On Her Majesty's Behalf

by Joseph Nassise

  She had it halfway closed when the shredder on the far side of the room spotted her.

  Their gazes met.

  The shredder suddenly gave a weird, howling shriek and then rushed toward her, moving so quickly that it might have caught her if she hadn’t chosen that moment to throw her full weight against the door and slam the heavy crossbeam into place the second the door clicked shut.

  On the other side of the barrier, the shredder howled in frustration. It was not a pleasant sound.

  To take her mind off it, Veronica went back over to Freeman’s side, determined to take a look at his shoulder.

  She rolled him on his side and then used his knife to cut his shirt away. She’d been right; the bullet had entered in the front but seemed to have gotten caught up on something as it came through his body, for there was no exit wound. How he’d managed to get the plane down safely with a bullet lodged in him she didn’t know, but that didn’t make her any less thankful. Blood was still trickling out of the wound, which wasn’t a good sign. Veronica knew she was going to have to do something about it if Freeman was going to survive.

  She hunted around the odds and ends stored in the room until she came up with some cloth to use as a bandage and a bottle of brandy to clean the wound. Freeman was still out of it, which was probably for the best. She had to dig the bullet out of his shoulder and didn’t know how squeamish he might be.

  Better an unconscious patient than one fighting your every move, she thought.

  She doused her hands and his knife with the brandy, then she did the same for the entry wound in the front of his shoulder.

  He didn’t even flinch, which was not a good sign.

  She felt around in the wound with fingers until she’d located the edge of the bullet and then used the tip of the knife to pry it out. She poured more brandy into the wound, washing it out as thoroughly as she could, then created a compress and secured it in place with some makeshift bandages.

  As she was finishing she noticed a rhythmic thumping in the background. It had been too faint to hear while she’d been concentrating so intently, but now that the hard part was over she heard it quite clearly.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  She got up from where she’d been working and walked over to the door.

  The closer she got, the more the door seemed to radiate a palpable sense of evil. By the time she stood right next to it, the hair on her arms and the back of her neck was standing on end and she was almost overwhelmed with the malevolence that exuded from the other side.

  She could imagine them out there, the shredders that had been chasing her, pressed up against the door, waiting for her to make a mistake.

  What was it the Americans said? So far they were shit out of luck!

  She couldn’t agree more.

  Veronica checked the brace one more time, reassuring herself there was no way for the shredders to get into the room, and she then went back to worrying about when Burke was going to show up.

  It had better be soon, she thought.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Out on the Sharp End

  London

  BURKE WOULD NEVER forget that last second, never forget that look on Jones’s face.

  The corporal’s dive put him on his stomach, with his head turned in Burke’s direction, and in that last second the sharpshooter flashed his trademark grin at his commanding officer.

  What’s a guy gonna do? that grin seemed to say.

  Burke methodically identified that dull crump that sounded from beneath Jones’s body as the detonator cap going off, a cruel, ugly sound followed by a larger blast milliseconds later that flung Jones away like a rag doll and knocked Burke off his feet and sent him sliding down the deck of the Reliant, where he bowled over Bankowski, who was shielded the most from the blast by his position at the rear of the group. The two men tumbled to a halt, smoke and the stench of burnt flesh in the air, their thoughts dazed and confused.

  It might have ended right there had the riflemen on the bridge above them been better shots.

  The two of them were caught dead to rights, and once they were taken out it should have been a simple matter for the sharpshooters to pick off anyone charging up to the deck from the interior of the submarine. But whether it was due to the angle they were shooting from or some unexpected jittering in their undead flesh, the shots were all too high or fell short of Bankowski and Burke, giving them time to gather their wits about them.

  Bullets whipped and whined through the air as first Doc Bankowski and then Burke began to return fire. From where he knelt on the deck Burke could see at least a dozen commandos on the bridge above, their dark uniforms stark against the sky. Several leaned over the side of the bridge, firing at them, while others readied something in the background. Burke wasn’t certain exactly what that something was, but it didn’t take too much imagination to presume it was a heavy support weapon of some kind. A machine gun like that which had been used against the Queen’s plane or perhaps something more man-­portable like a mortar. Either way they were going to be in serious trouble if they were still sitting here on the deck when the enemy got whatever it was up and working.

  Another potato masher grenade came tumbling through the air, but this one skipped off the decking and disappeared beneath the surface of the Thames before detonating, leaving the two men on the deck unscathed.

  “We need to get below!” Burke shouted, only realizing how badly his hearing had been disrupted by the earlier blast when his voice sounded to him like it was coming through a bucket of cotton. He couldn’t imagine how it must have sounded to Bankowski.

  Whether he heard him or not, the Doc had apparently come to the same conclusion as Burke, however, for he pointed at the open hatchway then looked at the major, a questioning look on his face.

  Burke nodded a very emphatic yes.

  Ropes suddenly came whistling down from above and Burke understood that there was only one reason for them being there. They weren’t going to be alone for much longer; if they were going, now was the time.

