Conflagration (50 page)

Lime reluctantly started to pull on the overall. “What about shoes?”

“We’ll find you some shoes.”

She shook her head as she buttoned the buttons. “You really won’t get away with this. Her Grand Eminence is miles ahead of you.”

“I’d shut up if I were you, Harriet. The only thing that’s stopping me doing my worst to you is that everyone is so busy mobilizing to stop this thing at the pyramid, and Her Grand Eminence’s absurd attempt to break into another reality.”

Jesamine added, “Our mobilization is all that’s saving your sorry ass.”

RAPHAEL

The sun was setting as the barges approached the point on the river, towards the eastern outskirts of the ruined city, where the vehicles were assembled with which the small force would make their journey to Amiens and the pyramid. Some of those around Raphael had slept, but the majority had spent the day in frantic preparation for the attack, and he was amazed just how much had been achieved in such little time. It made sense that Damon Falconetti could muster a crew of armed men and women in a matter of hours, but the speedy location of explosives, heavy weapons, fuel, and ammunition, even Mosul uniforms and vehicles, and some strange concoction of quick-drying cement that Old Temps Perdu had demanded, indicated that the Falconetti Family had resources that were far more extensive than Raphael had ever imagined, and Il Syndicato were much more than the “degenerates and cutthroats” he had thought them to be before he had arrived in Paris. He was also surprised and impressed at the intelligence, ingenuity, and capacity for improvisation that had been demonstrated all over the Falconetti stronghold once the bit was between the Family’s teeth. Plans were formulated, details checked, weaknesses were discovered and corrected, and the needed materials obtained. As the barge Raphael was on floated past the last major outcrop of tall ruins, armed but silent children had stared down at him, and he could not shake the eerie feeling that Paris was being left in their care while the grown-ups went to war.

He remembered how his last battle had started, and how very different it had been. At Newbury Vale, the fight had been joined in the bright light of morning, with flags and banners, wild optimism, the thunder of hooves, and artillery pounding the enemy positions with shot and shell. This assault on the Mosul was diametrically different. They would be driving secretly into the night, relying on stealth, silence, and total surprise. A hundred things, unseen and unknown, could go wrong, and, instead of optimism, the mood was one of grim determination. About the only one who was viewing the attack with any obvious relish was Old Temps Perdu, who made no attempt to hide the fact that he hardly gave a rat’s ass about the defeat of Jeakqual-Ahrach, or even saving reality and the world. He was going to Amiens for just one reason—to create the biggest bang of his long career in explosives, and this made him happier than the proverbial widow on her wedding night. The only others who seemed to grimly relish the prospect of the coming fight were the half-dozen Rangers, who seemed relieved to be back in harness, and ready to melt into the night to, as they put it, “ply their trade.”

The luxury of observation ended abruptly the moment that he stepped off the barge. The army might be very small and highly ragtag, but it was saddling up and moving out, and doing it with dour efficiency. Once Damon Falconetti had committed to the cause, he had made manpower his first priority. Only a small force could be moved out of Paris, and Falconetti had gone to every length to see that it was made up of the best soldiers and centurions from his own ranks, plus the top guns of other Parisian gangs and outlaw bands who owed him fealty, plus the best contract freelancers. The force traveled light and was quick to sort out the transports to which they had been assigned. The war party from Paris would go to Amiens in convoy. A motorcade of cars and trucks that would, everyone hoped, descend on the unsuspecting Mosul, Zhaithan, and Teutons sometime around dawn, and without the slightest warning. The Four had been divided for the journey to the pyramid. Raphael had argued against it but had eventually been overridden. The obvious difficulty was that Cordelia had to stay with Lime, since Lime would be the one to hear and tell when the White Twins were coming, even if she supplied the information under physical duress. This made Cordelia a crucial part of the unit that would kill or capture the Twins, but to have the rest of The Four with her would make them nothing more than a nonfunctional appendage. None of them particularly wanted to go into the Other Place so close to the Amiens Pyramid after Cordelia had described what had happened when she had been near it. They all hoped that the attack and the seizing of the Twins would be a strictly terrestrial operation, and it had therefore been decided that they should split up, distributing their individual talents where they were most needed, and, they hoped, also manage to maintain at least rudimentary four-way, psychic communication. If they were called on to go paranormal, they would try to move to a prearranged meeting place.

