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Chapter 51

"No," Andy said firmly. "We go as fast as possible. We wait just long enough for that one catapult to be finished. That'll be enough to send over the smoke bombs that Leffen's making up. To hell with anything fancier."

Rod scratched his jaw. He'd known Andy would want to move quickly, but he hadn't foreseen anything this quick. They hadn't gotten back and given their report but three hours ago. "A smoke bomb won't hurt anybody."

"I know that," Andy said patiently. "But it will confuse them—and by now I'm sure that regime of Luff's is held together by nothing more than chewing gum and baling wire. I mean, Jesus. Three freezers stuffed with corpses and severed heads? And we already knew from James here that Luff started his killing spree almost immediately. By now . . ."

His normally ruddy face looked ashen. Rod knew that the news that hundreds of the inmates had been slaughtered was affecting him. The problem was that he thought it was affecting his military judgment too.

But, to his surprise, Chief Watkins spoke up in support of Andy's plan.

"I agree with the captain," he said. "Most forts get captured because the defenders are caught unprepared. That's how the Red Sticks took Fort Mims." He chuckled. "That backfired on them, of course, once Andy Jackson got into the act afterward. But that fucking asshole's nowhere around to save this Luff fellow's bacon." A big grudgingly, he added: "Not that he probably would have anyway."

Cook weighed in, then. "Yeah, let's just do it. But I don't agree with one thing in your plan, Captain Blacklock. Just rushing the main gate seems . . . well, silly, to be honest. We should go for the armory again, too."

"The armory? No matter how crazy Luff is, he's bound to have that well-guarded by now. And that door wasn't . . ." Blacklock trailed to silence, his eyes widening.

"Sure, we didn't blow it up. So what? We got the key, still. And I can guarantee you that whatever else Luff has, he doesn't have a locksmith with his tools to have changed the lock."

"He might have it barred or chained from the inside, though."

"So? Worst that happens, we create a diversion. But I'm willing to bet he doesn't. In fact, I'm willing to bet my life—I will be betting my life, since I'll volunteer to lead the attack—that Luff still isn't worrying much about what sort of threat might come from the outside. He'll have analyzed our raid on the armory and come up with exactly the wrong conclusion. There must have been somebody on the inside involved. And he doesn't know who it is. That's what he'll be fretting over."

Blacklock studied him, for a moment. "Is he that crazy?"

Cook shrugged. "It's just the way the man's mind works. He's a manipulator, Captain. He doesn't lead a gang, he engineers one. He's smart, but I remember what the Boom said about him. Luff will always ignore a straightforward answer if he can find a complicated one. Look at that attack on me he told Butch Wesson to do. What was the purpose of it? I spent some time trying to figure that out, and finally had the sense to ask Boomer. He said Luff was trying to get me to be cooperative with him, since I had access to the infirmary. But instead of just asking, or figuring out some way to bribe me, he went about it ass-backwards."

Blacklock thought about it. "All right, I can see your point. But he'll still have at least a dozen men guarding the armory. Some outside, but most probably inside."

Cook smiled. "You still don't get it, Captain. Luff won't have anybody inside the armory. He won't trust anybody in there. He'll have it locked inside and out—with him having the only keys. The guards won't be in the armory. Some of them will be on the outside, and some might be guarding the inside door—but not inside the armory itself."

He glanced over at the Boomers sitting a distance away from the leadership conference. "We can handle the guards on the outside easily enough. Kidd alone could probably do that. What happens next, I don't know. If the guards on the inside are steady enough, we'll pretty much be stymied. Opening that second door and just rushing out would be dicey as hell. But by then you'll have started the main attack and I don't think they'll stick around. They'll be too rattled. Those guys aren't what you'd call Delta Force, you know."

Rod had been thinking about it, while the two talked, and the more he did, the more he liked Cook's plan. If nothing else, even if Cook and his men couldn't get out of the armory, they'd have taken it. Luff wouldn't have access to it either. And he was pretty sure Cook's assessment was right. Whatever guards were assigned to watch the inside door probably would abandon the assignment, once the crap hit the fan.

Andy, apparently, had come to the same conclusion. "All right. I take it your proposal is to turn the whole job over to you Boomers?"

"Seems sensible. Look, let's face it. Some day we may all be good buddies and make jokes about Botany Bay. But right now, your guards and us Boomers are about as comfortable together as cats and dogs sharing a lifeboat. With the dogs getting hungry and the cats in a foul mood. Trying to mix us together on the spot into a single combat team is just pie in the sky. You know it, and I know it. So you take one assignment—you and the Cherokees—and concentrate on getting through the main gate. Meanwhile, we'll see what we can do at the armory."

"I think he's right, Andy," Rod said. "To be honest, if you were to add the Boomers to my platoon, I'd just scratch my head and tell them to keep out my way. I wouldn't know what else to do."

"Yeah, I can see that. All right, Cook. No, I guess I'd better start calling you James, huh?" That came with a little smile. "But what do you propose to do assuming you succeed and get out of the armory? We need to be careful we don't wind up shooting at each other."

Cook chewed on his lower lip for a few seconds. "We'll go for the watch towers. You'll have enough on your plate as it is."

"All right. I'll make sure all my people know. But keep in mind that we're almost certainly going to be taking fire from those towers before you can take them. If you can even try at all. So if you do get into any of the towers, we need some sort of signal that lets us know they're now in friendly hands."

"Those Spanish blankets are distinctive—and it's one thing we know Luff and his people can't possibly have. We'll cut some strips and take them with us. If you see one hanging from a tower, pretty please stop shooting at it."

"Okay." Andy looked around the small circle gathered at the campfire. Him, Hulbert, Watkins, Kershner, and Cook. "Sergeant, how are you and your men doing with the new rifles?"

"Very well—except I think Susan Fisher's niece will be getting jealous. Pitzel is talking about marrying his new rifle." In his heavy Swabian accent, he added, "I am struggling against the temptation myself. Fortunately, unlike Pitzel, I have read the Bible and know that such a joining is forbidden by the Lord."

Between the accent and the young man's solemn face, it was hard to know if he was joking or being serious. "Uh . . . where does it say that in the Bible?" Rod asked.

"Leviticus. Somewhere in there, almost everything is forbidden."

It'd been a long time since Hulbert read the Bible; even then, he'd only read parts of it. He was pretty sure he'd skipped over Leviticus because—well, yeah, it had seemed like page after page of you can't do this and you can't do that or you must do this and do it exactly this and that a way. Still, he thought it unlikely that God had said anything specifically about .223 caliber semiautomatic rifles.

"I guess," was all he said, though. Arguing Biblical interpretation with a nineteenth-century German-American was probably as pointless as arguing it with Brian Carmichael.

"Let's get going then," said Blacklock. "Edelman tells me the catapult will be finished today, and Leffen will have enough bombs put together. I want us moving out at dawn. Two days from now, we take Alexander back."

 

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