Chapter Fourteen

 

 

"They were here."

 

Sergeant George Conte, once of the United States Army, gazed at his corporal's findings.

 

Whittaker rubbed carbon build-up from the wall across his fingertips, spreading clumps of it in thick smears. He was a ratty-looking little man, even with the spit-and-polish appearance Burroughs insisted on for all the troops. "Maybe only a few hours gone."

 

"That lantern could have been there for a long time, Corporal."

 

Whittaker revealed a thin, mean grin and adjusted his thick glasses. "This stuff's still soft, sir. If it'd been here as long as the rest of the materials around here appear to have been, it would be a hell of a lot harder."

 

"Okay." Conte nodded. He didn't like the other man, and had surprised even himself by working past the hate over the past hundred years. On some days he was astonished that out of all of them, Whittaker was still alive. The man rubbed everybody wrong.

 

Except Burroughs. And maybe that was the answer in itself. Whenever the major had given a shit-duty detail, Whittaker had been there to handle it, especially the killing. Interrogation had been another skill that the little rat man had mastered. Whittaker hadn't minded using the knife or getting bloody as he pried every secret Burroughs needed from reluctant captives.

 

"I'll take a look around," Whittaker offered.

 

"Do that," Conte said. "Take Henderson and Aames with you. Set up a loose perimeter guard."

 

Whittaker flipped him a nonchalant salute and went toward the other room, where they'd found the ladder leading up to the cave.

 

"Cruse," Conte yelled.

 

"Sir?"

 

"I could've chewed a hole through the roof of this redoubt in the time it's taken you to find and light a lantern, mister."

 

"Got it, Sarge." Cruse walked back into the room with a lighted lantern between his hands. The flame was weak and didn't cast much light.

 

Conte took the lantern. "Forgot you were a city boy, soldier." He removed the glass and made adjustments to the wick, then put the glass back on.

 

The room lit up appreciably.

 

"Put away the flashes, people," Conte ordered. "Let's save the batteries."

 

All the flashlights winked out.

 

"Found some rechargers in the back," Cruse said. "Also a vehicle."

 

Conte handed the lantern to Turley, who was still working on the gateway unit. From the looks of things, according to Turley, the mat-trans station was pass-coded to make it proprietary and couldn't be used to jump them to other gateways they knew to be in existence.

 

"Where?" Conte asked.

 

Cruse led the way.

 

The unit of soldiers had been inside the redoubt at the other end of the jump for less than twenty minutes. When they'd arrived, Turley had pointed out the crushed barrel of the .50-caliber machine gun that had been blocking the doors. There'd been no sign of Ryan Cawdor or his people, except for the carbon Whittaker had discovered.

 

Conte played his flash over the vehicle, raking it from stem to stern. "Is it driveable?"

 

"Should be," Cruse replied. "I'll have to look it over some before I know for sure."

 

"Get it done, and let me know." Burroughs had made sure his team had been cross-trained in a number of areas over the decades, and there wasn't a man in the group who couldn't fix most of the vehicles they had. The major bad burned it into memory that without mobility, they didn't stand a chance of rebuilding the nation.

 

"Yes sir."

 

Conte returned to the main room. He was of average height, but broad shouldered. His blond hair was longer than regulation length, but Burroughs hadn't commented on it.

 

Turley was buttoning up his tool kit, a disgusted look on his face.

 

"What have you got, Mike?" Conte asked.

 

"Cranky bastard's still operational," Turley said, hooking a thumb back over his shoulder toward the mat-trans unit. "But you climb in, you get a one-way back to White Sands. Directional programmings been gutted. Just like I thought."

 

"Any idea where we are?" Conte had tried the radio as soon as he'd arrived. Nobody was in range that he could pick up, except for his own people.

 

"None." He let out a long breath. His brow was furrowed as he looked up over his cupped hands and lit a cigarette. "No way to tell from this piece of shit, sir."

 

"Disable it," Conte said, "just in case. Even if the unit's only a receiver with one point of delivery, I don't care to think about what may come through after us."

 

"Yes sir. Hadn't thought about that."

 

"That's why they made me sergeant." Conte went into the other room containing the cryo units. He glanced at the dead man. "Wish I knew who the hell you were and what you were doing here. Cut down on some worry."

 

A hundred years, he thought sourly, and maybe they had a lead on the information leak they were supposed to have been guarding against in their initial assignment. He went up the ladder to the cave. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to establish a beachhead of sorts wherever they were. It was irritating not to know why. That was one of the reasons Conte had always liked military life everything was pretty much spelled out for a guy, leaving no empty spaces or idle wondering.

