuzieQ is 34 foot Mainship sport fisher, white hull, black trim.”
The radio crackled a response, but Jim lost his footing and fell to the floor. Water was up to the doors and he pushed them open. He pulled on the life preserver and clipped it around his waist and chest. There was an inflatable raft in one of the deck compartments, but he couldn’t reach it. He had to let go of the railing. Get away before the boat rolled on top of him. Jim pushed off the edge during the next swell and went into the water.
The cold water took his breath away. He struggled to swim away from the boat as it rolled onto its side, scrapped against the rock and went down. It was underwater within a few minutes. Utter darkness. A swell rolled over his head and he came up sputtering. His muscles ached and his hands already felt numb. Sleet and wind drove against his face.
If the Coast Guard had sent someone from Burlington within seconds of his distress signal and if they powered in a straight line to his exact spot, he had twenty minutes. At a water temperature of forty degrees, hypothermia would hit in fifteen.
Chapter Forty-two:
The castle came under attack before the men on the north wall finished hauling Tess and Niels and their prize up to the walls. They took the box back to the keep. She barely had time to open the box, stare in delighted amazement at the goodies inside, before the shout came from the gatehouse. Niels loaded a satchel from the box, threw it over his shoulder and followed Tess up the stairs to the outer curtain.
By the time they reached the battlements, Tess’s men launched crossbow bolts tipped with burning rags to illuminate the battlefield. They burned and hissed in the driving sleet. Men hung lamps on poles in front of the gatehouse or along the walls to look for enemies against the walls.
A pair of sheds inched down the hill. One made its way toward the gatehouse, the other toward the broken stretch of wall, weakened by days of bombardment. The wall formed a V, open at the top, but tapering to a weakened, but still intact bulge of stone on ground level, where the wall was thickest.
“Get the north shed,” she said told her men. “The south one, with the ram, is a feint.”
Peter found her a few minutes later. He carried lead to melt in braziers being lit all along the wall. “How can you be sure?”
“About the north shed? Look, you can see it going slow on purpose. It’s got less weight because there’s no ram underneath.”
“How are they going to attack the walls, then?”
“Electric cement drills. That’s what was on the boat, and a bunch of rechargeable batteries.”
“Rechargeable?” Peter asked.
“Think of them as disposable in this case,” Tess said. “They’ll go through them one after another as they drill at that weak spot. Pretty soon they’ll be in the middle of the bailey.”
Tess examined the walls. She was crippled by the gaping wound atop the outer curtain that kept her men from moving freely from the near side to the side closest to the gatehouse. It effectively divided her forces.
“Get the blacksmiths,” she told Peter. “Have them drop everything and get up here. See if they can rivet a couple of boards from one side of that hole to the next. It’ll be dangerous as hell, but it might help in a pinch.”
“Wouldn’t want to be standing on a plank if they break through the wall, it will collapse.”
“You’ll be dead,” Tess agreed.
She looked up and her mood improved to see Niels, Miko, and Lars lugging the stolen box along the outer curtain.
“That everything?” she asked.
“I held back a few things for the warehouse, in case they break through,” Niels said.
�
�Perfect,” she said. She turned to Peter. “And you shut off the electricity down there?”
“Yes, the generator is off. No way to turn it back on now that we’ve hauled up every liter of diesel fuel.”
“Good.”
The warehouse was below ground. With the climate-control system off, the air would shortly resemble the bottom of a mineshaft, except for that bit near the walled-in door on the north curtain, assuming the enemy broke through.
“Heads down!” someone shouted.
A mass of enemy soldiers broke off from where they’d sheltered behind the north shed, now halfway to the castle. They launched a hail of crossbow bolts from the protection of six-foot wooden shields. Her men exchanged fire, and she peered over the battlement to see one of Kirkov’s crossbowmen go down.
Once she had the enemy crossbows pinned down, she returned her attention to the sheds. The nearest was only fifty yards off and broke from the slower one that moved toward the gates.
