remaining lefferti were as good as dead if they didn’t run like hell.”
Miro nodded. “Unquestionably. Now, about this Piero. He has agents watching the traffic along the Tiber?”
“Yes. Relatives, in fact. And he can pass news to the master of the scialuppa that took us up the Tiber, who could at least follow them for a day or two and get a basic idea of their course. So if anyone is removed from the insula Mattei, we’ll know about it, and have some sense of which way they were sent.”
“Which is another reason why we need to leave immediately,” added Owen. “If there is no more intelligence than that on their movement, we will lose their trail pretty quickly. The Mediterranean is a big place, after all.”
Miro smiled; Thomas was tempted to characterize the expression as “sneaky.” “Yes, it’s big, Colonel, but the number of places where the Spanish might keep two such prisoners for an extended amount of time is actually fairly limited. I agree that we must leave at once, but if the scialuppa can trail them for even one day, I think I’ll be able to narrow down their probable destinations to a fairly small list.”
“So you don’t think they’re going to stick them on some desert island somewhere with a platoon of guards?” Sherrilyn sounded disappointed.
“Absolutely not. First, the Mediterranean is thick with pirates. The Spanish cannot risk keeping the prisoners in anything other than a stronghold. And with a pregnant woman, they must have access to midwives or Hebrew physicians.” Miro’s smile went from “sneaky” to positively “wicked.” “And that alone narrows the list quite a bit.”
Sherrilyn nodded, her bangs bobbing. “Okay, Don Estuban, then what’s our plan?”
Miro shrugged. “To depart quickly and remain flexible.”
Sherrilyn blinked when it was clear that Miro was done speaking. “And that’s it? That’s the plan?”
North shrugged. “Don Estuban is right: we don’t have enough specifics to even begin to know what we might need to do, let alone where or when. Our only option is to gather up any sufficiently portable resources that might conceivably give us an edge and get moving as quickly as possible. I suspect we can get a lot of what we’d want from the airplane facility in Mestre: extra communications gear, tools, wire, maybe even a spare engine for the balloon, if that’s where they are kept.” He turned to Miro. “Is there any reason we can’t leave tomorrow?”
“One,” Miro answered. “I had the Monster’s gas tanks tapped for the remaining gasoline in them. The amount of energy gasoline produces in the balloon’s engines, versus other fuels, makes it too valuable to leave behind. It would give us one ‘high performance’ flight with the dirigible. And we might need one, before we are done.”
North heard something more than general prudence behind Miro’s last comment. “You foresee something in particular, Estuban?”
Miro shrugged. “Once the rescue is over, we may need to move Giovanna Stone very quickly. If it takes a long time to find the two of them, or if the escape is a narrowly managed affair with the Spanish in hot pursuit, she might not have much time left in her pregnancy.” Miro frowned. “Add to that the possibilities of bad seas, a shipwreck, or running from the Spanish on land if we are compelled to abandon ship and take our chances ashore. A pregnant woman either can’t or shouldn’t be asked to do any of those things. So, once we have her in our possession, we may need to put Giovanna and Frank in the balloon and send them home-or at least to a safe, well- staffed birthing place.”
Owen was nodding. “Sensible. Will the gasoline be on hand in time for us to leave in thirty-six hours?”
“It should be,” answered Miro. “We are loading it on the barca-longa, which will carry most of the team. The overflow personnel will be traveling in the same gajeta that brought you back from Rome the first time.”
“Once we rendezvous with the Italian fishing boat, you’re going to have to assign an admiral, too,” commented Sherrilyn. “But none of us have much experience with high-seas mayhem.”
Thomas had never seen Miro’s eyes go so flat or serious. “I do.”
Sherrilyn cocked her head. “Don Estuban, I know you have a lot of experience on the seas, but shouldn’t we have someone with-?”
“Miss Maddox. You apparently think that being a merchant in the Mediterranean is an enterprise that does not involve combat. I must tell you that you are mistaken. Quite mistaken.” Thomas believed him.
