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  Chapter 49 Marie shifted her pack. It was almost empty now, so walking was easy. Later, if things went well, it would be loaded. The two-day return trek though the rough terrain would be more difficult.

  Hulbert hadn't really wanted her to come along. The truth was, she hadn't wanted to join the mission herself. Her body still ached from the punishment it had taken over the last week. She hadn't been able to take the time she needed to build her energy stores all the way back up. But since she was one of the few capable of the type of shooting they might need, she'd understood Captain Blacklock's reasoning-and so had Hulbert, even if he was even less happy about it than she was. And got a lot unhappier when Frank Nickerson caught up with them and told them there was a change in plans. This wasn't going to be just a reconnaissance after all. Silently, Marie cursed her father and brothers for insisting she got good with a gun, and pushed herself to walk faster. Just after nightfall, the next day, they reached the prison. Carefully, making as little noise as possible, they circled around until they were facing the prison's armory. The small brick building located outside the prison walls was shrouded in darkness. Using a night scope he'd luckily thought to bring along for the expedition against the Spaniards, Hulbert spotted two convicts posted outside its door. Luff was overconfident. He should have had four men posted there. He did have four convicts posted close to the front entrance to the prison, but they were far enough away that, in the darkness, they shouldn't notice anything unless someone shouted or a shot got fired. That would have been hard to manage against four sentries. Against two, it was possible. Given who Hulbert had available, at least. Frank Nickerson had been trained by the army for this sort of thing. And while Kevin Griffin had never had any formal training, his life's experience probably made him even better. The American frontier in the early nineteenth century had been a world of raids and ambushes, and Rod knew Kevin had done his share of it. Best of all, those Luff did have posted were only armed with pistols, and they had the pistols in their holsters. They should have been standing guard with rifles in their hands. He wondered why they weren't.

  Probably because Luff was keeping the powerful semiautomatic rifles restricted to his inner circles. For this kind of boring sentry duty, he'd probably figured any convict would do. That was also a stupid decision. But… Luff might not have had much choice. Given the situation Cook and the Boomers had depicted, it was quite possible that Luff felt he had to keep everyone he could rely on ready at hand in case of another rebellion. Not standing outside the prison watching for a less immediate threat. Rod turned, pointed to Frank and Kevin, and motioned them forward. He let the two men survey the situation themselves, for a while, then whispered, "If we're going to get into the armory, we need to take those two guys out. Silently. I figure the two of you are the best we've got for the purpose. Can you handle it?"

  "I can take one," Griffin said immediately. "Frank?" Nickerson nodded.

  "Yeah. If they'd kept a clear fire zone around the prison like they should have, it'd be tricky as hell. But the lazy bums even let the ground cover grow." He pointed a finger toward some trees that were near the armory, and had a thick growth of ferns between them and the prison. "That way, I think, Kevin. Once we're at the wall, we can sidle along it until we're close enough." "Same thought I had. Let's do it." Immediately, he started moving toward the trees in a low crouch, making no noise at all that Hulbert could hear. Rod wasn't surprised. He'd always considered himself an expert woodsman. But his experiences over the past period with the Cherokees had driven home to him that there was a huge difference between survivalism and surviving. Truth was, in the end all of his skills were basically a product of play-acting taken very seriously. For men like Kevin Griffin, the skills were what had kept them alive. Nickerson made a little bit of noise, but not much. And even the big black man-he was half again Griffin's size-couldn't be heard after he was a few yards away. Rod turned, pointed to Marie, and summoned her forward. "One of us keeps the scope on the sentries, and one of us is ready to shoot at any time. In case something goes wrong. You got a preference?" "I'll shoot. You're a better shot than I am, but at this range it doesn't matter. And I'm not comfortable with the scope. Only used the damn things twice in my life." Rod nodded. He brought the scope up and focused it on the sentries. He was tempted to use it to follow Griffin's and Nickerson's progress-or try to, anyway-but that would have been a stupid indulgence. They'd either pull this off, or they wouldn't. Nothing Rod and Marie could do would help them in the first task. But if they stayed alert and concentrated on the sentries, they might very well be able to save Frank's and Kevin's lives. If it came to gunfire, of course, the plan went up in smoke. But plans could be made anew. A dead friend couldn't be summoned back to life. It was a tense few minutes, that became a tense half hour-and then stayed tense for another quarter of an hour. Kevin and Frank weren't rushing anything. Rod was sure that Nickerson would be letting the Cherokee set the pace. And where even a modern soldier with Frank's training would have moved much more quickly, Griffin had the patience taught him by a lifetime. Rod knew what he was doing. Move a few feet; stop; wait a few minutes. Then do it again. Never moving long enough to allow the target to spot you. Just enough that, even if they heard something, they'd never see you. And then there'd be no further sound for minutes. Rod spent a fair portion of that forty-five minutes thanking the stars that he hadn't been born and raised in the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century frontier. He finally understood just how hairy that must have gotten. Imagine going to bed every nightknowing that somebody like Kevin Griffin might be creeping up on your cabin. When the assault finally happened, it went so fast Rod barely understood what he was seeing through the scope. Griffin appeared, right in front of one sentry. His hand flashed to the convict's throat. Rod never saw the knife, but an instant later the con was going down, clutching his throat and silent. Nickerson, with his size and strength, didn't bother with a knife. He just seized the convict and slammed his head against the brick wall of the armory.

