“Yes.”
“And just how many more of your men are waiting even farther beyond the hall outside my room?”
“That,” said Vincente, averting his eyes uncomfortably, “I cannot tell you.”
“You don’t know?”
“I am not allowed to say.”
Frank stared at him until Vincente met his eyes again. “It’s not just a riot, is it?”
Vincente looked sad. “Of course not.”
Harry watched as Sherrilyn and the others reached the roof of Palazzo Giacomo Mattei, just east of the room in which Frank and Giovanna were being held. As soon as they got in position, they crouched low, Matija shrugging off a haversack: Gerd’s demolition gear.
Harry swung his scope right, to the south and the east, and saw, at a considerably greater distance, Gerd’s spare outline, returning from his first assignment. He was moving spiderlike across the roofs, keeping to the shortest path that would bring him back to Sherrilyn’s vertical entry team. Behind him, a wisp of smoke was now visible: the diversionary fire he had started near the southeast corner of the insula, the point furthest away from the northwest corner occupied by the palazzos Paganica and Giacomo. Harry cheated the scope a little farther south to the rooftop belvedere on the Palazzo Giove: empty, now. Maybe one of the folks in the crowd had heaved a few rocks at the observer he had seen there earlier. At any rate, the coast was clear.
Harry turned toward the lefferto with the light and nodded. Once again, the young fellow commenced signaling with his bull’s eye lantern.
John O’Neill saw the second signal window illuminate on the second floor of the tall building beside the Porto Giuda. He pushed open the storeroom door, revealing the fountain that dominated the small square. He jerked his head toward the street and the arched entrance of the Palazzo Giacomo’s courtyard. “On me, at the trot,” he ordered, and then led the way, as he always did. But this time he went forth with his sword still in its scabbard; there was no need to make clear their intents until they reached the entrance, only fifteen yards away.
Frank, staring out the slightly open window himself, began assessing the scene in the courtyard more carefully, seeing if there were any hints to be gleaned as to what, other than the riot, might be going on nearby. Given the long, slanting shadows of dusk, it was almost impossible to see beyond the arches that dominated both levels of the two-tiered loggia that faced opposite the street entry.
Almost impossible. But now that he looked carefully, he could see faint silhouettes hidden behind the supporting pillars of the upper gallery’s arches. Silhouettes of large men. In helmets. With weapons. Then Frank noticed movement: a window’s louvered shutters rotated slightly, briefly revealing a dim light in the room behind it. And in the moment before that light was extinguished, Frank saw, quite distinctly, the barrel of a very long gun, set on a pedestal, aiming out into the darkness at a slight elevation. Holding his breath, Frank followed the muzzle’s invisible trajectory out over the top of the courtyard wall and then between nearby roofs, at which point it was impossible to determine its precise path. But there were only a few two-story buildings out in that direction, and only one that was three stories, topped by a shabby belvedere, at the edge of the Ghetto. Where he saw, faintly, a tiny twitch of movement: maybe a nodding head, backlit by the setting sun. Or maybe silhouetted by the flash of a mostly shaded lamp…
Before he could think the better of doing so, Frank turned toward Vincente; cold pierced the pit of his stomach even as his brow suddenly burned with panic and rage. “You bastard-!”
Sherrilyn scanned the insula’s roofs nervously; she wished the riot could be a little more-well, quiet. Eyes were not enough when trying to make a covert entry; you needed your ears as well. And the tides of raucous protest at the main gate was rendering her ears useless.
Gerd was almost done placing the entry charges so that they would-hopefully-send most of their force downward. The tests he had run weeks before had yielded limited success; hopefully, this time would be no worse than those. With any luck, it would be a bit better.
Gerd played out the fast-burning fuse as he low-scrambled back to where the rest of the Crew was waiting, behind a low roof-peak, just six yards from his crude demolition charge.
“Ready?” asked Sherrilyn, rubbing her knee.
“ Ja, we can start the fireworks,” smiled Gerd, who sat up a little higher to reinspect his handiwork, to make sure he hadn’t missed anything.
Owen pulled out his pepperbox revolver as almost a dozen more lefferti, led by Frank Stone’s friend Piero, emerged from a building on the opposite side of the fountain’s piazza and swung in behind the leading wedge of Wild Geese. From an adjoining wain-shed, another half dozen lefferti burst out onto the street, but they turned sharply to the right, sprinting southward toward the riot outside the massive gates of the Palazzo Giove.
Owen reached, and sidled up alongside, the much smaller double-doors that led into the courtyard of the Palazzo Giacomo and nodded to David Synnot. The Ulsterman, standing six foot two and heavy-thewed, was carrying a maul.
Since the guards, if they were highly motivated, might be looking out the vision port in the door, Synnot wasted no time. He planted his feet wide, reared back with the maul, and then swung it forward in a fast, overhand arc.
“Knock, knock,” John O’Neill snarled wickedly, just before its iron head landed.
Frank saw Vincente’s jaw tighten, and then his eyes shot towards the gateway into the courtyard, where a thundering crash sent the doors themselves flying into pieces. Without turning toward Ezquerra, the Spanish captain ordered: “Ready my gun.”
The splintering smash of Synnot’s maul even drowned out the ongoing protest for a moment. Along with John, Owen shouldered open the tattered remains of the doors. Into that gap rushed Turlough Eubanks and Gerald O’Sullivan, swords out in their right hands, pepperboxes in their left, cuirasses glimmering faintly in the last light of day.
The fight for the door was over as soon as it had begun. The two guards, disheveled and nursing the dregs of nonregulation libations, were cut down swiftly. John grinned, sped past Owen, and then waved in the lefferti, who were tasked to secure the ground floor level of the two-tiered loggia at the opposite end of the courtyard. So far, so good: it was all proving to be just as easy as Harry had foreseen…
Owen lagged a step. It was too easy, too clean. He scanned the two gate guards; oddly, neither affected the coiffure stylings popular among the Spanish. No beards either, but ill-shaven, and a bit thin; one had distinct hollows in his cheeks. And where was the inevitable detritus that collected around such a low-trouble watch post? There should have been a smattering of garbage, or the little conveniences that guards brought to their posts: stools, rain-capes, a deck of cards…
That was when Owen heard the gunfire start up on the roof, and it didn’t sound like one of the Wrecking Crew’s weapons.
Sherrilyn saw the flash near the base of the main palazzo’s rooftop belvedere a split second before she heard the sharp report-and before Gerd dropped forward like a bag of rocks. He slid a yard down the shallow slope of the roof, upsetting tiles as he went.
“Damnit, Gerd! Gerd!”
But even before Sherrilyn got to his side, she knew Gerd was dead; the bullet had hit him just left of the sternum, and the blood was welling up out of him like a slow spring.
“Bastards,” growled Sherrilyn, thumbing the safety off her rifle and popping a round at the site of the flash. “Follow my fire,” she shouted to the rest of the Crew, “and suppress.”
As another bullet whined overhead, and the Crew’s shotguns roared in response, Sherrilyn Maddox lit the fuse of Gerd’s demolition charge. Then she scrambled, low and fast, to rejoin the Crew, hoping against hope that the second shot from the belvedere meant there were only two shooters concealed there.