On Her Majesty's Behalf (3 page)

 

Chapter Four

S
ILENCE.

Darkness.

There was even a sense of peace as Burke sank down through the cold, dark waters.

For just a moment he was tempted to let it all go, to let the water take him down, down deep, away from the mud and the muck and the sheer terror of the battlefield, sinking deeper toward the ocean floor so far below, sinking, sinking . . .

That was when a hand grabbed his ankle.

The sudden, unexpected feeling of that viselike grip wrapping around his flesh shocked him out of his torpor, banishing his lethargy as he suddenly found his will to live and began fighting for the surface. He couldn't see anything in the dark water but knew instinctively that a grip that strong didn't belong to anything living. The realization flooded his system with adrenaline, and he kicked wildly with both legs, trying to free himself from the shredder's grip as they sank deeper with every passing second.

He imagined the shredder staring up at him hungrily from below, its eyes piercing the darkness without difficulty, its mouth opening in a silent scream of hunger . . .

Burke nearly screamed himself at the thought.

With air already starting to dribble out between clenched lips, he knew he didn't have time to fool with this thing. If he waited too long, he wouldn't have enough air to get back to the surface and then it all would have been for naught. He kicked and thrashed but still it did no good.

The shredder held on, dragging him deeper.

Since it didn't need to breathe, the water wasn't affecting it much. Burke hated to think of what it would do to him if they reached the bottom before he could get free.

He had to do something quickly . . .

I take it back; I don't want to drown!

The weight of his mechanical arm, now filled with seawater, gave him an idea.

He jackknifed his body forward, bending at the waist and reaching downward with both hands until he could grab his own leg. He felt around with his good hand until he came in contact with the shredder's hand on his ankle, then guided the mechanical one downward along the shredder's fingers until he came to its wrist.

His chest was burning with the need to take a breath, but he fought it off as he wrapped his mechanical fingers around the shredder's wrist and squeezed as hard as he was able.

Bones snapped like brittle twigs and suddenly the grip on his ankle was free as the creature's fingers stopped working.

Burke felt it flailing at him with its other arm, trying to grab hold of something new, but he didn't hang around to give it the chance. He kicked frantically for the surface, reaching upward with long strokes of his arms, his chest screaming for air, his mind fighting a war with his body to hold on a few seconds longer as his vision began to tunnel and the black haze at the edges began to close in from all sides even as he surged upward . . .

He broke the surface of the water with a shocking gasp and saw that he was not twenty feet from the gunwale of the trawler.

“Here! He's over here!” he heard a voice cry as he sucked in great lungfuls of life-­giving air and shook his head to clear the fuzziness. Something splashed into the water in front of him and he reached for it instinctively, discovering only once he had it in hand that it was a rope.

“Hold on,” the voice shouted and this time he recognized it as Montagna's.

For once, Burke did as he was told and in a matter of moments he found himself bumping up against the wooden hull of the fishing trawler. Hands reached down to pull him up and he dropped down over the side and into the boat, wet and bedraggled but alive.

The British soldier . . .

The fuzzy form bending over him solidified into that of the private who had just dragged him out of the drink and Burke knew he startled the younger man by grabbing him and gasping out, “The Tommy! Where's the Tommy?”

“Take it easy, Major,” Montagna said, grabbing Burke's shoulders as he struggled to get up. “We fished the Tommy out of the drink a few minutes before you popped up like a cork from a bottle. Cohen's doing what he can.”

Doing what he can?

That didn't sound encouraging to Burke, and when he looked in the direction Montagna was pointing, he understood why.

The Tommy was lying flat on his back on the deck, unmoving. Private Cohen knelt beside him, pumping up and down on the other man's chest with both hands. With each compression a thin stream of water bubbled out of the man's mouth and onto the deck. Burke had seen men revived with the same process so for a moment he was hopeful that it would turn out all right, but after a long moment where the Tommy failed to respond, he began to have his doubts.

Then Cohen did a strange thing.

He bent over the wounded man and kissed him!

Burke's jaw dropped open and he stared at the two soldiers in shock. The young American's lips were pressed completely over the drowned man's, his fingers were pinching the other man's nostrils shut, and he seemed to be blowing deep into his throat.