 

He paused in the mouth of the cave and looked at the footsteps only partially covered by snow. Then he lifted his gaze to the valley, sweeping across it. Ryan Cawdor was out there somewhere. It might take some time, but he knew they could track the man down and terminate him with extreme prejudice.

 

After all, if Cawdor wasn't going to throw his lot in with them, he was a dangerous enemy of the United States of America. One thing Sergeant George Conte didn't abide was a traitor.

 

 

 

THERE WERE FOUR WAGS, all four-wheel drive and rigged for off-road travel. Two of them had started their lives as pickups, the third had been a van and the last a military jeep still bearing insignia that had almost faded out.

 

The jeep was in the lead, bearing down on Jak, Krysty, Doc and the young Celt. Two men rode in the back, hanging on behind a machine gun that was bolted to a crossbar. The whine of the straining transmission drowned out all other noise.

 

Doc and Krysty went to cover at once, dodging behind trees. Jak grabbed Tarragon and pulled him behind a boulder. His .357 Magnum was settled across the top of the big rock before Ryan had time to draw another breath.

 

Ryan moved behind a shelf of rock and brought the Steyr to his shoulder, scanning the new arrivals through the rifle's scope. None of them appeared to be dressed in green, but they weren't easy-living men, either. Scars and weapons were worn like badges of office.

 

The jeep came to an abrupt halt less then fifteen yards from Doc and Krysty's position.

 

A short, broad man dressed in a leather flying jacket and aviator's cap and goggles stood up in the driver's seat and held on to the front windshield. He reached up and took a well-chewed cigar from the corner of his wide, thick-lipped mouth. "Well, bloody hell, people," he yelled. "These effing rescue efforts only go so effing far. Now shit or get off the bloody pot."

 

"Who the hell are you?" Ryan shouted back.

 

"Blackjack Gehrig. These are my boys, devil take 'em if they ain't."

 

"What's your interest in us?" Ryan asked. Over to his right he saw Jak reach out and snare Tarragon, who was suddenly trying to go back the way they'd come.

 

"You got those bloody tree-huggers chasing you, like to set your arse on fire if they catch you," Gehrig stated, "You figure a bloke needs much more in this day and age than a common enemy?"

 

"I do," Ryan answered.

 

Footsteps sounded at his side, and J.B. was suddenly there. "We're between a rock and a hard spot if they're against us, too."

 

Ryan nodded. "Make them pay for the privilege, though."

 

Gehrig waved at the machine gunner. The heavy assault gun came around and pointed up the mountainside. A loud barrage pealed across the valley, and white smoke from the heated barrel twisted into the slight breeze and disappeared. Brass spewed out over the ground.

 

The line of .50-caliber bullets smashed into the mountainside. Two of the Celts went down, and the others found cover wherever it was available.

 

"You're a bloody fool if you don't take the hand that's offered," Gehrig said. "Never had anybody turn down a bona fide rescue before." He bent his head and struck a self-light, holding it to the end of his cigar.

 

"Still looking for the strings," Ryan said.

 

"Take a look at what you have to trade," Gehrig suggested. "I'm no frigging stoneheart, 'cept to those fucking would-be dryads."

 

Ryan didn't know what a dryad was, but the term didn't sound complimentary. "Mebbe I'm not exactly convinced we need rescuing."

 

"Give it fifteen minutes," Gehrig promised. "Then you'll be convinced all to hell." He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, back the way they'd come. "Had some trouble ourselves. There's a search party after us. Could be they'll take it out on you and yours when they can't catch us."

 

"What he says is true," J.B. said. "We don't exactly have a lot of choices here."

 

Ryan saw it that way, as well. He read Gehrig and his party as scavengers of some type, though not necessarily as killers. Gunfire from the mountain was picking up, beginning to strike the four wags now.

 

"Your call, mate, but this train's leaving now."

 

Ryan stepped out from behind the rock and jogged toward the jeep. "Where do you want us?"

 

"You heading up this outfit?" Gehrig asked.

 

"Yeah."

 

"You're with me." Gehrig turned to one of the men in the machine-gun team. "Carson, find another spot."

 

The man shot Ryan a sour look, but quickly scrambled out of the vehicle.

 

"Rest of you find places in that wag." Gehrig pointed at the nearest pickup truck. "Settle in tight as you can. Gonna be bumpy before it gets better."

 

Ryan waved his group forward.