  As if on cue the two men broke into a run, firing as they went. There was no room on the narrow deck for them to dodge without falling over the sides so the best they could do was charge straight ahead and hope that they made it to the hatch before an enemy bullet found them.

  By some miracle, they reached the hatch uninjured and practically fell down the ladder together, Burke making sure to haul the hatch closed in their wake.

  From their tangled heap at the bottom of the ladder, he shouted, “Dive the boat!”

  Drummond stared at them from his position in the pilot’s chair, the grease and dust smeared across his cheek now bisected by a slowly dribbling trail of blood where he’d apparently banged his head.

  “Wh . . . wh . . . what?” he stammered, his ears no doubt ringing as loudly as Burke’s from the echo of the explosions against the boat’s hull.

  Burke stared him dead in the eye, said it again, slower this time in case Drummond needed to read his lips, and used his hand to simulate a diving motion.

  “Dive the boat!”

  That must have done it, for Drummond’s eyes got wide as recognition dawned. He dove for the controls as the sound of boots ringing out against the deck above their heads sang through the hull.

  The German commandos were aboard the boat!

  The sound galvanized the rest of the men into action. Orders were shouted through the talk box to Williams in the engine room while Graves began dumping ballast out of the tanks in preparation for the dive. Urgency gripped them in an iron fist; if the Germans blew open the hatch before they could get beneath the surface, they would be left fighting hand to hand inside the narrow confines of the sub’s hull.

  The engine spun up and the plane of the boat began to dip downward as Graves worked to get them below the surface as quickly as possible. No
t being submariners, it didn’t occur to anyone to think about the depth of the river until the bow of the boat began dredging its way along the river bottom. A sliding, grinding sound filled the boat and more than one pair of eyes frantically sought out the seams in the hull around them, praying that they would hold against the pressure of both the impact and the water.

  “Level off!” Burke shouted, as he finally managed to extract himself from the tangled heap in which he’d fallen and rushed to Graves’s side. Between the two of them they hauled back on the control levers that controlled the plane of the boat, fighting the momentum the boat had built up, and there were several long anxious moments before the noise stopped and the boat leveled out.

  Their relief was short-­lived, however. No sooner had the sound of the hull grinding against the river bottom stopped than another sound could be heard.

  A rhythmic knocking on the hatch.

  Knocking that was coming from outside of the boat.

  “Bloody hell!” Drummond said into the stunned silence, and every living man aboard that boat agreed with him.

  The dead didn’t need to breathe.

  The Germans were still out there.

  And they wanted in.

  A sudden image of several of the zombielike commandos clinging to the hatch, unaffected by the cold or the environment, as the sub dove for the bottom came to mind and Burke shivered in his boots.

  How the hell do you fight an enemy like that? he thought.

  When the answer came to him, it was in a voice that sounded suspiciously like Jones. Relentlessly, that’s how.

  Right. If there was anything that Burke was good at, not giving up until the fight was over was certainly it. And they had a long way to go in this one.

  The reminder snapped him back into action.

  He put on a confidence he didn’t feel and faced the others. “Graves, get us on the surface. Drummond, I want you and”—­he almost said Jones, stopping himself only at the last moment—­“Cohen with me by the hatch. If we don’t knock them free as we surface, we’ll open the hatch and give them a blast from the Tommys to force them back and then finish them as necessary. Everyone with me?”

  Cohen looked a little green, though that might have been from the head wound he’d sustained back at the museum. Burke tried not to think about it too much. Drummond would hold up his end of things, and that would have to be enough.

  Moments later Graves signaled that they’d broken through the surface and Burke ordered the engines to idle. The men moved into position as instructed, with Doc standing nearby to serve as backup if needed.

  If those things get down in here, we’re going to need a lot more than just Doc to stop them, Burke thought, but he kept the determined expression on his face and his thoughts to himself.

  With Burke standing a few steps up the ladder, Tommy gun at the ready, Drummond climbed up beside him and spun the hatch locking mechanism to open.

  There was no sound from outside; nothing tried to grab the hatch and haul it open.

  Doesn’t mean they’re not out there waiting for dinner, Burke thought.

  Drummond counted down—­three—­two—­one—­and then threw the hatch upward and open.

  Burke stepped up, spinning in a circle with his gun ready.

  A shredder’s face thrust between the bottom of the hatch and the lip of the opening, practically right on top of Burke.

  His finger tightened automatically, bullets from the Tommy tearing the undead thing apart before it, or anyone else, could react.

  That was it; they were alone.

  Burke climbed out on deck, Drummond on his heels, and took a look around.

  London Bridge sprawled across the Thames in front of him while to his left stood the imposing bulk of the Tower of London.

  He might have stood there, staring at the landmarks, both strange and oddly familiar, for quite some time if Drummond hadn’t tapped him on the shoulder and pointed.

  “What’s going on over there?” the sergeant asked.

  Shredders were streaming in through the water gate to the building on the other side of the walls as if someone over there had just rung the dinner bell.

  Maybe they had.

