Gears of a Mad God: A Steampunk Lovecraft Adventure

by Brent Nichols

  Chapter 4 – Striking Back

  Colleen watched the rest of Carter's team disembark from the ferry and immediately felt better. There were four of them, three men and a woman, and they all exuded a tough, competent confidence. There was a brief flurry of handshaking. Then Carter said, "This is Colleen. We'll do introductions on the way. We're going to Chinatown."

  They filled the convertible with luggage, left it at the docks, and took a pair of taxi cabs through Victoria. Colleen found herself sandwiched between two of the new arrivals, a stern-faced woman in her fifties, and a broad-shouldered young man with a black mustache and a lantern jaw.

  Carter sat beside the driver and twisted around in his seat to make introductions. "Colleen Garman, this is Margaret Nelson and Richard Dalglish."

  The woman smiled and said, "You must call me Maggie." She had a distinct southern drawl.

  "And I'm Rick," the man said. "We've already heard about you."

  "Maggie is a professor of antiquities, now retired from active teaching so she can work with us," Carter said. "Rick is part of the Canadian team. He's been seconded from your Dominion Police."

  "It's the Royal Canadian Mounted Police now, actually," Rick said. "Pleased to meet you, ma'am."

  "Call me Colleen."

  "A few things have changed since our last telegram," Carter interjected. "The opposition has kidnapped a woman who may have vital information. We're looking for clues to her whereabouts." He nodded to Colleen and she described Jimbo's uniform, and the laundry she'd seen in Chinatown.

  "I'm not sure exactly where I saw it," she admitted. "I was pretty distracted at the time."

  Carter chuckled at the understatement.

  "But it's fairly distinctive, and it's somewhere in Chinatown, so it shouldn't be hard to spot. How big can Chinatown be?"

  "Second-largest Chinatown in North America," Rick said cheerfully. "Only San Francisco has a bigger one."

  "Show-off," Maggie said with a smile.

  Chinatown was less terrifying on this visit. Even with night falling everything seemed less strange, less foreboding. In part it was because she had seen it before, but the biggest reason was that she was back with friends, and with a purpose.

  They divided into two groups, agreeing to stay fairly close together. Colleen walked with Carter and Smith, while the new arrivals worked their way up a parallel street. She was torn between a desire to rush and a terror of going too fast and missing something. She racked her brain, trying to remember landmarks from her first visit, but it was all a kaleidoscope of fragmented images. Was the kitchen before the opium den, or after? Did she see the laundry hanging in a street, or an alley?

  She needn't have worried. Before they reached the end of the block, Rick and another man, David Parker of the Bureau of Investigation, came jogging around the corner. "We found it," Rick said.

  Maggie and the last team member, a fat, older man named Garson, were standing in front of a clapboard building with a sign that said "Londry." Maggie gestured at a gap between buildings. "Is that what you saw?"

  Colleen looked where she pointed. Laundry hung in three tiers on closely-spaced lines. The middle tier was full of dark trousers, neckerchiefs, and white shirts. The shirt collars and neckerchiefs all bore a distinctive pattern of white-and-burgundy stripes. Colleen nodded.

  "The proprietor," Maggie drawled, "tells me these belong to the SS Arcadia. They aren't picking up their laundry until tomorrow afternoon, so they're in port for at least that long." She turned to Carter. "What now, boss?"

  "Let's go take a look," he said.

  They walked to the waterfront. It was full dark, and they kept to the shadows, circling wide around the streetlights as they slunk down the aptly-named Wharf Street. Smith was in the lead, and everyone froze when he raised his arm.

  The Arcadia was a vast shape looming in the darkness. She had a single chimney stack, so she was steam-powered, but Colleen could make out several masts as well. She was rigged for sailing, then.

  She was moored at a wharf. The seven of them stood in the shadow of a warehouse and looked the ship over. No one was in sight, but lights burned on deck, and light gleamed from a few portholes. Colleen eyed the ship, trying to guess her size. Three hundred feet long? Four hundred? Maybe forty feet wide? It was a lot of ship to hide one woman in.

  "What's the plan, boss?"

  Colleen wasn't sure who asked the whispered question, but it was Carter who answered.

  "We watch. We have no idea what we're dealing with, or how many there are. So we set up surveillance, keep track of who comes and goes. Tomorrow we'll find out how long she's in port, and set up some kind of schedule."

  Surveillance? Tomorrow? Colleen thought of Jimbo, his feverish eyes, his knife, and knew there was no time to spare. She thought about arguing with Carter, decided it would be pointless, and shrugged.

