In the back of the gondola, the one remaining passenger started praying in Latin.

  Tom let the first tactical probe get within twenty-five yards before he fired four times, quickly. Of the three approaching Spaniards, two fell: one, howling and writhing; the other, silently and limp. Having finally given away his position, Tom ducked, just in time to hear a ragged crackle of musketry from both the hamlet and the upslope trail. Perhaps a dozen balls spattered Tom’s sheltering rock, the rotted log, and the ground nearby. Many more hissed into the white, whirling veils of the cataract and beyond, into the trees.

  Tom popped up, saw a thin horizontal line of gun smoke diffusing slowly in his direction. He also saw the last Spaniard advancing on his flank, hunched low, pistol and sword at the ready. Tom fired twice at the skirmisher, turned and jumped into the stream, hopping and struggling his way across. The Spaniard’s pistol, and a more distant musket, discharged behind him; either Tom was not hit, or he did not feel it. Either way, he continued his uneven progress across the ford, wondering how long the gun smoke would obscure the vision of the Spanish line, and how long it would take them to reload.

  Harry Lefferts was so focused on finding a way to get closer to the cataract that he was completely surprised by the buff-coated man who rose up in front of him. Jerking to a startled halt, Harry squinted into the near-dark: the man’s weapon was an immediate giveaway as to whose side he was on.

  Harry moved the barrel of the down-time box-magazine Winchester away from his belly. “Wondered where you guys were,” Lefferts drawled.

  “Waiting for you.”

  “Oooh, snappy. I like that. You also just about scared me out of my pants.” He looked the mercenary up and down. “You’re pretty damned good. Wanna work for me?”

  The man shrugged. “I like my boss.”

  “I pay better.”

  “I doubt it. And I’ve got a family. Lieutenant Hasting is just down the slope.”

  “No time to find him. How are you deployed?”

  “Loose skirmish line from here to the river to cover Captain Simpson’s group as they come up the track.” As if to emphasize the harried approach of that group, a clatter of musketry rose above the dull thunder of the cataract.

  “Any force closer to the ford?”

  “No. None to spare. We’ve only got two squads.”

  “You’re only one squad, here. Where’s the other?”

  “Landing zone security and uncommitted reserve.”

  Harry scowled a little. Frequently, the word “reserve” translated as the hiding place for cowardly commanders. “I see Colonel North is sitting this one out.”

  “That’s not how we see it.”

  “Well, we can debate that over a beer some time. We’re going in.”

  “In? In where?”

  Harry pointed in the direction of the recent fusillade. “In there.”

  “You’re going to attack the Spanish?”

  Harry smiled and waved for the Wrecking Crew to follow him southwest, angling to follow the upslope limit of the woods. “Not directly.”

  Tom reached the other side of the ford just as the muskets started sporadically barking at him again. However, from the sound of it, most of the Spanish were giving chase, not stopping to reload. In the dark, any gunfights at ranges greater than ten yards were pretty much pointless.

  Feeling solid ground under his feet, Tom up and sprinted forward, following the cart-track. The pain of his reopened wound returned sharply, now reaching up into his lower back. When the shooting had started, adrenaline had swept the discomfort away, but that relieving rush was gone; soon, he’d start limping, stumbling He heard movement upslope, some yards beyond the trees linking the track.

  Impossible. There had been no way to cross the cataract higher up; how could the Spanish have anyone on his northern flank?

  Desperate, and experiencing true panic for the first time in many years, Tom Simpson found another surge of strength which sent him dashing forward along the track.

  Lieutenant Hastings watched the man and woman help the little priest stumble past his position, and right behind them, an odd couple indeed: a fit, yet clearly older woman with a useless, dangling foot, being almost dragged along by a fit, but equally aged Moor. And, still farther back along the track, another very large silhouette was emerging from the darkness…

  Corporal Eugenio Morca de Torres clambered out of the frothing current, cocked his miquelet musket, aimed after the fleeing figure, then lowered his weapon. Cono, the big American was fast, even when wounded. He waved for his men to follow and ran in pursuit.

