was probably up the stairs. However, once he cleared the Marines, he could, so to speak, turn the tables on the defenders; the trestle tops would not protect his men from up-time ammunition at that range but they would provide full concealment until they popped up to shoot. And if he could get a half dozen sheltered there to send a volley up the stairs…
“The firebomb is ready,” said Linguanti.
“Good, get ready to throw it just short of the base of the stairs on my count of three.”
“But, Valentino, there is no target there. And it might prevent us from assaulting up the stairs once we-”
“I don’t want the bomb to kill people; I want its smoke to blind them. And don’t throw it on the stairs, but a few feet in front, so we can still get up them. Now, Odoardo, look there-” Valentino pointed. “You see that corridor just to the right of the main entrance?”
“ Si.”
“It apparently goes off into the north wing. There might be another staircase back there. At any rate, when you take a group in that direction, it will distract the bastards at the head of the stairs.”
“I’m not putting myself in the sights of that-”
“If you go first, you won’t be the one shot-not if you move fast enough. Just make sure the next man is close behind you.” He needed to get Odoardo out of there before he started balking at the casualties. If the big man did so then others would, too. Every man Odoardo took with him was one more who wouldn’t be looking nervously around to see if his mates were fearful, if they were starting to think more about retreat than riches.
“Okay. And if there’s no staircase?”
“Come back here, report, and prepare to assault up the stairs.”
“I told you, I’m not going to-”
Valentino wished Odoardo was dead already. “Idiot. Listen: we will have the stairs blocked by smoke, and will have cleared whoever is at the corner. And you’re not to be in the lead; you command from the second rank.”
Odoardo smiled. “I’ll get a dozen men.” He turned to inspect the clutter of faces behind him. “Hey, you three, and you-”
Valentino turned to Linguanti. “On my count of three, you throw the bomb where I told you. And then, you follow the last of Odoardo’s group. Two seconds after they’ve crossed the open area. Keep that oaf on the objective, do you understand?”
“I understand-enough to hate the task already.”
“My sympathies.” Louder: “Odoardo, stand ready. The bomb will be thrown in one, two, THREE…”
Half-blind in the darkness of the staircase, Cardinal Luke Wadding tried to control how rapidly he was breathing. Even back in Ireland, sought by English bounty hunters, he’d never been as close to being murdered as this. To keep his teeth from chattering, he muttered at Hastings’ broad back: “Where does this passage lead?”
“There are two exits,” the lieutenant explained. “The first comes out behind a wall-hanging in the hallway of the north wing, just beyond the stone wall of the kitchen. The other goes down into the kitchen’s basement.”
“What? There’s no outside exit?”
Hastings’ dim outline shrugged. “They never finished that part of the escape route. You can see, on the west wall, where they obviously planned to run a tunnel out into the back. But it’s almost solid rock there.”
Antonio Barberini’s voice quavered in fear. “But we have no reason to go down to the cellar-just into the north wing and out the side exit, there.”
Hastings shrugged as he neared the landing that would give them access to the first door. “If the north wing isn’t secure, then we’ll have to head down into the cellar, come up into the kitchen and run to get out the back door of the great room.”
Wadding calculated, swallowed. “We’d have to cross about eight feet of open space.”
“I know,” said Hastings with a nod. “And I know you are all brave men. Now, quiet, all of you.”
Odoardo ran across the smoky, blood-spattered room. He was in front of the main entrance when a new weapon spoke from up at the head of the staircase behind him: a deeper, powerful, spiteful report, followed by two more in rapid succession and a faint click-clack, click-clack.
The two mercenaries immediately behind Odoardo sprawled, one screaming, the other ominously silent.
Odoardo reached the northern hallway, which evidently led to the servant’s quarters. He spun, leveled his short-barreled fowling piece at the head of the stairs, and fired. The gun sounded like a small cannon going off. The charge of pellets tore up the rude railing, the top step, caused jets of ruined plaster to gush sideways out of the landing’s far wall. It killed no one, but his shot still had the desired effect: the gunman flinched back long enough for the rest of Odoardo’s ten men to cross the open space to safety.
Linguanti, the last over, skipped an extra step when another round from the lever-action rifle roared at his heels. Odoardo looked at him. “Now what?”
“Now we check down the hall.”
They hadn’t gone ten steps before fire chipped divots out of the right-hand wall of the corridor; they threw themselves snug against the left-hand wall.
“Damn it!” Odoardo complained.
From farther down the hall, another spattering of small-arms fire went away from them, toward the door on the northern end of the villa. Odoardo thought he heard Verme, the Corsican, shouting about a lost finger. “They’re holding off Ignatio’s boys, too, from the sound of it.”
Linguanti nodded. “Probably a very narrow doorway from the servants quarters to the outside. Easy to defend.”
“Yeah,” Odoardo sighed. “And I guess we can’t get to them, either. Unless we want to get slaughtered.” He finished tamping the wadding down against the single-aught sized pellets with which he had reloaded his weapon. “So who do we kill now?”
Sherrilyn Maddox felt two aches in her legs: one came from the knee that now surged with pain at every careful step, and the other was a painful tautness in her calves that came from wanting to continue to sprint, flat out, to help her friends.
But that was the fool’s move, despite the sounds of a firefight emanating from inside the house. The exchanges outside had been ominously brief, even though the Hibernian guarding the back doors had unleashed a steady stream of lever-actioned lead at the assassins who had been sent to neutralize him. Judging from the cries and fitful writhing of several indistinct shadows, he had killed or wounded at least two of them, but then a quartet of muskets had volleyed in the general the direction of his muzzle flashes-and all was stillness.
That had been only twenty seconds ago, so perhaps the murdering bastards had not yet sorted out their casualties and their next move, but Sherrilyn had decided to spend that time closing the distance quietly, not starting a running gun battle. With almost no moon out, and no light source behind the attackers, targets did not become distinct until you were within fifteen, even ten yards. And even then…
Sharon crouched lower, pointed to her eyes, then to the frontal arc across which the enemy was distributed. The three Hibernians, lever actions at the ready, nodded and raised their weapons slightly, ready to bring them up.
They got within twelve yards before the apparent leader of this group came walking out from the back of the villa. He scanned the surrounding area, and a moment later he must have spotted the four shadowy figures approaching in postures of stealthy menace. He brought up his gun, turned to shout.
Sherrilyn went down on one knee and brought her Glock 17 up into a two-handed grip. She squeezed the trigger twice; the leader went backwards-and around him, muskets fired off hastily into the darkness, murdering the air over the Sherrilyn’s lowered head as her three Hibernians set to work.
The echoing cracks of the. 40–72 rounds and the creak of the lever actions seemed to set the rhythm for the harvest of death at the rear of the villa. Working from the flanks to the center, noting where the wild-firing muzzle flashes had been, North’s well-trained men cranked round after lethal round into their targets.
Six seconds later, Sherrilyn rose, charged the last ten yards, and found herself standing amidst the sprawled bodies of her attackers. She resisted the urge to spit on them. Instead, she hissed orders. “Corporal, find the man they killed back here and get his revolver. We’ll need it. You and you; watch our flanks. And be alert; our perimeter pickets will be inbound as well.”
“And what next, Captain Maddox?” asked the corporal.
