The defenders were asleep, dead, or incompetent, Otto decided as he watched the wagons roll along the road towards the gatehouse. Or they'd been struck blind by Sky Father. The glaring hell-light cast a lurid glow across the ground before the gatehouse, but there was no shouted challenge, no crack of gunfire. What are they doing? He wondered. A horrid surmise began to gnaw at his imagination. They're dead, or gone, and we're advancing into their ground while they sneak through the land of the dead, to ambush us from behind-
Rapid fire crackled from the gatehouse, followed by a squealing roar of bovine distress: Otto breathed again. Not dead or gone, just incompetent. They'd shown little sign of movement earlier in the campaign, and despite their lightning-fast assault on the castle when he'd taken it, they'd failed to follow through. The witch-clan were traders, after all, lowborn tinkers, not knights and soldiers. He grinned as the wagon ground forward faster, the uninjured oxen panicked halfway to a stampede by the gunfire and the smell of blood. It had fifty yards to go, then forty-why aren't they firing? Are they low on ammunition?-then twenty, then-
Otto knelt close to the ground, bracing himself, mouth open to keep his ears from hurting. The moments stretched on, as he counted up to twenty heartbeats.
"Is he dead?" called one of his gunners.
"I think-" someone began to reply, but the rest of his comment was forestalled by a searing flash. A second later the sound reached Otto, a door the size of a mountainside slamming shut beside his head. The ground shook. A couple of seconds later still, the gravel and fragments rained down around the smoke-filled hole. "What was that?" Otto shouted, barely able to hear himself. It wasn't like any powder explosion he'd ever heard, and he'd heard enough in his time. What's the Pervert got his hands on now? he added silently, straightening up.
The hell-light had gone out, along with the front of the gatehouse. The wagon hadn't been small-there could have been half a ton, or even a ton, of explosives in it; whatever kind of explosives the king's alchemists had cooked up, using lore stolen from the witches.
Otto cleared his dry throat, spat experimentally. "Break them down, get ready to move out," he shouted at Shutz. "The cavalry will be through here next."
Shutz looked baffled, then pointed to his ears. Otto nodded. "Scheisse." He gestured at the now-silent machine guns, miming packing them and moving forward. Shutz nodded, then opened his mouth and began shouting orders. Or at least he appeared to be telling troopers what to do: Otto found to his bemusement that he couldn't hear them.
The ground was still shaking. Peering back up the road, it wasn't hard for Otto to see why. Two more wagons were plodding grimly towards the pile of dust and smoke that had been the gatehouse-and behind them, what looked like a battalion of royal dragoons. In the predawn twilight they rode at no more than a slow walking pace. Otto shook his head; the ringing in his ears went on, but he was beginning to hear other sounds now. He raised his glasses, fumbled with the power button, and peered at the wagon. This one carried soldiers in helmets and half-armor, and a complicated mess of stuff, not the barrels of explosives he'd half-expected to see. "Interesting," he murmured, looking round for a messenger. "You!"
"My lord!" The man shouted.
"Tell Anders to get his guns ready to move. We're to cover this force." He pointed at the approaching dragoons. "They're going to break in. Go!" How they were going to break into the castle he had no idea, but Egon cleared expected them to do so, and Otto had more than a slight suspicion that the new explosives in the oxcart weren't Egon's only surprise.
Strung out on caffeine and fatigue, Judith Herz suppressed a yawn as she watched the technicians with the handcart maneuver the device into position on the scaffold. There was a big cross spray-painted in the middle of the top level, and they were taking pains to move it so that it was centered perfectly. The size of a beer keg, with a briefcase-sized detonation controller strapped to it with duct tape, the FADM didn't look particularly menacing. She glanced over at Rich Hall, who was sitting patiently in a director's chair, the Pelikan case containing ARMBAND between his feet. Cruz was about, somewhere, of course: They were taking pains to keep it within arm's reach at all times. Good, Judith thought tiredly. Everything's ready, except for the PAL codes. And head office, of course, but they'd be on-site shortly. The sooner they could get everything hooked up, the sooner they could all go and get some well-earned sleep.
A flicker of motion near the entrance to the tent caught her eye and she looked round. The new arrivals seemed tired: the colonel, talking animatedly to the man-in-black from the West Wing, a couple of aides following in their wake. Oh great, she thought: rubberneckers. "Wait here," she hold the technicians, then walked down the ramp to meet the newcomers.
"Colonel." She smiled. "And, uh, Dr. James."
Smith glanced sidelong at him. "He's our vertical liaison. With WARBUCKS."
"Dead straight." Dr. James looked tired, too: The bags under his eyes suggested the lights had been burning late in the Naval Observatory grounds. "Let's take a look at the package."
"We haven't attached ARMBAND yet," Judith began to say as Dr. James marched straight towards the scaffold.
"Then do it, right now. We need to get this thing done." What's the sudden hurry? she wondered. "Yes. Sir." She waved at Rich, who sat up sharply and mimed a query until she beckoned. "What's up?"
"Change of situation." James was terse. "I have the PAL codes." He tapped his breast pocket. "Colonel?"
"Dr. James is here as an official observer for the White House," Smith reassured her. "Also, we have Donald Reckitt from NNSA, Mary Kay Kare from, from the people who made ARMBAND, Richard Tracy from the Office of Special Plans-"
The introductions went on until the scaffolding began to creak under their weight. Finally they worked their way down through the layers of observers and their credentials to the technical staff. "And Dr. Rand, who will confirm that the munition is release ready, check the connections to the detonation controller, and hand over to Major Alvarez and Captain Hu for deployment."
"Certainly. If you folks wouldn't mind giving me some elbow room?.." Rand, fiftyish and somewhat bohemian in appearance, looked as irritated by the institutional rubbernecking as Herz felt. As FTO's tame expert on these gadgets-indeed, as one of the nation's leading experts-he'd studied under Teddy Taylor, although the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty meant that his expertise was somewhat abstract-he understood the FADMs as well as anyone else. And he ran through his checklist surprisingly rapidly. "All looking good," he announced, finally. "Considering where it's been."
"That's enough about that." Dr. James spoke sharply: "Not everyone here is briefed."
"Oh? Really." Rand smiled lopsidedly as he straightened up. "Well that makes it alright then." He patted the bomb, almost affectionately. "For what it's worth, this one's ready to go. Excuse me, ladies, gentlemen…"
As Rand left the platform, the colonel glanced at Herz. "If you want to call the items?…"
"Uh, yes, sir…" She stared at her clipboard and blinked a few times, wishing the tension between her brows would go away. Focusing was hard. "PAL Codes. I need to contact WAR-the designated release authority," she corrected. She looked at Dr. James.
He nodded. "This is what you want," he said, handing her a manilla envelope from his jacket pocket.