by Glenn Cooper
“We’re seeing a hot zone in action,” Emily said. “I shudder to think what’s happening on the other side.”
Yates let out a low whistle. “I don’t think we have nearly enough ammo.”
“The SAS has a reputation for improvising,” John said.
“Then improvise we will,” Yates said.
“I don’t think we’re going to find the MAAC people among that lot,” Emily said.
“We’re going to have to leave that to the captain while we move on,” John said.
“What do you think the story is on that ship?” Kyle said.
It was a large four-master with a tall quarterdeck sitting at anchor in the deepest part of the river channel. A longboat was being lowered over its side.
“It’s a warship,” John said. “A galleon, but I don’t think it’s English. Look at the flag.”
“My God, John,” Emily said. “I think it’s flying French colors.”
“An invasion?” Yates asked.
“It’s on its own so I doubt it,” John said. “I think it may be a sign of something more serious. Word of the hot zones may have spread to the continent. That’s the bad news.”
“What’s the good news?” Kyle asked.
“We may have found our ride to Francia,” Emily said.
The operation required the cover of darkness and had to be conducted in absolute silence. While it was hard to spend another day waiting, the prospect of commandeering the French galleon was too tempting. John gamed it out with Yates and his staff sergeant, O’Malley, a fellow with a heavy Belfast accent. If the entire crew had abandoned ship to join the migration to Earth then the galleon would be essentially useless and the wait would have been a waste. If the crew were still on board they would have to be subdued and pressed into service for the channel crossing. The safest way of achieving this was to use all of A Group for boarding and capture. But keeping a dozen or more crewmen in check during a crossing to Francia would take more than John, Kyle, and Emily, even with a couple of AK-47s. There was simply too much ship to cover to avoid an insurrection.
“But the French are allied with Garibaldi now,” Emily said. “Maybe they’ll cooperate freely once we tell them who we are and what we’ve done.”
“Any crew that decided to take passengers to Dartford has gone rogue,” John said. “We couldn't trust them.”
“There’s no way around it,” Yates said. “You’ll need to take some of my men with you. You’d know better than I the minimum number needed to keep a ship like that under control.”
“Two of your people ought to do it,” John said.
“How many AKs will you need?” Yates asked.
“None. You’ll need all of yours. One of your men can take mine. I’ll find a musket on board.”
“I can reload a blackpowder rifle pretty damn fast,” Kyle said. “The other guy can use mine.”
“All right,” Yates said. “I’ll be looking for one volunteer.”
“I thought you said two men,” John said.
O’Malley grimaced. “I think the captain just gave me an order. He’s a sneaky bastard that way. I’ll go and canvas the others for the volunteer. Hearing none, it’ll be Culpepper.”
When fully dark, A Group left the thicket and made its way to the riverbank upstream of the galleon and a good distance from the Hellers still coming toward the promised-land of Dartford. John, Emily, and Kyle waited among the bulrushes with all the rifles and ammo while the SAS men slipped into the water and began swimming toward the warship armed only with knives procured from William’s forge.
And then they waited.
Half an hour passed, then an hour.
In the distance they heard some shouting coming from the direction of Dartford but nothing from the river. The night was impenetrable; it was an act of faith that the ship was even still there. Finally, they heard something that sounded like oars slapping the water and a longboat appeared at the river’s edge carrying Yates and six of his troopers.
“Hop in,” Yates whispered.
“Was the crew there?” Emily asked.
“Yeah, about a dozen men and their captain.”
“What took so long?” John asked.
“Taking them down didn’t take much time at all. It was searching for the ones we might’ve missed that took some doing. That plus rounding up all the guns, knives, and swords. Do you have any idea the nooks and crannies in one of these things?”
“Actually, I do,” John said, recalling his all-too-recent channel crossings.
“What’s the captain like?” John asked when they were on their way, rowing back toward the galleon.
“He’s pissed off,” Yates replied. “Speaks English, swears in French.”
“Does he know what we want him to do?” John asked.
“Thought I’d leave that to you. Hungry?” Yates opened a basket stuffed with bread and cheese. “Found this in the captain’s cabin.”
“Famished,” Emily said, reaching in.
The captain, a man named La Rue, was indeed pissed off. Sergeant O’Malley had done him the courtesy of not sticking a gag in his mouth but he was confined to his cabin, his hands and feet bound.
“I hear you speak English,” John told him.
“Who are you?” La Rue asked.
“John Camp. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of me.”
“Why should I know you?” he asked contemptuously, sniffing at him.
“Didn’t know if you were informed about recent events inside Francia.”
“If you mean the demise of King Maximilien and our alliances with Italia and Iberia, yes, I am well-informed. What has this to do with an outsider such as yourself?”
“My associates and I are, how can I put it, in the service of your new king, Garibaldi.”
“None of this has anything to do with me. I owe my allegiance to the Duke of Bretagne. He cares little about these alliances. We attend to our own affairs.”
“You’re a long way from Brittany. Why are you here?”
