Smith paused for a few seconds. “I’m just guessing here, you understand. I’m not privy to that information. But my guess is that we would be very, very angry—for all of about thirty minutes.” He swallowed. “And then we’d retaliate in kind, Mike. The SSADM backpack nukes have been out of inventory since the early seventies and the W54 cores were retired by eighty-nine, but they don’t have to stay that way. The schematics are still on file and if I were a betting man I’d place a C-note on Pantex being able to run one up in a few weeks, if they haven’t done so already. Daddy Warbucks and the Wolfman are both gung-ho about developing a new generation of nukes. It could get really ugly really fast, Mike. A smuggler’s war, tit for tat. But we’d win, because they’ve got better logistics but we’ve got a choke hold on the weapons supply. And if it comes to it, I don’t think we’d hold back from making it a war of extermination. It’s not hard to stick a cobalt jacket on a bomb when there’s zero risk of the fallout coming home.”
“Wow, that’s ugly all right.” 9/11 had been bad enough: the nightmare Smith was dangling before him was infinitely worse. “Anything else?”
“Yep.” The colonel stood up. “From now on, until you’re through with this thing or we call it off, you’re in a box. We don’t want you in day-to-day contact with the organization. The less you know, the less you can give away.”
“But I—oh. You’re thinking, if they kidnap me—”
“Yes, that’s what we’re afraid of.”
“Right.” Mike swallowed. “So. I’m to tell Mrs. Beckstein about Matt’s bomb threat, and we either want it handed over right now, or convincing evidence that he was bluffing. Otherwise, they’re looking at retaliation in kind. What else?”
“You give her the mobile phone and tell her who it connects to. There’s a deal on the table that she might find interesting.” Smith nodded to himself. “And there’s one other thing you can pass on at the same time.”
“Yes?”
“Tell her we’re working on the world-walking mechanism. Her window of opportunity for negotiation is open right now—but if she waits too long, it’s going to slam shut.” He stood up. “Once we aren’t forced to rely on captured couriers, as soon as we can send the 82nd Airborne across, we aren’t going to need the Clan any more. And we want her to know that.”
In Otto’s opinion one camp was much like another: the only difference was how far the stink stretched. His majesty’s camp was better organized than most, but with three times as many men it paid to pay attention to details like the latrines. King Egon might not like the tinkers, but he was certainly willing to copy their obsession with hygiene if it kept his men from the pest. And so Otto rode with his retinue, tired and dusty from the road, past surprisingly tidy rows of tents and the larger pavilions of their eorls and lords, towards the big pavilion at the heart of the camp—in order to ask the true whereabouts of his majesty.
The big pavilion wasn’t hard to find—the royal banner flying from the tall mast anchored outside it would have been a giveaway, if nothing else—but Otto’s eyes narrowed at the size of the guard detachment waiting there. Either he mistrusts one of his own, or the bluff is doubled, he thought. Handing his horse’s reins to one of his hand-men he swung himself down from the saddle, wincing slightly as he turned towards the three guards in household surcoats approaching from the side of the pavilion. “Who’s in charge here?” he demanded.
“I am.” The tallest of them tilted his helmet back.
Otto stiffened in shock, then immediately knelt, heart in mouth with fear: “My liege, I did not recognize you—”
“You weren’t meant to.” Egon smiled thinly. “No shame attaches. Rise, Otto, and walk with me. You brought your company?”
“Yes—all who are fit to ride. And your messenger, Sir Geraunt.”
“Good.” The king carefully shifted the strap on his exotic and lethal weapon, pointing the muzzle at the ground as he walked around the side of the tent. Otto noticed the two other house hold guards following, barely out of earshot. They, too, carried black, strangely proportioned witch weapons. “I’ve got something to show you.”
“Sire?” Behind him, Heidlor was keeping his immediate bodyguard together. Good man. The king’s behavior was disturbingly unconventional—
“The witches can walk through another world,” remarked Egon. “They can ambush you if you keep still and they know where you are. Armies are large, they attract spies. Constant movement is the best defense. That, and not making a target of one’s royal self by wearing gilded armor and sleeping in the largest tent.”
Ah. Otto nodded. So there was a reason for all this strangeness, after all. “What would you have me do, sire?”
Behind the royal pavilion there was a hummock of mounded-up earth. Someone—many someones—had labored to build it up from the ground nearby, and then cut a narrow trench into it. “Pay attention.” His majesty marched along the trench, which curved as it cut into the mound. Otto followed him, curious as to what his majesty might find so interesting in a heap of soil. “Ah, here we are.” The trench descended until the edges were almost out of reach above him, then came to an abrupt end in an open, circular space almost as large as the royal pavilion. The muddy floor was lined with rough-cut planks: four crates were spaced around the walls, as far apart as possible. The king placed a proprietorial hand on one of the crates. “What do you make of it?”
Otto blanked for a moment. He’d been expecting something, but this…“Spoils?” he asked, slowly.
“Very good!” Egon grinned boyishly. “Yes, I took these from the witches. Hopefully they don’t realize they’re missing, yet. Tonight, another one should arrive.”
“But they’re—” Otto stared. “Treasure?” His eyes narrowed. “Their demon blasting powder?”
“Something even better.” A low metal box, drab green in color, lay on the planking next to the crate. Egon bent down and flicked open the latches that held the lid down. “Behold.” He flipped the lid over, to reveal the contents—a gun.
“One of the tinkers’,” Otto noted, forgetting to hold his tongue. “An arms dump?”
“Yes.” Egon straightened up. “My sources told me about them, so I had my—helpers—go looking.” He looked at Otto, his face unreadable. “Twenty years ago, thirty years ago, the witch families handed their collective security to the white duke. He standardized them. Their guns, your pistol—” he gestured at Otto’s holster—“when you run out of their cartridges, what will you do?”
Otto shrugged. “It’s a problem, sire. We can’t make anything like these.”
Egon nodded. “They have tried hard to conceal a dirty little secret: the truth is, neither can they. So they stockpile cartridges of a common size and type, purchased from the demons in the shadow world. Your pistol uses the same kind as my carbine. But they kept something better for themselves. This is a, an M60, a machine gun.” He pronounced the unfamiliar, alien syllables carefully. “It fires bigger bullets, faster and farther. It outranges my six pounder carronades, in fact. But it is useless without cartridges, big ones that come on a metal belt. And they are profligate with ammunition. So the duke stockpiled cartridges for the M60s, all over the place.”
Otto looked at the gun. It was bigger than the king’s MP5, almost as long as a musket. Then he looked at the crate. “How much do you have, sire?”
“Not enough.” Egon frowned. “Four crates, almost eighty thousand rounds, six guns. And some very fine blasting powder.”
“Only six—” Otto stopped. “They haven’t noticed?”
The king lowered the lid back on top of the gun. “Ten years ago, the witches began to re-equip with a better weapon.” He patted the MP5: “These are deadly, are they not? But it is a side-arm. They held the M60s to defend their castles and keeps. But they’re heavy and take a lot of ammunition. They have a new gun now, the SAW. And it takes different ammunition, lighter, with a shorter range—still far greater than anything we have, though, near as far as a twelve pounder can throw shot, and why not? A soldier with one of the new demon-guns can carry twice as much ammunition, and war among the witches is always about mobility. So they gradually forgot about the M60s, leaving the crates of ammunition in the cellars of their houses, and they forgot about the guns, too.” The royal smile reappeared. “But their servants remembered.”