The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3) (17 page)

‘Yes, we will.’ Erasmus surprised himself with the assurance of his answer. ‘But this isn’t the time for addressing long-term problems. We’ve got to get the word of
these momentous events out first. Once the loyalists realize they have been abandoned by their false monarch, that will change the entire situation!’ He nodded at Edward. ‘What’s
happened out east? What can you tell me that I can print? I need pictures, damn it! Who witnessed the events?’

*

The attack began an hour before dawn. Otto ven Neuhalle watched from a discreet distance as his men walked their precious M60s onto the front of the gatehouse from long range,
firing parsimonious bursts – wary of his threats to damage any man who damaged his precious guns. The defenders declined to fire randomly into the dark, although a ghastly white glare opened
its unblinking eye above the barred front gate, casting long shadows across the beaten ground before it – shadows that promised pain and death to anyone who ventured into view of the firing
slits in the walls.

‘Keep their heads down!’ he shouted at Shutz and his men. ‘But watch for our own!’

They didn’t have many minutes to wait. Creaking and squealing with an ominous rumble, two large wagons rolled round the shoulder of the hill, following the road that led to the gate. The
bullocks that pulled them didn’t sound too happy, roaring and lowing beneath their heavy burden. Otto bared his teeth as he heard the voice of their driver and the crack of his whip.

‘This should be fun,’ a familiar voice commented from behind him.

Otto shivered as a chilly sweat broke out across the nape of his neck. ‘Your Majesty has the better of me.’ He turned around slowly – it was a faux pas to turn one’s back
on the monarch, and he had no desire to draw attention to it – and bowed deeply.

‘Rise.’ The king gestured impatiently. The lance of royal bodyguards around him faced outward; the armor and colors he wore were indistinguishable from their uniform, but for the
lack of an arm-band of rank. ‘Two minutes, no more. They should be shooting by now.’

Otto found his tongue. ‘May I ask if the carts are for men or explosives, my liege? I need to prepare my men . . .’

‘Explosives.’ Egon nodded towards them. ‘The driver will take them up to the gate then set them off.’

‘The – oh.’ Otto nodded. The driver would do what he was told, or his family would be done by as the king had decreed: probably something creatively horrible, to reinforce his
reputation as a strong and ruthless monarch. ‘By your leave, I shall order my men to take cover just before the blast.’

‘We wish them to advance and provide covering fire for the cavalry immediately afterwards,’ Egon added offhand.

‘Cavalry?’
Otto bit his tongue, but even so the word slipped out first. Beyond the gatehouse was a wet moat, and then a steep descent into a dry moat before the gate into the
castle’s outer battlements. Nobody in their right mind would use cavalry against the layered defenses of a castle!

‘Cavalry.’ The royal grin was almost impish. ‘I hope you find it educational.’

‘My lord – ’ One of the guards cleared his throat.

‘Momentarily.’ Egon stared at Otto. ‘I intend to surprise
everyone
, Baron. This is just the start.’

Otto bowed his neck jerkily. ‘Yes, Your Majesty.’

‘Go.’ Dismissed, Otto turned to warn Shutz and his gunners about the wagons – and to leave the king’s disturbing presence. Behind him, Egon was mounting the saddle of a
stallion from the royal stable. A pair of irreplaceable witch-clan night-vision glasses hung from his pommel.

The defenders were asleep, dead, or incompetent, Otto decided as he watched the wagons roll along the road towards the gatehouse. Or they’d been struck blind by Sky Father. The glaring
hell-light cast a lurid glow across the ground before the gatehouse, but there was no shouted challenge, no crack of gunfire.
What are they
doing
?
He wondered. A horrid surmise began
to gnaw at his imagination.
They’re dead, or gone, and we’re advancing into their ground while they sneak through the land of the dead, to ambush us from behind
–

Rapid fire crackled from the gatehouse, followed by a squealing roar of bovine distress: Otto breathed again.
Not dead or gone, just incompetent
. They’d shown little sign of
movement earlier in the campaign, and despite their lightning-fast assault on the castle when he’d taken it, they’d failed to follow through. The witch-clan were traders, after all,
lowborn tinkers, not knights and soldiers. He grinned as the wagon ground forward faster, the uninjured oxen panicked halfway to a stampede by the gunfire and the smell of blood. It had fifty yards
to go, then forty –
Why aren’t they firing? Are they low on ammunition?
– then twenty, then –

Otto knelt close to the ground, bracing himself, mouth open to keep his ears from hurting. The moments stretched on, as he counted up to twenty heartbeats.

