Rork held up a finger. “Well now, I hate to disagree. But really, an Irishman can be as quick as a colt when times demand it. You should stay here an’ shoot, sir.”
“Damn it, Rork, I cannot believe that you are arguing with me about who’s going to get to shoot the friggin’ rifle while we’re cooped up in a goat box in the middle of nowhere in Africa on the way to be slaves to some savage sonovabitch. Good God, man, just follow the damn order. Discussion’s over, Bosun.”
Rork cast his eyes downward and coughed. “Aye, aye, sir. But I was jes’ thinkin’ that—”
“No, dammit!”
“Yes, sir . . .”
***
The drivers of the wagons were starting to ladle mush into bowls while other bandits were lying on the ground with their kufiyyas drawn over their faces. Snoring and subdued conversation were the only sounds Wake heard and he wondered where Falah was.
He nudged Rork. “Ready?” The bosun nodded.
They eased the slats off and Wake slid his head out, craning around to see in all directions. To the front, the direction he couldn’t see before, he saw a line of mountains with a valley cleft in it. In front of the mountains, about a mile away, he saw a group of horsemen trotting their way.
There were no other horsemen around the camp, so he surmised that was the mounted guard of scouts and flankers. Almost all of the wagoneers were over by the fire, except for two or three resting under the shade of the wagons. He wondered if there were some under his wagon.
Moving slowly, Wake tried not to make any motions that could catch the eye of the bandits. He hung down and looked under the wagon. No resting bandits there. He lowered himself to the ground and crouched between the crude wheel and the wagon side as Rork made his way forward to the driver’s seat.
He saw Rork smile, then hand him a rifle. It was a muzzle-loader, apparently without a round in the barrel. The bosun handed down some powder cartridges and bullets from a belt pouch on the seat. Trying to control his breathing, which he was sure could be heard by the bandits forty feet away, Wake slowly loaded the powder cartridge and ball, then slid the wadding and ramrod in. Slowly he cocked the hammer and put a percussion cap in the action. Rork, crouched behind a hay bale on the wagon, was doing the same.
“Ready?” Wake mouthed. Rork nodded and laid his rifle over the seat, drawing a bead on the bandit standing closest. Wake used a spoke of the wheel to rest his barrel and picked another man as a target. A bandit by the cooking fire glanced up. Wake shifted his sights onto the man.
Then the man pointed at the bosun and started to open his mouth.
“Fire now, Rork.”
The blasts came out together, felling both targets. Rork, reloading quickly, got off another shot twenty seconds later as the bandits were scrambling to find cover. Wake was already running to the next wagon behind, where he found another rifle, which he loaded faster than he had in his life, calling out the sequence as he remembered Gunner’s Mate Durling doing with his sailors during the war.
Swearing foul oaths while fumbling with the cartridges, he got off two shots, one of which went into the face of a bandit climbing up from under the wagon. While Rork kept firing, Wake took the man’s khanjar knife before going around the back of the wagon and grabbing the back panel of the crate, yanking it open. He reached in and cut the bindings of Sokhoor and Woodgerd, who then used it to sever the ropes tying the others inside.
Woodgerd emerged shakily, followed by Sokhoor, who yelled something in Arabic as Wake ran to the next wagon. Another three men fell out of the crate, missionaries, one with a clerical collar. The bandits were returning fire now. Out of the corner of his eye, Wake saw the horsemen riding fast, a dust cloud climbing into the blue sky behind them. He didn’t have much time. They were getting close. Woodgerd was shooting, Sokhoor loading a rifle, but the missionaries were disoriented.
“Grab rifles and shoot them!” he bellowed at the missionaries.
He saw Rork standing on top of the second wagon now, calmly marking his targets, shooting and reloading. A bandit came charging around the next wagon, khanjar in hand, shrieking at Wake. The man raised his knife, ready to plunge it down into Wake, when an invisible punch doubled him over and knocked him down. Blood spread in the middle of his robe as Wake kicked him in the face and wrested the knife away.
The next wagon had no rifle on the seat. Wake jerked the door open. A man tumbled out and he cut his bindings, then handed him the knife to free the others who were crawling out. Wake heard the wailing of women above the gunfire. He raced to the last wagon and saw one of the horses in front drop, screaming with a hole in its head, the other horse panicking and skittering around trying to rear up while still in the traces. The wagon skewed and leaned over, hanging precariously for a moment before crashing on its side. The crate rolled off, resting upside down beside the wagon, the women inside shrieking. Wake was frantic as he looked for the latch.
“Catherine! Are you in there!”
With all the confusion he didn’t hear the riders sweep around the line of wagons behind the crouching hostages. With Falah leading, they fired a volley into the wagons from fifty feet away.
It felt like a red-hot poker had been rammed into Wake’s right side.
He doubled over. Wake knew it was a gunshot wound in the right side of the chest, then
