Eric Flint - Time spike

The noise had been pretty incredible, in that enclosed space. He saw John's lips move. "What?" he asked. Then, pointed to his ear. Boyne came closer and almost shouted. "I'd forgotten how much noise a pistol makes in a room." He grinned. "That's what got me the hard sentence, you know. If I'd just shot the bastard humping my wife once or twice, they mighta gone easy on me. But I emptied the whole clip. Wadn't much left of the dirty rotten fuck, by the time I was done." Jealousy wasn't an emotion James approved of, probably because he suffered from it fairly badly himself. Any time he spotted Elaine in what looked like a friendly conversation with another man, he got a little twinge.

But he was bound and determined, this time around, to keep it under control-and he wasn't really worried about her anyway. For one thing, she was at least as possessive as he was. The squint in her eyes was a sight to behold, whenever shespottedhim talking in a friendly way to another woman. Still, even in his worst days-even drunk-James couldn't imagine himself actually murdering somebody out of jealousy.

But… who knew? He'd never caught a girlfriend in fragrant deliction, either, or whatever it was called. On the other hand, why had Boyne been carrying a gun in the first place? The adultery couldn't have caught himthat much by surprise. Unless he packed a piece everywhere he went, which wasn't likely. Boyne had been a machinist, not a gangster. And why was his mind wandering? They were, in fact, in the middle of a war. "Get a blanket up here!" he yelled down the stairs. A moment later, the strip of blanket was passed up, hand to hand. Crouching to stay out of the line of fire, James moved to the open window and tossed most of the blanket strip through. Then, squatting by the wall and holding the other end in his hand, he wondered what he could use to anchor it. That was another thing he hadn't given any thought to, earlier. So much for his budding career as Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great. For a brief instant, James felt a powerful spike of longing for his familiar job as an emergency medical technician. That had sometimes gotten stressful, but it was a stress he wasfamiliar with. Boyne squatted next to him. He'd apparently analyzed the same quandary. "We gotta leave two guys here anyway, boss. That was the plan. But I figure we may as well leave three. Hell, leave four. Now that we done it once, the truth is that having a lot of Boomers along is pretty pointless. Two, three, four guys can take a tower, or it can't be done at all." He pointed to the strip-end in James' hand. "One of 'em can take a break by sitting here and holding the blanket. Two guys watch at the window with rifles. One guy watches the stairs with a pistol." As plans went, it was better than the one James had drawn up. He let Boyne pick out the men to stay at West Tower, while he steadied himself for the next task. He thought they'd still have the advantage of surprise, at least. This tower had been the critical one, since it was the tower that covered the main entrance. He could already hear the sounds of Blacklock's men pouring through the entrance. The Cherokees were out there too. Their war whoop was distinctive. Scary as hell, too. James didn't think any of the cons in the other towers would be paying much attention to anything else. He could be wrong, of course. But they'd find out soon enough. The battle inside the prison was now in full swing. The moment Andy Blacklock saw that strip of Spanish blanket coming out of the tower window, he ordered the charge on the entrance. By then, the catapult Edelman had designed and the Cherokees had built-Jeff called it a "trebuchet," with his usual fussiness about terminology-had fired more than a dozen of Leffen's smoke bombs. The entrance area was almost completely obscured. Anyone firing at them as they charged would be firing blindly. It had been the danger from the tower that had really kept everyone pinned. At least one of the cons up there was a marksman. Two of Andy's people had been killed by him, already. Not in a while, though. Hulbert had taken out one of them, and that might very well have been the sniper. The men remaining up there, after that, had just satisfied themselves with little quick bursts of rifle fire. It was all a moot point now, though. Cook and the Boomers had done their job. Four more guards went down charging the entrance. As closely spaced as they were-had to be, given the dimensions involved-even someone firing blind was bound to hit somebody, at least a few times. Unfortunately, while the bombs Hulbert's raid had planted had destroyed the gates, they hadn't been powerful enough to really damage the walls. Then, finally, they were in the smoke, searching for the defenders. Leffen had told them the smoke wouldn't be too hard on the eyes-but if this was his idea of "not too bad on the eyes" Andy didn't want to think what the little convict could produce if he was deliberately trying to blind someone. Still, squinting or not, a little teary-eyed or not, they could see well enough. There were five convicts still left in the area when they came through the gate. All five went down, along with one of the Cherokees. Two of the convicts were shot while trying to run away. They'd lost seven people so far, that Andy knew of, at least four of them killed outright. But they had the entrance to the prison. That was the critical thing. There was no longer any way that Luff and his men could get it back.