 

Jak was struggling with Tarragon. The young Celt obviously preferred being left behind to going with Gehrig and his crew. Ryan joined them, grabbing the wounded boy by the shoulder. "What's the matter with you?"

 

"If I go with you," the boy said, "they'll kill me."

 

"You stay here, Pepper and his little group will kill you," Ryan replied.

 

Jak held on to the boy with difficulty, gripping a fistful of the back of his shirt.

 

"Let me go!" Tarragon shouted. He took a step to one side and launched a fist at Jak.

 

The albino moved around the blow easily, then nearly got caught with a faceful of dust the young Celt blew off his other palm.

 

Ryan rapped the butt of the SIG-Sauer against Tarragon's forehead with enough force to stun the boy without badly injuring him. He watched the boy's eyes roll up into his head as he crumpled to the ground. He felt bad about hitting the wounded boy, but there was no way he was going to leave him behind while Mildred was held prisoner.

 

He bent down, grabbed Tarragon's clothing and ran to the wag Krysty and Doc had already climbed into. As Ryan shoved the boy into the back of the vehicle, he glimpsed movement on the ridge back along the tracks the wags had made coming down into the valley.

 

Horsemen crested the hill. A rider in long green robes with a silver brocade led them.

 

"It's him!" one of Gehrig's party shouted. "Prince Boldt himself!"

 

Krysty took the unconscious boy's shoulders and pulled him under the bench seat that ran down the side of the pickup bed. "I've got him," she told Ryan. She peeled back an eyelid. "Don't worry about him. Bringing him was probably the best thing you could do for him."

 

"You don't know if that's the Prince," another man shouted. "Not with the way these tree-huggers can bend a man's vision around with their magic."

 

An argument ensued, but it was swallowed by the roar of the revving engines.

 

"Got us an effing tree-hugger right here," said a bearded man with a ragged scar through his lower lip. He stood up in the back of the wag and approached the unconscious boy. "Easy for the killing." He slipped a hooked knife from his belt, then reached down and grabbed the boy's hair.

 

Ryan moved in a blur of action, lifting up the Steyr, then butt-stroking the man in the face.

 

With a groan of pain he fell over the side of the wag as if he'd been poleaxed. Before he landed, the other men in the wag were grabbing for weapons.

 

"Stay down!" Gehrig ordered. "Stay down, the lot of you mangy dogs!"

 

Ryan and his group had already drawn their weapons, and lines had been drawn between the two groups.

 

"You got something special in your heart for that bloody tree-hugger?" Gehrig demanded.

 

"Lost one of my people when the Celts opened the ball on this," Ryan stated, his eye roving over the assembled chilling crew Blackjack Gehrig ran. "This boy's our prisoner. Could be he's the only thing that'll help us get our friend back."

 

The machine gunners were burning rounds by the belt, and the drivers were screaming for the order to move.

 

"I can understand that," Gehrig said, looking at Ryan. Then he turned his attention to his men. "And if I can understand it, then you dogs can, too. I say this once, so clean your effing ears out and listenany man touches that boy, he answers to me, then he answers to his maker. And that's all I've got to say about that."

 

There was a good deal of grumbling, but the tension drained from the situation.

 

Ryan looked at Krysty. "Have a care, lover."

 

"You, too."

 

Gehrig waved the wags into motion.

 

Sprinting, Ryan caught up with the jeep and pulled himself in behind Gehrig. He settled into the seat, then belted up. Empty brass rolled around his feet.

 

The Celts on horseback approached at a gallop, their weapons blazing. Motorized vehicles had joined the pursuit, and a half-dozen wags now threaded their way through the horses along with motorcycles.

 

Ryan kept his head low as bullets whacked branches over their heads. "Where are we headed to?"

 

"New London," Gehrig said. He craned his head around the seat. "You're not from around here, are you?"

 

 

 

IT WASN'T A ROAD so much as a trail they followed. Ryan watched with interest. Gehrig's men were obviously well versed in scooting along the treacherous terrain, not panicking when soft ground gave way beneath them and sent the wags whining yards out of the path they'd chosen.

 

Gehrig stood and turned to look over his shoulder, shouting at someone behind them and waving enthusiastically as they approached a narrow notch in the mountains. To Ryan, it looked like a gunsight carved between the rocky slopes.

 

"Here's where it gets lovely," Gehrig said, dropping back into his seat. He waved his driver over to the left. The man steered away, then held his own in the rough terrain as the full-sized van came rattling up to pass them.