‘Is he dead?’ called one of his gunners.

‘I think – ’ someone began to reply, but the rest of his comment was forestalled by a searing flash. A second later the sound reached Otto, a door the size of a mountainside
slamming shut beside his head. The ground shook. A couple of seconds later still, the gravel and fragments rained down around the smoke-filled hole. ‘What was
that
?’ Otto
shouted, barely able to hear himself. It wasn’t like any powder explosion he’d ever heard, and he’d heard enough in his time.
What’s the Pervert got his hands on now?
he added silently, straightening up.

The hell-light had gone out, along with the front of the gatehouse. The wagon hadn’t been small – there could have been half a ton, or even a ton, of explosives in it; whatever kind
of explosives the king’s alchemists had cooked up, using lore stolen from the witches.

Otto cleared his dry throat, spat experimentally. ‘Break them down, get ready to move out,’ he shouted at Shutz. ‘The cavalry will be through here next.’

Shutz looked baffled, then pointed to his ears. Otto nodded.
‘Scheisse.’
He gestured at the now-silent machine guns, miming packing them and moving forward. Shutz nodded, then
opened his mouth and began shouting orders. Or at least he appeared to be telling troopers what to do: Otto found to his bemusement that he couldn’t hear them.

The ground was still shaking. Peering back up the road, it wasn’t hard for Otto to see why. Two more wagons were plodding grimly towards the pile of dust and smoke that had been the
gatehouse – and behind them, what looked like a battalion of royal dragoons. In the predawn twilight they rode at no more than a slow walking pace. Otto shook his head; the ringing in his
ears went on, but he was beginning to hear other sounds now. He raised his glasses, fumbled with the power button, and peered at the wagon.
This
one carried soldiers in helmets and
half-armor, and a complicated mess of stuff, not the barrels of explosives he’d half-expected to see. ‘Interesting,’ he murmured, looking round for a messenger.
‘You!’

‘My lord!’ The man shouted.

‘Tell Anders to get his guns ready to move. We’re to cover this force.’ He pointed at the approaching dragoons. ‘They’re going to break in. Go!’
How
they were going to break into the castle he had no idea, but Egon clearly expected them to do so, and Otto had more than a slight suspicion that the new explosives in the oxcart weren’t
Egon’s only surprise.

*

Strung out on caffeine and fatigue, Judith Herz suppressed a yawn as she watched the technicians with the handcart maneuver the device into position on the scaffold. There was a
big cross spray-painted in the middle of the top level, and they were taking pains to move it so that it was centered perfectly. The size of a beer keg, with a briefcase-sized detonation controller
strapped to it with duct tape, the FADM didn’t look particularly menacing. She glanced over at Rich Hall, who was sitting patiently in a director’s chair, the Pelican case containing
ARMBAND between his feet. Cruz was about, somewhere, of course: They were taking pains to keep it within arm’s reach at all times.
Good
, Judith thought tiredly.
Everything’s
ready, except for the PAL codes
. And head office, of course, but they’d be on-site shortly. The sooner they could get everything hooked up, the sooner they could all go and get some
well-earned sleep.

A flicker of motion near the entrance to the tent caught her eye and she looked round. The new arrivals seemed tired: the colonel, talking animatedly to the man-in-black from the West Wing, a
couple of aides following in their wake.
Oh great
, she thought:
rubberneckers
. ‘Wait here,’ she hold the technicians, then walked down the ramp to meet the newcomers.

‘Colonel.’ She smiled. ‘And, uh, Dr. James.’

Smith glanced sidelong at him. ‘He’s our vertical liaison. With Mr. Cheney.’

‘Dead straight.’ Dr. James looked tired, too: The bags under his eyes suggested the lights had been burning late in the Naval Observatory grounds. ‘Let’s take a look at
the package.’

‘We haven’t attached ARMBAND yet,’ Judith began to say as Dr. James marched straight towards the scaffold.

‘Then do it, right now. We need to get this thing done.’

What’s the sudden hurry?
she wondered. ‘Yes. Sir.’ She waved at Rich, who sat up sharply and mimed a query until she beckoned. ‘What’s up?’

‘Change of situation.’ James was clearly tense. ‘I have the PAL codes.’ He tapped his breast pocket. ‘Colonel?’

‘Dr. James is here as an official observer for the White House,’ Smith reassured her. ‘Also, we have Donald Reckitt from NNSA, Mary Kay Kare from, from the people who made
ARMBAND, Richard Tracy from the Office of Special Plans – ’

The introductions went on until the scaffolding began to creak under their weight. Finally they worked their way down through the layers of observers and their credentials to the technical
staff. ‘And Dr. Rand, who will confirm that the munition is release ready, check the connections to the detonation controller, and hand over to Major Alvarez and Captain Hu for
deployment.’