  Since the man wasn't wearing any sort of head covering, that produced a thud so faint Rod couldn't hear it at all. He was sure the four sentries standing guard at the main entrance hadn't noticed a thing, since they were farther away than he was. That head smash might very well have killed the convict. But, an instant later, Nickerson had him by the hair and shoulder, holding his throat open for Griffin. It was over. Rod shifted the scope, to study the four guards at the main entrance. Nothing. They were still chatting away, where alert guards wouldn't have been talking at all. But Luff hadn't exactly been able to take his pick from the few and the proud. "Okay," he whispered to Marie. "Let's all move up. We can circle around now, and get out of sight." Five minutes later, they were all gathered just to the side of the armory, out of sight of the sentries at the main entrance. Moving briskly but not as if he were up to something-one of the sentries might still look over-Rod found the key to the armory and unlocked the door. Silently cursing himself for being an idiot. Luckily, either Griffin or Nickerson had figured out that the two of them needed to remain standing in front of the armory. Just in case one of the other sentries looked over, saw no one apparently on guard, and decided to wander over to see what had happened to them. Rod hadn't even thought of that. If he had, he might not have used Nickerson at all. True, one of the convicts they'd slain had also been black. But he was nowhere nearly as big as Frank. Fortunately, Frank had been quick-witted enough to figure that out also. So, he'd spent the whole five minutes slouched against the wall, figuring that one slouching man looked about the same as another seen from a distance. And staying in the darkest part of the area, since his uniform wasn't remotely the same color as the con's coverall. Fortunately, as dark as it was, the distinction between blue and orange wasn't readily noticeable that far away. Griffin hadn't taken any chances, though. He'd quickly dragged the other convict out of sight, stripped the corpse of its coverall and put it on over his own clothes. That man was just enough larger than Kevin was to make that
possible. He'd be sweating under that double layer, in this heat, but Kevin Griffin could make any of those ancient Stoic philosophers look like crybabies. The door opened, Rod positioned himself so he could keep an eye on the guards at the main entrance, and waved everybody in. One at a time, spaced five seconds apart, as they'd been told. Rod was the last one in. Just before entering, he reached down, seized the collar of the convict Nickerson had taken down, and dragged him into the armory. Once inside, he summoned one of the men in the K-9 team. "Strip him of the coverall, put it on, and take Nickerson's place outside. You're about the right size and color." Kelly Evans chuckled. "I got a much higher moral fiber, though. I swear I do." That done, Rod went to see what they'd found. A minute later, like all the guards in the armory, he was trying not to laugh out loud. Almost everything was there! Very little had been taken from the shelves and hauled inside the walls. Luff was either paranoid or he had good reason to be. Most likely both, of course. "What do we do?" asked Marie. "We can't possibly carry all this stuff out of here." "Not the weapons, no, except for some of the rifles. But we can take out most of the ammunition for the rifles.