  Harry skidded to a halt, five yards from where the woods ended at the cart-track. He saw a figure running down there, heading towards North’s forward skirmish line. A big figure. Tom Simpson. Had to be.

  Catching a tree branch to slow himself, George Sutherland readied his up-time shotgun, tracking back along the route of Tom’s retreat. Troop sounds-a platoon or more moving quickly-were growing loud enough to rival the cataract back there.

  Harry shook his head. “Not yet.”

  Lieutenant Hastings saw that the approaching figure was the large up-timer, Tom Simpson. He was limping and staggering, now, probably both wounded and exhausted. And behind him, only twenty yards or so, the first of the Spanish were visible. And one, in the lead, was stopping, raising his arms…

  …drawing a bead?

  Lieutenant Hastings brought up his Winchester and yelled, “Get down, Simpson. Squad, fire at will!”

  Tom heard the British accent, almost sobbed in relief, and dove forward with the same gusto and abandon that had propelled him into Ohio State’s end zone when it had been fourth quarter, two minutes left on the clock, and fourth-down-and-goal-to-go from the three-yard line.

  Corporal Torres felt the men on either side of him go down, and discharged his musket in the direction of the small and ominously rapid muzzle flashes. Up-time weapons or copies-no doubt about it. But the range was close, and he had fifty men. And since one of their quarry was obviously a Moor, it seemed only right to cry, “Santiago and at them!” Dropping his spent firearm, Torres sprinted forward. Drawing his sword, he swept it back in readiness…

  “Now,” said Harry calmly.

  Five yards beyond the upslope trees that lined the cart-track, the nine members of the Wrecking Crew unleashed a near-uniform volley from their trademark pump shotguns. With the center of the ragged enemy column now directly abreast of the Crew, the carnage was startling. More than a dozen Spaniards sprawled, theirblood black in the early moonlight.

  The lethal, hollow-tube sound of the shotguns’ cycling actions-the dull ker-throonk of rounds being fed back and up from under-barrel magazines-offered a faint counterpoint chorus before they roared again. Other sounds of twentieth-century slaughter added to the waves of sound, echoing off the rocks of the Val Bregaglia several more times before giving way to absolute silence.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Well, I guess that was just about a perfect L-ambush. And improvised on the spot, no less.” Harry Lefferts seemed very pleased with himself as he and Sherrilyn emerged from the woods and strolled into the small clearing that had been the dirigible’s original extraction zone.

  The airship was now resting on the ground; every thirty seconds, Franchetti goosed the burner, sending a long blast of heated air up into the envelope. He turned to Miro and North. “We go soon, si? I waste fuel to keep the dirigible in readiness.”

  Harry looked at the casks of fuel stored at the midsection and ends of the gondola. “I thought you brought extra juice.”

  “ Si, but ‘extra’ is not ‘endless.’ And flying back could be difficult. We may have to land and take off again-at Bivio, I think. And that will make returning to Chur a very close thing.”

  “Land again? Before Chur?” Sherrilyn asked, reloading her shotgun. “Why?”

  Franchetti shrugged, with a dubious look in Miro’s direction. “I am not sure I want to try to go all the way back through the Sur Valley in the dark. It was bad enough in the day.”

  Cardinal Ginetti got more pale, if that was possible.

  Miro nodded and stepped down from the gondola as the Crew hauled out their packs. “I agree with Franchetti: you cannot fly that route at night. The air-currents around the Lai di Marmorera and the Sur are too unpredictable, and you would have to fly to twelve thousand feet to be safely above them. It is too risky. Better to stop at Bivio, at the south entrance to the valley. This part of our mission is to ensure that Captain Simpson’s group returns safely to the USE. Having them killed during a daredevil return flight would rather defeat the whole purpose, no?”

  Lefferts nodded, smiling. “Well, at least I don’t have to take the slow ride back like Ms. Mailey here.” Melissa Mailey was limping out of the wood line, supported on either side by members of North’s detachment.

  The former school teacher responded archly. “A nice, slow ride will suit me just fine, Harry.”

  Lefferts shrugged, caught the Crews’ collective eyes, and tilted his head back in the direction of the cart-track.

