by Chuck Dixon
Voices came from above him. They were gathering together up there. Sure as shit one of them came across his blood trail and called the others. From his shelter under the apex of two fallen boles, he watched them cautiously moving down toward him. They had arrows nocked and their bows curved back ready to fill the air with missiles. The little men glanced about, blindly scanning the dark ahead as the center man bent to follow the smear of crimson on the forest floor.
Four of them moved cautiously toward the deadfall with two more behind. All had bows raised and bent full back, moving the barbed points back and forth, sighting down the shaft for the target they knew to be here. Knew to be close.
The SEAL covered his eyes with one arm and flipped the cover off the clicker. He depressed the switch twice.
A charge of C-4 send hundreds of steel balls rushing from the Claymore. In an instant, the area before the mine was transformed into a ballistic hurricane of flesh, bone, and blood as well as a cloud of dust and fragmented debris from the forest floor.
The four archers closest to the blast were vaporized. The two behind were dismembered. A seventh archer unfortunate enough to wander into the kill zone lost both legs below the knee and collapsed with a high keening cry that died away as his blood sprayed from torn stumps. All in a fraction of a second thanks to the baddest anti-personnel weapon in the SEAL’s arsenal.
Lying less than fifty feet behind the blast, Boats was deafened. His head felt like there was a clapper inside it striking off the inside of his skull. He fought to remain conscious.
He lost that fight.
31
At Madame’s Pleasure
Caroline knew two things for certain. She could not be in this room when the registrar returned with either gendarmes or soldiers. And the single door to the hallway was the only way out of this room. The door was locked from the outside, but the key was still in the slot. She knew this by crouching silently and peeping into the keyhole to see it was blocked by the barrel of the key.
Her room was on the third floor. The windows opened onto a narrow balcony that was mostly decorative. It was an escape route she’d hesitate to use if she were alone. With Stephen in her care, it was beyond any consideration.
She swiftly packed the carpetbag with all it would hold, then put on the woolen coat and hat and a pair of scarves. The baby was dozing in his basket, but would not be for long if the plan she carried out was to work. Caroline retrieved the revolver from its hiding place and worked the hammer back with the heel of her hand. She then went to the door and pounded on it with her fist.
“My child! My child is ill! Mercy! You must have mercy!” she screamed in her tourist French and hoped she was selling her desperation. The drumming on the door and the shouts of his mother awoke Stephen with a start. His pitiable cries added to her performance.
She could see a shadow shift in the crack of light under the door. Big, dumb, drunken Patrice heard her. “Please, help me. Have mercy on a small child who has harmed no one. I beg you, sir!”
The key rattled in the lock, and the door swung inward. Patrice entered the room with wide eyes devoid of suspicion. Caroline backed farther into the room and raised the pistol in both hands.
“Please?” Patrice said once he realized what he was looking at.
“My baby and I are leaving,” Caroline said, fighting to keep her voice steady. “Pick up that bag, and I will not be forced to hurt you.”
Patrice looked down at the packed carpetbag resting by the door.
“I am not certain.” he said.
“Well, I am certain, monsieur,” she said and gestured at him with the revolver.
Reluctantly, he picked up the bag and turned his back on her as she indicated he should do with a twirl of the pistol barrel. She shifted to a one-handed grip and lifted the handle of the basket containing the squalling Stephen.
“We will use the back stairs and the servants’ exit,” she said, following the big man down the hall at three paces distance.
“Please do not shoot me, madame,” he said with a small voice.
“Please do not make me,” she said. The way was awkward in the narrow hallway with the weight of the basket in one hand and the heavy wool coat that fit like a tent over the brocaded dress and all the goddamned layers of petticoats. The boots had raised heels that she’d thought were so cute but now realized were impractical for getaways. This would have all gone so much easier in a pair of sweats and Nikes, she thought.
She turned at voices behind her. The three cigar smokers were coming to the top of the open stairway from the second floor. They’d seen her and were calling out in alarm. They looked as though they meant to catch up and subdue her.
Caroline raised the revolver, straightened her arm, and jerked the trigger. The result was deafening. The big handgun threw her arm up like a pump handle. She felt the shock all the way to her shoulder. Through the smoke, she saw an entire section of banister had been torn away at the top of the stairs.
The three cigar smokers were descending the stairs three steps at a time, leaving top hats behind in a rush to be out of the line of her fire. She fired two more shots in quick succession to let them know the first was not a fluke. She could hear splintering furniture and the crash of from the floors below, followed by the shouts of men and screams of women.
Through the clanging din in her ears, the rising sound of a baby’s wail. Her baby.
She looked down to see Stephen red-faced and howling in terror, with hands held fisted to his face. Caroline cooed words of comfort even though she could not hear them herself. She was probably shouting and adding to the baby’s fear. In a flash, she recalled her predicament and swung the gun down the hallway toward where she fully expected to see Patrice rushing her.
The big man stood at the far end of the hall, frozen in mid-stride with his back to her and clutching the carpetbag. His shoulders were hunched in anticipation of a fresh fusillade. Smoke was still drifting from the weapon she aimed at him. Caroline used all her strength in her free hand to thumb back the heavy hammer and saw that the revolver cylinder rotated and clicked into place.
