Her Majesty's Western Service (43 page)

For the last day and change, Marko, Ferrer, Rienzi and McIlhan had
been waiting antsily in their cabins for the orders that were supposed to arrive. Now, the tiny, hyperactive captain in red pounded on the door of the cabin Ferrer shared with Rienzi. With him was Otto Skorzeny.

Marko and McIlhan were already out in the passageway.

“We finally got movement orders?” Marko was asking.

“You finally get the fuck out of here,” Skorzeny replied.

From what Ferrer had seen, there was absolutely no love lost between the anarchist and the SS colonel. That was one reason the four were sleeping aboard the airship instead of taking the luxury-grade quarters Himmler had offered them. “Don’t trust that uptight excuse for a commando fuckup not to be listening,” Marko had explained curtly.

“About time,” Marko shot back. Turned to Judd. “Where?”

“You have the orders, big man,” Judd said. The little pirate seemed utterly unafraid of Skorzeny, maybe even considered him a kindred spirit in craziness. In the last day or so, through small-talk with Judd’s engineering crew, Ferrer had
heard
a thing or two about Otto Skorzeny. Some of the shit he’d pulled over the years… even allowing for exaggeration, it was impressive.

A more honest form of action than what Marko had drawn him into. What he, Ferrer, had
thought
he’d be getting into at the start of all this.

“Gimme,” Marko ordered Skorzeny.

“What, no please?” Judd asked.

“No thank-you, either,”
Skorzeny observed when Marko had the folder.

“Wire from
Houston via New Orleans. Just came out of decryption,” the SS colonel added. “Looks urgent.”

“You know it’s urgent,” said Marko. Reading the orde
rs. Nodding.

“Colonel, get the fuck out of here. Judd, lift immediately. We’ve got another loose end to tie off.”

“I’ll buy you a drink in Hugoton,” Skorzeny promised Judd. “And” – with nods at Ferrer, McIlhan and Rienzi – “you guys too. Gypsy thief can buy his own.”

“You can buy another ramrod to go up your ass
,” Marko muttered. “Shithead.”

“Behave, gentlemen,
” Judd said. “Colonel, we’ll be lifting immediately.”

“For where?” Rienzi asked.

“Red Cloud, in the Black Hills. Pirateville!”

Cornwell’s train had undergone a much less serious customs inspection on the US side of the Texan border; Cornwell’s own box had not been opened and, from the speed of things, not many were. Before long they pulled into a town he recognized from pictures as Ft. Lawton, a major border outpost.

Finally some good news
, he thought, getting out of the box. His legs hurt from the long concealment. There was an airship park in Ft. Lawton, and that park was a regular waypoint for the Imperial ships patrolling the border railway line that ultimately ran to Hugoton. He could get a train in any case, but he also had the option – if he was lucky – of riding an Air Service vessel.

I’m about due for some damn luck
, he thought, as he carefully stepped through the wide-open boxcar door and began to head out of the airship park.
And with a bit more luck, I might even make Hugoton tomorrow.

The yard workers weren’t paid to pay attention to hoboes – not by their employers, at any rate, or at least the directives from management made other things a priority.

One man, however, had met a fellow in a bar a couple of weeks ago. On learning he was a yard worker, the man had bought his drinks for the rest of the night and said some interesting things about hoboes. A Federal agent, the yard worker had thought, or maybe organized crime. Either way, he’d said that some people he worked with would be especially interested to know about any hoboes coming from Texas.

That was silly, the yard worker said. Lately for some reason the Texans ha
d taken  to extra special care about outgoing customs inspections, and while they weren’t
looking
for hoboes, a customs inspector would certainly kick off any he saw.

The Federal agent or mob man – from the yard worker’s perspective there wasn’t a whole lot of difference, but the guy
was
buying him drinks – had said that yeah, and thus we’ll be especially interested in any who
do
get past the customs inspectors. Competition we don’t like. Give us a call and there’s a month’s pay in it for you if we get him.

The yard worker had blown it off at the time, but he’d kept the card, stuffed in his wallet. And now – what was this? A hobo getting off a boxcar from a train he knew perfectly well had come from Texas.

More to the point, if that guy hadn’t been shitting him – a month’s pay!

He waved his flags to the man down the line: Hold – Back – Five – Minutes.

And, fishing in his wallet for the card, he ran for the office, where there was a telephone.

It had taken Cornwell a few minutes to find his way out of the yard and get his bearings. He’d never actually been to Ft. Lawton before, just seen maps and pictures of the place, and it took a short conversation with another bum – a
real
hobo, not a fugitive as far as he could tell – to get the location of the airship park. A few miles away.

Well, after days cooped up inside that damn crate, he could use the exercise.

Don’t think for a moment
, he told himself,
that you’re home free. You’re home free when you’re physically on an Air Service ship or inside the Hugoton lines
.

To make sure, his hand reached inside his worn black-leather jacket, for the automatic .40. As he’d done a thousand times on that terrifying, informat
ive ride north from Houston, his fingers slid along the body-heat-warmed steel of the gun.

This time he did something he hadn’t bothered to do in the crate. He turned the safety off
and chambered a round.

Nothing
under his control was going to stop him from reaching the safety of Hugoton. If the worst erupted, the gun would keep things under control.

“That’s him,” said the offsider in the steam-car. He wasn’t Third Department, just a locally-hired grunt whose other employers had included a couple of loan-sharks and the occasional smuggler. But the foreigner had offered him good money.

