One Helluva Bad Time- The Complete Bad Times Series

by Chuck Dixon

  A flurry of shooting sounded from ahead. They all sighted their weapons. Down on the gun deck, Carberry paced behind his crews, urging them in his own fashion to stay steady.

  “Ready to port! Ready to starboard. Sight targets and fire on my signal, ye boss-eyed buggers!” he shouted. Following behind him was a Chinese in white pajamas and a black kepi trimmed in white with crossed cannons in gold brocade atop the cap. This man acted as translator, relaying Carberry’s barked orders in a soft, almost apologetic, tone to the gun crews.

  The prow of the Abundance cleared the headland. A hundred yards ahead an ironclad flying the French tricolor was anchored close to shore. Men stood on the upper decks firing muskets into the air. Jimbo lowered his Whitworth and stretched his telescope to fix it on the craft. Through the lens, he saw a thick screen of birds high in the air above the other boat. Ducks. Along the bank, naked coolies were plunging around in the reeds retrieving fallen fowl from the water. They would then swim out to the French gunboat and toss the birds upward in exchange for coins thrown down to them.

  “False alarm. The frogs are hunting out of season,” Jimbo said, lowering the telescope.

  “Doesn’t mean we can’t have some real target practice,” Chaz said and shouldered his rifle. Boats, Lee, and Bat did the same. They banged away at the flock of ducks passing by overhead and brought down a number. Wei joined them, nailing a mallard soaring high above the mast tops. The French hallooed and called out their congratulations as ducks splashed into the muddy water off the port side of the Abundance.

  Down on the deck, Carberry was shrieking after his gun crew who were, to a man, diving into the water to retrieve the game floating by. His second called after the men, wheedling for them to obey their master. They returned to haul themselves back aboard, tossing duck carcasses to the deck before them. They held them up, all smiles for the Yankees to see, ignoring the apoplectic Englishman going hoarse with rage.

  “Anyone for Peking duck?” Bat said, grinning.

  They steamed past the first floaters on the morning of the third day.

  Bloated corpses, swollen with corruption, came down with the current. Fish swarmed around them, giant carp by the thousands feeding on the rotting flesh. Carrion birds massed along the banks where bodies became trapped in reeds and eddy pools. Unrecognizable collections of rotting flesh that could only be distinguished by size as men, women, or children. All were headless, even infants.

  There were human scavengers as well. Peasants, heads wrapped in scarves, waded into the shallows with long staffs to hook bodies. They dragged them to shore where women, with faces covered in mufti, stripped the dead of clothing. Other women spread the sodden garments upon rocks to dry.

  As they moved upriver, the number of bodies grew, sometimes gathering in grotesque islands of the dead with ravens perched atop them, gorging. The sheer number of the slain created an unavoidable impasse, their bodies thumping along the hull as the prow of the Abundance cut through the mass. The crew bent over the gunwales to clear corpses from the waterline with poles.

  They wrapped cloths about their mouths and noses, dousing the cloth in rum to cut the rancid smell. The stink got on their skin and their clothes and clung to every surface. The Chinese crew lit joss sticks and set them along the decks to create a miasma of flowery herbal scents. It only served to take the edge off the stench of decomposition.

  Not all the dead were waterborne. In the afternoon, they passed what looked like a black wall running down the eastern bank. As they neared it, the smell of putrefaction came over the water in a noxious fog. The wall was a stack of corpses that looked to be at least eight feet high. It took the gunboat a full ten minutes to pass to the end of the wall—roughly over a mile of decomposing humanity.

  The team stood on deck watching the massive heap of dead recede behind them.

  “Them poor Chinee buggers,” Gunnery Officer Carberry said, a rare note of sympathy in his voice.

  “Who did that?” Bat’s eyes above the face scarf were rimmed in red. Lee was stoic beside her.

  “Taipings. Qing troops. Both. This is a war of annihilation,” Jimbo said. “Anyone caught in the middle is collateral. There’ll be thirty million dead by the time this is over. Hundreds of cities were erased. Total extermination.”

  “And we’re heading into the heart of it,” Bat said, resigned. “With people, we can’t trust,” Jimbo said, glancing toward Shan up on the quarterdeck, amused by Wei violently puking over the railing.

