Stanley made as if to unsling his rifle, then seemed to think better of it. “Can’t do that, sir, I’m afraid,” he said. “The sound would carry too far.”
“I’m so glad you have my welfare in mind,” Crooke said with a rasping chuckle. After two or three miles, they came to a river too wide to be easily forded.
“There’s a log bridge a couple of hundred yards upstream,” Morton Green said. The party gathered together to find it and crossed a few at a time.
Bushell looked down into the clear water to the stream’s gravel bed. Fish hung motionless above the pebbles and small rounded stones, or else dashed off to snap at insects on the surface. Some of the shining green creatures were as long as his arm. As his knowledge of fish before they were cooked was on the theoretical side, he asked Lieutenant Green, “Are those salmon?”
The Marine nodded. “Yes, sir, and trout, too. They all make fine eating when there’s time to fish.” He walked over the bridge with a sigh of regret. So did Bushell. The fresher fish was, the better, and how could it be fresher than just pulled from a river? He thought it a pity his water jar held only water and not a good white wine, a Meursault perhaps, or a Vouvray, or a Rhine wine from the Palatinate. Not long after they’d crossed over the river, they came out of forest into a stretch of saplings and weeds and brush running for several hundred yards: logged-over land that hadn’t yet regrown. Bushell said.
“This can’t date back to the days when Buckley Bay was a going concern.”
“It doesn’t,” Lieutenant Green answered. “From the height of those young trees, I’d say it was cut about ten years ago: the trunks would have been rafted across the inlet to Port Clements and dealt with there. By the time it’s sat idle sixty years, it’ll be ready for another round of cutting.”
Bushell was beginning to feel his years when one of the Royal Marines said, “Hold up - pass the word.”
Inside a few steps, everyone had stopped. A moment later, the reason for the halt came down the line:
“You can see the old settlement through the trees.”
“How are we going to proceed?” Lieutenant Green asked. “If it were a purely military operation, I’d send some men through the woods beyond Buckley Bay and approach from all sides at once to prevent any possible escapes. If, however, you’d sooner just tramp up and rap on the front door, we can do that. Consider me and my men at your disposal.”
“Normally, we would just rap at the front door,” Felix Crooke said.
“Normally, we wouldn’t be carrying these.” Bushell reached over his shoulder to touch the barrel of the rifle slung there. “For that matter, I don’t know which front door in the settlement belongs to the men we’re looking for. We’ll use the military approach here.”
Crooke still looked doubtful, but Samuel Stanley nodded emphatic agreement and said, “Villains with rifles aren’t the sort of people whose front doors I care to rap on.”
“Good enough.” Green gave swift orders to his men. Sergeant Fuller and Corporal Wainwright led one squad off on the flanking maneuver Green had described. Corporal Johnston and the rest of the Royal Marines stayed behind with Green and the RAMs. Green said, “Let’s spread out along the treeline, not showing ourselves, and see what we can see.”
What Bushell saw, from behind a cedar whose trunk was thicker than his body, was the ghostly ruin of what once had been a thriving little town. Overgrown streets made a grid centering on a small square. More than his lifetime of storms and rain and wind and sun had peeled every speck of paint from the buildings and bleached almost white the boards of which they were made. The windows were all blank and vacant, with not a shard of glass anywhere. Here and there, ferns grew on rooftops; beards of moss and lichen hung from eaves.
A couple of trees over, Sam Stanley let out a soft hiss. “Do you see it, sir?” he called to Bushell. “That place on the east side of the square with the big window in front, looks like it was a grocer’s shop once upon a time. There’s smoke coming up from the chimney.”
“I see it,” Bushell answered. It wasn’t a lot of smoke, just the wisps that came from a low fire, but it stood out like a flag (an Independence Party flag, Bushell thought) in a town otherwise slowly being reclaimed by wilderness.
Lieutenant Green saw it, too. “Is that where our suspects live, sir?” he asked Bushell.
“Either them or the Ladies’ Aid Society,” Bushell answered. “How long will your other squad of Marines need to get around to the far side of Buckley Bay?”
“Let’s give them fifteen minutes, unless we spy them advancing out of the forest there sooner,” Green said. “I am correct in assuming you wish a stealthy approach to the target building?”
“That might be a good idea,” Bushell agreed dryly.
Felix Crooke said, “Surely they’ll surrender when they realize we represent the law and the military power, and that we have them outnumbered and surrounded.”
“Don’t think of them as ordinary villains, Felix,” Bushell said. “Think of them as soldiers. They’re playing for keeps.” Behind a spruce, Crooke nodded. Bushell did not like that nod. It looked more as if it came from dutiful obedience than from conviction.
Fifteen minutes passed, then a couple more. Just as Bushell was beginning to get itchy, several men in dark khaki that made them hard to spot burst out of the woods on the far side of Buckley Bay and sprinted toward the lesser cover of saplings, tall clumps of fir, and scattered boulders. As soon as they had flopped down in their new places of concealment, the other half of the squad Sergeant Fuller led ran past them into other hiding places closer to the abandoned town. It was as pretty an example of move-and-support as Bushell had ever seen.
“Now we can start,” Lieutenant Green said softly. “Corporal, you and the odd numbers forward, if you please.”
“Sir!” Corporal Johnston said. He and half the squad ran forward forty or fifty yards and went to ground in the cover they’d chosen for themselves.
“Even numbers and gentlemen of the RAMs,” Green said. Bushell realized he should long since have figured out where he was going to run when the time came. He hadn’t played this game in too long, too long. He spotted a fallen tree that for whatever reason hadn’t been dragged away after it went down. It had lain there a long time; sword ferns grew in profusion atop it. Crouching almost double, he ran for it and dove in behind it hard enough to knock half the wind out of him. Sam Stanley came down behind a moss-covered rock. He mimed wiping sweat from his forehead, but the way he panted was no joke. Southwest of Buckley Bay, Sergeant Fuller’s squad was moving up again. Behind Bushell, Corporal Johnston called, “Odd numbers move.” His half of the squad sprinted past the RAMs.
This time, Bushell had picked in advance the spot to which he would go. When Lieutenant Green ordered the even numbers ahead, he streaked for the corner of a building on the very edge of Buckley Bay. He crouched, gasping, behind it. Streaks of rust from old nails bled down the boards and gave them their only color.
Corporal Johnston’s demi-squad worked their way into town, too. “Now we move forward until we are noticed,” Green said quietly, “at which point, command returns to your hands, Colonel Bushell.”
“Right,” Bushell said. He slithered through the heather and ferns that choked what had been one of Buckley Bay’s main streets, making for the open square on which stood the building the men he sought were using. He could smell the smoke from their fire: not just wood but roasting meat. The odor made his belly rumble and spit rush into his mouth. Come on, boys, you be hungry, too, he thought. Watch the joint get done cooking or sit around eating it up, don’t pay a bit of attention to what’s going on outside, and we’ll scoop you up neat as you please.