  So be it.

  "Hang on, Jane," she murmured. "I'm coming." And she stepped out of the shadows.

  Carter's voice was an urgent hiss. "Colleen! What are you doing?"

  She turned to him, her heart thumping in her chest, almost hoping he could persuade her to stay back. But her voice was level as she said, "You do all the surveillance you want. I'm going after Jane." And she turned her back on the group, ignored Carter's sputtering voice, and set off down the wharf.

  She reached the ship, moving to the edge of the wharf where the ship cast a long stripe of shadow. The hull was close enough to touch, a pitted surface of chipped white paint and flaking rust. There was no gangplank, and the side of the ship rose above her like a wall. Colleen kept walking, hoping to find a way up.

  In the middle of the ship the hull was lower, and Colleen stood looking up. The top of the hull here was even with her head. She had no idea what lay beyond it. She shrugged and crouched, preparing to jump.

  A rustle of feet made her turn her head. Carter, Smith, Rick, and David Parker were marching up the wharf. She raised an eyebrow when they reached her, and Carter shrugged.

  Smith waved Colleen back, then sprang nimbly, clinging to the top of the hull. He lifted himself up until he could peer over the top, then pulled himself up and over.

  Colleen went next. Smith was crouched below the gunwale, a pistol in his hand. Colleen dropped into a crouch beside him, and the others quickly joined them.

  They were in the shadow of the forecastle. Electric lights on the masts burned down, painting the deck in alternating stripes of light and shadow. The deck was an orderly clutter of ropes and davits, lifeboats and pipework. For a long moment nobody moved. When Colleen realized they were waiting for her, she rose and darted to the forecastle.

  She found a door, unlocked, and slipped through. There was a corridor ahead, and a ladder leading down. She took the ladder, guessing that Jane would be hidden deep in the ship, away from prying eyes. They arrived at a lower deck, she had a quick glimpse of another corridor, dimly lit, and she took another ladder deeper into the ship. She could hear the rustle of footsteps as the team followed her, and the hum of machinery in the bowels of the ship.

  The ladder ended and she stepped into a corridor. It was an oppressively big ship, and her heart sank as the immensity of it sank in. However, there was nothing to do but keep on.

  The corridor was too narrow for two people to walk side by side, but Smith was close behind her, pistol in hand. The others were not far behind, and she saw more handguns. She headed down the corridor, glancing at the closed hatches that they passed. She was betting that Jane would be guarded, that there would be people and noise wherever she was.

  The corridor ended at a hatch, a door with rounded corners and a circular handle in the middle. Colleen glanced at Smith. He nodded, hefting his pistol, and she gave the door a push. It opened a crack, and she pushed it farther until she could peer out.

  She saw another corridor, but more plush than the one she was in. The floor was car
peted, the light fixtures were fancy rather than strictly functional, and the walls were perforated by doors rather than hatches. She guessed she was seeing the passenger section of the ship. A man in a crisp white uniform crossed her field of vision, not glancing her way, and she eased the hatch shut.

  The others looked at her and she shook her head. She was guessing that the entire ship wasn't crewed by cultists. The man she'd seen had lacked the depraved, half-mad look of the cultists she'd seen so far. And the passenger section just felt wrong as a hiding place. If Colleen was right, Jane wouldn't be in the passenger section. She'd be tucked away in a boiler room or a corner of the hull, somewhere only a small part of the crew might go.

  They retraced their steps, took a perpendicular corridor, froze at the sound of echoing footsteps, then resumed moving as the footsteps faded.

  A left turn had them moving toward the stern. The corridor ended at an open hatch, and Smith peered in, then stepped through. Colleen followed, and smiled. They were in the boiler room. She felt immediately at home. It was one vast room, as wide as the ship, but crowded by vast steel shapes. She could see two boilers, with only a narrow space between them. Pipes ran in every direction, and valves and gauges sprouted everywhere.

  A man came walking from behind a maze of pipes and stopped, staring at them in astonishment. He was greasy and dirty, wearing stained coveralls and carrying a wrench. Smith pointed his pistol at the man, and Carter hustled forward, took the wrench from the man's hand, and said softly, "Keep quiet if you want to live."

  The team members spread through the boiler room and found two more sailors, dirty sullen men who might have been cultists or innocent bystanders. Carter herded them into an empty coal bunker and jammed the wrench through the wheel on the hatch, effectively locking it.

