The usual sentence after conviction by Bureau administrative tribunal—guilty was nearly but not quite inevitable—was five or ten years of corrective labor. It certainly corrected any tendency to publicly blame the United States for any war it was engaged in, since the earliest enrollees hadn’t graduated from their course of educational labor yet. Seeing their scruffy, miserable forms in pictures or by the side of the road certainly corrected the speech and actions of most onlookers from the small minority who didn’t share Uncle Teddy’s opinions in the first place.
“That is a clever deception,” Horst said. “What about clothing?”
He’d brought his own set of American street clothes with him, and was changing into them as they spoke. That wasn’t practical for the rest, though.
“We have enough regular clothes, you can carry those in bundles for later after you, so to say, freshen up a wee bit . . . but it’ll be the prisoner overalls at first; with those nobody will be surprised that you’re not looking, ah, sweet as spring daisies, as it were.”
That everyone’s scruffy and stinking, Luz filled in, focusing on impersonal things to help beat down the gathering knot of tension within. I can see a couple of them wrinkling their noses at the Germans, and I doubt Mr. McDuffy’s friends are the most fastidious of men to begin with. From the one-bath-a-week set, the most of them.
It would probably pass muster, too, since the U-boat men did look the part. A term of corrective labor under Section Fourteen wasn’t supposed to kill you, but it wasn’t supposed to be pleasant, either. There was enough food, just, but of the most bland and basic sort, and the work was hard—very hard indeed and dangerous too, for those not used to rough manual labor on construction sites in the blistering Colorado Valley, or digging irrigation canals around Bakersfield or logging in Alaska or the like. Among other things the whole process was intended to make a three-year hitch in the Army look attractive by contrast even to the imperfectly patriotic.
A few judges had tried to rule that sort of thing unconstitutional, years ago. They’d apparently forgotten—God alone knew why, since he hadn’t been at all shy about it on the stump—that Uncle Teddy had put snap judicial recall elections into the Party’s platform in 1912. Possibly they thought he’d been bluffing or only meant to use it for things like upholding the workman’s compensation and child-labor laws that conservative judges were in the habit of striking down back then. A few demonstrations of just how quickly he and the Party could mobilize voters to yank offending judicial backsides off the bench had made the remainder . . . or their replacements . . . much, much more pliable.
“Your weapons will have to be concealed . . . unless you’d prefer to leave them with us . . .”
A single pale, coldly arrogant Uradel glare from Herr Hauptmann Freiherr von Dückler showed the Irishman how far he’d get with that idea. His lips went thin in annoyance, but he nodded silently.
And let that be a lesson in exactly how much liberty Ireland would have in a world where the Reich has the victory, Señor McDuffy-Venganza. What you really want is to see the English brought down and their pride humbled in the dirt; everything else is a distant second.
McDuffy’s men handed out the overalls, loose canvas striped in black and dirty white, with a number preceded by the letters FBS stenciled on breast and back and brimmed caps of the same coarse material. While the Germans changed and stuffed their uniforms into sacks for disposal, quickly but with a fair bit of chaffing, the Clann na nGael men cranked the engines of the trucks and the Guvvie. They were well cared for and caught immediately, blatted, and began to roar. Oddly the sound didn’t echo, sounding more muffled than it would have in open country: The tons of soft leather and wool all around seemed to soak up noise, and Luz doubted they could be heard outside at all.
Another strong point of this warehouse, Luz thought with professional respect for the Clan na nGael leader. I’d bet you couldn’t hear gunshots very far, either . . . Mr. McDuffy is a problem in need of solution . . . and death solves all problems.
The warehouse was dim, but Luz saw things with increasing clarity—the wart below an eye, dirt ground into a laborer’s knuckles by decades that could never be scrubbed free, a young man’s gingery wispy mustache. Her body felt lighter, too, and her movements more precise. That was something in the back of her head warning her that she was about to go back to a certain place, a place she dreaded and—in her most honest moments—admitted she had come to crave as well.