“Why are you here?” La Rue challenged back. “And why have you seized my vessel?”
“I like you, Captain,” John said. “Sergeant, would you untie him?”
O’Malley began to undo the knots.
“I’ll go first,” John said. “I think you know about the channel that’s opened between our two worlds. I think you’ve just dropped off a load of passengers who want to cross over. My associates and myself are here to try and cut the connection between Earth and Hell. It’s supposed to be a one-way journey and we need to keep it that way.”
“Thank you,” La Rue said, rubbing his wrists. “Yes, that is why I am here. Word of the miracle of this English village has reached Britagne and many people want a second taste of life and are willing to pay someone like me for the chance.”
“I’ll bet your duke doesn’t know you’re moonlighting.”
“What is this word?”
“It means you’re on your own. He doesn’t know anything about it. That way all the payments go to you.”
“I would rather not speak of such matters.”
“Of course not. Tell me this. Why didn’t you cross over too?”
La Rue asked if he could have some of his own wine and poured a glass. “I admit I gave it some thought,” he said, “but then I asked myself, why? I have heard from recent men how wondrous your world has become. Would I like to see the sun again, watch children at play, read a book, listen to a chamber orchestra, walk among men who are not all cutthroats and despicable scoundrels such as myself? Yes, of course. But I am a sea captain. I command a galleon. I am told there are no galleons in your world. What would I do? I get along well enough, I have the patronage of the duke, a good house in Brest, better than the one I had in life, and so far I have avoided the salles decomposition. I will stay in Hell. I am reconciled.”
“Well I hope you’ll be reconciled to taking us to Francia. Tonight.”
La Rue delivered a mighty Gallic shrug. “How
much will you pay?”
“Here’s my best offer,” John said. “If you cooperate I won’t put a bullet in your head.”
The captain puckered his lips in contempt. “Your generosity staggers me, monsieur.”
18
From his perch on well-concealed high ground, Captain Yates kept saying he wished he had a pair of binoculars. He and his men had bided their time until daylight and now, an hour past dawn, they were still debating their strategy. With Sergeant O’Malley off to Francia, second-in-command duties fell to Lance Corporal Scarlet, a fast-talking Londoner.
“It’s not going to do us a bit of good to go in with guns blazing,” Yates said. “My guess is that most of them are either unarmed or too lightly armed to do us much damage. We’ll burn up too much ammo and we won’t necessarily get what we want.”
“I don’t disagree with you,” Scarlet said. “This is more like riot control than an assault, isn’t it? We’ve got to teach ’em who’s boss then get control of the inner perimeter. See the clear zone around the village? It’s almost a perfect circle. From where that bloke just disappeared to the opposite side, I reckon is a quarter of a mile. We can’t cover every inch of it with the men we’ve got.”
“More than controlling it, we’ve got to hold it for an extended time.”
“How long?”
“Anybody’s guess but I can’t see it being less than a fortnight,” Yates said.
“That means we’ve got to treat each round of ammo like it was a bloody pearl.”
“It also means we’ve got to work out our supply lines. We can’t box ourselves out of access to the river for drinking water and this wooded area for game. Seems to be rabbit and deer about.”
Grabbing a stick Yates cleared out a patch of ground with his boot and drew a circle in the dirt, then four X’s. “We position two men at each of these four compass points,” he said. “That’ll leave me plus four other men outside the perimeter to respond flexibly to threats as they arise and to fetch water and hunt. We’ll rotate, do shifts and whatnot to keep it as fresh as we can. Right?”
“Too bad we had to give up O’Malley and Culpepper.”
“Yeah, well, had to rob Peter to pay Paul, didn’t we?”
“The plan sounds plausible,” Scarlet said. “But how are we going to part the Red Sea?”
“Assemble the men,” Yates said. “I’ll tell everyone how it’s going to go down.”
Before long the men of B Group marched from the woods onto the flat flood plain of the river. Yates had chosen a protectable flying V formation with ten paces separating each man. He took the point. Rifles were on semi-auto, facial expressions on full badass. A few Hellers just arriving in the area saw the marching formation coming but the vast majority of the crowd of several hundred had their backs to them, engrossed by what was happening at the border of the hot zone where the intrepid souls who stepped forward into the void were disappearing.
Most of them turned to the sound of Yates’s firing his rifle once into the air and following up with his booming voice.
“Now hear this all you dead motherfuckers! We are from Earth. We are alive. We are British soldiers. More specifically, we are the SAS, the biggest, baddest fighting force you have ever seen. You will stand aside. You will disperse. You will not approach the disappearing point. You will go back to your homes. You will get the fuck out of here immediately. You will not try to pass to Earth. We will not let you. We know we can’t kill you but we can seriously fuck you up.”
A few Hellers on the periphery ran away but most remained rooted, talking and arguing about what to do. The crowd was large enough that not everyone heard what Yates was shouting and his message had to pass from person-to-person.
Scarlet was to the right and rear of Yates. “They’re not responding, Captain.”
