listlessly. A bullet-hole just under his heart was leaking out his life faster than any up-time surgeon could have staunched; in any century, this kind of sucking chest wound was a death sentence. A quick one, perhaps, but that was the coldest of all possible comfort.
Harry closed his eyes and felt his molars grinding together. He’d come here to rescue Giovanna-and he’d just gotten her brother killed.
Captain Vincente Jose-Maria de Castro y Papas was fast-terribly fast. He crossed to Frank in a single step, grabbed him with both hands and hurled him bodily away from the window. Airborne for at least five feet, Frank crashed into, and slumped down along, the opposite wall.
“Beast!” Giovanna screamed at the Spaniard as she dashed to her stunned husband’s side. “Murderer!”
Don Vincente had stepped back from the window. “Signora Stone, I may have just saved his life-”
That’s when the gunfire started in the courtyard, and an explosion slammed the roof in the adjacent room, quaking half the plaster off the ceiling.
Harry swung back up into his firing position, slammed the Remington into his right shoulder, and jerked his scope over to the courtyard. As he did, he saw the tail end of another small flash, right next to where the first one had been, but now half-obscured by the leaping oil flames.
Before Harry could react, he felt a red-hot poker lance into his right shoulder, just above the clavicle, and push out the other side with the force of a sledge-hammer. Lefferts went off his stool, but kept his grip on the rifle. Damned if I’m going to jar the scope out of alignment now, he thought.
He threw himself upright without delay and snugged the gun tight-agonizingly tight-into his savaged right shoulder. He dropped the crosshairs on some movement he saw through the louvers and fired. At that precise moment, the dark arches lining both the second and ground floor galleries of the courtyard’s loggia were raggedly illuminated by a volley of murderous fire.
John O’Neill was so stunned by the sudden wave of fire- an ambush! we are betrayed! — that he almost didn’t feel the two-headed battering ram that slammed through his cuirass and stuck his chest, almost penetrating the buff coat beneath. As he fell backwards, he was vaguely aware that the lefferti in front of him were going down in windrows. He felt the overlapping mental and physical shocks combine and verge toward confusion-and then he turned off his mind. He thought only so much as was necessary to get moving, a trait taught by years on battlefields. He started to roll up into a crouch, checking his pistol, and the situation.
Which was not good: three of the Wild Geese who had charged in with him were down. But like him, two were unwounded and rising, thanks to their cuirasses and buff coats. The third man, Fitzgerald, was having a hard time getting to his feet, trailing a useless left arm. His bicep had been torn through, and was probably still attached only because the Spaniards were using loads of multiple, lighter balls. Lethal against the unarmored troops they had evidently been expecting, but much less so against layered armor.
But as O’Neill swayed upright, he saw the real horror of what such double loads could do. The unarmored lefferti, who had been given the presumably easy job of securing the bottom level of the loggia, had caught the brunt of the volley; a dozen were strewn across the width of the courtyard, motionless. Three more were rising unsteadily, their clothes tattered and blood-smeared from multiple wounds.
So John O’Neill did what he did best. Tossing his pistol over to his left hand and drawing his sword with the right, he screamed, “At them!” and led the charge toward the loggia.
Sherrilyn looked over the shallow roof peak as the terra-cotta tile fragments blasted skyward by Gerd’s demolition charge ceased to rain down. The explosion had blown open a hole, but not as big as they had hoped or planned. Two at a time could get down into the room below, at most. “Matija, Donald, suppressive fire. The rest of you, follow me.”
She scuttled over to the edge of the still-smoking hole-and almost fell in when her weight prompted a little more of the ruined structure to collapse. “Damn it, this is going to be tough. George, Paul, you’re going to lower Felix and me down for a look-see.”
Paul frowned. “I thought we were just going to jump down and-”
“Nope. We’ve had too many surprises already. So we take it one step at a time from here on; it might just save our lives.” She got her foot in the rope loop that had been prepared for this eventuality, pulled her. 357 Smith and Wesson revolver and looked over at the waiting Felix-who had the team’s CQC entry weapon, a sawed-off 12 gauge, ready. She nodded to George Sutherland, who held the rope in his massive hands. “Okay: down we go.”
