Jud called across to Sam as he helped Zita wire the rocket launchers to the Range Rover, ‘Sam, it’s time for your rest break.’
Back muscles aching, his hands still throbbing and painful from unbolting the seats on the bus, Sam headed across the snowy yard to the farmhouse. It was midday; he’d not slept in more than 30 hours.
He did wonder if he would sleep at all, what with the tension of the impending confrontation with the Bluebeards, but the moment his head touched the pillow his eyes closed and he slept without dreaming.
‘These are the grenades,’ Carswell told Sam. He was sitting at the table in the hayloft. ‘I don’t expect you’ll have the opportunity to use them – they’ll be in the hands of the professional soldiers – but you might as well see what they look like and how they work.’
Carswell handed Sam what appeared to be a section of iron piping about the same size as a beer can. It was a discoloured bluey-black and looked pretty roughly made; it was far heavier than Sam had expected, too.
Carswell said, ‘You’ll see that it’s basically a section of iron piping sealed at both ends by welded discs of iron plate. Then it’s filled with blasting powder, and this is the fuse. If you should ever need to use one of these beauties, light the end of the fuse with a match, then throw the grenade at the enemy. The fuse will detonate the powder five seconds later and anyone close enough will be sliced to pieces by the red-hot chunks of iron pipe hurled outwards by the blast. So make sure you throw it far enough away from you. Got that?’
Sam nodded. ‘Have you decided where we – the civilians – will be during the battle?’
‘I have, and I was just coming to that. Most will be stationed at the amphitheatre car park. The plan being that the bus and cars drive close enough to the barbarians as they emerge through the time-gate. They fire a volley of rockets and artillery shells at the enemy, then return to the car park to reload. Of course, the artillery men can keep reloading and firing their guns several times before we need to return.’
‘But you will need some of us to drive the vehicles.’
‘That’s true. Lee Burton will drive the bus… He’s had some experience of it in the past.’
‘He has a PSV licence?’
‘Ah, no, he used to move the bus from the car park to the front of hotels.’
‘So he’s had no real experience driving the bus on roads? Never mind on the kind of open terrain where we’ll be fighting this battle?’
‘No, but he’ll be able to practise before we attack.’
Sam felt his face tighten. A little practice in the road between here and the amphitheatre wouldn’t be nearly enough. It would demand all an experienced driver’s expertise to throw that coach around snow-covered fields as though it was an army tank while the artillery fired broadsides or rockets whistled from their firing tubes.
Carswell moved on crisply. ‘Needless to say, we need a relief driver.’
‘Who, Jud?’
‘No, I’ve chosen Zita.’
‘Zita? Why?’
‘She drove tractors and an assortment of farm vehicles when she was in her teens.’
‘But—’
‘She’ll do a good job, Mr Baker.’
Sam swallowed his doubts. Zita was extremely capable. Indeed, every man and woman there had worked minor miracles, but it seemed as if Carswell was expecting positively superhuman performances from them. All Lee had to do was to catch one of the rocket-tube ‘wings’ on the barn-door frame as he backed the bus out and that would be 20 hours of work down the drain. Again Sam had the nagging suspicion that Carswell’s battle plan was too complex for it to work – especially without the time to practise.
‘You, Sam. You’ll drive the Range Rover. Jud Campbell will be in the passenger seat. He’ll operate the switches that will fire the rockets. You’ll have a couple of soldiers in the rear seats armed with rifles. I suggest you stuff your ears with cotton wool; it’ll get very noisy. Any questions?’
Yes… loads.
The light-bulb igniters haven’t been properly tested. What if the rockets don’t fire?
What if the rocket-tube wings are too flimsy after all and simply drop off when the car goes over a bump?
What if the cars become stuck in snowdrifts?
Can four or five hundred men and women stop three thousand battle-hardened barbarian warriors?
That was just the start of the questions. Sam could think of hundreds more. But it was all too late in the day now.
What he heard next came as something of a shock. He should have anticipated it, but somehow in the white heat of the conversion work he’d pushed the eventuality to the back of his mind.
Carswell said, ‘It’s been four days since the Bluebeards attacked Casterton. I don’t envisage them delaying any longer, on the off chance the town could call on help from outside; therefore, I’m going to have the vehicles moved up to the amphitheatre car park tonight.’
‘Tonight?’
Carswell gave a curt nod. ‘If they come at first light tomorrow we need to be ready.’
Sam forced a smile. ‘So this is it. The eve of battle. Hell of a Christmas present, isn’t it?’
45
Dawn. Saturday 25th December 1865 – Christmas Day.
‘God rest ye, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay… for Jesus Christ our Saviour was born this Christmas Day…’
The words came from Ryan Keith. He’d hardly said anything since the death of his wife. Now the Christmas carol wasn’t sung so much as grunted syllable by syllable.
They were at the amphitheatre. It was eight in the morning. From the grey sky only the occasional flake of snow spiralled down with a luxurious laziness as if enjoying the slow glide to earth.
Sam watched Ryan. The man had armed himself with a double-barrelled shotgun. He didn’t say why he was here, but Sam hoped it was to inflict some damage on the Bluebeards. Not on himself. Nor on any of the other townsfolk and soldiers now preparing the vehicles that were dotted around the car park.
For a moment Sam actually regretted that the conversion on the vehicles was finished. While they’d been hammering, sawing, splicing away there in the brightly-lit barn they could make believe that the eventuality they were preparing for would never come.
But here it was.
Crunch time.
This was Casterton’s only line of defence against the Bluebeards. A fragile line at that. One that looked insignificant there on the car park that was surrounded by several hundred acres of snowbound meadows.
Sam allowed his gaze to travel to the huddle of vehicles. He saw the bus with its stumpy ‘wings’ housing the rocket-launcher tubes that gleamed a brassy yellow in the daylight; Carswell had decided the bus should be named, and he’d ordered Zita to paint Thunder Child on the side in chunky black letters. There too was the Range Rover with its own small ‘wings’.
Mounted on the roof of the ice-cream van was a muzzle-loading cannon, which as weapons went was already pretty much an antique in 1865. Parked in a line by the visitors’ centre were half a dozen cars. All of this formed Carswell’s army for his Operation Rolling Vengeance (named tongue-in-cheek, Sam guessed).