  “They’re as interested in seeing this op succeed as we are. We can trust them on this side of the divide,” Lee said.

  “Once they get that relic, we’re after they can fuck us and leave us for dead here in The Then,” Chaz said, taking his eyes from a tangle of corpses propelled into an obscene swirling pattern by the bow wave of the Abundance.

  “We’re going to have to get our hands on it first. It’s the only bargaining chip we’re going to get,” Lee said.

  “And what’s to stop them gunning us down once we get back to the Raj? Kill Mo, Quebat, Parviz, Geteye and the whole damn crew,” Chaz said.

  “That’s something we need to work out before we get back to Shanghai. We have advantages here. It’s a matter of working out how to use them to our advantage,” Bat said.

  “All this for Genghis Khan’s diary?” Chaz said.

  “I have a feeling it’s a whole lot more than that, bro,” Jimbo said. “A whole lot more.”

  The river ahead was broken up by islands at the center. The skipper called orders through a speaking tube set by the steering column. The engine choked and sputtered. The stacks belched black soot. A high squeal of metal on metal from inside the iron-armored paddle-box as the blades slowed by half. The bow swung to port then righted as the captain turned the wheel to guide them along the broadest channel running along the western bank.

  A mate was ordered forward to drop a weighted line into the water at the bow. The end was dipped in sticky tallow. He let loose the knotted rope, calling out the depth at regular intervals. He hauled up the tallow end to eyeball remnants of the river bed.

  “No bottom!” the sounder called back in English. He repeated this three times, holding the rope to trail under the keel. The tallow came back clean each time.

  “Deep four!” he shrieked. The skipper repeated the same. “Half three!” the sounder cried, voice rising higher. It came out as “hoff twee!”

  The skipper screamed into the end of the voice pipe, and the rumble of engines dropped to a purr. The walking beam clunked to a stop. The spin of the paddles stopped with a jerk then were free to turn lazily with the current. They moved dead slow; the skipper squawked for help. Two mates leapt to the wheel to help him turn the boat into the center of the narrowing channel. Shan left the stricken Wei to lend a hand, holding the wheel in place against the increasing force of the river. The current was pressing against the bow with greater strength as its way south was forced between the closing banks.

  The skipper shrieked an order, and the sounder hauled back his line, counting each knot as it slid between callused fingers.

  “Mark three!” the sounder bawled back.

  “Jesus, that’s three fathoms. We’re aground sure if that heathen can’t keep the keel centered,” Carberry breathed, teeth clamped on the end of his clay pipe.

  The sounder called out again. This time it was a gargled cry cut short when he dropped to the deck with the shaft of a long black arrow through his neck. The iron plates rang with the patter of steel arrowheads. More shafts arced down to stick humming in the deck planks. Sparks struck off the iron plating near Boats’ head— the shaft caromed away at an angle to lodge in the base of a mast.

  “Guns! Guns! To quarters, lads!” Carberry shouted.

  Lee and Bat drew side arms and fired through rifle ports set along the port side. The rest of the team scrambled for their rifles, stacked close at hand.

  “You see them?” Lee called, levering the big Remington at the near bank, s
quinting through the gun smoke.

  “I damn sure do!” Bat replied.

  Horsemen galloped along a broad muddy bank. Hundreds of them in plate armor and helmets that came to a point like a wizard’s cap. They were armed with recurve bows, weapons of massive power, and astonishing range. As they rode, they loosed a storm of arrows at the ironclad. The black shafts rose in the air to drop down with an unerring trajectory onto the open deck of their target. Not a single missile fell short or long to drop into the river. Bannermen rode along with the archers trailing long ribbons of black cloth and a broad yellow flag with an ornate crimson cross resting on a bench, the symbol of the Heavenly Kingdom.

  28

  The Compound

  Dwayne was wishing he’d taken his own advice. The Lee Hammond approach. That solution wasn’t workable now.

  It looked like a humble farming village as seen through the trees from above. Rundown hooches of adobe and wood planks. The largest structure was a hangar with a steel roof rusted orange. The whole collection of buildings was nestled in a ravine with one road leading out to the desert. The houses were set up off the ground with crawlspaces beneath. Built that way because the rare cloudburst would turn this gully into a river.