“Move on!” It sounded to her like it was coming from miles away through layers of cotton. She was shrieking though it sounded to her like a whisper. Patrice trotted toward the end of the hall, and she followed with the pistol raised at the back of his skull.
They descended the tight back staircase and reached the servants’ mudroom and the doorway to the alley that lay at the bottom. She urged Patrice to step outside and set the carpetbag on the cobbles. She ordered him away, out of her sight. A waggle of the weapon sent him running away down the alley toward the rear courtyard as fast as his big feet could carry him.
Caroline dropped the revolver into a voluminous pocket of her coat and hefted the carpetbag. Struggling with her double burden, she made for the street at the far end of the alley. She prayed that whoever the registrar went to for help capturing the mad German spy was too busy with the war to come back to the hotel with him.
Her hearing returned in the cold sting of the wind coming down the narrow passage between buildings. Stephen was still wailing in the basket. Beneath the sound of his cries, she could hear the muffled rumble of cannon shells landing somewhere nearby.
“Goddamn you, Samuel,” she whispered as she stepped out of the alley and onto a sidewalk crowded with foot traffic. They were all running in one direction. She turned to look at the way they came to see a dense tower of dirty gray smoke rising over the buildings to join the low shroud of winter clouds.
Caroline found shelter for herself and the baby in a restaurant set in the middle of a block of apartments. They were out of the wind and the cold and removed from the chaos on the streets. Soldiers were trying to keep order. They blocked entry to certain upscale streets, bayonets gleaming in the cold winter light. The mobs were encouraged to disperse, to go home and huddle in their basements and cellars. Some men, young men mostly, stood to engage the troops in argument or simply
hurl abuse. Those were rewarded with rifle butts and bootheels and left to lie where they fell while their comrades fled, calling back dire threats of the people’s vengeance.
Within the dim confines of the restaurant, the political discussions continued at tables crowded with refugees from the street. They were refugees of a certain class only. Two sturdy waiters stood at the door, judging customers by their dress and deportment. Those who failed to meet the pair’s standards were refused entry. Those who insisted on entry despite their appearance or manner of speech were discouraged with fists.
She took a booth at the rear and ordered a cup of tea, a glass of wine, and a plate of olives and hard cheese. It was understood that only paying customers would be tolerated. She selected enough from the scant menu to allow her a few moments to order her thoughts and dropped far more coins on the table than necessary to pay for her order. Stephen also needed to be fed, and she nursed him using her shawl to conceal the suckling baby.
There was little privacy here as the place filled up. Two men slid into the booth across from her, removing their hats and smiling greetings. They eyed the shifting shape beneath the shawl with openly lurid interest. They nudged one another like schoolboys. They made muttered remarks at the sounds Stephen was making on her breast. They giggled like children. Caroline pretended interest in a rather dreary landscape framed on the wall above the booth.
“A lady wishes to sit here,” a man standing at the opening booth said in a deep rumble.
The two men protested. The man, a big man in a leather-trimmed wool coat, grabbed fistfuls of their clothing and dragged them from the bench. He cast them toward the crowd standing at the bar. He tipped his head at Caroline. He had the face of a boxer with a crushed nose and scarring along his brows. But his eyes were kind.
“Would you excuse the company of my mistress?” the man said.
Caroline nodded in gratitude.
The big man stood aside to make way for an older woman dressed in conservative clothes of magnificent quality. She wore a coat trimmed in ermine or mink over a high-collared dress of black silk embroidered with jade insets. On her hands were dove-colored gloves, with a garnet ring worn on one finger.
She walked with the aid of a gold-capped walking stick. Despite whatever infirmity she suffered, she carried herself in a regal manner. The woman settled on the bench across from Caroline and removed her gloves, setting the ring on the table. The big man stood at the opening to the booth with his back to the ladies.
“Claude will make certain we maintain some degree of privacy,” the woman said. “You should not have to suffer unwanted attentions while seeking to see that your child is fed. War has made us all equally miserable but it is no cause to turn us to beasts.”
“Thank you,” Caroline said. “I was beginning to feel very uncomfortable.”
“I am Madame Villeneuve,” the woman said. “I assume from your charming version of French that you are foreign.”
“Caroline Rivard. I’m Canadian, though my husband is French. I am learning the language from him.”
“The only place to learn any language is in bed,” Mme. Villeneuve said and smiled when Caroline blushed. “Your husband has left you and your child alone?”
“We were separated by the fighting. I am trying to find him.” Caroline resisted creating a more elaborate story than that. She opted for some partial truths. “Stephen, my baby, and I were evicted from our hotel. They did not believe I was married.”
“These filthy Germans have made a tragedy of all our lives. Now they are outside our gates. They will not stop until they have made us all into Germans.”
“Do you believe they will win? They will take the city?” Caroline wished she already knew the answer to that.