  As he took his first step in that direction, North asked, “Here now; where do you think you’re going?”

  Lefferts stopped. “Uh…there’s a lot of handy gear back there. Word is, its owners don’t have any further use for it, so-”

  North shook his head. “Not this time.”

  “Colonel North, last I checked, you were not acting commander of this operation. He is.” Harry pitched his chin in Miro’s direction. “And I don’t hear him making any noise-”

  “Harry Lefferts, you will not loot the dead.” Somehow, Melissa Mailey raised herself up to an imperious height, despite being propped up by North’s men. “Let’s ignore the odious habits of your trade for a moment. Removing gear from that many bodies will take time that we do not have. I doubt this sleepy valley is accustomed to ferocious nighttime firefights, so I’m going to propose the outrageous deduction that news of it will spread quickly. Back to Chiavenna and the Spanish. Who will come here swiftly. So, if we are to leave a false trail that encourages our enemies to conclude that, despite the local reports, this was a relatively mundane ambush-one conducted without the aid of an airship, for instance-then there’s no time for looting. Furthermore, those persons who are remaining behind to travel overland to Italy must start on their way immediately. That includes you, if I am not mistaken.”

  Harry smiled respectfully at his old history teacher’s remonstrations. When she was done, he shook his head and sighed. “This is twice, now, I’ve had to rescue you Ms. Mailey. And you always spoil the fun. C’mon folks”-he gestured to the Crew-“we need to police our own brass, at least.” He and the rest of the Crew left at a trot.

  North looked after them, then turned toward Miro. “I do not believe we’ve met, sir. Colonel Thomas North, Hibernian Mercenary Battalion. I believe it’s time to put our respective halves of the operational coin together. What are your further objectives?”

  Miro nodded and explained. “Well, as you heard, the dirigible will retrace its path back east to Vicosoprano, then a short hop north over Cassacia. From there, a rising buttonhook westward will put the blimp into the Val Maroz, then north over the Septimer pass and to a landing on the outskirts of Bivio.”

  “Will they need to take on extra fuel, there?”

  “I suspect so. Besides, Franchetti will not want to fly again before dawn. And I doubt there’s enough fuel on board for him to reinflate the balloon and make it the rest of the way to Chur.”

  “So tomorrow morning he’ll have to toddle down into Bivio and try to find-What do you burn in that thing, anyway? Spirits? Oils?”

  “Yes, and it uses a lot, very quickly. Luckily, they won’t need very much to get from Bivio to Chur. But then again, there probably won’t be much fuel to be had in a remote alpine lake town in May.”

  “I suppose not. Sounds like they’ll be lucky to get airborne again after a one day delay.”

  “I’m guessing two. But from Bivio, it’s not even two hours to Chur, more fuel and the route home.”

  “Which is-?”

  “Chur to Biberach, then Nuremburg, then Jena. Probably two or three days between each connection.”

  “The delay at each point is to be spent getting more fuel?”

  “No, we prepositioned enough. But weather and other factors could easily delay the airship that much. Besides, I find that overestimating obstacles is generally a better operational model than underestimating them.”

  “Agreed. And for those of us who remain behind?”

  Miro brought out a map, an exact copy of an up-time document, right down to its “Baedecker” logos. “We are here.” He pointed just east of a tiny dot labeled Piuro. “We will head back toward Chiavenna-”

  North’s eyes widened. “I beg your pardon, did you say ‘back toward Chiavenna’?”

  “Yes, but I reemphasize: we are heading toward Chiavenna, not to it. Instead, we are fast-marching two miles back to the west, to this place marked as Santa Croce.”

  “Why there?”

  “Do you see the southwest line that comes down from Santa Croce?”

  “I see a southwest zigzag.”

  “Yes, well…that is a mountain trail which cuts through to Berzo, here, on the Mera, just south of Chiavenna.”

  “So we take a nice, long, and rather steep, walk in the woods to avoid delivering ourselves into the hands of the people who would like to make us the central attraction at their next auto-da-fe.”

  “No, I suspect they would reserve that for me, alone. You, they would simply execute. Maybe torture and execute. Hard to say.”