  Without ammo, they're just clubs. Not very good clubs, at that." "The pistol ammo?" "Leave the pistols and their ammo. For the kind of war we'll be fighting, they won't be that much use. It's the rifles that matter." He paused, for amount. "Well… let Kidd take one of the pistols and plenty of ammo for it. That'll make him happy, and I figure a happy hit man is worth a little extra work." Geoffrey smiled serenely. Softly, Rod clapped his hands. "Okay, people, let's get at it. You know the plan." They were running slightly behind schedule, so Rod didn't dare spend more than four hours at the work of emptying the armory. They still had another important assignment tonight. It was slow work, too. Gathering the stuff up and depositing it by the door went quickly. But the rest was time-consuming. First-and only one at a time, since a group of people might be noticed moving, even in the dark-they had to leave the armory carrying as much as they could.

  Walking slowly and as silently as possible, until they reached the cover of the woods. Dropping the burden in the first small clearing and coming back. Timing it so there was never more than one person moving visibly at the same time. Rod exempted Marie from that task.

  She was still too worn out from her exertions, and they needed someone good with a rifle shot anyway, keeping the men at the main entrance in sight and ready to shoot if need be. At least the work wasn't too tiring. The ammunition they carried was heavy, but they had to move so carefully that everyone had plenty of time to rest in between stints.

  And after an hour, they were able to shed some of their precautions.

  Those cretins at the main gate "standing guard" had started a campfire! A few minutes' worth of staring into the flames would make them effectively night-blind. All they had to worry about thereafter was making any loud noise. Forty-five minutes before the time he'd allotted ran out, to Rod's surprise, they'd emptied the armory of every single round of rifle ammunition in it. It had been so long since he'd done simple manual labor that he'd forgotten how much a few people could do, just using their own muscles, if they kept at it steadily. "Okay. We'll take as many rifles as we can. But forty-five minutes, that's it." That work was physically much easier. Rod wouldn't let anyone carry more than two rifles, one in each hand, even though they could have easily handled more weight. He wasn't taking any chances that somebody might stumble out there in the darkness and wind up dropping several rifles in a clatter. Even with that limitation, they managed to empty the armory of most of its rifles.

  All that was left in the way of usable weapons were pistols.

  Henceforth, Luff and his men would be able to use whatever rifles they had just as long as their magazines still had rounds. Well… Luff had probably stashed some rifles and ammo in his own quarters, too.

  Still, the one great nightmare that had haunted Andy and Rod had been the overwhelming firepower the convicts possessed. Which, they had now lost. When the four hours were up, he spent a couple of minutes chewing on the unexpected problem their success had created. The rest of their mission was important, sure, butnothing was as important as getting the rifles and ammo now stacked in the clearing back to the cave. Or, at the very least, hidden somewhere the convicts couldn't find them. That would require a change of plans. The intention had been that they'd use everyone in the mission for the next stage. But Rod decided that he could make do with just himself, Marie, and…

  Cook and Kidd, he decided. Cook, because for whatever reason, Hulbert had come to have a lot of confidence in him. Kidd, because if things went sour, it might come to a gunfight at close quarters. In that sort of gunplay, he was pretty sure Kidd was the deadliest man alive.

  Literally, in this new world. Besides, if would be safer with just four of them. They couldn't do as much, but they could probably do enough-and there was much less risk of being spotted. Marie led the way to the supply room, with Hulbert bringing up the rear. The room was located between the administration building and the gates that led to the prison cells. The men who'd designed the installation almost a hundred years back had arranged things so anything a prisoner might want or need was beyond a prisoner's reach in the event of a prison riot. They wanted to be able to starve the prisoners into submission if they had to. That worked in their favor. Obviously, Luff had decided the original design suited his purposes as well. The areas were deserted at night. They made their way to the first floor cafeteria, then crossed the large room and entered the back area using Marie's keys to get in. Marie stood outside the door, watching, while the others got busy. They each had a list of what Carter Leffen had called a "Recipe for Destruction." Using everyday cleaning products they were to mix up explosives and divide them between each set of double entry gates. They wouldn't be able to time exactly when they'd explode, but when they did, Leffen thought they'd destroy the gates.

