That said, Quentin still didn't think there was any chance that a large enemy force could have gotten this far south of the Elbe. Even without aerial reconnaissance, there was simply too much traffic on the river for a major crossing to have gone unreported.
One of the refinery workers started babbling about the French.
"Just shut up, will you!" Quentin hollered. "That's got to be the stupidest thing I've heard anybody say yet. How the hell would the French get all the way over here?"
He waved his hand roughly, as if shoving something aside. "Just shut up! What we've got here is just a stray Spanish cavalry unit from the Netherlands. All of you, stop panicking!"
He glared at the site's manager. "Get out there and stiffen up the garrison's officers. I'll be out myself in a minute. First, I've got to get hold of Stearns on the radio and tell the asshole that his asshole policies just resulted in another fuck-up."
It took a while to reach Stearns, since it turned out the idiot had gone haring off to the mouth of the Elbe to look at a disabled timberclad. That was typical. Stearns knew as much about delegating authority as a chipmunk. Having a man like this running an entire country was simply insane. He'd have been stretching his abilities to run a high school softball league.
But, eventually, Stearns got on the radio. And-naturally-he immediately panicked also.
"Quentin, get out of there. Now. All of you. That's got to be a French force. It's not Spanish, I'm sure of that-and there's no way French cavalry would have come that far on a whim. They've got a real raid underway, and all you've got is a small garrison unit."
"Bullshit, Stearns! This facility is valuable. No way we're giving it up without a fight."
"Forget the goddam facility! It's so primitive they can't do all that much physical damage to it anyway. The real danger is that they'll kill or capture skilled workers."
Quentin almost retorted "and good riddance," but the presence of the radio operator made him leave the sarcastic remark unspoken. "It'll never get that far. Nice talking to you, Stearns, even though it was the usual waste of my time. Just get somebody down here as soon as you can, huh? One of those fancy airplanes you waste resources on would be handy, right about now."
Hearing the sound of gunfire starting up, he realized he'd better get out on the guard perimeter. He just took enough time to snatch up his rifle, that he'd left leaning up in a corner of the operations center. Fortunately, he'd brought it with him on this trip. He normally didn't, on these inspection tours, figuring that his revolver was enough to deter any footpad. But with the war heating back up again and unsettling the situation, he'd decided that hauling the thing around was probably a wise idea.
No sooner had he taken a few steps out of the operations center, however, than he came to an abrupt halt. The garrison whose resolve he'd intended to stiffen was no longer at the perimeter to begin with. They were already in full retreat-rout, rather-pouring away from the earthen fieldworks that protected the oilfield site. Most of them were even throwing their guns away.
"Get back there, you fucking cowards!" Quentin brandished his rifle in the air, as if it were a clumsily made sword. Then, realizing that was a little foolish, aimed it instead at one of the retreating soldiers who was running toward him.
"I'll shoot you dead, you son of a bitch-so help me I will!"
The man paid him no attention. He raced right by Quentin without so much as a glance. He'd been in such a panic that Quentin didn't think he'd even heard him at all.
The threat was empty, anyway. Quentin hadn't even come close to pulling the trigger. Hadn't really even thought about it, since he'd assumed the threat would be enough.
What in God's name was happening? Even sorry-ass garrison soldiers should have had more fight in them than this.
But apparently it was just this section that had collapsed. From the continuing gunfire, somebody had to be putting up a resistance.
A pretty ferocious one, too, from the sound of it. Some unit of the garrison that Quentin couldn't see from his vantage point, with a cluster of buildings blocking his sight, was laying down one hell of a good rate of fire. There was simply no way that cavalrymen armed with wheel locks could be firing that often and that continuously.
He half-ran around the nearest maintenance shed, moving a bit clumsily due to his age and weight and silently vowing-as he had dozens of times before, to no avail-that when he got back home he'd listen to his wife and start using the exercise equipment in his basement. Underwood was one of those heavyset men who tended to run to fat, under the best of circumstances. In times past, the work of managing a coal mine had kept him on his feet a lot, but he'd become a lot richer since the Ring of Fire. Rich, he'd soon learned, usually meant sedentary also.
When he came around the corner of the shed, he stumbled to a halt, staring. A wave of soldiers-enemy ones, obviously-seemed to be pouring over the fieldworks a hundred yards away. No one was putting up any resistance at all. The few garrison soldiers still near the earthworks were already surrendering.
The gunfire he'd heard was coming entirely from the enemy. They weren't really even shooting at anybody, any longer. Most of them, from what Quentin could see, were just firing in the air from sheer exuberance.
How in God's name were they managing that? There was something odd-looking about their matchlocks, although Quentin couldn't really see them that well at the distance. His eyesight was starting to get worse, too.
But it was still good enough to aim a rifle, certainly at this distance. Underwood realized he had no choice any longer but to follow Stearns' advice and abandon the facility. No goddam way he was going to do it without firing at least two or three rounds in anger, though.
He took aim and fired. To his grim satisfaction, the soldier who'd been his target was knocked off his feet. Meet Lord.30-06, you bastard.
Quentin worked the bolt, jacking another round into the chamber, and took aim again.
This time, he missed. By now, at least half a dozen enemy soldiers were aiming their guns at him, but Quentin wasn't too worried about that. They were still almost a hundred yards distant, quite a ways beyond the effective range of matchlocks. He jacked another round into the chamber and started bringing the rifle back up to his shoulder.
It never got there. Of the three.50 caliber bullets that hit him almost simultaneously, either one of two would have killed him. One wound, slowly and painfully, from the damage done to his intestines. Fortunately, the other one severed his aorta, sending a gout of blood everywhere. For all practical purposes, Quentin Underwood was dead before his body hit the ground.
"Quickly! Quickly!" Turenne waved his hand impatiently at the four soldiers ransacking the desks and cabinets in what seemed to be the oil facility's central headquarters. "We haven't much time."
He gave the stacks of documents they'd already piled up on the desks a brief examination, estimating their weight and bulk. Not too bad, in themselves-but they'd be getting added to a larger pile of what seemed to be critical small pieces of equipment.
The officer in command straightened up from the lowest drawer of a desk, with a pile of papers in his hands.
"I think we've already gotten everything critical, Marshal," he said. Since both his hands were occupied, he used his head to point to a big stack of documents on a desk near one of the windows. "The best stuff is over there. Including what looks to be diagrams of the entire facility."