  “Yes. But why do you presume they would reserve the delights of a personal bonfire as your special reward, Mr. Miro?”

  “Because, Mr. North, I am a Jew.”

  “Ah.” The Englishman’s eyes were bright. “A so-called ‘crypto-Jew’?”

  Miro was surprised. “Yes. I was not aware that the writings of twentieth-century historians were among your reading interests.”

  “I am nothing if not eclectic. Please continue.”

  Miro decided he liked North, whose sardonic British wit was not entirely out of step with the less arch, but no less ironic, traditions of Talmudic humor. “So we emerge at Berzo, where we will immediately find honest work as the honest security escort of an honest merchant caravan, that just happens to be heading south. And which just happens to be waiting for us in Berzo.”

  “And how do we come by all these fortuitous-and honest-opportunities?”

  “By having one of Europe’s most widespread mercantile facilitation families as our trusted partners. More specifically, Cavriani agents are in charge of the caravan waiting in Berzo.”

  “I see. And then?”

  “We travel south along the banks of the Mera until we come to the ferry wharf at the northern edge of the Lago di Mezzola.”

  “I take it that there, although in the very belly of Milanese control and watchfulness, we will serendipitously discover and book passage aboard an honest barge captained by an honest ferryman.”

  “Your powers of foresight rival those of the Old Testaments prophets, Colonel North. Once on Lago di Mezzola, there is little chance that we will even come into contact with any Milanese patrols. The north-south traffic along the lakes there-from Mezzola to Como to Lecco to Garlate-is too valuable for the Milanese to close against all Lombard and Venetian access. So we shall make our way down those interconnected waterways until we disembark at the southern tip of Garlate. There is an ‘open-town’ custom there, much as has been enforced in Chiavenna since the Spanish and French renounced their squabbles over the Valtelline. From that town, it is a short ride across the border into Venetian Lombardy.”

  “How many of us are in the party?”

  Miro had to double-check the numbers. “You, me, twelve of your men, the nine members of the Wrecking Crew, and our chaplain.”

  “Our chaplain?”

  “Yes,” said a new voice. “That would be me.”

  Melissa Mailey looked up sharply at the sound of that voice, which came from the last, cloaked passenger who was descending from the airship. “Larry?”

  Father-now Cardinal-Lawrence Mazzare let the hood of the habit fall back. His smile was thin. “Guilty as charged.”

  James Nichols, who was helping Tom Simpson gimp toward the airship, almost dropped the wounded ex-halfback. “Good God, Larry, how did you get Stearns to go along with this?”

  Mazzare shouldered his own modest pack. “I don’t believe in starting arguments I can’t win.”

  James’ realization was almost a whisper. “You didn’t tell him.”

  Melissa’s jaw dropped, a thing very few of them had ever seen. “Sweet balls,” she swore earnestly. “And he will sure as hell have yours, Larry.”

  Miro got the impression that His Eminence Mazzare’s momentary silence was due to the pious suppression of a swarm of scrotal puns and testicular one-liners. “He’s welcome to them if I can accomplish what I came for.”

  “Which is?”

  He turned a patient glance on Melissa. “Do you even need to ask? And I’ll remind you that not all of the people gathered here have equal measures of information. Most of the security troops don’t even know where we’re going next. And they certainly have no idea who you were protecting in Padua. Wherever possible, Mike and Sharon Nichols have kept people in the dark on that.”

  “In which benighted group the good father must regrettably include me,” put in North with a tone that was the very model of drollery.

  “And it is best to keep it that way for now. What, precisely, have you been told, Colonel North?”

  “When President Piazza contacted us, we were already seeing to-erm-‘security matters’ just south of Nuremburg. He retained us immediately and ordered us to deploy with all haste to Chur, as an escort for a shipment of high quality fuels. Which, unless I miss my retroactive conjecture, were for the airship, here. We were then ordered to move down into the Val Engadine via the Julier pass. We received updates for this extraction mission by radio, on the way. As to what comes next? We were simply told to be ‘flexible,’ but also to anticipate further field operations without refit or resupply. Which it sounds like we’re about to do.”