If that's a kiss, it's the strangest one I've ever seen . . .

Burke was about to say something—­he wasn't sure what, maybe order the younger man away perhaps—­when the Tommy suddenly coughed up a lungful of seawater right into Cohen's face and began thrashing his arms about in a panic, no doubt thinking he was still in danger of drowning.

Cohen looked up and caught Burke's stare. “A hand here, please, Major,” he asked calmly, as he struggled to hold the other man down.

Burke scrambled to his side and grabbed hold of the British soldier's arms, keeping them from flailing wildly about, while Cohen gently turned the man's head to one side. He was just in time, too; the Tommy suddenly convulsed and vomited up a puddle of seawater.

“Easy now,” Cohen said to the man, in a surprisingly gentle voice. “Easy. You're safe now; we left the shredders behind.”

The Tommy looked wildly about, his face drawn with tension, but that began to ease up a bit as he took in the scene around him and seemed to recognize them as fellow soldiers. His gaze focused on Burke and he tried to say something, but all that came out was a low mumble.

Frowning, Burke leaned closer.

“What was that?”

Another mumble.

The man's head drooped down against his chest, the demands the day's events had placed on his body having finally surpassed his limits.

Yet whatever it was that the soldier was trying to say must have been important, for he visibly fought back against the encroaching darkness, grabbed the front of Burke's uniform blouse with one hand, and dragged him closer.

With his ear half an inch away from the man's lips, Burke finally heard what the other man had been trying to say.

“I have a message from the King.”

Startled, Burke pulled back far enough to look the other man in the eye. The Tommy nodded at him, as if to assure him that what he'd just said was true, and then the last of his strength deserted him and he slipped away into unconsciousness.

 

Chapter Five

Calais Harbor

France

A
N HOUR LATER
Burke stood in the bow of the trawler as it made its way into the harbor at Calais and did his best to ignore the anxious looks that he was getting from the crews of the other boats as they passed by. He knew it wasn't his presence that was making the other men nervous, but rather the shredder wrapped in chains and thrashing about while hanging off the transom at the back of the boat. As shouts passed from boat to boat like the flames of a wildfire amid the dry tinder of an Arizona forest, Burke began to realize that he might have a problem on his hands.

After the Tommy had lapsed into unconsciousness, Burke had ordered Cohen and Montagna to make the man as comfortable as possible while he stepped into the wheelhouse to have a few words with the captain. His anger at being left behind as shredder bait must have come through loud and clear, for Burke found the man to be far less boisterous and demanding than he'd been on the journey out earlier that morning. A few quick questions revealed that there wasn't a convenient room or even an empty storage tank in which to lock away their prized captive, so Burke decided to hang the shredder upside down off the transom at the back of the boat for the journey across the Channel to the mainland. He figured it was the safest option available; if they needed to cut it loose for any reason, it would sink to the bottom of the Channel under the weight of its chains and that would be that.

What he hadn't counted on was how inflammatory the sight of the shredder might be to those stationed in Calais.

Word spread quickly, and a crowd of soldiers and dockworkers had gathered on the wharf by the time the captain began his docking approach. Burke eyed the crowd for a moment, not liking the looks of them, and then turned to his two subordinates waiting on the deck behind him.

“I don't care who they are; no one gets close to that shredder without my express permission, understood?”

The two men nodded.

“Good. Let's hope they aren't that eager to cause trouble for us, but just in case, if I raise my left hand, I want you both to put a bullet into the dock in front of where I'm standing.”

“Sir?” Cohen asked.

“You heard me, Private. If I give the signal, fire at the dock a few feet in front of the crowd. Can you do that?”

“Sir, yes sir!”

“All right then.” Burke gave them a long look, decided they'd stand up if and when the time came, and then turned back to face the crowd.

With a shock he saw that they had nearly doubled in number in just those few short moments and his stomach did a slow roll at the sight.

Where the hell was Graves?

Burke looked out over the heads of the crowd, but he didn't see any sign of the professor or the truck he was supposed to be arriving in. Without that truck, and the specially prepared cage it carried, he was going to have to find some other way to transport the shredder back to Graves's lab at MID headquarters. That, of course, would take time, and time was something they didn't seem to have a lot of at the moment. The longer the shredder was in view, the more agitated this crowd would get, he knew.