‘Certainly. If you folks wouldn’t mind giving me some elbow room . . . ?’ Rand, fiftyish and somewhat bohemian in appearance, looked as irritated by the institutional
rubbernecking as Herz felt. As FTO’s tame expert on these gadgets – indeed, as one of the nation’s leading experts: he’d studied under Teddy Taylor, although the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty meant that his expertise was somewhat abstract – he understood the FADMs as well as anyone else. And he ran through his checklist surprisingly rapidly.
‘All looking good,’ he announced, finally. ‘Considering where it’s been.’

‘That’s enough about that.’ Dr. James spoke sharply: ‘Not everyone here is briefed.’

‘Oh?’ Rand smiled lopsidedly as he straightened up. ‘Well, that makes it all right then.’ He patted the bomb, almost affectionately. ‘For what it’s worth,
this one’s ready to pop. Excuse me, ladies, gentlemen . . .’

As Rand left the platform, the colonel glanced at Herz. ‘If you want to call the items . . . ?’

‘Uh, yes, sir . . .’ She stared at her clipboard and blinked a few times, wishing the tension between her brows would go away. Focusing was hard. ‘PAL codes. I need to contact
WAR – the designated release authority,’ she corrected. She looked at Dr. James.

He nodded. ‘This is what you want,’ he said, handing her a manila envelope from his jacket pocket.

Judith slit it open with a fingernail. There was a single sheet of paper, on White House stationery, with a brief note, a pair of eight-digit numbers, and a famous signature. ‘Well.’
She breathed deeply. ‘This looks to be in order, so’ – she clipped it behind her checklist – ‘we move on to ARMBAND. Rich, this is your curtain call. Major?
We’re ready to attach ARMBAND.’

Alvarez waved Rich Hall through to the front of the platform. ‘Okay, here it is,’ he said. He cleared his throat. ‘I’ve only done this a couple of times
before.’

He opened the shockproof case and pulled out four black rubber feet. ‘Shoes.’ Rocking the bomb carefully side to side, he wedged the feet underneath it. ‘The payload needs to
be electrostatically isolated from ground, or this won’t work.’ Next, he picked up a drab plastic box, its upper face broken only by a winking red LED, a button, and a key slot.
‘Okay, now for the duct tape.’ With that, he pulled out a reel of duct tape and a box cutter, and taped the box to the top of the bomb. Finally, he held up a key: ‘Arming
key.’ He inserted it in the slot and gave it a half turn, and addressed Alvarez: ‘ARMBAND is not yet armed. To activate it, it’s necessary to give the key another half-turn, then
push the button. It beeps, then five seconds later, it does its stuff. You do
not
want to be touching it when that happens.’ He picked up his case and stepped back. ‘You have
control now.’

‘I have control,’ Alvarez echoed. He nodded at Wall: ‘You’d better leave the platform now, sir.’

Is that all?
Judith blinked again, feeling obscurely cheated. It was like black magic – a device that could transport a payload into another universe? – and yet it seemed so
mundane.

‘Agent Herz?’ Colonel Smith prodded her.

‘Oh? I’m sorry.’ She nodded. ‘Major Alvarez?’ she called.

‘Ma’am.’ Alvarez and Hu were out of uniform – nobody wanted inconvenient questions about what army officers were doing in a field outside Concord – but nobody would
mistake them for civilians, not with that crew cut and attitude. ‘I have the checklist.’

He knelt down beside the package and unclipped a panel on the detonation controller strapped to the side of the bomb. Pulling open a laminated ring-bound checklist, he began to flip through
pages, periodically double-checking a switch position. ‘Check, please,’ he told Hu.

‘Check.’

‘I need the PAL code now.’

‘Here are your numbers.’ Herz read out the eight-digit sequence from the letter. The audience fell silent, like witnesses at an execution. As, in a manner of speaking, they were:
Alvarez and Hu the hangmen, adjusting the noose; Herz the prison governor, handing over the death warrant; and parties unknown standing on the trapdoor . . .
Well, at least they won’t feel
a thing
, she told herself.
More than you can say for their victims, over the years
. ‘Remember, we want a sixty-second delay. If the package doesn’t disappear in front of your
eyes within ten seconds, then turn the ARMBAND key to the “safe” position and enter the abort code. Are you ready?’