Cherie Priest - Clementine

Maria said, “And this Ossian Steen-he’s taken the boy away? This is how he manipulates the poor doctor?”

“Correct. He locks the little fellow up with himself, in one of the outbuildings, where he pretends to be a doctor himself. Obviously we don’t let him anywhere near the patients; or rather, it’s just as well he has no interest in them, for he could only do them harm, and he wouldn’t care in the slightest. Missus…” the nurse hesitated, uncertain of what to call the spy. She settled on, “Boyd. I want you to understand that even if I had no lingering loyalties of my own to any nation or side in the long-running unpleasantness, I would wish to see an end to this awful lieutenant colonel. I can’t abide such cruelty-much less to a gentle old man and an innocent child.”

Maria steeled herself against what might come and she de-manded quietly, “Take me to Ossian Steen. We’ll settle this now.”

Simeon squinted at the sky and drew a quick, hard sip from his cigarette before tossing it aside. He asked, “You see that?” and he cocked his head towards a corner of the sky where a fistful of puffy clouds were parting to make way for something heavy, high, and dark.

The captain’s scarred face widened with delight. “Men,” he said, “Watch for it. Look-let it land. You see where it’s going?”

The craft swayed as it sought a place to settle; it moved drunkenly and slow, too loaded down to fly swift or straight. It hummed and hovered over the Waverly Hills compound. Atop the low central mound where the sanatorium hulked, the Free Crow slipped and jerked through the air as if it threatened to land on the roof, but it did not rest there. It swung over to the side and behind the main building, into the trees beyond it-where there must have been another clearing, or perhaps a landing dock designed for just such a purpose.

“How are we going to play this, Captain?” Lamar wanted to know. “Do we catch them mid-air, or do we let them land?”

The captain said, “Mid-air hasn’t worked so well, so far; but then again, we didn’t have a ship this strong. Still, this time let’s let them land, and we’ll take it out from under them.”

Simeon said, “We’re going to take it quiet, and let ’em walk back to Washington?”

“Not even if they ask nicely.” Hainey stomped back up the folding stairs that led inside the Valkyrie . “I don’t plan to leave any of the bastards standing. Or this bastard, either,” he indicated the ship he was entering.

“Sir?” Lamar asked.

The captain answered from the interior, “Engineer, I want you to unscrew that bottom armor plate along the rear hydrogen tank. Leave it naked, and be careful about it. But be fast.”

When he descended the stairs again, he had the Rattler slung across his shoulders. It had long since cooled from the assault in Kansas City, and although it was almost out of ammunition, another band of bullets sagged around the captain’s chest like a sash.

He continued, “We want to give them a few minutes to get themselves moored and get comfortable.” Then he asked Simeon, “You don’t think they saw us, do you? This is a big bird, but we’ve got some tree cover and the hill between us.”

“I couldn’t say. But I’d guess they didn’t.”

Hainey stripped the last handful of bullets out of the Rattler and began to thread the new band into its chambers. Lamar was already whacking at the armor with a wrench and a prybar, and they both finished their tasks in less than a minute; but Simeon joined Lamar, and between them they pulled away another crucial strip of plating, widening the vulnerable spot and giving themselves a bigger target.

“That ought to do it,” the captain declared. “Let’s leave it for now and go. It’ll be safer to blast it from the sky, anyway, and I think we’ve given Brink and his boys time enough to get our ship secured. Simeon, help me with this thing.”

Simeon took the barrel of the large, freshly loaded gun, and helped to carry it as if it were still suspended in a crate. Together they walked through the trees, down the hill, and around the back end of the building where an improvised landing pad had been cleared and a set of uncomplicated pipework docks had been established. From the edge of the clearing where Hainey, Simeon, and Lamar were hunkered and hiding, it looked like there had once been a building in the clearing-and now there was nothing left but its foundation, which made a perfectly serviceable spot in which to park an airship.

The Free Crow -improperly christened the Clementine -sagged on its moorings. None of the lines and clips that held it to the earth were strictly necessary, and none were drawn tight for the ship was so overburdened that without the fight of the engines, it would have sunk to the ground.

A pair of large Indian men milled about outside the ship. They looked enough alike to be brothers, but neither Hainey nor either of his crewmembers could guess which tribe they hailed from. Beside them, seated and scowling, was a heavily bandaged man with a wrapped foot, thigh, and hand. He fiddled with a makeshift crutch and swore under his breath.

Hainey whispered, “I knew I’d got one of them, back in Seattle.”

Lamar said, “You shouldn’t have fired inside the ship. You could’ve killed us all.”

The captain made half a shrug and said, “I know. But I was mad as hell, and being mad got the better of me. I wonder what man that is,” he said, and he meant that he wondered what position the crewman held. “I think his name is Guise. I know the first mate is a fellow called Parks, but I don’t see him out there.”

“He must be inside,” Simeon said.

From within the ship, a loud, repeated banging sound echoed throughout the hull. The sound had a sharp edge, like a sculptor’s chisel biting into stone; it rang with a timbre that made Hainey think of miners picking their way through coal. He said, “They’re trying to dig it out of her, I bet.”

“The diamond?” Lamar asked.

“That’s right. They’re digging through the cement in her coffin, trying to reach what she’s wearing. They should’ve started that sooner, rather than leaving it to the last minute like this.”

The first mate said, “Maybe there’s more cement than they bargained for.”

And Lamar suggested, “Maybe they were too busy running from us .”

Hainey nodded at the engineer and said, “I like your explanation better. Well, let’s get going.”

With Simeon’s help he hoisted the Rattler up onto his shoulders, and checked the smaller guns that hung on the belt around his waist. They did this with all the quiet they could muster, and they were at barely enough distance that they thought no one would hear them…until Hainey stood up straight, Rattler primed and ready, and found himself face-to-face with one of the Indians who had only a moment before been a hundred feet away.

The native man had a shape that looked like it’d been carved from a tree, and gleaming black hair that hung down almost to his hips. He was dressed like a white man, in a linen shirt tucked into a pair of denim pants.

Nothing rustled and no part of him moved. He did not even blink.

Simeon and Lamar were frozen to the spots where they stood, even though the newcomer appeared unarmed. It was too startling, the speed and silence with which this man had moved into their midst.

It occurred to all three black men at once that there’d actually been two Indians, down by the Free Crow . Their realization came a split second before the injured man beside the craft began to holler, “Where the hell did you two get off to? Eh? What’s going on?”