  It was David Parker, the burly Bureau of Investigations agent, who spotted the hatch in the back bulkhead of the boiler room. He cocked the snub-nosed revolver in his fist, glanced at the others, and pulled the hatch open.

  There was a gunshot and Parker fell back. Rick, the Mountie, dragged Parker back as Carter and Smith fired through the hatch. When the bulk of a boiler was between Parker and the hatch, Rick said to Colleen, "Do what you can for him." Then he ran to join Carter and Smith.

  Colleen stared down helplessly at the man. She knew how to fix machinery, not people. She shut her eyes for a moment, made herself breathe deeply, and murmured, "You can do this. You can."

  She opened her eyes. Parker was staring up at her, his face grey, his lips pressed tightly together. She looked him over. The damage was easy to spot. There was a hole in his left sleeve, just below the shoulder joint. There was no blood on the fabric, but blood was pooling on the floor beneath him. Well, that would be the first priority, then.

  In the corner of her eye she saw the others charge through the hatch, going deeper into the ship. She shrugged. She had her hands full for now.

  Her one attempt to get Parker's jacket off left him gasping and white-faced with pain. She balled her hands up, frustrated, looked around for something she could use to cut the fabric away from the wound, and finally asked him, "Do you have anything sharp?"

  He nodded, and pointed to his front pants pocket with a shaky right hand. Colleen dipped her hand in the pocket and came up with a folding razor. She cut apart the seam of his jacket where the sleeve met the shoulder, tugging to tear the threads in the places her razor wouldn't reach. Then she went to his wrist and drew the sleeve down and off.

  His shirt was a bloody mess. Colleen told herself that it was a repair job, nothing more. A mechanical malfunction that happened to involve blood and flesh. She sliced the shirt sleeve open, wielding the razor with delicate precision, and eventually slid the sleeve from his arm.

  She could see the bullet's entry hole, a small black circle oozing dark blood, but not the exit. "You'll have to roll onto your side," she told him. He nodded, used his right arm to stabilize his left wrist, and she slid her hands under his back, lifting, helping him roll. He grunted with pain but didn't cry out.

  The exit wound was a mess. A chunk of flesh was missing, leaving a gory, ragged hole two inches across. Colleen cut a section of his shirt sleeve, wadded it up, and pressed it into the hole. She wrapped the rest of the sleeve around his arm and got him to hold it in place with his free hand. She looked around for something to hold it all in place, and finally used Parker's shoelaces.

  By the time she was done blood was soaking through the makeshift bandage, but slowly. He wouldn't bleed to death, not soon. Now they just had to get him off of the ship. She draped his jacket over him and got up to take a look around.

  There were four boilers in all, three of them cold. The fourth boiler was lit, a fair amount of pressure showing on the gauge, enough to run a few onboard systems, she supposed. She moved past the lit boiler to the hatch at the back of the room and peeked through the opening.

  Carter, Smith, and Rick hadn't advanced very far. Rick was no more than six feet past the hatch, pressed into a gap between thick pipes on the wall of the corridor. Carter was a few feet past him, on the other side of the corridor, flattened into a hatchway. Smith was a short distance beyond, crouching behind more pipe. Shadows moved deeper in the corridor, a shot rang out, and all three men flinched. They were pinned down.

  Colleen drew back. The longer they remained stuck, the longer the cultists had to circle around, or to get rid of Jane. Clearly something had to be done, but what?

  Her eyes drifted naturally to the lit boiler. They had the awesome power of steam at their fingertips, if they could figure out how to tap it. She examined the boiler and the surrounding equipment. The water level was decently high, so she could crank up the heat without too much danger. She examined the firebox. There was a coal hopper, almost full, and a grate to allow coal to tumble into the fire. She kicked the grate open, sent coal pouring into the firebox, and opened the air vent. The needle on the pressure gauge twitched, then crept upward.

  This was steam power on a larger scale than Colleen had ever worked with. She took her time examining the pipes, hoses, and gears around her. She found a pipe with a T-intersection on it, the base of the T ending after six inches as if the pipe had been cut off. Above the cut-off was mounted a red-painted handle. She tugged the handle gently, and steam came hissing out of the pipe end. She shoved the handle back and the steam stopped.

  Her eyes scanned the room and fell on coils of hose mounted in racks on one bulkhead. She pulled down a coil. The hose was thicker than her arm, stiff but moderately flexible. It felt like rubber wrapped in canvas. She dragged the end of the hose over to the T-intersection. There was a clamp on the hose end, and she found that the hose end fit neatly over the base of the T. She used the clamp to lock the end of the hose in place.