The feeling was never wrong when it warned that the dance was about to begin; that buried part of her mind was better at quick deduction than the conscious portion, too.
There’s never been as much riding on it as now, though. These negatives are the most important intelligence since that random soldier picked up Lee’s Special Order 191 just before Antietam.
The Guvvie had no top, and a pintle mount stood up between the two front seats. One of Denke’s seamen brought over his Lewis gun, and he and a man of McDuffy’s who knew the weapon—he’d probably done a hitch in the U.S. Army, possibly precisely to acquire training for the Irish Republican Brotherhood’s purposes—capably clamped it home in the pivoting mount on top of the steel column.
As the Germans piled into the trucks, McDuffy’s followers gathered around behind the Guvvie. He pulled a map with the American National Railways crest—a stylized wheel superimposed on the outline of the U.S.—off the seat and began to open it, and his men crowded around to get their final instructions. The map was part of a series put out as an element in ANR’s campaign to integrate road and rail transport more effectively, now that so many miles of paved road had been finished and even more were under construction. The Party never saw a road that it didn’t immediately want to straighten, widen, and pave, at state and federal levels both. McDuffy’s followers continued going over it after he came back for a last word with the German leader.
“I will ride in the small auto,” Horst said as he joined them; his clothes were a bit wrinkled, but would do, and he’d rather heroically shaved with his drinking water before they arrived. “In which of the motor trucks will Fräulein Whelan ride? Two women in the car of the secret police would be excessively suspicious.”
McDuffy looked up sharply. “Sure, and she’ll stay here with me, of course. This is her town, and she has kin here, who I’ll take her back to. She’s no use to you now, and she’s of our people, not yours.”
Luz caught Horst’s eye and gave a single short no motion of her head. The German officer’s nod was equally curt; from his point of view Ciara Whelan simply knew far too much. And could not be allowed to talk privately with her compatriots before the Breath of Loki was launched, not under any circumstances. Her usefulness was over.
“That is not possible,” Horst said flatly. “She will accompany us. Let us go. Sofort!” he added, then realized he’d used his own language.
“Immediately,” he repeated, which meant the same thing but didn’t have quite the imperative snap or sense of: Do it! Now!
Luz turned, and casually nudged Ciara in the ankle with her toe as she did. It was time to break the situation loose.
The younger woman nodded vigorously. “Oh, sure and that will be for the best, Mr. McDuffy!” she said brightly, wetting her lips and letting her voice catch with fear. “I’m sure that I can be of help to the gentlemen, and they our allies.”
Good job, querida! Luz thought, as things took on a diamond clarity.
McDuffy was no fool; his eyes narrowed as he looked at Ciara, obviously determined to wring out everything she knew. When he spoke, his voice was flat:
“She’ll come with us. It’s bad enough we had to use her as the courier; she’ll spend no more time among strangers, a good Irish girl.”
“Captain von Dückler!” Ciara said, grabbing his arm with a terrified gesture.
Luz thought it just a trifle overdone, but then she knew Ciara better, and it wa
s certainly an excellent improvisation and fit for the purpose. The Clann na nGael certainly didn’t know what the Germans had really planned . . . and letting them know would drive an instant, handy wedge.
“Don’t let them keep me here!” Ciara went on. “I don’t want to be here when everyone dies!”
“Silence!” Horst barked, but the local men were all looking at her.
Some simply seemed puzzled themselves, but several were starting to look very curious, or alarmed. Sean McDuffy took a step forward; Horst’s hand went to his .45, but the Irishman wasn’t intimidated.
“Talk, girl!” he said, as she cowered backward . . . and away from the German. “Why should explosives launched at the Navy Yard kill everyone?”
“Bombs, they told you? It’s poison gas over the whole city—” Ciara blurted, giving a very convincing imitation of someone panicking.
If I didn’t know she was brave as a lion, I’d think she was panicking too. I am in love!