Chapter 54 Frank Nickerson led eight guards into the armory.

Blacklock had ordered him to make sure it was secured, and then-if the situation permitted-position himself and his people as snipers on the roofs. The armory itself was empty. Just beyond, they found Geoffrey Kidd on the floor, with his back propped against a wall. He looked to be bleeding pretty badly. Carter Leffen was kneeling next to him, fussing and fidgeting and obviously doing the man no good at all.

Frank looked around. The bodies of four convicts were scattered around the area. All of them had been shot in the neck or upper chest. Kidd's work, obviously. Frank didn't care what the general attitude of the guards was. He was starting to get very fond of Geoffrey Kidd.

"Leffen, leave him alone. You're probably doing more harm than good."

Frank looked over the people he had. Bird Matthews, he thought, had the most medical training of any of them. "Matthews, you stay here and do what you can for Kidd. Jenkins, you stand guard. The rest of you, come with me." "What do I do?" asked Leffen plaintively. "I have no idea. Just stay out of the way. And don't burn anything down, fiddling around." "Why would I do that?" Leffen said, more plaintively still.

"Ain't no insurance companies left." In the machine shop area that he used for his war room, Adrian Luff moved three tool bits across the diagram of the prison. "Haggerty, get out there and tell Hancock, Olszanski and Thaxton to get their squads up to cover the entrance.

Those guys there will need reinforcements." Haggerty left. Luff moved another couple of tool bits, while crooking a finger at Walker.

"Jimmy, you go round up Metcalf and Michaels. We need to take back the armory." Walker left. Whatever reservations or doubts he or any of Luff's top lieutenants might have had about the situation, they were buried deep in their brains and out of sight. By now, Luff's authority was absolute. And there was something very reassuring about the way he kept calm and collected under any circumstances. Walker even thought they were going to win this battle. Haggerty could have warned him otherwise, by the time Walker reached Metcalf and Michaels and their men. But Haggerty was dead by then. Haggerty had passed through D-block on his way to find the squads Luff had sent him to find. The building was mostly empty, by then, with not more than a fourth of the cells still occupied. He was caught completely off guard by seven convicts rushing out of one of the cells. All these cells were supposed to be locked! There weren't any reliables in D-block. He only got off two shots with his rifle, and neither of them hit anything but the walls of an adjoining cell. The first con who grabbed him had gone for the rifle and had wrestled it aside. Haggerty would have died eventually from the beating that ensued. But a sharpened pork bone driven through his eye and into his brain made sure of it. Not even Luff's maniacal regime, it turned out, had been able to keep inmate ingenuity suppressed. When they were done with Haggerty, the convicts went back into the cell and hauled out one of Luff's men. One of his "reliables," as he called them. His name was Jack Mayes. The man had remained cowering in a corner, after agreeing to unlock the cell for them. Seeing the convict yanking the pork bone out of Haggerty's eye and coming toward him, Mayes squawked. "Hey! We had a deal!" By then, two other cons had him by the arms. A third con, standing behind, kicked his legs out from under him. A fourth con seized him by the hair and jerked his head into position. "We lied," were the words that came with the pork bone. Dino Morelli led the attack on the next tower. James had planned to do it himself again, but the Boomers simply wouldn't let him. They wouldn't allow Boyne to take part, either. At some indefinable point between towers, those men had started accepting that they might actually have a future. "You ain't got nothing to prove, boss," was Morelli's comment. "Neither does John." Morelli did a better job anyway. He wasn't as purely murderous as Kidd would have been. But a man doesn't commit that many armed robberies without leaning how to use a pistol, even if a smart armed robber like Morelli never actually fired a shot in the course of his crimes. The reason for his long sentence-the judge had thrown the book at him-wasn't because he'd hurt anyone in the course of the robberies.