He was in a dark storeroom and he thought he smelled-sausage.
He turned toward the other barrel just as it, too, hinged open from the first hoop, the ethanol that had been trapped in the reservoir behind the spigot splashing out, mixing with the water.
Owen helped little Edward Dillon crawl out. Dillon clambered to his feet, reached back inside, and retrieved his pepperbox revolver. Owen shook his head. “No Edward, that’s not the tool for this particular job. It’s in here.” He tapped the young man’s temple. “ Como le va? ” he asked.
“ Bueno. Estoy dispuesto a hablar espanol.” Dillon’s accent was as convincing as his reply was swift and sure. Furthermore, being one of the “black Irish,” he looked as genuinely Spanish as he sounded. His gear, like Owen’s, had been carefully selected from among the pirate equipment that had originally been worn by troops on Spanish argosies. The disguise was very effective in Dillon’s case; it was much less so for rangy, red-haired Owen Roe O’Neill, whose tip-tilted nose and plentiful freckles definitively marked him as a son of the northern Celtic peoples.
“Shall I lead, then, Colonel?” Dillon asked.
“Just a moment.” Owen checked the handle of both spigots; he saw two fresh, lateral scratches on one of them: the ‘go’ sign. “Lead on, Dillon. You know the way.” Twenty rehearsals on the chalk outline in Tarongi’s basement ensured that.
Dillon nodded, went to the door, drew a deep breath, and fell into what he evidently hoped was a nonchalant posture. A great actor he will never be, thought Owen, but he’s good enough to walk fifteen feet to the left.
Which is just what Edward Dillon did: pushing open the door casually, he wandered out to the left-hand side, not hugging the curving wall of the Castell de Bellver’s lower gallery, but anyone on the opposite side of second gallery level would still have only seen him from the waist down. Owen shut the door behind them without attempting to muffle the noise and followed Dillon, who reached the door to the long-term storage room, located just to the south of the Castell’s main entrance. The door was not open, but they had not expected it to be. They could not be sure if the room was occupied, either; their advance intelligence, while good insofar as layout and complement were concerned, did not extend to a precise knowledge of interior duty stations, or any others that could not be observed from the nearby slopes and low mountains just a bit inland.
Dillon looked at Owen, who glanced around the Castell’s circular bailey or, “arms court”: only two Spanish in sight, almost on the opposite side of the lower gallery, strolling. Were they walking a patrol of the interior? That hardly seemed plausible, since it was only one hundred feet in diameter. More likely they were simply off duty, bored, and glad for the freedom to be taking some of the comparatively cool night air. Owen turned back to Dillon and nodded.
The little Ulsterman opened the door without having to knock or fiddle with the lock; that much they had known-that this room was kept unlocked for ready access to routinely used tools and supplies. The dim light revealed a guard; before he looked up, Dillon muttered an informal greeting.
As the guard grunted his lazy response, Owen moved past Dillon quickly and quietly, noting that the Spaniard was portly, well settled into a snack of olives, cheese, and bread, and rather slow-eyed.
He looked up at Owen’s approach, suddenly anxious at the sound of swift, decisive movement. “Sir, I wasn’t-I didn’t-” He stopped and squinted as Owen got within arm’s-reach; the guard frowned, and his hand went to the short scabbard on his belt.
“Hey-” he started.
Harry Lefferts squinted into the murk and signaled on his handset for Doc Connal to lower him another ten feet in two intervals of five. The clouds had not risen as they approached the slopes on the west side of the Bay of Palma, which meant that they were damn near evolving into a ground fog.
Harry scanned under the thickening cloud bank to find the sea-level-and therefore, visible-landmarks he’d spotted during his approach. Using the lights at Fort San Carlos to the south, and Palma to the north as his points of reference, he confirmed his bearings. He looked at his compass, recalled the last time he had seen the dim outline of Bellver-probably about three minutes ago-and frowned. Unless he was completely screwed up on the numbers, he should be almost on top of Bellver’s lazarette loomed out of the darkness at him the same moment that the line started playing out in response to his request for the first five feet of slack-putting him on a course that would carry him up against the battlements with a solid whack before he cleared them. Worse yet, he realized with a jump of his heart, the guys in the dirigible were about to lower him five more feet-meaning he was actually going to miss the roof entirely and instead splat full into the side of the tower at ten miles an hour. Not great, in itself, but then he’d either get dragged straight up the near side of the lazarette and be caught on its crenellations, or slide around curve of its outer wall, bumping as he went, his line possibly snagging one of the toothlike merlons, snapping, and dropping him one hundred feet down into the dry moat.
Harry signaled quickly with the handset and reached his other hand around to unholster his. 357 automatic-a gun he was not particularly fond of, but was optimal for this situation. His signals-which were a three digit code for “emergency: raise me ten feet now: stop the airship now”-were evidently quickly received and understood; the second five-foot dip reversed into a hasty reascent that began as a lung-cinching snap. Wheezing, Harry reached behind to release two of the small spools of landing slack affixed to his main wire and did the same to his “fanny wire.” As he approached the wall-a little too high, now-he suddenly dropped two feet lower: his final altitude correction. At the same time, his butt swung down, leaving him in more of a sitting position as his course took his toes over the battlements, his feet out to brace against an impact or land. His gun was up, his eyes scanning for targets on the roof.
Well, he thought, here goes nothing.
Frank looked up as Asher’s assistant came back with the water and ethanol-and his heart sank. Oh no. Don Vincente Jose-Maria de Castro y Papas pushed into the room ahead of the returning guard, his eyes dark with genuine worry.
“How is your wife?” he asked, crossing to Frank in one stride.
Frank stared at him. S o it’s just like old times, huh? Just like that, all is forgiven. No hard feelings for the cold shoulder I’ve been giving you for weeks, even though I am lucky that it was you who beat me up. And I’ve never thanked you for the paper, the ink, the niceties, and especially for Asher, because there’s no other way Morales would allow a xueta into his precious Castell. So, despite my ingratitude and rebuffs, here you are, no resentment, just genuine concern. Probably ready to do anything for us, for her. You poor sap.
“Frank?” asked Don Vincente, the frown on his face deepening. “Are you quite all right?”
Asher’s voice was loud and scratchy. “I need quiet. Here,” he said to his larger assistant, “keep this handy.” Asher reached out a long, wicked looking knife; it didn’t look like any surgical implement Frank was familiar with, but then, he wasn’t too familiar with the doctoring tools of the seventeenth century. The tall assistant reached out, took the blade carefully. Dakis and one of the guards watched him closely until he set the knife down on the table in front of him.
In the meantime, Asher had asked for his smaller assistant to stand ready with two full quart-sized, long-necked bottles of water and ethanol respectively. “I may need you to wash away a great deal of blood and douse against infection,” Asher said grimly as his hands were busy behind the privacy blind. Giovanna, to whom he had earlier given a draught that he identified as opiated wine, murmured and moaned. “God help me,” Asher muttered, “this will not be easy.”
He seemed to be manipulating something gently when, suddenly, there was a splash of liquid on the floor: blood.