  "What are you doing?"

  She looked down at Parker. "Hooking up a steam hose. They would have used it to power tools or to do steam-cleaning. I'm going to use it more directly. Do you think you can stand up?"

  "I'll try."

  She helped him to his feet and led him to the T-intersection. He leaned against the pipes and she showed him the red handle.

  "When I knock twice, metal on metal, you pull this handle down, okay? When I knock twice more, you push it back up. Then repeat, when I knock again."

  He looked puzzled, but he nodded.

  Colleen took the free end of the hose and started toward the hatch where the men were pinned down. On the way she picked up a wrench from a wall rack. She peeked into the corridor.

  Rick, Carter, and Smith hadn't moved. Colleen took a deep breath, plunged into the corridor, and banged her wrench hard, twice, on the pipe beside Rick. Then she raced forward, passing Carter and reaching Smith. She heard Carter say, "What the hell are you-"

  A man moved in the shadows ahead, she saw a gun barrel gleam in the darkness, and then the hose squirmed in her hand and steam came blasti
ng out. In an instant the corridor was filled. She couldn’t see a foot in front of her face. A shot rang out, she heard the bullet ricochet on metal, and a man began to scream.

  She charged forward, and she felt shapes brush against her as Carter, Smith, and Rick followed. The temperature rose as they ran into ever hotter clouds of steam, and she swung her wrench blindly. It banged on metal, the sound ringing out like the peal of a bell. She banged again and the flow of steam ended.

  They reached a cross-corridor. The steam was dissipating quickly here, and they could see for several feet. A man knelt in the corridor, a gun in his hands, clutching his face. His skin was red and blistered, and Smith stepped up behind him and slammed the butt of his pistol into the top of the man's head. The man collapsed, Smith pocketed the man's pistol, and the four of them looked around in the fading mist.

  A hatch swung open ahead of them and a man leaned out, his face twisted with rage and a pistol in his hand. Smith fired once and the man sagged into the corridor. Smith moved forward, peeked through the hatch, then looked back at the others and grinned. He dragged the body out of the way and stepped through the hatch.

  Colleen and the others advanced. By the time they reached the hatch, Smith was coming back out. Jane was with him, her arm over his shoulder, his arm supporting her. She looked terrible, her face swollen and cut, her head lolling on her shoulders. Colleen, torn between relief and horror, dropped her steam hose, pushed through the men, and helped support Jane.

  The sound of a pistol being cocked was the only warning they got. Colleen and Smith ducked, Carter and Rick pressed themselves against the walls, and the blast of a gunshot echoed through the corridor.

  Rick and Carter returned fire. Colleen wriggled out from under Jane's arm, grabbed the dropped steam hose, and banged her wrench sharply on the floor. On the second bang the hose thrashed under her hand. She was about six feet from the end of the hose, and it flapped and writhed, spraying steam in every direction. Rick sprang back, cursing, and Colleen crawled forward, pinning more and more of the hose to the floor.

  The corridor was completely filled with steam. She didn't see Carter, not even when he bumped into her on his way past. She got a grip on the end of the hose, then banged her wrench a couple of times. This time she kept her grip on the hose as she retreated.

  They spilled into the boiler room, Colleen dragging the hose behind her, and Carter slammed the hatch shut. He kept a hand on the wheel as the group took stock.

  Rick was burned, not badly, but the side of his face was bright red. Colleen said, "Oh, I'm so sorry," and he smiled.

  "Better than a bullet. Thanks, Colleen, I think you saved my life."

  The wheel under Carter's hand twitched, and he grabbed it, keeping it from turning. Colleen wrapped her steam hose through the spokes of the wheel, immobilizing it, and he let go.

  "We need to get out of here," Smith snapped. "They know the ship better than we do. They'll be circling around and cutting us off soon."

  They organized themselves quickly. Carter helped Jane while Rick helped Parker. Smith went first, gun in hand. Rick and Parker brought up the rear. Rick supported Parker with one arm and held a pistol in his free hand. Colleen found herself in the middle of the group, the wrench clutched in her sweaty hand.

  They hurried down a long corridor, moving toward the bow of the ship. When they came to a ladder Smith darted up while the rest of them waited. Then Smith waved them up. Carter and Colleen boosted Jane upward until Smith could reach her wrists and lift her. Parker was able to climb, gripping the hand rail with his good hand, his face tight.

  On the next level Colleen took over supporting Jane while Carter and his pistol brought up the rear. A sailor came through a hatchway carrying an oil can, gaped at them in astonishment as several pistols came to bear on him, then dropped his oil can and stepped back through the hatch. They heard the slap of his feet as he ran away.