“I only know what I read in the papers, which means I know nothing.” Mme. Villeneuve sniffed. “It does not take a genius in military affairs to know that if their cannons are close enough to strike the Pantheon and the Sorbonne, then we will soon see Prussians marching on our boulevards.”
As if in emphasis to her remarks, the restaurant shook with a tremor of enough strength to set the chandeliers swinging. Dust streamed down from the ceiling. The clamor of conversation died across the dining room and bar for a few seconds then resumed as before. “You say you lost your lodgings,” Mme. Villeneuve continued. “Where will you and your child stay?”
“I will find a place,” Caroline said. Beneath the concealment of the shawl, she opened her dress further and shifted Stephen to her other breast.
“A woman alone? Don’t be ridiculous. You will only face the same ignorance at any hotel worth staying at. The two of you will find yourself in some horrid pensione, where you will be robbed and worse.”
“It’s that dangerous?”
“Can you not feel it in the air? Unrest. Disobedience. The uncertainty of these days has given men license to act unlike they would in a time of security. No woman is safe, even in as sophisticated an establishment as this once was. Those two pigs leering at you as they did! All decorum gone. Respect is a forgotten thing. It may become so anarchic that we will eventually welcome the Germans in to restore things to the way they should be.”
“Then I have no desirable opportunities for shelter then?” Caroline felt as trapped as she had back in her rooms at the Exemplaire.
“Nonsense,” Mme. Villeneuve said, pursing her lips. “You will come to my home. I will not see a young lady, even a Canadian, cast upon the street with a baby in arms.”
Caroline’s eyes welled with tears, and the older woman held up a hand to quell any displays of emotion or gratitude.
“We will wait here until just before curfew. Then Claude will escort us past the army barricades to my home. You will be far more comfortable there, and I will be far more comfortable with myself, knowing I did not leave two innocents to a fate unknown.”
“Thank you, Madame. Thank you for my baby more than for myself,” Caroline said and dabbed at her eyes with a cloth.
“Now, let us see if they have any brandy of quality here. Would you care for a glass, my dear?” Mme. Villeneuve tapped a finger on Claude’s broad back. The big man waved for a waiter.
“More than anything in the world, Madame,” Caroline sighed.
The street before the Hotel Exemplaire was filled with a choking mix of wood smoke and brick dust. A twelve-inch Krupp shell had dropped through the roof of a theater a block away. It buried itself deep in the orchestra pit before detonating. The resulting blast caused the ceiling to collapse, leaving the one thousand seat emporium a flaming ruin and covering the surrounding streets with a thick fog driving pedestrians before it.
A man stood on the sidewalk across from the Exemplaire. The crowd moved past him in a rush. The man remained unmoving beneath the awning of a jeweler’s as ash fell on them like snow. He watched as the hotelier returned with a gaggle of blue-jacketed soldiers and all rushed inside.
The watcher removed his Homburg hat, exposing a head of close-cropped white hair. With his elbow, the dark man brushed ash from his hat before replacing it atop his head. He then turned up his collar and crossed the now-empty street to enter the hotel.
32
A Wolf in the Fold
The Rangers atop the escarpment heard the sounds of battle from somewhere below. The multiple shotgun blasts reverberated to them through the still night air. They moved to the end of the headland at the top of the slope above the Roman fort. Bat and Jimbo watched the wooded hummock of land through their scopes but could see nothing, not even a muzzle flash, through the dense skein of trees.
Lee watched the fort beneath them. No alarm was raised. The sentries had to have heard the booms reaching them from the forest but paid them no mind. They hadn’t yet had the experience of facing firearms, so the blasts meant nothing to them but a curious noise of unknown origin.
An extended firefight meant that they probably lost the horses. There were too many shots fired. It wasn’t a quick exchange with a small force. It
was bandits perhaps but more probably the auxiliary archers showing up ahead of schedule. None of them were concerned about Boats. He knew to abandon the mounts and get the hell out.
The unmistakable sound of a Claymore erupting changed that assessment. That was a last-ditch, broken arrow move. The SEAL was in deep shit if he was playing his lethal trump card this early.
Down in the camp, the Romans were rousing. They all heard it. It was loud enough and close enough to bring some of them out of their tents. The mine going off raised a visible cloud that rose above the treetops. They didn’t make a move to mobilize, but an officer was storming around in his undies, waving a staff and ordering men up onto the ramparts. That confirmed that they were warned to expect something even if they didn’t know what form it would take.
“What about Boats?” Chaz asked.
“Boats is fucked,” Lee said. “That’s the way it is.”
“So, we leave him hanging?” Jimbo said.
“What would he want us to do? We don’t know that he’s been captured and if he’s been killed then heading back over there is a pure bonehead play. Either way, we lost the horses.”
“And the gear,” Bat said. “We’ll need to do something about that.”
“Can’t leave that shit back here when we leave,” Chaz said.
“Yeah. Catastrophic anachronisms. Heard the lecture, bought the t-shirt,” Lee snarled. “We have a new Priority Two. We stick here and watch the fort. If it is the Assyrians over there, then they’ll bring the horses and the gear to the fort. Once we confirm that we build a plan from there.”