 

Ryan, sitting behind Gehrig, had noticed now that the steering wheels for the wags were on the opposite side than he was used to. He remembered from bits and pieces of conversations between different drivers he'd known while traveling with the Trader, and books he'd looked at and read, that the people of England and a few other countries drove on the other side of the street. It felt alien to him, but the vehicle handled admirably.

 

"If the effing Prince found out straightaway that we were visiting," Gehrig said, "then he's bloody well had time to station some snipers along the ridge. We're lucky that's all. One time he had felled trees across the gap. Lost a wag that time out, and a good dozen men before we fought our way free."

 

The van shot by them. The nose of the wag had been altered by adding a triangular battering ram pointing out. It looked like something from a locomotive Ryan had seen.

 

"We've been waiting to try out Betsy," Gehrig said. "She's a tough old girl."

 

The wags roared up the incline to the gap, pushing the envelope of control. Ryan spotted the collection of logs blocking the juncture. The timber lay in a crisscross fashion like a fence.

 

 

"Give him leave," Gebrig told the driver.

 

The man laid on the horn, and the rolling squall of it echoed around them. The van driver honked back, then sped up while the jeep dropped back to about four wag lengths.

 

"They're waiting up there," the driver shouted over the grind of machinery. Then one of the first shots punched through the windshield and reduced the corner of Gehrig's seat to cottony tatters.

 

The next bullet went in below the machine gunner's left eye and exited through the back of his head, dumping red-and-gray gore at Ryan's side. He followed the trajectory of the round and saw green-garbed men clinging to the sheer face of the cliffs above them. Ropes were around them, holding them in place while they fired.

 

"Sniper!" Gehrig yelled. He lifted a boot and kicked the windshield forward, then brought up a semiautomatic sniper rifle Ryan didn't recognize. The recoil was obviously tremendous, pushing the man back when he fired.

 

Pulling himself up, Ryan grabbed the .50-caliber machine gun as it spun on its pintels. He kicked the belt clear, then started firing. Brass flipped from the breech as a line of autofire chewed into the right cliff face and scratched Celt snipers free.

 

The lead wag smashed into the stack of logs and almost came to a standstill as the rear wheels lifted from the ground because of the impact. The engine roared, and twin rooster tails of dirt, grass, snow and stone spit out across the jeep, caking Gehrig, the driver and Ryan with congealed cold.

 

A belt jammed in the machine gun. Abandoning it, Ryan took up the Steyr. The wag was almost at a standstill behind the lead vehicle, and he knew they were sitting targets for the Celts.

 

More of the enemy came from around the trees at the base of the gap. Ryan knew it would be only seconds before they were overrun. He leaned forward and grabbed the driver's shoulder. "Ram the wag ahead of you, dammit! Give it more weight! Do it now!"

 

The driver let out the clutch and steered for the back of the wag.

 

Ryan braced himself as well as he could, but the impact was jarring. Metal buckled on both vehicles, and the jeep's engine joined the van's in the rough grunting as eight tires struggled for traction.

 

Then, almost imperceptibly at first, the wag inched forward, shoving logs out of its way. The driver cut the wheel, following the path of least resistance as the jeep pushed from behind. The weight of the blockage gave way all at one time, and the lead wag skidded along the length of the logs.

 

Two Celts were almost on the jeep, screaming and firing revolvers.

 

Ryan whirled and filled his hand with the SIG-Sauer. He fired into the center of both men as the jeep jumped forward and nearly pitched him from the seat. The Celts went down.

 

The jeep rode the logs hard, slithering along the length for a short time before finding the open area beyond the blockade. It jerked as it smashed against the heavy tree trunks, knocking them out of the way.

 

The last wag through had no trouble getting past the logs, but several large stones were pushed from the top of one of the cliff faces and came crashing down. Ryan caught sight of the wag taking damage and bouncing from the impacts as he worked the jammed belt in the machine gun free.

 

The land on the other side of the notch was all mountain. Beyond it was the emerald green of an ocean, stretching out as far as the eye could see.

 

 

 

"THE ENGLISH CHANNEL," Doc said, standing on a promontory overlooking a sheer drop to the water below.

 

Ryan stood a little down from the old man, peering hard at the whitecapped waters battering the base of the cliff more than a hundred feet below.

 

"We're only hours from London," Doc announced, his voice wistful as he surveyed the half-familiar landscape.

 

"London?" Blackjack Gehrig asked, walking up from where his men were replacing a tire on the van. He carried his sniping rifle over one shoulder. "You're talking about New London, now, aren't you, mate? The only London there is, is New London about two hours north and east of here. During the nukestorm the original London was hit all to bleeding hell by the bombs."