  At last they reached the same ladder they had first come down. Smith went up first, and swung open the hatch leading to the deck of the ship. Almost immediately he flinched back. "Gun," he said. "At least one man. He's got good cover."

  Carter climbed up beside him. "I'll cover you while you run for it?"

  "I don't know. There isn't much cover close by. And if they have someone up high, I'm done for."

  Colleen drew back from the group. She helped Jane sit down and whispered, "Hold on. We're almost clear."

  Jane nodded, tried a small smile, and flinched as a cut on her lower lip opened.

  Parker sat at the base of the ladder, a pistol in his hand. Rick stood beside him, ignoring the discussion above, eyes scanning the corridor. Colleen hefted her wrench and set off down the corridor. She heard him hiss a question, but she kept walking.

  She came to another ladder and went up. There was no hatch. Instead she found a corridor with portholes on one side. She examined a porthole, figured out how to swing the circle of glass open, and peered out.

  The hull of the ship stretched below her, flat and smooth. She could see the wharf, six or eight feet down. The men would never make it through an opening this small, but she thought she might get through.

  She craned her neck around to look up. There was a railing just above her. She looked carefully in every direction and didn't see a sign of life. She listened intently, heard only the slap of water on the hull and the creak of the boat as it moved in the water. Finally she tucked her wrench into the belt of her dress, took a grip on the porthole, and started working her way out.

  She squirmed around until she was sitting in the round hole, the wrench digging into her stomach. She stretched her fingers upward and found a precarious grip on a flat surface somewhere above. She pulled with her hands, squirmed with her hips, and slid out, her backside hanging over the wharf. She worked her hands up higher, got a better grip on the surface above, and squirmed and wriggled until she could draw a leg out and get a foot on the sill of the porthole.

  From there it was almost easy. She stood, took the wrench out of her belt and set it on the deck above her, grabbed the vertical bar of a railing support, kicked off with her feet, and pulled with all her might. She drew herself up, let go with one hand and scrambled frantically for the railing above her. She caught it with her fingertips, then scrambled with her toes on the smooth hull. She got a toe on the deck, and hung awkwardly by two hands and a foot, her skirts riding up in a most unladylike way.

  She wasn't sure she could make it over the railing, but she had to, so she gritted her teeth and heaved. She gained a precious half inch, took a better grip on the railing, and in moments she managed to swarm over.

  Colleen found herself on a walkway about four feet wide. On one side was the railing she'd climbed over. On the other side was the hull of the ship, pierced every few feet by portholes. She ducked low under the portholes and moved quickly sternward, toward her friends.

  She reached the back of the forecastle. The walkway made a right-angle turn, and Colleen crouched in a strip of shadow, looking down on the deck of the ship eight feet below. By her calculation, she was directly above the hatch where Smith and Carter waited. She scanned the deck, looking for the gunman who had them pinned.

  She spotted him, a man in a white uniform shirt and dark trousers, crouching behind a vast coil of rope. His attention was focussed on the hatch below her. She was pretty sure she hadn't been seen. The rest of the deck seemed empty.

  Colleen crept along the walkway, feeling exposed for the first several feet until the coil of rope was between her and the cultist. She followed the walkway until she found a ladder going down. There she froze for long moments, listening to the mad beating of her heart, straining her eyes and ears into the darkness. If she'd been spotted, the ambush would be here.

  Was she unseen? It was impossible to be sure, but there was no time to be cautious. She went down the ladder as quietly as she could, took a firm grip
on her wrench, and tiptoed into the darkness. No light reached this part of the deck. Each step was a cautious probe with her toes. She inched forward, moving past big, dark, shapeless structures, and finally saw the coil of rope gleaming ahead of her.

  Now she moved faster, terrified that the gunman had heard her, was already reacting. She went around the coil of rope quickly, almost running, and found him turning, his mouth open, the gun swinging around toward her.

  She swung the wrench with all of her strength at the pale gleam of his face. She hit him a glancing blow on the forehead. The gun wavered in his fist, and she brought the wrench up and swung at his wrist. Metal crunched into bone and the pistol fell clattering to the deck.

  He cried out and clutched his wrist, and she slammed the wrench into the top of his head. He swore, and she gritted her teeth and clubbed him again. This time he slumped forward.

  When she peered around the coil of rope she saw Carter and Smith already charging through the hatch. She gave them a wave, then turned back to the gunman.

