Her Majesty's Western Service (28 page)

Is he going to kill me?
was Ferrer’s thought. His role was almost done, wasn’t it, and it would save the Russians the price of a nice farm if Marko simply cut his throat. Perhaps he knew too much anyway. Fear slipped through him.

“They’re coming,” said Marko. “Get the speelies ready.”

Ferrer got to his feet, pulled his boots on. They’d been waiting all night – did Marko
ever
sleep? – but now a small dirigible was coming into sight; a sleek, streamlined vessel that couldn’t have been more than a hundred yards long, flying very low up the narrow canyon. Just the shape of it; no headlights, no running lights, navigating by moonlight. Double fins; maneuverable as well as sleek.

It slowed as it approach
ed the small campsite, and for a moment a blazing searchlight stabbed out from the bridge, covering the three men. Rienzi moved his hand across his pistol menacingly, feeling threatened, and Marko backslapped him hard across the face.

A rope dropped, and three men rappelled the fifteen or so feet down to the ground. They approached the campsite, one of them carrying a briefcase. They wore civilian clothing
, but Ferrer could tell from their bearings that at least two of them were military.

“Mr. Skorzeny,” said
Marko to one of the military types. “I’ve heard about you.”

“I’ve heard about you, too, Marko,” said that man in a Germanic accent. He was sixtyish, with a prominent scar dividing the right side of his face. “Do you have the tactical information?”

“We have it. Maps and scopes. And a little bonus.”

“Hugoton,” mused
the other man with a military bearing. Lean and rangy, and his accent was clear Texas. “Skorzeny’s coming back to Houston with me.” A head-gesture at the third man, who held the briefcase. “The Third Department could use copies as well. Just for general reference.”

The Third Department. Ferrer had heard whispers of those guys; an intelligence service that rivaled the Okhrana, reporting directly to Count Leon and the Tsar. Smaller tha
n the Okhrana, but feared more.

“The Third Department,” said Marko. Thinking. Musing. He smiled. “Very good. Tell the Count well played.”

“I’ll tell him directly,” said the agent. “He’s in Houston for the final negotiations. He sends his regards, by the way.”

Marko turned to Ferrer. “The recordings.”

“Yessir.” Ferrer stepped forward with the case.

The man from the Third Department stepped forward, and they exchanged briefcases. Skorzeny and the Te
xan watched coldly. The case Ferrer took was smaller and much lighter than the one containing the kinematograph tapes of the Hugoton reconnaissance.

“Your orders are in there,” the Third Department man told Marko. “
As well as more money, should you need it.”

“You should know that I have an Imperial line-class,” said Marko. “
The Denny-Neuvoldt type. Crewed by a bunch of trash, and the Imperials know it’s in unfriendly hands. The specifications as I’ve been able to gather are in there, too.”

“Specifications for the Denny-Neuvoldt. I don’t think we have those,” said the man from the Third Department.

“We heard about your little overflight,” said the Texan. “Killed a couple of them, didn’t you?”

Hugoton bordered Texas, and there was a
respectably-sized Texan garrison in Fort Guymon, on the Texan border just to the south of the Lease.

“Only a couple,” said Marko. “Plenty of fun left for you guys.”

“Plenty of fun for you to have, too,” said the Third Department man. “See the new orders. We’re scheduled to move into final execution two weeks from now. You’re going to be busy.”

Behind them, the dark, streamlined scout-class lowered. The Texan, the man from the Third Department and the
Germanic named Skorzeny turned their backs and headed back to the gondola, from which a staircase had dropped.

There was excited fire in Marko’s eyes, and a new
vibrancy to his movement, when he turned to look at Ferrer.

“The Third Department,” he said. A wicked smile on his face. “It was the Third Department. You know, I
really
didn’t think the Count was that ruthless.”

“What do you mean?” Ferrer asked.

Marko’s eyes glinted in a way that Ferrer had found exciting before, but that was before the killing, before he’d personally seen Marko cut the throats of fifty sleeping men with the enthusiasm of a young child. Now a shiver of fear went down him.

“Oh, you probably don’t want to know. Not if you want to retire and enjoy your
ten thousand pounds. But there are some clever men afoot here, engineer.”

“And some more killing yet to be done, I hope,” said Rienzi. “Only got to notch it three times so far this operation.”

Punk
, thought Ferrer. A third-rate engineer and a bloodthirsty goddamned punk to boot. Marko was fear and respect, but Rienzi was nothing but disdain and contempt. How the kid had ever gotten into MIT to begin with...

“Oh, there’ll be a lot more killing before we’re all done.” Marko’s broken-toothed mouth spread in a wide, wide smile. “We’ll see what the orders say next, but I can assure you they’ll involve a lot more killing. Now, shall we get back to that beautiful ship we’ve borrowed?”

Chapter Eleven

Name: Special Squadrons

Founder: Heinrich Himmler, 1933

Type: Armor/mechanized

Present station: Western Missouri (since 1959)

Strength: 14,000, including 230 tanks and approximately 600 other combat vehicles. Quasi-independent logistically.

Notable accomplishments: S
uccessful suppression of Raleigh-Wake Forest area in 1944 secessionist insurgency. Continuous operations suppressing insurgencies in Missouri since 1949.

Overview: The Special Squadrons, an almost entirely Germanic unit, is one of the larger mercenary units on longstanding contract in the Southern States. They have a record of zealous accomplishment; some, including more liberal New England and Midwestern Congressmen, have in fact accused them of being overzealous.

It has been the consistent position of successive Administrations, however, that there is no such thing as over-zealous when it comes to retaining our hard-won victory in the Civil War, and the Squadrons are considered a valued addition to our strength there.