  He exchanged looks with N’itha the whole way down the trail from the ridgeline, following the two campesinos walking ten paces ahead. It was a silent communication; N’itha suspicious and looking to him for direction. His eyes stayed calm, moving from the backs of their escorts to the buildings below.

  The place looked innocent enough. A woman was hanging wash outside a shed. Kids played tag in a dirt yard between houses. Dogs slept in the street. Men sat in the shade of porches, drinking beers from a cooler. Music played from a boombox somewhere. Looked like siesta time on the ranchero.

  As they were brought farther along the dirt road, the village started looking more like a compound. The kids’ game of tag consisted of throwing empty shell casings at one another. The spent brass littered the ground everywhere. The dogs sleeping in the road were pit bulls with chain collars. The men sipping brews in the shade had rifles close at hand. Dwayne saw an AK or two among them. The music Dwayne recognized was a corrida celebrating the life of cartel hero El Chapo. The only innocent aspect of the place seemed to be the woman hanging laundry. Dwayne noticed telltale pink stains splashed on the sheets.

  The men stepped out from under the porch to meet the new-comers in the center of the street. Four young guys like the pair leading them. A fifth guy, older, the obvious jefe, shirtless under a denim vest. He was jangling with gold chains on a broad chest that dropped to a beer gut. One of the young guys was almost as tall as Dwayne and looked mentally challenged, a sloppy grin fixed on his face. More troubling was the AK cradled in his arms like a baby. A sixth man stayed back on the porch, rocking on a chair with a shotgun across his knees.

  “That beer looks good,” Dwayne said, nodding at the dripping bottle held by one of the men, a skinny guy in snakeskin boots.

  They all laughed except el jefe. Maybe Dwayne’s gringo Spanish amused them. But he knew that wasn’t it. He shot N’itha a glance. She tilted her head at him and narrowed her eyes.

  Eyes still on his guests, the jefe held out a hand to one of his compadres.

  “Apple,” he said. A guy in a t-shirt, with a faded Estrella beer logo on it, fished in his jeans and came out with an iPhone that he handed over. El jefe held the phone aimed at Dwayne then turned his head while the others offered advice on how to use it.

  “Stay here no matter what,” Dwayne said low to N’itha. He swung the rope running through the jug handles and flung them into the tight knot of Mexicans before turning to run.

  He hared over the dusty street toward a tumbled down shack with a collapsed roof and a veranda of sun-bleached wood running before it. There was shouting behind him. And barking dogs. He tensed for a bullet. Or the vise-like clamp of jaws on his leg. He could hear them rushing after him. Dwayne dropped to his belly at the front of the veranda, hoping it looked like he tripped. One of the men chasing him let out a whoop.

  Dwayne rolled into the shadows under the slats and into the crawlspace under the shack. He was hidden from sight for a second or two. He could see the boots and sneakers trotting toward him. Ahead of them, a dog’s paws kicked up the sand. Dwayne yanked the .45 from his waistband. He laid it on the ground. Before they grabbed him by an ankle, he covered it over with sand. They pulled him into the light.

  The jefe came jangling up, puffing hard, to deliver a weak kick to Dwayne’s side. That started the others kicking. The toes of boots and sneakers swung at him. He rolled with the kicks, giving a yelp with each one. As long as he kept them kicking, they’d leave the dog out of it. The animal was up on back legs, whimpering to get at him. Slobber flew in thick ropes from its snapping teeth. A man with weight lifter muscles and a Pemex ball cap was holding the beast back with a leather strap.

  “Get him up! Get him up!” El jefe stepped back and aimed the smartphone at Dwayne again.

  The others hauled the Ranger to his feet. He could see N’itha standing in the street, her arm locked in the grip of the idiot with the Kalashnikov.

  A fist gripped Dwayne’s hair and yanked his head back. He could hear the whirr and click from the smartphone as the boss man took snaps of Dwayne’s face. They hauled him along back to where el jefe took some shots of N’itha. She looked at Dwayne the whole time, eyes open and pupils still.

  “How do I do this?” el jefe said, leaning to hold the phone up to the guy in the Estrella shirt.

  “What are you trying to do?” Estrella said.