Yates replied, “Lance Corporal, pass the word to hold steady. Let’s see if we can avoid bloodshed. I see some belted knives and swords but no firearms but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.”
Yates shouted his instructions again at the top of his voice.
From the other side of the crowd a small number of King Henry’s soldiers, a unit of sweepers tasked with roaming the countryside looking for new arrivals to Hell, talked among themselves.
“Let’s circle around and get the better of them,” their captain said.
“I don’t wish to get crashed just as we’re on the brink of passage to Earth,” one of his men said.
“You’ll do as I say,” the captain said, sticking his flintlock into the man’s ribs. “Follow me.”
Yates fired another round into the sky and the sound reverberated like a clap of thunder. A few more Hellers ran off toward the river. The six sweepers pushed their way through the crowd and got clear of their fellow Hellers some fifty paces to the left of where Yates was standing.
A trooper on the left-hand side of the V formation spotted the captain and screamed, “Gun! Left! Gun! Left!”
The trooper closest to him took aim and fired a single shot, shredding the sweeper captain’s head. The five other sweepers charged. Three had swords. Only one had a pistol. He got off one shot that flew high before he and his companions were dropped by a volley of SAS fire. The Hellers nearest the felled and bleeding sweepers began to scatter.
“Cease fire!” Yates shouted. Then he bellowed, “Who’s next? If you haven’t raised your hand then move away from here while you can still walk. Now!”
That final “now” had the desired effect. Hundreds of Hellers took off like runners hearing a starter pistol. As the crowd thinned, those closest to the hot zone bucking up their courage for the final steps into the unknown had to make a decision. Yates saw two men and a woman leap forward and disappear but the rest of the Hellers opted to retreat.
Seeing only the backs of fleeing men, Yates ordered a few of his troopers to check the bodies of the men they had shot.
“They’re all still moving,” a trooper called back. “Even this one missing most of his fucking head.”
Yates swore under his breath. “Leave them as a warning. Teams one through four, take up your positions. Don’t get too close to the hot zone. The boffins told us it might be expanding. If you pass through I’ll take it as a desertion, not an accident. Team five, do some hunting. I fancy a nice joint of venison for supper.”
Thanks to their compass and silk maps, Marsh’s A Group quickly located the Sevenoaks hot zone. They discovered a similar situation to the one Yates had found in Dartford. Hundreds of Hellers ringed the zone, daring one another to take the plunge into the unknown. A nobleman from Maidstone had come to inspect the scene, accompanied by his well-armed militia, and this was the group that Marsh focused on.
Taking cover behind a shabby stables about a hundred yards from the crowd, Marsh conferred with his sergeant and with Trevor.
“We dominate that lot, we dominate all of them,” Marsh said.
“I can work two men up along that line of bushes and set up a sniper nest by that big tree,” the sergeant said. “I reckon the bloke with the helmet on the tan horse is the big cheese. We’ll take him out first then anyone with a long gun. Wouldn’t be surprised if that starts a stampede.”
“I like it,” Marsh said. “Once they clear out we can set up a defensive perimeter around the hot zone and dig in for the duration.” Then he sniffed a few times and said, “What the fuck smells so bad?”
Trevor said he thought he knew and told them to wait. His rifle at the ready he crept around the wooden building. A latch held the door shut and when he slowly swung it open he recoiled at the concentrated stench.
“What was it?” Marsh asked him when he returned.
“Come and have a look,” Trevor said. “John told you about them before we left but seeing’s believing.”
There was just enough light coming through the door to let them see what was inside. The sounds of groaning, moaning, and pathetic pleas filled in the rest of the picture. Marsh and the group sergeant only penet
rated a few paces before turning in disgust.
Gasping at the fresher air Marsh said, “Is this a rotting room?”
Trevor nodded.
“Bring each trooper in here,” Marsh ordered his sergeant. “I want the men to see what it is we’re up against. I swear, we are going to keep every goddamn Heller from coming to where we live or we’re going to die trying.”
Trevor had set out on his own, trying to figure out where the Belmeade schoolboys had entered Hell. He had left Marsh and his men to their plan and it had gone off without a hitch. After sniper fire cut down the Baron of Maidstone and his men Marsh established his perimeter. The baron had taken a bullet to the mouth so he couldn’t be questioned but those militiamen who could still talk were interrogated about the boys. None confessed to knowing anything about them or any Earthers. Trevor didn’t fancy being back in the British army so he had left A Group as soon as he could, telling Marsh he would rejoin them at some point, with or without the schoolboys. He began wandering the surrounding meadows looking for clues.
In the near distance was a heavy forest. He wondered if it would have attracted or repelled the boys. He had to admit he didn’t much fancy being in the woods come nightfall so he decided to see what he could find in that direction while there was still daylight. After a while he noticed a well-trodden path through some low bushes leading into the forest. Almost immediately his eye fell upon a small piece of bright blue and gold wool stuck to a bush. He plucked it off the thorns and inspected it. Blue and gold. Weren’t those the Belmeade colors?