  Burke turned and shouted down the hatch.

  “Port bank, as quickly as you can, boys!”

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  The Storage Room

  St. Thomas’s Tower

  QUEEN VERONICA WAS eyeing the door nervously when Freeman spoke for the first time since she’d pulled him out of the wreckage following the crash.

  “Don’t worry; he’s coming.”

  She started in surprise and spun around to find the major watching her from where he sat propped against the rear wall. His skin had a gray, shallow cast, indicative of all the blood he’d lost, and there were dark circles under his eyes, but at least he was conscious and making sense.

  Maybe.

  “Who’s coming?” she asked, as she crossed the room to crouch beside him and check that he hadn’t loosened his bandages when he’d awoken.

  He sat patiently through her ministrations—­grunting in pain as she tightened a bandage here and there—­and then said through gritted teeth, “My brother. He won’t let us just rot away in here. All we need to do is hold out long enough and he’ll find us. That’s what he does.”

  Veronica watched him, looking for any telltale signs of a head injury. His eyes seemed to be reacting properly to the light and there didn’t appear to be any knots or swelling along his skull . . .

  “I’m sorry, Major. You have me at a loss. I don’t know who you are talking about.”

  For a moment he just stared, then broke out into a weak chuckle that turned into a coughing fit. When he finally settled down again, he gave her a short grin.

  “My apologies, Your Majesty. I thought you knew. Madman Burke—­Major Burke—­is my brother.”

  Veronica sat back on her haunches, taken completely by surprise. She’d heard the two men arguing—­had known they had a history of some sort together by the way they were acting—­but she had no idea that they were related.

  Her thoughts were on her own family, lost to the bombings and their aftermath, when she said, “It must be reassuring to know you’ve family who would risk so much for you.”

  This time Freeman’s laughter was heartier and went on for several minutes, which just confused her even more. She sat staring at him, seriously considering examining him again for a concussion or similar injury, anything that might explain his strange behavior, when he waved a hand as if to dismiss her unvoiced thoughts.

  “I’m sorry, Your Majesty, truly I am. You have no idea how ironic your comment is to me. Burke may be many things, but a loving brother he is not.”

  “But you just said . . .”

  “Who I am doesn’t matter a lick in this situation,” Freeman said, reining in his amusement. “No, I could be the son of his worst enemy and he’d still come after me if that’s what his orders said. The man’s a stickler for orders.”

  That’s not such a bad vice to have, Veronica thought.

  But Freeman wasn’t finished. “Besides, it’s got nothing to do with me,” he said, glancing away with what seemed to be some hidden disappointment of his own. “I saw the way he looked at you.”

  Veronica was so surprised by his revelation that she didn’t bother to try to hide the flush that washed over her at the thought of Burke’s possible affection. With death looming outside the door, she’d be a fool not to admit it to herself at this point.

  Hurry, Burke, she thought.

  Freeman was overcome by a coughing fit at that point, chasing away any other thoughts Veronica might have had beyond their immediate survival. When he was finished, she noted flakes of blood on his lips.

  That wasn’t a good sign.

  The bu
llet wound in his shoulder was obvious, but now she found herself wondering what other unseen injuries he might have sustained in the crash.

  He must have caught the worried expression on her face, for he tried to smile. “Don’t worry about me, Your Majesty. I’ve survived being held prisoner in a German POW camp after being shot down by the Red Baron, and growing up as the illegitimate son of our illustrious president. No way I’m going to let a ­couple of rotters take me out.”

  Son of the president . . . ?

  Before she could ask, Freeman’s so-­called rotters began pounding on the door in earnest, as if to remind them that they weren’t safe yet. The door creaked and groaned, but still held.

  Heaven only knew for how much longer, though.

  Freeman must have had a similar thought, for abruptly he asked, “Can you shoot, Your Majesty?”

  Veronica nodded. “Yes. Quite well, in fact. My father believed in making certain his children, male and female, were ready for whatever life might throw at them.”

  “Sounds like a wise man,” Freeman said, as he choked back another round of coughing. He stuck a hand inside his flight boot. “Here, take this.”

  It was a standard ser­vice pistol for the American troops, a Colt Model 1911. Veronica had fired one several times in the past, and although she might not be proficient, she was certainly familiar with one. To illustrate that fact she triggered the magazine release, checked to see if it was fully loaded, and then slotted it back into place with smooth easy motions.

  When she looked up, Freeman was holding out another magazine to her.

  “With my shoulder messed up the way that it is,” he said, “I won’t be able to shoot so well. It’s best that you have everything you need.”

  Taking it, she slipped it into her belt.

  “Let’s hope we don’t need to use it.”

  He eyed her carefully for a moment, then said, “Do I need to tell you to keep two in reserve?”

  Veronica shook her head. Captain Morrison had impressed on her the undesirability of being caught by the shredders what felt like weeks ago but she hadn’t forgotten that lesson. She’d count her shots and, if worse came to worst, use the last two on first Freeman and then herself to be certain that they both went out with a bit of grace and dignity.