Horst’s hand with the heavy automatic pistol in it made a hard smacking sound as it struck the side of her head. It wasn’t lethal, as it might have been without the half step he had to take and her dodging, but she reeled against the Guvvie’s side and slid down it, bleeding from a pressure-cut over the temple.
“Miss Carmody! Miss Carmody!” she called shrilly. “Don’t let them leave me here to die! Everyone here’s going to die of the gas, Miss Carmody!”
That was beautifully done, Luz thought, checking her impulse to shoot Horst with a little difficulty; first things first.
But it may have been a step too far. Don’t complicate the story you’re selling—though that does make it impossible for Horst to just brazen it out . . . And so does that attack on Paris back in May. The photographs in the papers were fairly dramatic.
Horst’s pistol came around to cover McDuffy, whose eyes darted between him and Luz and Ciara and then went very wide. His mouth opened.
“Carmody—” he began.
Luz had grabbed the cocking knob on the top of her Thompson’s receiver as soon as the men began their confrontation, twisted it to unlock it, and racked it back in the same movement. She was pivoting on one heel as McDuffy spoke, letting the forestock fall into her left hand and clamping the butt between her side and her right arm, and then her finger tightened on the trigger—
Braaaaaaap.
The rattling snarl was a precise controlled burst, eight or nine rounds, directly into the clump of Clann na nGael men behind the Guvvie. The Thompson’s muzzle kicked up and to the right when it was fired on full automatic, but she’d started with it pointing at groin level and clamped down hard against the torque. The muzzle blast was a leaf-shaped blade of flame in the dimness of the warehouse, and she slitted her eyes to keep it from blinding her.
Braaaaaaap. Braaaaaaap. Braaaaaaap.
The men collapsed as the heavy .45 slugs punched into bodies and limbs from only ten feet away; a few sparked off the concrete floor and flew away with peening sounds. Luz’s thumb clicked the selector switch back to SA as she stepped briskly over and brought the butt to her shoulder. One of them was struggling to lift a pistol he’d pulled from his pocket, shaking with the effort as blood ran down into his eyes. Others were moaning or thrashing or screaming, or still.
Crack. Crack.
Two rounds into the center of mass, and the man with the little .32 went limp. The Thompson was very accurate at close range, and the recoil of a single pistol round, even a powerful one, did very little against the weight of the weapon.
The German and the local man who’d been mounting the Lewis gun on the Guvvie were wrestling over it now, hammering clumsily at each other and making the vehicle rock on its springs. Luz stepped close and extended the Thompson until its muzzle was only a few inches from the local’s stomach.
Crack. Crack.
The man pitched backward off the auto and landed in a boneless sprawl; the German leapt down and did what someone in his situation normally would, ran back to his comrades. She walked behind the vehicle and finished off the others quickly and methodically, starting with the least injured, double-tapping with precise shots into the upper chest or the equivalent on the back. That was the spot where you blasted into the bunch of arteries and veins above the heart, and the .45 round had been designed as a shock-action man-stopper that ripped things apart within. It worked just as well here as it had against Moro fanatics in the Sulu isles hopped up on religion and hashish.
Blood sprayed across her jacket and pooled about her shoes as she did so, and the coppery-salt smell of it was rank under the sweeter odors of leather and wool, and the chemical stink of auto exhaust.
¡Otra vez la misma historia! she thought, the words distant in her consciousness. Back in business at the same old stand.
Men were shouting in the trucks, and a few started to jump down. Less than half a minute had passed since her first shot, and they weren’t used to this type of fighting. Horst’s voice broke through the brabble in crisp German:
“Quiet! Two men in each truck, change into street clothes; one to play guard, one to drive. The rest—”
He paused a little; Luz thought he was probably remembering that the men were sailors, and more likely to shoot each other than McDuffy if they tried to hunt him through this maze.
“—the rest watch carefully for the American in the suit. Shoot him if you see him but do not shoot me.”
