revenge on Chambord and Captain Bonnard.'
'Having the Crescent Shield here is going to complicate matters,' Jon said, 'but they could turn out to be useful, too.'
'How?' Randi said.
'Distraction. We don't know how many of his renegade Legionnaires La Porte has with him, but I bet it's a substantial number. It'll be good if they're worried by someone else.'
They drove on in silence for another ten minutes through the moonlight, the road a pale pathway in the silent, rural night. There were no other cars on the road now. The lights of farmhouses and manor houses sparkled intermittently through the apple orchards and the outbuildings and barns that probably housed equipment to make the cider and Calvados for which the region was famous.
At last, Randi pointed ahead and upward. 'There it is.'
Marty, who had been mostly silent since they left the highway, suddenly said, 'Medieval! A baronial bastion! You do not, I trust, expect me to scramble up those ridiculous walls?' he worried. 'I'm no mountain goat.'
The Chateau la Rouge was not the fine country estate the name would have implied around Bordeaux or even in most of the Loire Valley. It was a brooding medieval castle boasting battlements and two towers. Moonlight had turned the granite an inky blood-red. Set high on a craggy-hill beside what looked like the jagged, gap-toothed ruins of a far older castle, this was the Chateau la Rouge that Jon had seen in the painting and photograph.
Peter studied the massive structure with a critical eye. 'Send for the siege train. It's a bloody old one, it is. Late twelfth or early thirteenth century, I should say. Norman-English, from the look of it. The French tended to like their fortresses a bit more elegant and stylish. Possibly as old as Henry the Second, but I doubt it'
'Forget the history, Peter,' Randi interrupted. 'What makes you think we can climb up those walls without being spotted?'
'I don't climb,' Marty announced.
'Shouldn't be difficult,' Peter enthused. 'Looks as if she's been updated sometime in the last century or so. The moat's filled in, the portcullis is gone, and the entryway is wide open. Of course, tonight they'll have that entrance guarded. They've manicured the hill up to the walls, which is an advantage for us. And my guess is we won't have to worry about boiling oil, crossbows, and all that rigmarole from the battlements.'
'Boiling oil.' Marty shuddered. 'Thanks, Peter. You've cheered me enormously.'
'My pleasure.'
Peter turned off the headlights, and they cruised to the base of the rocky hill where he paused the car. There in the moonlight they had a clear view of a curved drive that led up to the front and in through the tunnel-like entryway. As Peter had guessed, there was no gate or barrier, and spring flowers grew in well-kept beds on either side. The nineteenth- and twentieth-century La Portes had obviously been unworried about attack. But a pair of armed men in civilian clothes at the open front portal showed that the twenty-first-century La Porte was.
Peter eyed the two guards. 'Soldiers. French. Probably the Legion.'
'You can't possibly know that, Peter,' Marty rebuked. 'More of your superior man-of-action hyperbole again.'
'Au contraire, mon petit ami. Every nation's military has its traditions, methods, and drill, which produce a different appearance and manner. A U.S. soldier shoulders arms on the right shoulder, the British on the left. Soldiers move, stand at attention, march, stop, salute, and generally hold themselves differently, according to the country. Any soldier can tell instantly who has trained the army of a Second- or Third-World nation by simply observing. Those guards are French soldiers, lad, and I'd bet the wine cellar on the Legion.'
Exasperated, Marty said, 'Poppycock! Even your French stinks!'
Peter laughed and rolled the car onward along the country road that curved out and around.
Jon spotted a helicopter. 'Look! Up there!'
The chopper was perched on a squat barbican fifty feet up, its rotors protruding over the stone balustrade. 'I'll bet that's how Chambord and Bonnard got in and out of Grenoble and flew here. Add in the military guards, La Porte's being here, and the Crescent Shield, and I'd say the DNA computer is here.'
As Peter continued the car's circle of the castle, Randi said, 'Swell. Now all we have to do is get into it.'
Jon stared up the slope. 'With our equipment, we'll be able to climb it. Pull off here, Peter.'
Peter cut the motor and coasted the car off the road into a grove of old apple trees. The car bumped along until it stopped at a spot where the steep hillside met the wall at a higher point. Jon, Peter, and Randi got out. Peter pointed silently up to where the head and shoulders of a sentry moved along the parapet in the moonlit night.
They conversed in whispers. Sound carried far in the rural night.
'Anyone see any others?' Jon asked.
After studying the wall in both directions, they both shook their heads.
'Let's time that one,' Peter said.
They clicked the timer function on their watches and waited. More than five minutes elapsed before they saw the head of the sentry return and disappear in the other direction. They waited again, and the man passed more quickly this time. Less than two minutes.
'Okay,' Jon decided. 'When he heads off to our right, we've got five minutes. That should be enough for at least two of us to make the top.'
Peter nodded. 'Should do.'
'Unless,' Randi said, 'he hears us.'
'We'll hope he doesn't,' Jon said.
'Look!' Peter whispered, pointing to their left.
In the distance, hunched dark shapes were moving up the incline, heading to the castle's entry. The Crescent Shield.
Using arm and hand signals, Abu Auda urged his men through the old apple orchard and up the incline toward the wide gateway between two low towers. It had taken him most of the day since returning from Liechtenstein to assemble his reinforcements, many from other Islamic cells and even splinter groups. He had called ahead for help when he had discovered where this General La Porte and his lackey, the devious snake Bonnard, had taken the lying Dr. Chambord and his longtime comrade-in-arms, Mauritania.
Now his people numbered more than fifty rifles. He and his small cadre of veteran warriors herded the new men up toward the entrance. His scouts had counted the guards and sentries and reported only two were stationed at the gate, while fewer than five patrolled the entire rampart wall. What concerned him was his lack of information about how many French soldiers were hidden away inside the castle itself. In the end, he had decided it did not matter. His fifty fighters could defeat twice-three times their number, if need be.
But that was the lesser of Abu Auda's worries. If the battle went against them, these French renegades might murder Mauritania before he could be reached. Therefore, Abu Auda decided, it would be necessary to reach Mauritania first. For that, he would take a strong small party, scale the walls where the French sentries were thinnest, and rescue Mauritania as soon as the battle was well engaged by the bulk of his troops.
'Let's go,' Jon said as Peter opened his trunk again.
The three readied their equipment, while Marty remained rooted inside the car. Randi shoved the climbing rig and another HK MP5K submachine gun into an SAS fanny pack, and Peter loaded a small cube of plastique explosive, some manual fuses, and a pair of grenades into another. He saw Jon watching him. 'Handy for locked doors, thick walls, the like. Are we ready?'
Marty rolled down his window. 'Have a pleasant climb. I'll guard the car.'
'Out you come, Mart,' Jon said. 'You're our secret weapon.'
Marty shook his head stubbornly. 'I use doorways to enter structures, especially very high structures. In a dire emergency, I might consider a window. Ground floor, of course.'
Randi said nothing. With her climbing equipment, she scrambled quietly up the steep grade. Jon exchanged a look with Peter and nodded to the other side of the car. Peter padded around to it.
'No time to play coy, Marty,' Jon said cheerfully. 'There's the wall. You're going up it one way or another.' He opened the door and reached in to grab Marty.
Marty recoiled directly into the bear hug of Peter, who dragged him protesting, but not too loudly, out of the car. Randi was already at the base of the castle, preparing her climbing rigs and the harness she would use to haul Marty to the top. Jon and Peter hustled the still reluctant and complaining Marty up the slope.