The planks came from below and men worked from either side of the gap in the wall to attach them to the hoardings. There was shortly a way to move from one side to the other, but she didn’t trust the plank system, attached as it was to a crippled section of the wall.
Tess grabbed Peter. “Go the gatehouse. Make sure everyone is ready. And watch your footing.”
He made his way gingerly across the planks and disappeared into the gatehouse.
The first shed pulled up to weak spot in the castle walls while the other approached the gates. The first shed bumped around as the men underneath tried to get past the heap of stones that had broken free of the walls.
There was a whine of electric drills, maybe three or four from the sound of it. It vibrated through the stone, all the way to the top of the walls. Her men took buckets of warm diesel fuel from the generator, mixed with melted pitch and poured it over the battlements. The enemy had covered the shed with wet hides and layer-upon-layer of canvas from their tents. That wouldn’t matter, and neither would the sleet help. Not with all the diesel.
Tess grabbed a torch and leaned over the battlement. A crossbow bolt zipped past her ear. She threw the torch. It flew end over end and struck the top of the shed. It burst into flames.
Within seconds, fire engulfed the shed. It lit the battlefield like floodlights and a wave of heat rolled up and over the castle walls.
“Burn, you bastards,” Tess said. She turned to Niels and they shared a grin.
Her triumph was short lived. Two men stepped out from the rear of the shed and grabbed a stick tied to a rope that had been tucked underneath with the men. They dragged it back and the top, diesel and pitch soaked layer came off and with it, the fire.
She directed bolts at these two men, but they were back underneath the shed before she could bring them down. The top of the shed steamed, but those lower, wet layers had not caught fire. The discarded pile of hides and wet canvas burned. How much of her fuel had she wasted?
“Damn, that was smart,” Niels said.
“Again,” she ordered. “But hold back this time, not so much, we’ve got to make it last.” And to Niels, “Get your head down, you fool. You’re going to get shot.”
More buckets dumped over the edge.
Meanwhile, the second shed made an abrupt left turn as it got to the gates. Another minute and they’d be on the east side of the weak spot in the walls.
Peter ducked out of the gatehouse and shouted across, “What are they doing, what should I do?”
“Pull everyone out. Get everything you’ve got, attack that other shed.”
Moments later, men and women in armor came out of the gatehouse toward them, carrying lit braziers, buckets of steaming diesel and pitch, melted lead, and even stones.
“More drills?” Niels asked. “Is that what they’ve got under there?”
“No, look how slowly they’re moving. They’ve got the ram, but it’s not for the gates. They’ll drill along the seams, then hit the weak spot with the ram. It’s a great plan.”
She lit the shed on fire a second time, but they pulled the same trick. What would give out first, her diesel and pitch or the layers of wet hides and tents? Meanwhile, the drills kept churning. She listened and identified four. They must be crouched shoulder to shoulder under the shed. Every once in a while, one of the drills went silent and a spent battery flew out the back of the shed.
The second shed, smoldering, but not yet on fire, fought around the heap of stone to come up next to the first. Both sheds struggled against hooks on ropes, her giant pillows, and now stones that clattered off the top. The drill shed shifted to the left and the other shed pulled into its place. A crack from the ram below that sent a shudder through the wall.
“They’re going to break through,” she said. “We’ve got to pull back from the edges or we’ll go down with the wall.”
She squinted against the sleet. Men clanked and shouted from the remains of the enemy camp, but she couldn’t see more than a tightly bunched mass of men in the darkness. They’d come behind a wall of body-length shields, that was sure enough. But how many? Fifty? Sixty?
Niels grabbed his satchel that they’d loaded in the keep. He handed Tess a pair of black tubes, perforated by holes and wrapped with a green band at the bottom. “We called these flashbangs in the KSK. Clever way to take prisoners. Non-lethal, but they’re serious enough.”
“How do they work?” she asked.
“Just like a regular grenade. Pull and throw.”
She cringed. “You know I, uhm, throw like a girl.”