  “Send these pictures. To this place,” el jefe said, squinting hard at the screen.

  “Let me do it,” Estrella said and took the iPhone. His fingers flew over the screen. After a second, he held the phone out to his boss.

  “It is sent. See,” he said, and the boss nodded, taking the phone back.

  In under thirty seconds, all were waiting in the shade of the porch with fresh beers cracked open. The phone came alive in el jefe’s hand with a few chords of a pop song. He stepped away into the street to hold it to his ear, listening a while, muttering replies. He came back, tossing the phone to Estrella.

  “He is one of the ones they want,” el jefe said, waving a hand at Dwayne.

  “And the bitch?” said the weightlifter in the Pemex cap. “They don’t know her.” El jefe shrugged.

  The weightlifter was across the porch in a single stride, shouldering another guy to the floor. He snatched N’itha up by the elbow and walked her from the porch toward a shed next door. Dwayne felt the sole of a boot press down on his chest. The men on the porch whistled and stomped.

  “Don’t break her, Jorgito!”

  “She is small! Save some for us!”

  From the floor, Dwayne could see through the porch slats. N’itha was being walked away, her toes barely touching the ground. She didn’t look back.

  “Bossman,” Dwayne said in English. The others turned to him. El jefe leaned on the porch rail, in the middle of lighting a cigarette. “These men you called. The men coming for me. You don’t know them,” Dwayne said, returning to Spanish.

  “One gringo same as the other.” El jefe shrugged.

  “They’re not law or CIA or anything else you think they are. Whatever they promised you is a lie,” Dwayne said.

  “A lie?” el jefe said and stooped to blow a stream of smoke into Dwayne’s sweating face.

  “They’ll take me from you and kill everyone here. Tell me I’m lying.”

  “You are lying.” El jefe’s smile showed teeth capped in silver.

  “We’ll see who’s lying, motherfucker,” Dwayne said, in English, but the other man took his meaning and leaned closer.

  “I should believe a coward? A maricón like you? These gringos want you alive. But it is many hours until they get here, and my cousins are muy cachondo, eh? Maybe they cannot wait until Jorgito is finished with the girlfriend. Maybe I let them have y
ou.”

  El jefe swiped a hand across Dwayne’s face and grunted an order to the others. Two men lifted Dwayne by the arms. They dragged him toward a steel-walled shed across the street.

  Dwayne resisted enough to put on a show for them. He looked at the hooch that N’itha had been taken to. No sounds came from inside.

  The men hunting him, hunting Caroline as well, wouldn’t be here for hours. It would be full dark by then. He knew all he needed to know.

  29

  Ambush

  Arrowheads raised a drumming cacophony along the iron hull of The Complete Abundance.

  “They’re Taipings! A cavalry screen to harass reinforcements!” Jimbo called as he sighted the Whitworth through a rifle port. Byrus crouched by his side, sword drawn and useless against the archers on the raised bank.

  “Who the hell cares?” Boats said, standing fully exposed to work the lever of his rifle from the hip. He sent a stream of lead at the riders less than a hundred yards away. A shaft came close enough to catch in the cloth of the SEAL’s tunic.

  “Get down, asshole!” Chaz called from where he was kneeling at a port taking careful aim at the cavalry. The horsemen were matching the speed of the slowing gunboat to send a steady stream of missiles their way. Chaz sighted on a guy standing in his stirrups, sending nocking arrow after arrow from packed quivers hanging either side of his saddle. A squeeze of the trigger and the bowman rolled off the saddle to be trampled by his comrades’ mounts.

  Jimbo set sights on an officer riding at the lead of the pack. His helmet was rimmed in gold that flashed in the late afternoon sun. The guy was waving a curved sword, his mouth open to call orders, curses, or encouragement. The Whitworth boomed, the barrel rising high with the force of the .50 caliber Minié ball launched from it on a plume of white. He waved a hand to clear the dense fog of sulfur smoke. The guy in the gold helmet was down and had dragged his mount to the ground with him. Riders coming behind rode headlong into the tangle, going down themselves on the muddy bank. Some spilled off the slope to the water. The hail of arrows continued unabated as the column wheeled around the welter of men and beasts to keep stride with the ironclad.