Cordelia and Jesamine, with a handcuffed Harriet Lime in tow, were to travel in the immaculate Benz, along with Sera, her driver Jacques, and Madden as an extra armed bodyguard. They would be the lead vehicle and pathfinder for the others. Sera’s Benz created such a convincing impression of Mosul brass on urgent nocturnal business, that, should they encounter a routine checkpoint, the Mosul giving the order to stop would be more nervous of higher authority than fearful of armed guerrillas. The Benz was to travel a few minutes ahead of the rest of the motorcade. If they ran into a problem on the road, the plan was elegantly simple. No showing of forged papers or any other kind of deception. They would simply kill the soldiers at the roadblock as quickly and efficiently as possible, before any alarm could be raised, and proceed on, leaving the road clear for the rest of the convoy, that would remain close together in one body, except for the truck carrying Old Temps’s explosives, and that would follow at a quite considerable distance, with one car of volunteer gunmen driving behind it to protect the rear. Raphael would be riding with the main force that would attack the Mosul camp, and free the slave laborers, either to escape and cause a huge chaotic diversion, or to move the Paris Gun, if so needed. Argo, on the other hand, was going with Old Perdu’s crew, that included Penhaligon, whose objective was to blow up the gun and wreck the pyramid.

As Raphael swung up into the liberated Mosul truck that was to carry them, and settled himself between Cartwright and Bonaparte, Jesamine’s voice spoke in his head.
“Raphael?”

The psychic linkage was being tested. He did his best to respond without being obvious to those beside him in the truck. “Jesamine?”

“Are you hearing me?”

“Without a problem.”

“Cordelia?”

“I’m in.”

“Argo?”

“Loud and clear.”

Jesamine sounded satisfied.
“We’re moving out in the Benz right now. Let’s hope it stays loud and clear.”

JESAMINE

The interior of Sera’s black Benz contained more passengers than was strictly comfortable. Jacques drove and Madden sat beside him with a shotgun across his lap. Madden still wore his Ranger uniform, although Sera had expressed some concern. “Isn’t it a little obvious?”

Madden hadn’t seemed worried. “By the time they see me, they’ll be as good as dead. And anyway, Jesamine and the others are doing the same.” He had been totally unwilling to change into anything more anonymous. “If they catch me, they’re going to hang me anyway, and I’d rather be hung as a Ranger than a spy.”

Sera, accustomed to being obeyed with little or no question by the Falconetti rank and file, seemed distinctly irked by Madden’s attitude, but Jesamine and Cordelia found it comforting. It was good to have a familiar psychopath in the car with them, as they led the drive into danger, and they were especially glad he was there when the oil lamps and red flares of the first Mosul checkpoint were spotted. Madden had turned in his seat and grinned at the two of them, crowded in the back with Sera and Lime. “You ladies should check the silencers on your pistols. We don’t want any noise right now.”

Jesamine already had the silencer screwed firmly onto the muzzle of her revolver. She steeled herself. To hesitate would be fatal. She remembered what Madden had told her earlier. “Aim and shoot, without thinking of them as men. They are targets, merely in the way.” He had also laughed and added, “But don’t worry too much about having to do any killing. Jacques and I should have it all under control.”

Jacques had started to slow the car. He glanced back. “Looks like a routine roadblock, with just three of them manning it. A couple of soldiers and an Agent from the Ministry of Virtue.”

Madden put aside his shotgun, and held his silenced revolver down beside the door. Cordelia glared at Harriet Lime, whom she seemed to have made her personal responsibility. “If you’re tempted to try something, first remember how that orange suit is a shoot-to-kill signal to every ignorant Mosul with a loaded gun.”

Lime sat very still with her cuffed hands in front of her. She said nothing, which angered Cordelia. “Do you understand what I just said?”

Lime finally nodded. “Yes, I understand.”

“And if they don’t kill you, I will.”