All it would take was one overzealous idiot . . .

He pushed the thought out of mind and put on his game face, determined not to let all their hard work up to this point go for nothing. As the captain brought the boat up against the dock, Burke drew his sidearm and jumped out of the boat to stand about fifteen feet in front of the crowd.

When in doubt, go on the offensive,
he thought to himself.

“I want this dock cleared and I want it cleared now!” he shouted at the mob, making no effort to hide either his mechanical arm or the Colt automatic that he held in his good hand. “If you're still here thirty seconds from now, I'll have your asses hauled down to the brig where you can spend the next week digging latrines and contemplating what it means to disobey a direct order!”

An undercurrent of angry murmurs ran through the crowd at his statement, but except for a few stragglers out along the edges, no one moved.

If your first bluff fails, bluff again, but make it bigger and bolder this time around,
Burke told himself.

He searched the row of men directly in front of him for a second, settling his gaze on a large, hulking man with master sergeant stripes on his sleeve who appeared to be leading one of the larger groups. Burke stepped up and got right into the man's face.

“Do you know who I am?” he demanded.

Caught off-­guard by the combination of Burke's command voice and being called out in front of all the others, the master sergeant responded just the way Burke had hoped. The man's bald head nodded vigorously. “You're Madman B . . . ah, Major Burke, sir.”

Normally Burke would have objected to the ridiculous nickname he'd been tagged with after the battle of Cambrai, but in this case it worked to his advantage. Madman Burke had a reputation for taking on overwhelming odds with the single-­minded determination of a rabid bulldog and right now that reputation might be the very thing that got him and his men out of this mess.

“That's right, Master Sergeant. Major
Madman
Burke,” he replied, emphasizing his nickname so the others around them would hear it, betting that it would spread through the crowd in seconds and figuring that he might as well put his notoriety to good use. He could see that those in the front row had stopped paying attention to the shredder and were now watching his interaction with the man, which was exactly what he wanted.

“I don't know what this bunch of rabble is doing away from their posts, but they're interfering with an authorized military intelligence mission and I'm ordering you and all the rest of them to get the hell out of my way. Do I make myself clear?”

Years of habit of accepting the commands of senior officers had the master sergeant practically snapping to attention by the time Burke had finished speaking. “Yes, sir!” he replied before turning to face the crowd.

“You heard the major!” he yelled. “Show's over! Back to your posts or he'll have you up on charges faster than you can blink!”

Burke began backing away from the assembled mob, and for a moment he thought it was going to be all right. He'd apparently chosen the right man; the master sergeant was a known entity to these men, and many of them were listening to him. They were grumbling and clearly unhappy, but at least they were moving away from the boat and that was precisely what Burke had been hoping for. A few minutes to unload the shredder and secure it for transport to MID headquarters and they'd be on their way.

But then some jackass in the back of the crowd shouted, “I don't care if he's in charge of the entire war effort! If that thing gets loose, we're all dead. I say we kill it now and be done with it!”

There was a moment of silence as the crowd teetered on the edge, trying to decide what to do, and then an answering shout rose up from somewhere to Burke's left—­“I'm not waiting around for that thing to get loose and bite me! Kill it now while we still can, I say!”—­and Burke lost them completely.

The crowd surged forward, more than a handful of them shouting, “Kill the shredder!” as they came.

Burke stood his ground and calmly raised his left hand in the air.

The bullets thudded into the dock a few feet in front of the surging crowd a half second before the sound of the shots echoed over their heads.

The crowd came to a stop as suddenly as if they'd run into an invisible wall. Silence fell in the wake of the gunshots, thick and heavy.

Satisfied that he had their attention, Burke calmly raised his sidearm and pointed it at the crowd in front of him.

“I'll shoot the next man who takes another step,” he said.

He was bluffing, but they didn't know that. At least not yet. All it would take was a single step for the truth to be revealed, though. Burke was hoping they wouldn't risk life and limb just to take out a single captive shredder.

The two groups stared at each other, waiting to see who would blink first.