“He got away?” Luz said sharply, turning back to him.
“Yes, Herrgottdonnerwetter!” the German noble said angrily. “You startled me. I wounded him but he’s still mobile. My fault, I should have expected you to act quickly. Finish off the girl, I’ll get Herr McDuffy and we’ll salvage what we can from this beschissen mess. It shouldn’t be too serious.”
Horst turned away, keeping the rifle slung and his pistol ready, more suited to the close-in stalking among the maze of bales; he was going to have his work cut out hunting the IRB gunman down in this tangle, even with a blood-trail to follow. Luz crossed to where Ciara was slumped against the Guvvie and bent, forcing down concern with a massive effort of will. Her eyes were open, but her gaze looked vague. She’d been able to speak coherently after Horst hit her, so she couldn’t be too badly concussed.
I hope!
“Lie still when I shove you!” Luz hissed. “But be ready to move. Understand?”
A weak nod. Luz looked around for an instant, then fired into a bale of leather nearby and pushed her to one side. Ciara toppled to the floor and did her best to go limp as death.
“Taken care of!” Luz called in German; none of the U-boat crew could see details and Horst was looking in the other direction.
Silence fell; one of the sailors started to talk and someone else whapped him on the side of the head. Then Luz heard a sound she hadn’t expected: laughter.
“Ye dim thick gobshite!” McDuffy yelled; the accent was stronger in his voice now.
Then there was a guttural sound of pain, probably from the effort of the yell.
“Ah, Christ Jayzus!”
From the sound of it he was lying on top of one of the piles of leather or wool. From the sound of it he was also wounded and fairly badly; there weren’t many places a flat-nosed .45 round wouldn’t do that, if it hit you at all.
“Ye’ve kilt me, but you’ll be dyin’ too, and soon. Elisa? Elisa Carmody de Soto-Dominguez—isn’t that the full name of her?” McDuffy called out to the German.
Mierda, he noticed what Ciara called me, Luz thought with icy concentration; things were going to move fast now.
The Irishman spoke quickly, to get the knife in while he could:
“We got the news of that one ten days ago, to the message we sent asking where she was! She was took, took in Mexico by the Black Chamber in March and they squeezed her dry in Lecumberri dungeon and swept up most of the PNR that was left on the strength of
it! That whore with ye’s a Black Chamber bitch, a fookin’ viper of a spy ye’ve been nursing amidst all yer secrets, ye treacherous amadán!”
“¡Recórcholis!” Luz said mildly as Horst answered, which meant Uh-oh or Oooops, roughly.
Horst is more than smart enough to remember that Ciara didn’t use Carmody’s full name, so McDuffy would have to have known it on his own. And he’s disciplined enough to remember it even when he’s about to kill. And if he talks to McDuffy for more than a few seconds—
The German officer replied, and he wasn’t shouting, and neither was McDuffy when he answered; she could just make out their voices, but not the words among the sound-absorbing piles.
“Eso lo tronó,” Luz said; that had torn it. “Ciara! Up, quick!”
Ciara did her best; Luz bent and gripped her around the thighs as she rose and pitched her into the rear seat of the Guvvie, where she landed with a thump and a groan. Luz was already vaulting into the driver’s seat and dropping the Thompson on the passenger side.
“Stay down!” she snapped.
Fortunately none of the U-150’s sailors spoke English well enough to instantly grasp what was going on. Infantrymen would have known what to do by reflex when she pulled the cocking handle and turned the Lewis gun on them, but they hesitated fatally because their minds still saw her as someone on their side.
Bratatatatatatat—
Luz walked short bursts along the row of Model T trucks, aiming low—the fuel tanks were under the driver’s seat. Tracer showed the path of the bullets, like bars of red light through the dimness at this close range, and then as she turned it back the first vehicle took fire with a whump that was not quite an explosion but close enough for government work. Men ran screaming as their clothes caught fire in the spray from the ruptured tank.
Black Chamber Page 38