He laughed. “Hell of an admission coming out of your mouth. You’ll be fine, just drop it in the general vicinity. But listen, we’ve got to spread the word. If you’re near this thing when it goes off, you’ll be useless. The flash—especially in this darkness—will blind you for five, ten seconds. The overpressure on your ear drums will knock you right on your butt, you’ll have no balance for a good minute.”
She tucked four into her belt. “Got it. You go with the men below. You hit the first ones inside, then charge. I’ll drop mine on the outside of the wall as Kirkov comes through. The remains of the wall should shield you from the blast.”
Another wave of heat boiled up from below. They’d finally penetrated to the drill shed. It burned and the enemy couldn’t put it out. She directed crossbow fire and stones from the hoardings. Shortly, the fire would rage out of control and the enemy would have to abandon it, but it was taking a damnably long time to catch. And worse, the defenders had used up their diesel. The ram pressed its assault, untouched by fire.
“Tess,” Peter shouted from the bailey. He’d gathered maybe a dozen men from the gatehouse. Niels and several more came down from the walls to join him.
“Lars said they’re hitting the north wall. They’ve got ladders and they’re trying to break into the vault.”
“How long till they’re inside?”
“I don’t know. We don’t have enough people down there to hold them out, not if you want my guys down here, too.”
She stumbled under another blow to the wall. Stone chips burst into the bailey. “Where’s Nick? In the keep?”
“Yes, upstairs,” Peter said. “Should I move him?”
She was afraid to leave him in the keep with the enemy attacking the basement, but where could she put him? The gatehouse wasn’t safe, the manor hall wouldn’t hold if the enemy broke in.
“No, we don’t have a choice. Hold on, I’m coming down.”
She grabbed the first person she found. It was Daria LeFevre. “Take these,” she said as she pulled the stun grenades from her belt. Quickly, she explained what she and Niels had planned.
“How many, all of them?” Daria asked.
“Yes, all of them, don’t save them, whatever you do. Kirkov breaks in, there’s no other battle. You remember what that means.”
Tess didn’t wait for her response, but turned to go. She met Peter and Nick in the bailey. Nick was wrapped in a blanket, crying. He grabbed for he
r leg. It was hell to pry him off and turn a stony face to his screams.
“Stop it, you’ve got to be a big boy,” she told him. “Listen to your dad. Everything will be okay, I promise. And if neither of us are around and anyone tells you what to do…” She hesitated, thinking of Yekatarina and Kirkov taking this beautiful boy. “Anyone, I mean, you do what they say. Please, don’t fight them.” A deep breath, a fight to control her emotions.
“I’m so sorry, Tess,” Peter said. “I didn’t mean—”
“Not now, Peter. For god’s sake, not now.”
Chapter Forty-three:
Eleven explosions rocked the Druzhba Pipeline in Kazakhstan, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. It was just before 6:00 A.M. Moscow Time, 3:00 A.M. in London, and ten at night in New York City. A technician in Samara first noticed an urgent blinking light on his console, but by the time he figured out that it was not a malfunction and called headquarters, local police had noted the attack in several municipalities and a Ukrainian news team based in Kiev had caught wind of the attack and loaded a van to drive to the site of one of the explosions.
At 6:43, a nervous secretary awoke the Russian President, who placed an urgent call to the Russian Oil Minister. Alexander Borisenko, it would seem, was out of the country. The deputy minister, Anton Kirkov, was allegedly in Istanbul, but could not be reached, either.
Someone in the Oil Ministry called his broker in Tokyo and within an hour an early buzz stirred through the speculators of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Currency and commodity traders in Frankfurt, London, and New York were still asleep. Several huge oil and gold plays were set to execute the instant the exchanges opened. Many latecomers would pile on.
Chapter Forty-four:
Kirkov choked on a noxious mix of powdered stone, burning diesel, and sweat. The scream of drills was deafening. He crouched on the ground with his own cement drill, attacking the wall. He’d used up four battery packs already and his second drill bit was dull and nearly useless. He didn’t have another. His newest battery was already starting to labor.