Jacques stopped the car a little short of the roadblock and waited. It was nothing more than an antique armored steamer pulled across the road as a barrier that any approaching vehicle would need to drive around. The two soldiers approached the car on foot, one leading, and the other a few paces behind. The one farthest from them had unslung his rifle, but the closer one had not even bothered. His eyes were screwed up against the glare of the Benz’s powerful headlights. Madden signed to Jacques that he would dispatch the two soldiers while Jacques should concentrate on the Agent by the steamer. Jacques indicated this was fine by him. In a single, easy movement, Madden was out of the car, down on the surface of the road, firing around the door. His pistol made a quiet
pifft,
and the first Mosul staggered backward as a heavy caliber slug hit him in the chest. The second one had not fully grasped that anything was wrong before the second
pifft,
and he, too, was shot. Jacques had to negotiate the Benz’s steering wheel, and was maybe a second behind Madden. Two silenced shots came in rapid succession, and the Agent from the Ministry of Virtue went down.

Madden and Jacques moved forward, checking that the fallen Mosul were in fact dead, and when satisfied that no one was shamming, they picked up each body in turn and dumped them in the weeds and long grass at the side of the road. With the bodies out of the way, they turned their attention to the steamer. Madden, for once, had no answer, and he looked to Jacques. “You know how to drive one of these things? I don’t have a clue.”

Jacques shook his head. “I can give it a try, but…”

Inside the car, Sera cursed. “Fucking men!”

She opened the passenger door and stepped from the car. “At least one of us knows what to do.”

She swung up into the driving seat of the steamer, valved off excess steam, and then heaved on the heavy gearshift, and put it in reverse. The machine lurched backward off the road, and Sera, who was wearing the leather flight suit that had previously been Lime’s, jumped clear as the wheezing bulk started to upend itself in a ditch. She walked back to the car, wiping grease from her hands. “You know, those poor bastards’ only means of communication was a couple of signal rockets in the steamer. No one will know they’re dead until someone comes to relieve them.”

As she got back in the car, she smiled at Madden, perhaps as a token apology for her earlier ill temper. “Nice work, Ranger Madden. Very clean.”

Madden winked. “Wait until we hit the Mosul for real, Miss Falconetti. You’ll see some real clean wet-work.”

ARGO

The truck in which Argo was traveling came upon the Benz, another car, and three trucks parked under the cover of a grove of trees. The pyramid loomed so large that anyone could be forgiven for thinking they were right on top of it, until Old Temps Perdu reminded them just how big the Amiens Pyramid really was. “We’re still a good half mile away, maybe more.”

He climbed down from the truck and made known the next phase of his plan to the group from the other vehicles. “While you wait for the others to catch up, I’m going ahead right now. I need to look at the gun before all hell breaks loose.” He indicated Argo. “I’ll try to keep in touch via the young major’s mumbo-jumbo, but if that doesn’t work, the truck with the explosives needs to keep its engine running, and head straight for the gun as soon as the first attack starts. It’s vital you all remember that.”

Sera Falconetti, who was de facto leader of those who had so far arrived, nodded. “No problem, Old Temps, it will be done.”

“I don’t want to be at the fucking gun and lacking the wherewithal to blow it all to hell.”

“Don’t fret, old man. I’m telling you it will be done.”

Apparently satisfied, Old Temps climbed back onto the running board of the truck and leaned in to speak to the driver. “Okay, real easy and lights off.”

In the back of the truck, Argo, the Ranger Penhaligon, and nine of Falconetti’s best arsonists and cat burglars rode in silence as they rolled quietly forward, headlights off, blind in the darkness, until Old Temps decided that they had gone as far as they safely could along the main road to the Mosul labor camp. “Take her off the road and stash her behind those bushes yonder. It won’t be no hiding place come daylight, but, come daylight, it won’t matter.”

As the driver eased the truck forward, doing as instructed. Argo, Penhaligon, and the others grabbed their kit and weapons, swung down to the road, and gathered round Old Temps. He turned immediately to Penhaligon. “You think you can take us up to the gun on foot, Ranger?”

“Easy. Just follow the ditches and hedgerows for as long as we can; then a brisk sprint at the end.”