  Enough of them, he said, might even take down part of the wall. Even if just the gates went, nothing Luff and his people could jury-rig in their place would be nearly as strong. They had two hours to make up the explosives, he figured. Then, with whatever they had, they'd set them and be gone. By then, Nickerson and Griffin and the others would have been able to haul the rifles and ammunition at least a half mile into the woods and have found a safe place to hide them. Kevin had said he could manage that well enough that only an expert Cherokee or Choctaw or Chickasaw woodsman-"maybe few white men too, I guess"-could eventually find it. But none of the convicts at Alexander had a cold chance in hell. As he was carefully finishing with his fourth bomb, Marie appeared at his side. Her face looked very pale, but that might have been a trick of the dim lighting. They were working by the light of a small electric lantern. "Rod, you have to see this," she whispered. "You justhave to." Puzzled, he followed her into the cafeteria. Marie headed straight for the big walk-in freezers. The door to one of them was open. That, alone, told him how agitated Marie was. The light inside was spilling into the interior of the building.

  Hopefully, given the few windows, nobody would spot it. But he'd still have to chide her about the carelessness. When he got to the open door, though, he forgot all about reproving her. His jaw dropped.

  "Holy Christ," he whispered. He was sure his own face was pale. Most of the shelves were stacked with naked human bodies. Headless naked bodies. The heads that had once belonged to them were stacked on a different shelf. "Get Cook and Kidd," he said. After Marie left, remembering, he closed the door to the freezer. Not all the way, just enough to eliminate almost all of the light coming out. When Cook and Kidd arrived, he opened the door little. "Look inside." They did so, for about ten seconds. After an initial little intake of breath, Kidd pursed his lips. There was no expression at all on Cook's face. In fact, after a few seconds he said, as calmly as could be: "They must have gotten the generators back up." "What the fuck is going on here?" hissed Rod. "I want a straight answer." Cook and Kidd withdrew their heads and he closed the freezer. Then he went to ch
eck the next one.

  It was also full of corpses and severed heads. The third one was almost full. After Cook saw that, he shook his head and said-in that same maddeningly calm voice-"I wonder what the maniac man will figure out next. Once this claptrap solution runs out of steam." The man's calm was almost infuriating. "What thefuck is going on? You didn't tell us about this!" He barely caught himself before shouting the last sentence. Cook shook his head. "We didn't tell you about it because it hadn't happened before we left. Remember-I didtell you that Luff was using us Boomers as his body-disposal unit. After we were gone"-he shrugged and hooked a thumb at the lockers-"I guess this was his next solution. And if it finally dawns on you that Luff is jumping from a frying pan into the fire, I told you that also. You know that phrase, 'penny-wise, pound-foolish.' Probably dates back to one of Luff's ancestors." "Jesus." Being fair, Cookhad told them that Luff's madness took the form of solving one problem at the expense of creating a bigger one. But neither Rod nor Andy had imagined anything this… this… "Jesus," he repeated. "It's like a photo I saw once. Some place in Cambodia, during the Pol Pot regime." "Tuol Sleng," Kidd provided. "I was thinking the same thing." Rod stared at him. Kidd smiled. "And if you're wondering how I'd know that, there are three possible explanations. I'm a man of many parts. I have a keen interest in the photography of the grotesque. I was looking to see if I might spot some professional tips. I'll let you decide which explanation is the right one." "I vote for 'you're a man of many parts,' " Marie said immediately. "Smart lady. I think I'll vote the same way myself." Rod sighed. "God help them. How many bodies are in there, do you think?" "Dozens," said Cook. "For a professional estimate, you'd have to let me look inside again." Rod shook his head.