Into the silence a truck horn began blaring from behind them. Glancing over the master sergeant's shoulder, Burke could see a four-­ton lorry driving slowly down the dock in his direction, the crowd parting reluctantly before it. The driver kept leaning on the horn, the grating sound clearing the way before him almost as effectively as the bulk of the vehicle itself.

As the crowd pulled back, Burke got his first look into the cab and breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of the thin, hawk-­faced man behind the wheel.

Once one of Nicola Tesla's most-­skilled protégés, Professor Dan Graves was now MID's resident scientific genius and in-­house expert on all things supernatural. He was also a tried-­and-­tested member of Burke's Marauders, having accompanied the team on their recent mission behind enemy lines to rescue the president's illegitimate son, Julius “Jack” Freeman.

Burke would be the first to admit that he hadn't liked Graves all that much when he'd first met him; the man's obsession with the undead was creepy as hell. But Burke had grown to not only like the man but trust him with his life, and he'd had to do just that during their hair-­raising escape less than two weeks ago from the secret base outside Verdun of Germany's top ace, Baron Manfred von Richthofen.

Given it was because of Graves that he was here at all, Burke was very happy to see him.

A younger man with gold-­rimmed spectacles sat in the passenger seat beside Graves, a leather medical bag clutched tightly against his chest. Burke stared at him for a moment but was pretty sure he didn't know the man.

Graves brought the truck up parallel with the boat and parked. He sat in the cab for a moment, staring in what appeared to be fascination at the chain-­wrapped shredder twisting from its hook at the rear of the boat, then he shook himself and said something over his shoulder to someone in the cargo area, out of Burke's view. Seconds later the canvas flaps at the back of the truck were thrown back and a squad of military police poured out over the sides, forming up around the vehicle, weapons at the ready.

Reinforcements had arrived.

The lieutenant in charge of the MP squad stepped forward and raised his voice over the angry talk of the crowd.

“All right, show's over. Back off and get back to work or you'll be spending the night in the brig. Don't make me tell you twice!”

There were a few shouts from the crowd that questioned the legitimacy of the lieutenant's parentage and a whole lot of grumbling to go along with them, but faced with the implacable stare of the lieutenant and the increased firepower his men added to the equation, the crowd finally began to break up and turn away.

Once the dock was secured, Graves stepped out of the truck and hurried along the edge of the dock to stand opposite the shredder, his gaze locked firmly upon it.

“So it worked?” he called over his shoulder at Burke, who was watching him with a mixture of amusement and revulsion.
How the man could be so enrapt by such creatures . . .

“More or less,” Burke replied. “I've got a list of suggestions that I think might help make it a bit more useful in the field.”

Graves nodded, but Burke could tell he wasn't really listening, his attention completely captured by the undead creature hanging off the end of the transom.

Knowing they could talk it all over later in the debriefing, Burke turned back to find the newcomer standing in front of the truck, watching them both. When the man realized that Burke was watching him, he stepped forward and saluted.

“Private Bankowski reporting for duty, sir.”

The newcomer was in his midtwenties, with blond hair and blue eyes that hinted at either German or Polish ancestry. Burke eyed the leather bag the man carried. “You a doctor, Bankowski?”

“Medic, sir. I was a doctor's assistant before the war.”

“Good enough. I've got an exhausted and potentially injured man inside the wheelhouse. I'm turning him over to your care for the time being. If he wakes up, I want you to notify me right away, clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

Burke gave him a hand up onto the boat and then turned his attention to the job before him, namely, getting the shredder unloaded and on its way to Graves's lab for further study.

Along with the squad of MPs, the truck also contained a large iron cage, similar to those used by zookeepers to transport dangerous animals. Burke had once seen a lion being taken by train from New York to Los Angeles and it had made the journey in just such a device. The bars were round and very thick, the cage itself large enough for Burke to have lain down in.

Unlike most cages, however, this one opened from the top, rather than from one of the four sides. Burke puzzled about it for a moment, until he realized that having it open in such a fashion would make it much easier to unload the shredder from the fishing trawler; all they would have to do is swivel the boom out over the cage and then use the winch to lower the creature inside.