“Next, we bust in there and save our people. So reload all your weapons now; you might not have another chance.”
Valentino, who had just finished getting his men organized for another general rush at the Marines’ table barricade, froze: gunfire at the back of the villa. And those were not his guns: the reports were too sharp and loud, and they came with the bam-bam-bam speed of multiple up-time weapons. Christ’s balls, they had a reserve force, hidden somewhere near the building! So now, there was only enough time to “Charge!” he screamed, firing a captured flintlock pistol at the barricades. “We have to seize the back door now!”
Emboldened by their numbers, and the now sufficient volume of smoke roiling up from the oil fire at the base of the stairs, nearly twenty of Valentino’s men rose and sprinted forward.
The Marines rose up to fire back, dropped several, were blasted down by the answering volley.
As Valentino’s men reached the table, two lever-action rifles roared down the stairs at them, dropping the first two to reach the makeshift barricade, as well as two others who tried to assault up the staircase itself. From the look of the hits they might not be dead, but were certainly out of the fight.
Many more survived, though, to get behind the tables and turn one around to face up the stairs. Seeing that, the rest of Valentino’s men dove for cover behind it, quickly grabbed hold of the other table and worked it around to match the position of the other. Within moments, one of his smarter mercenaries had found the unemptied revolver that had allowed one Marine to give them so much trouble; that fellow began snapping shots back up the stairs, where the volume of fire began to fall off.
The rearmost half-dozen who charged across the great room were now able to push past the tables and, without breaking their stride, they made it to either side of the back door, panting.
Finally, thought Valentino feeling the sweat that ran along his brow and down his sides, they had control of all the villa’s points of egress. “Reload!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “Prepare to sweep the stairs!”
The firefight suddenly became so loud that Sharon could easily have believed it was going on right outside the radio room. She wondered if-how-Ruy could survive such a nonstop barrage of enemy fire-but then shut off the part of her mind that had spawned the question and the thousand mortal terrors she could feel clamoring behind it.
She looked over at Odo, who had frozen into immobility as the firefight surged. “Ambassador,” he asked, “should we perhaps-?”
“Keep sending,” she interrupted firmly. “That’s our job, so we keep doing it.” She drew her small revolver from her pocket and trained it on the door. “No matter what.”
Larry Mazzare tried to force himself to remain calm as Lieutenant Hastings eased open the panel behind the wall-hanging in the north wing’s hallway, but he couldn’t keep from holding his breath. Within this stairway-built and hidden at the core of what, to external observation, looked like the villa’s central, load-bearing stone wall and kitchen fireplace-the noise in the rest of the house had been dim. They had heard faint cries, and the dull, distant thrumming of gunfire, but it had been impossible to gauge how close, or how much of it, there was.
As the panel opened and light shone in, the answer became obvious to all of them: they were at the epicenter of a vicious firefight. Moans, smoke, surging spasms of gunfire, screamed orders, and running feet vied with the stink of burning oil, wood, and gun smoke-all of which drove home the point just how bad the situation was in the villa’s interior. Worst of all, none of the voices they heard were familiar to them.
Antonio Barberini asserted, “I don’t think it’s safe to go out there.”
“No,” answered Hastings, “it isn’t.” He began closing the door. “To the cellar, then.”
Odoardo sighed again; he didn’t really want to go back to the great room and charge up those stairs, no matter how much that asshole Valentino assured him he’d be all right. He looked over Linguanti’s shoulder to determine if Valentino was readying such an assault-but suddenly forgot why he had decided to glance in that direction. He poked Linguanti, a sudden malign smile stretching from one well-tufted ogre-ear to the other.
Linguanti, looking up, saw that expression, saw Odoardo’s eyes fixed gleefully on something behind their group. Linguanti turned around and saw what the big man had noticed: one of the smaller wall-hangings in the northern hallway had swung out slightly, as if it had been a narrow door opening. It was now closing again, soon to be flush against the wall.
“That,” said Linguanti, with a demonic grin to match Odoardo’s ogrish one, “is quite a piece of luck.”
“Yeah,” said Odoardo, hefting his fowling piece in one hand and his axe in the other, “let’s go that way.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
As his feet shot over the battlements of the Castell de Bellver’s lazarette, Harry Lefferts heard the sound of the dirigible’s distant engines go through what sounded like a split-second of dopplering: they’ve spun them about. Sure enough, the balloon shed speed so quickly that, like the bob of an arrested pendulum, Harry did not travel all the way over the crenellated wall, but only swung forward, and-slowing-he could feel that he would start backward within the next few seconds.
Damn it, he thought, I said “slow down” not “stand on the brakes.” But no use crying over spilt milk; the end of his forward swing had brought Harry well past the inner rim of the lazarette’s battlements and into plain view of the two guards upon it.
They stopped, stared, mouths open as a black-suited ghost flew out of the dark at them.
Harry used that moment of surprise to hammer out rounds at the closest of the two, intending to use only two bullets. But the sway in his motion ruined his aim, and he had to track the target, firing as he did. The third and fourth rounds hit the Spaniard, who went down with a groan.
The other, startled out of his shock by the gunfire, had admirable reflexes: he had his miquelet musket up, cocked, and discharged almost before Harry could blink.
But the Spaniard’s speedy reaction came at the cost of accuracy; the musket ball whispered off into the night.
Harry stretched his legs downward as far as he could. He popped off one round at the second guard-just to make him duck-and then the back of his boots and calves came into jarring contact with one of the merlons of the lazarette’s battlements.
Harry flexed his legs, holding himself there, and released the rest of the landing spools. With an additional three feet of line, he was now able to pitch forward on to the roof, with slack to spare. Staggering ahead as the backward pull from the cable abruptly ended, Lefferts congratulated himself on a job well done-and looked up to see the guard almost upon him, sword drawn.
Since Harry was using both his hands-one free, one gripping his gun-to keep himself from falling nose-first on the roof, he knew he couldn’t bring his weapon to bear in time. So, with his weight already forward, and with the Spaniard’s backswept sword now arcing toward him, Lefferts did what he was best situated to do.
Harry’s tight, forward roll took the Spaniard by surprise. Granted, the surprise did not last long-not quite half a second-but it was enough. And it was fatal.
Harry came out of the roll awkwardly but was still able to wobble up to one knee, spin and steady himself with his off hand as he brought up the gun with the other. He knew he was going to do some piss-poor shooting now, but that hardly mattered: the Spaniard had turned and charged again.
When Harry fired, the guard was less than three feet away. Just to be certain, Lefferts fired three more times, almost draining the magazine. It was essential that this particular fight was over now.
And it was. A second after the guard fell, Harry was up, using the handset to signal for Dr. Connal to belay the grappling hooks down the line. Soon the dirigible would be moored in place, the others could join Lefferts, and the real fun could start. And he now had plenty of time in which to accomplish that.
Why, he probably had a full twenty seconds.
“That’s it,” muttered Thomas North when he heard the up-time pistol roaring atop the lazarette. “Gate team, on me. Stair assault team, on Colonel O’Neill. Ground level security, with Mr. Ohde. Ready?” Nods. Thomas nodded back and pushed open the door of the long-duration storeroom.
He had expected troops running in every direction, meaning a hard fight to even get to the gate. Or a score of them gathered in the arms yard, readying a skyward fusillade. What North had not expected was what he now encountered: a moment of absolute, stunned silence in the Castell de Bellver.
North did not stop to enjoy that second, or the striking architecture picked out by the torches flickering in