Evidently Sherrilyn did too; she shut up.
North stood. “Very well, then. With your permission, Estuban, I am going to brief our troops. And please do not take it amiss that I resume calling you ‘Don Estuban’ in front of them; we’ll want that measure of public formality, I think.”
“I quite agree. Gentlemen, Miss Maddox, I thank you for your willingness to move again so quickly. A good night’s sleep is in order for us all. I doubt we’ll have many of them from here on out. Captain Lefferts, one last moment of your time, if you please.”
Sherrilyn was strolling-well, limping-along the length of the monastery’s arcade when she heard Harry calling after her. She turned, saw him approaching, waited — and wondered: why had Miro kept him after the meeting was over? And why was he coming to talk to her now? Suddenly, she was more afraid of the possibility of his talking than she was of his long silences.
Which he had a lot of, these days. The formerly talkative bon vivant Harry Lefferts had undergone a startling transition since the debacle in Rome. Whereas in the wake of such a reversal, self-indulgent men might have become snappish or sulky, Harry had simply become very silent. On the journey home, he spoke when necessary and otherwise kept his thoughts and his company to himself, distancing himself from all others equally, even his long-time friends on the Wrecking Crew.
So, as he drew up to Sherrilyn, she was uncertain about what he might say. Which was, it turned out, wholly unexpected. “How’s your knee, Sherrilyn?”
“My knee? You mean-? Hey, hold on. I’m just fine; a little tired, that’s all. Old sports injuries do that, you know.”
Harry nodded. “I know. I also saw how you were running by the time we were retreating from the Palazzi Mattei. I don’t want any one of us taking unwise risks-any of us. Well, those of us who are left.”
Sherrilyn swallowed her arch but threadbare denials about her very real knee problems; she intuited that Harry’s self-recriminations were not merely conversational, but prefatory to some urgent message. “Okay; what’s going down, Harry?”
“Me. I’m going down on the chain of command.”
“What?” Sherrilyn felt her face grow hot. “What is that bastard Miro doi-?”
“Sherrilyn.”
Her name-which Harry uttered with a kind of flat-toned finality-stopped her. “What?”
“Sherrilyn, it wasn’t just Miro’s idea. It’s mine, too.”
Sherrilyn searched his face, looked for a hint of prevarication, for any sign that this was a cosmetic lie intended to save Estuban Miro from her wrath. But she saw no such sign. “Harry,” she said-and then didn’t know what else to say.
He picked up the conversation. “Look, first off: how much of the Wrecking Crew is left? You, me, George, Donald, Matija, and Paul. And we can’t take George anywhere with us right now. So we’re down to barely half of our strength. And most of us are nursing some kind of injury.” He looked at her knee but kept on his topic. “So, let’s be honest: we may have big-decisive-contributions we can make to this next rescue attempt, but we don’t have the power as a unit to remain the primary players.”
“The hell we don’t,” Sherrilyn snarled in a denial that she knew was simply the triumph of loyalty over common sense.
Harry looked at her and smiled-a small, patient smile that she had never seen on his face before-and shook his head. “Sherrilyn, think it through. Command should pass to the guy who’s going to be bringing the decisive hammer to the party.”
“North.”
“Yeah, and he’s good. Let’s be honest, Sherrilyn: he’s commanded real units-military units-all his adult life. And Rome, and whatever comes next, is likely to be primarily a military operation. The Crew-hell, it’s always been hard to fit us into a team-player mold, when you get right down to it. We’ve always worked on our own: in fast, hit hard, out fast. Rome wasn’t like that-not as much as I wanted it to be, and that’s part of what got us torn up. North wouldn’t have made my mistakes.”
“Yeah? Well, he wouldn’t have made a bold plan, either. Hell, if we had to wait for Nervous Nelly North, we’d probably still be sitting in Rome, eating pasta, wondering what to do.”