As John O’Neill charged, Owen winced. But whether the earl of Tyrone called for a charge by chance or design, it had been the right call. The Spanish had obviously fired all barrels, trusting to inflict so many casualties in that first terrible sheet of flame and lead that the intruders would break. John’s charge took them by surprise, and although he had only half a dozen Wild Geese following him, they were in armor and were closing with sword and pistol against musketeers caught in the act of reloading. Owen listened to the battle he could not see; from the sound of it, the lightly armored Spanish were tossing aside their firearms and going for their much smaller swords. So unless they had overwhelming numerical superiority, the battle for the lower level of the loggia promised to be a very one-sided fight. But the upper gallery Owen elevated and aimed his pepperbox, securing it with his left hand as Lefferts and North both had counseled. “Fire on the second level, lads. Make ’em corpses or keep ’em busy.”
Owen’s timing was indeed fortuitous. The Spanish musketeers on the second floor had finally sorted themselves out after dodging the oil flames and reloading. They now rose and brought their weapons to bear-but they had not expected four revolvers aimed up at them. The flurry of pistol fire dropped three of the Spaniards-and then another two went down an instant later. A pair of lagging, distant reports announced that the Hibernian riflemen back at the signal building had brought their own weapons into play.
For the moment, the tide seemed to be swinging back in their favor-but Owen put aside the seductive thrill of pushing ahead with the attack. The Spanish expected us, knew we were coming. If we get the initiative, we should use it to run. As quickly as possible…
With bits of roofing tiles crumbling down around them, Sherrilyn and Felix dipped down into the room adjacent to Frank’s, separated from it by one thin wall. They had a scant moment to survey the shattered finery before two Spanish soldiers swept around the doorway, firing pistols as they came. Another two stayed back, sheltering behind the doorway and discharging their pieces as well.
It was like some insane video game, Sherrilyn thought as she pounded rounds out of the. 357 magnum and wished she had stuck with the nine-millimeter this time: magazine size was an entry team’s best friend. She saw the first two Spaniards go down, felt a bullet sing past her ear. She fired through the wall at the third Spaniard sheltering behind it; he dropped screaming into the open doorway, clutching a ruined groin. Felix and the last of the defenders traded shots. The Spaniard went backwards, but so did Felix. Sherrilyn grabbed him, kept him on his rope, yelled: “Pull us up! Now! ”
John O’Neill came back out from under the roof of the loggia’s lower tier, his sword drenched red. He saw that Owen had killed no small number of the musketeers on the second level. And that he was forcing the rest to keep their heads down, for the nonce. So now Having heard the expected breaching charge go off on the roof in the midst of his attack, John looked up expectantly at Frank’s window. Just beyond it there was the sound of gunfire-a lot of it-then silence. Ah, so the Wrecking Crew had gotten inside. Excellent. No time to waste. “Fitzgerald,” he shouted, “with me,” and ran over to the foot of the window from which he expected a rope ladder, and then the hostages, to descend. Any second now.
The irate mob in front of the Palazzo Giove hushed suddenly, hearing the fusillade of gunfire just up the street, as well as one or two reports nearly overhead, evidently coming from the belvedere. Juliet frowned; even though she wasn’t seeing the battle with her own eyes, the pace sounded wrong. The firing should have been very much one-sided, and not so much of it, but now The tall doors of the Palazzo Mattei di Giove seemed to emit a metallic bark: the immense lock had been undone. And then the doors themselves seemed to fly inward on their hinges, so quickly that This is planned, Juliet thought, and jumped aside, nimble despite her size.
A split-second later, the doors were fully open, revealing a darkened courtyard…Which suddenly belched out a wall of flame and thunder as a waiting platoon’s musket volley drove straight into the core of the crowd.
For a moment there was no further sound. It was as though, surprised or outraged or both, the world was holding its breath. Then the screaming started: a chorus of agony from shattered bodies lying upon each other, mingled gore spreading across them.
As Juliet moved farther away from the gateway, she heard the sound of hooves, hammering down in a thunder against the courtyard’s flagstones. The riders-armored, swords drawn, pistols ready in fore-saddle braces,