 

"I beseech you, sir, to tell me how bad the damage was."

 

"There used to be a river that ran through it," Gehrig said.

 

"The Thames." Doc nodded. "I knew it well."

 

"They tell me in the old days, it flowed through the city and emptied into the North Sea. Used it for shipping and the like. I've seen some pix of London. Must have been quite a place to see in its time. But it's mostly all gone now. When those bombs hit, they caused a rift in the land that drank London down and brought the North Sea into the heart of England. Put the whole place forty and fifty feet underwater. Almost cut this lower section of the island off from the rest of the country."

 

" 'Tis a shame dear man."

 

"Yeah, I suppose it is."

 

The old man moved off, heading back to the wag where Krysty and the others were.

 

"Doc was kind of close to this part of the world. He was hoping to visit what was left of old London," Ryan explained.

 

"Is that what brought you out here?" Gehrig asked.

 

"No," Ryan replied.

 

"We're going to have to talk about that. And what you're planning on doing with that young Celt you brought along with you."

 

"Yeah." Ryan knew they would have to talk. If Gehrig had had repeated experiences with the Celts and knew the land they lived on, he was going to need that knowledge for any rescue attempt the companions might make to get Mildred back with them. However, that didn't mean giving the man all of the truth. "How far to New London?"

 

"A couple hours' hard driving."

 

"What kind of setup is there?"

 

"It's a big thorpe," Gehrig said, leading the way back to the wag. The men working on the van were already letting the jack down after replacing the tire. "A bloke named Taylor Henstell runs things. He's got three men working with him to keep things running smooth. Bobby Krieger, who's the thorpe's shipmaster"

 

"Shipmaster?" Ryan asked as he crawled into the back of the wag.

 

Gehrig nodded. "Krieger's sire built the first clipper ships based on some blueprints his grandfather had saved over the years. They come from sailing stock, all of them."

 

"What're the ships being used for?" Ryan asked.

 

"Defense mainly. It took Krieger a while to get Henstell to back his plans. Those ships cost a lot. But they're starting to pay for themselves. He's set up a regular trade route with the French, who haven't gotten their shit together enough to build a canoe, much less a boat. Breed like effing rabbits over there every chance they get, pox take the lot of them." Gehrig spit over the side of the jeep. "But there's a few who work salvage operations and bring things to Krieger's crew that we can use in New London. Then there's some diving starting to go on where old London went under. Krieger's found this big bell he lowers into the water and lets the swimmers work out of that instead of diving from the top. Still only have a couple minutes they can work the bottom before they come up for another breath of air, though. Getting a few things back from there, too."

 

Ryan listened to the words, and images danced in his brain, seeing men swimming across the broken surface of a city that had gone to a watery grave. "I'd like to see that."

 

Gehrig shrugged. "Not me. Like it just fine on dry land. Got some nasty sharks in that area that come up out of the ocean for a snack. Great whites, big enough to swallow a man, they tell me, in one effing bite. Some kind of mutie strain, Krieger thinks."

 

"That's Krieger," Ryan said. "Who else?"

 

"Graham Adams," Gehrig said. "General of the militia. Hard, hard man. Ran a thorpe of his own before Henstell persuaded him to throw in his lot."

 

"How?"

 

"Adams is a hell of a man when it comes to rules and regs. His thorpe was filled with laws, and those that didn't toe the line were dead or kicked out. But Henstell pointed out the fact that there was safety in numbers. Basic military concept that Adams didn't have a problem understanding. His place was getting by, but it wasn't self-supportive for the number of people he had. Primarily he was Robin Hooding neighboring thorpes. Ended up getting quite a few people properly pissed at him. Including New London. A few had banded together for protection. Just before they were ready to march off to chill Adams and his raid crew, Henstell made Adams a deal."

 

"You said there were three men," Ryan said.

 

Gehrig grinned. He took a twisted cigar from a pocket and jammed it into the corner of his mouth. "Me," he said. "I'm the third man. Henstell, like I said, is a bright guy. Every thorpe you want to name that starts getting fairly large and complex, you're going to have a certain amount of black-market traffic. Me and my boys, we were smash-and-grab razors cutting into New London everywhere we could. Henstell offered me a deal, too. I manage the crime in the thorpe and give him and the others a cut. Also, I get immunity from the little raiding parties I send out to other places."

 

"Like the Celt lands," Ryan said.

 

Gehrig let out a thick stream of smoke. "Exactly like the Celt lands." He flicked ashes from the cigar. "Now, you and me, we're going to deal. You can start with where you're from and why you're here."