From the
Federal Registry of Foreign Auxiliaries
, Washington DC, 1962.

In the first half-hour of the morning, clear l
ight and a chill, the train rumbled slowly into a railyard that Ahle identified as St. Louis.

“You know the place on sight?” Perry asked.

“Hardly the first time I’ve been on a train. But I don’t know the city. We’re going to have to ask directions to your place. Come on, and be careful. Rolling stock can kill you without noticing.”

The train hadn’t stopped moving – maybe it wasn’t going to, just slowing down – when
Ahle bailed out, landing on her feet between two sets of tracks. Perry was an experienced airshipman and therefore agile, but he stumbled a bit on the hard rocks.

“This way. When we get there, keep your mouth shut and be polite. We need these people.”

“What people?”

“Just come on.”

Ahle led Perry across one set of tracks then another, until their way was blocked by a stationary train, a long line of oilers that might or might not have come out of Hugoton. She paused for a moment and then climbed over the back of one, Perry following. That led to a couple more lines of tracks. Perry froze as they saw a yard worker signaling with a pair of flags to someone further up the line, but the yard worker – who clearly saw them – didn’t appear to give a damn. Around another line of flatcars, and over to a chain-link fence. On the other side was scrubby light forest.

“Always a hole i
n these things somewhere,” Ahle explained, turning right along the fence. “It’ll lead to a jungle.”

“Why’d that guy ignore us?”

“Line workers are just grunts. Don’t care either way about the hobos.”

Indiscipline, thought Perry. No wonder that man was still a grunt at the bottom of the food chain.
But he was a part of this world now, at least temporarily.

Get 4-106 back. Redeem myself.
Everything else had to be secondary to that. Including trusting this damn pirate.

Still. She was
behaving herself, and Perry had to figure she had her own code of ethics. The Code might have been PR-driven malarkey or a power play on the part of the legendary, apparently-invulnerable Joseph Kennedy, but it
was
also a code of ethics of sorts, that he supposed some people might adhere to. She had reason to be trusted; from her perspective, she was avenging the death of her crew and saving her officers. He’d have done the same.

Except that I work for the law.
I live by the law.

Yeah, which made present circumstances all the more difficult. He’d told the Service that he was prepared to give his life, but his
honor
? If he failed, if he lost, he’d be remembered not as a man doing his duty, manipulated by a bastard spymaster into risking it all, but as a fugitive and a traitor. Annabelle would know the truth, but who else would? What would his parents, retired in Bournemouth, think? What would his friends from the Academy think? The officers and warrants of the squadron he hoped would still somehow be his when he returned?

About a hundred and fifty yards down the line – they passed another disgracefully negligent yard worker, who saw them and kept going with his flags as though he hadn’t –
Ahle found her hole in the fence. On the other side was a loose trail that might have been made by deer; she headed down confidently.

Perry wanted to
draw his pistol, but restrained himself.

A very short walk later, they came to a clearing where several men slept around the remains of a bonfire. Various trash and debris were strewn around,
and a lean man dressed in black sat on a log absently strumming a guitar. He looked up as Perry and Ahle appeared.

“Well, well, well,” he said.

“If it isn’t the money man,” said Ahle.

Money man?, thought Perry. The thirtyish guy didn’t look like he had a nickel to call his own.

“Cap’n Ahle,
ma’am
. How you doin’, boss?”

“Doin’ just fine, Johnny. How you been?”

“Well,” said Johnny, “I ain’t been back to Folsom. That’s saying enough, ain’t it?”

“Good enough for me, Johnny.
The black man here’s Mark Perry, late an officer of the Air Service.”

Johnny gave Perry another look. Strummed a couple chords on his guitar.

“Running with Imperials now, cap’n?”

“Sprung me out of Hugoton. We’re hoping – you been around St. Louis, haven’t you?”

“I been here. I been there. When you get right down to it, I been everywhere.”

“Hoping you might direct us to a place. Maybe we can buy you a drink when we get there.”

The ‘money man’ got to his feet, swung the guitar on its strap around to his back.

“Always up for a drink, cap’n
Ahle. Where’s it you’re looking to buy me one?”

“Green Gables. You know the place?”

“Downtown. Near the Arrow, hike from here. You’ll owe me two drinks.”

“We can do five if you want,” said
Ahle.

“Five might be about reasonable,” said
Johnny. “I hear what happened to your last crew. Like to know, if you wouldn’t mind explaining, although that man next to you says a bit, maybe.”

“They were killed by a son of a bitch we’re going to track down an
d execute,” said Ahle flatly.

“Hold on,” said Johnny. He bent down, shook one of the sleeping men until he came to a wakeful grunt. Johnny said something to him that
Perry couldn’t quite make out.

“Telling him I’ll be back in three hours,” said Johnny. “And if I ain’t, he’ll know who to look for. So’ll the others. No offence, cap’n, but I hear what happened to your last crew.”

“I
know
what happened to my last crew. The bastard’s going to pay.”

“He bette
r. But Bobby here’s just to make sure. Cap, you were a good boss, but those rumors they swirl, hear me?”

“I hear you,” said
Ahle. “Just take us to the damn Green Gables, will you?”

A walk. Through industrial streets, then a nicer neighborhood, then into downtown, where the giant silvery St. Louis Arrow
– a four-hundred-foot-high tourist attraction pointing west – was visible between lines of skyscrapers. It was early in the morning, but the first clerks and data-punchers were making their way in, men and women in bowler hats and trilbies, some with fashionably fake airshippers’ goggles around their foreheads.