“We goin’ waste him?” his buddy the driver asked.

“Put him six feet under,
” the offsider ordered, pulling a sawn-off shotgun.

Something in the amplified
chuff
of the passing steam-truck warned Cornwell; someone gunning an engine. He turned, drawing the gun.

A man was leveling a sawn-off shotgun at him.

Cornwell fired first. He was better-trained, a field agent, and he was also more accurate. It was his bad luck that the gunman’s finger clenched around the trigger in a reflex as the .40 slug tore through his skull.

Heavy shot blasted out into Cornwell.

The agent staggered, but fired again. If he was going down –
this close to success, damn it!
– he was taking one or two of these Okhrana bastards with him. He fired again and again, but the original gunman was dead, slumped across the window, and the driver was taking no chances with his own life; he’d floored the steam, his truck racing off.

Cornwell fell against
the greasy industrial-slum wall, leaving a trail of blood with his body. His legs were limp; his chest was
hurting
, hurting terribly.

He had to get to the airship park. Miles away, but he had to get there.

They got me
, he thought.

Yes. They had. But he could walk. His legs still moved. He could walk.

“Mister? Mister? You alright?”

A man – not a cop, just a passer-by. A passer-by, Cornwell realized, with a vehicle. A steam-truck, a
delivery driver to one of these little factories.

A gasp, as the dismounted driver noticed the gun.

“I’m fine,” said Cornwell, and stuck the gun in the driver’s face.

“Nobody. Gets. Hurt. Get me to the airship park. Pay you. Don’t I’ll shoot you.”

“Mister, you couldn’t shoot a kitten.”

Cornwell got to his feet,
forcing
himself despite agonizing screams of pain from his body. He’d been shot in the gut – at least one of those pellets had gone into his gut muscles. It
hurt
, and he could feel strength ebbing from his body.

He probably didn’t have long.

Some chance was better than none.

“
Wasn’t. A. Request,” he snarled.

“Airship park,” said the man. “Well, I was going there anyway. Don’t pretend to threaten me or it’ll be the worse for you.”

“Pretend to bribe you,” said Cornwell, his left hand going for his wallet. There was still a few hundred, Texan currency that’d have to be converted, in there. He fumbled out a wad of money and offered it to the driver.

“Just get me there.”

The truck driver shrugged.

“Ought to get you to a doctor. You been shot bad, mister.”

“You’ll take me where I’m going.”

The steam-car driver’s friends didn’t show up again – Cornwell had almost come to hope they
wouldn’t
, that he’d get a free ride to the airship park – until they were almost there.

When they did, they came with a vengeance. Two sleek, low-slung steam-cars loaded with gunmen came screaming up behind the st
eam-truck without the slightest pretense of covertness.

“What the fuck did you get me into?” demanded the truck driver.

“Through the gates.” Which were in sight. “Drive through the fuckin’ gates!”

“That’s illegal.”

Cornwell leaned back in the worn leather seat of the truck and pointed the gun at the driver.

“I can’t miss at this range.
Get me in there!
”

The driver gunned the engine, pushing steam,
as someone in one of the tailing cars opened up with an automatic weapon.

“Who the fuck
are
you?” demanded the driver.

Cornwell could see an Imperial-grey airship – more than one! Looked like he was finally lucky, a wing of four! – in the airship park.

“Get me to the Imperial ships!”

Pursued by the two cars, they
smashed through the lowered boom-gates of the airship park. Mechanics and stevodores dove out of their way.

“Next to that one! Now!”

The airships were fueling, but Imperial airships in territory that was still arguably South
never
fully powered down. Was it just Cornwell’s wounded – dying? – imagination, or could he see crew moving to battle stations?

Heavy-caliber bullets cut into the steam-truck, lancing through, smashing the boiler.

“Fuck
you
,” he murmured, as something struck him.

“
I paid you. Get me there!”

“Can’t! Lost pressure!”

The truck was slowing. Fifty yards from the nearest of the airships, across empty pads.

“Halt! All three of you, halt immediately or you will be shot!” came from one of the airships,
an electrically-amplified loudspeaker.

One of the black cars heard
the order too late, or ignored it. Boilers hissing, it moved in to block Cornwell’s movement between his crippled truck and the nearest airship.

A missile
blasted from one of the Imperial airships. Hit the car and practically vaporized it. Burning debris flew in all directions from its shattered hulk.

Now! Now is the only chance I’m going to get!

Bent double, crippled, staggering, Cornwell bailed from the truck and ran through the shredded wreckage of the steam-car, praying the airship crews wouldn’t shoot him down. Instead, a door opened to him. He found himself on the ship’s bridge.

Looking
down the barrels of half a dozen pistols.

He dropped his
own gun. Collapsed face-down, coughing blood on the airship’s pristine stamped-aluminum deck.

“Who,”
an officer demanded, “the fuck are you?”

“MI-7,” Cornwell coughed, barely audible.

“Who the fuck?” The officer leaned closer

“MI-7,” Cornwell repeated. “Lift. And get me to Hugoton. I have urgent news.”

“You been shot bad, agent,” said the officer. “And we’ve got a convoy to protect coming out of here.”

“Get here. And” – as Cornwell realized he’d made it, but he might not
live long enough to reach safety proper – “get me a pencil and pad. I have a report to make.”