  He was moaning and holding his wrist, struggling to sit up. She shook her head. It was harder than she'd ever suspected to knock a man out. She picked up the pistol, pointed it at him, and found she couldn't bring herself to shoot. Well, he was injured and disarmed. That would have to do.

  She stepped around the coil of rope and a shot rang out. She flinched, looking around, as Smith dove for cover. Carter was nowhere in sight. Smith caught her eye and pointed above her. She turned and saw a dark shape moving high on the aft mast.

  A horizontal hatch swung open in the middle of the deck, fifty feet or so aft of Colleen. A man's head and shoulders appeared. He held a gun, a rifle or shotgun by the look of it, and Smith snapped off a couple of quick shots, making him duck.

  A sudden glow appeared below the gunwale of the ship, an engine thundered, and tires squealed. The dark figure on the mast fired at something beyond the ship, and Colleen took advantage of the distraction to spring up and run to where Smith was hiding behind a lifeboat. She dropped into a crouch beside him.

  The convertible raced up the wharf, headlights ablaze. Colleen could just make out the shape of Maggie at the wheel. Garson was beside her, standing, his fat body wedged against the seat back, his legs wide for support. He had a machine gun in his hands, a Tommy gun with a drum magazine, and he fired a stream of bullets at the ship.

  "Now's our chance!" Smith cried. He leaped up and ran back to the hatchway, and Colleen followed. Carter came through, supporting Jane. Colleen dropped her wrench, pocketed the pistol, and took Jane's arm as Carter turned back to help Parker.

  Colleen brought Jane to the edge of the ship and the car screeched to a halt below them. Pistol shots rang out behind her, but Colleen focussed on helping Jane clamber over the railing. She held Jane's wrists, lowered her as far as she could, and Garson came running over to catch Jane's legs. Colleen let go and Garson lowered her to the wharf, then helped her into the car.

  "Go, for God's sake," Carter snapped, and Colleen hopped over the railing and dropped to the wharf. Rick came next. Smith and Carter almost threw Parker over the railing and into Rick's waiting arms. Rick grunted, stumbled, and Colleen caught him. They lugged Parker to the car and dumped him into the back seat.

  Smith and Carter came flying over the railing, Maggie gunned the engine, and Colleen sprang onto the running board and hung on.

  Maggie didn’t waste time turning the car around, just put it in reverse and hit the gas. They went screaming down the wharf, Colleen clinging white-knuckled to the top of the car door, Rick on the running board beside her, his teeth gleaming as he grinned in the darkness.

  Garson was back in the front passenger seat, Tommy gun in his hands, and Colleen flinched as the machine gun fired inches in front of her face. She smelled hot metal and gun smoke and tasted the tang of cordite in the air. Garson's face was fixed in a snarl and he fired in short, controlled bursts.

  It wasn't enough. Return fire came from the ship, another machine gun. Colleen could see muzzle flashes coming from the top of the forecastle. Bullets ripped up the planks of the wharf, then smacked into the front of the car. Steam billowed from the radiator, the car swerved, a line of bullet holes appeared on the hood, and Garson grunted and let go of the Tommy gun.

  The Tommy gun landed on the hood of the car, and Colleen thought about reaching for it, but the car was swerving violently and she was afraid to let go. Then Maggie gave the steering wheel a sharp jerk and the Tommy gun went bouncing off into the darkness.

  They reached the end of the wharf. Maggie turned sharply, braked hard, and threw the car into first gear. They lurched forward, steam from the damaged radiator blowing over them, and Maggie muttered to the car as she fought the controls. They rumbled down Wharf Street, moving no faster than a man could run. A block later the engine gave a sharp bang and died.

  "That's it," said Maggie, "we're walking from here."

  "I think Mr. Garson was hit," Colleen said. He was sitting slumped forward in the front passenger seat, and she put a hand on his shoulder, pushing him back. His head lolled to the side as his body flopped back, and she could see a line of bullet wounds in his chest and stomach. His eyes stared blindly at the sky.

  Rick reached past Colleen and put two fingers on the side of Garson's throat. "No pulse," he said, and closed Garson's eyes.

  "We have to move," Carson said. "We'll have to leave him, and the car. They'll be coming, and they have us outnumbered."

  Colleen helped Jane out of the car. Rick and Carter got Parker out and held him supported between them. Colleen glanced back at the wharf. A knot of men had gathered beside the Arcadia. As she watched, the men broke into a trot, heading down the wharf.

  "Here they come," said Carter, his voice grim. "Let's move."