1634: The Baltic War: Chapter Twelve

The English Channel

    “Well, that’s a pisser,” said Harry Lefferts, lowering his eyeglass.

    Standing next to him at the small ship’s rail, Donald Ohde scowled at the vessel in the distance. “Doesn’t anybody have any imagination? They tried this once before, and it didn’t work.”

    “The Channel is notorious for pirates,” Harry pointed out mildly. “I really don’t think we got spotted making our way through France.”

    Paul Maczka was standing at the same rail, to Harry’s left. “No ambush, you’re saying.”

    “Can’t see it, Paul. I mean, why would the French bother with a complicated ambush? They had to do it with Becky’s ship, because she was a diplomat and they couldn’t let their hand show. Us? We were just thugs sitting in a tavern in Dieppe, dickering to buy a boat. The guy who sold it to us probably figured we wanted it to turn pirates ourselves. Send in a platoon of infantry, that’s all.”

    Both Paul and Donald were scowling now. Harry smiled. “Yeah, well, so that platoon gets shot up. They send in a whole company. We’re still fried, guys, before we even set foot on our new boat.”

    He looked back at the ship pursuing them. “No, this is just garden-variety piracy. We still got to deal with it, though.”

    Donald shrugged. “Easy enough.”

    Harry shook his head. “Not so easy as all that. Oh, sure, ole Jeff could just send them packing with a few grenades. But he didn’t care if there were any witnesses left. We can’t afford that.”

    He’d said “ole Jeff” with that certain note of approbation that one righteous hillbilly refers to another member of the clan. A few years back, he’d have done no such thing, of course. Harry had never been one of those high school jocks who harassed geeks, but that was simply because such behavior was beneath his dignity. Does a lion harass mice? Still, his attitude toward geeks like Jeff Higgins hadn’t been any different, really.

    However, that was then, and this was now. Jeff still wasn’t a hillbilly, properly speaking, and never would be, but Harry was quite willing to extend him honorary membership. He’d landed one of the best-looking girls around and blown close to a dozen Croat cavalrymen into pieces, hadn’t he? What more could you ask for?

    “No…” Harry mused. “We can’t do it Jeff’s way.”

    He glanced to the northeast, checking to see that they weren’t too close yet to entering the Strait of Dover. Then, turned his head and looked at the helmsman. That was Matija Grabnar. Like many of the commandos in Lefferts’ unit, his ethnic background was a mix; in his case, German, Slovene and Lithuanian. For whatever reason, Harry seemed to attract hybrids. He claimed it was because his charismatic personality and proven leadership qualities just naturally drew the cream of the crop from every nation.

    Mike Stearns had once commented that it might even be true—if you defined “cream of the crop” the way Harry did, and nobody else would except Ba’alzebub.

    “Hey, Matt! Get us out into the middle of the channel, will you? I don’t want any witnesses.”

    Felix Kasza, who’d been sprawled comfortably on the deck, lounging against the mainmast, rose to his feet. Then, ambling over, he said: “We do it like Guns of Navarone, eh?”

    “Yeah, what I figured.” Harry gave the three men around him a sly little grin. “Good thing I over-ruled you male chauvinist pigs and let the girls come along, ain’t it? This’ll work a lot easier with Sherrilyn and Juliet to dangle like bait.”

    “I heard that, Lefferts!” One of the two women in the unit, both of them sitting on the deck next to the opposite rail, lifted her head. “Talk about male chauvinist pigs. You got your nerve. What’re we? The designated rapees?”

    Harry shrugged. “Well, yeah—except it’ll never get that far.”

    “Sure won’t,” she half-snarled. It wasn’t a particularly cold day, for this time of year, but it was January, in the English channel. So, sitting on the deck, Sherrilyn Maddox and Juliet Sutherland had covered themselves with a couple of wool blankets. Sherrilyn flipped part of the blankets aside and rummaged somewhere beneath for a moment. Her hand emerged holding a very lethal-looking 10 mm. automatic.

    “They’ll have to fuck my dead body—but I guarantee you, Harry, if you aren’t dead by then already, I’ll make sure of it. You and your stupid movies!”

    All of Harry’s male commandos, including Harry, were addicted to action movies. The down-timers, though not Harry himself, were also addicted to action novels. It was their commonly held and firm belief that, when it came to fiction, there was no God but Matt Helm and Donald Hamilton was his prophet. Admittedly, the Sacketts and Louis L’Amour came a close second.

    The woman sitting next to Sherrilyn was the female half of the only married couple in the unit. She took the pipe out of her mouth, did her—very feeble—best to look prim and proper, and said: “My husband will have to agree. He’s crazy jealous, you know. His wife being gang-raped by dozens of pirates is likely to set him off.”

    Her husband, as it happened, emerged from the hold just in time to hear that. Frowning, he lifted his head and peered over the rail. “Didn’t realize they were getting that close,” he said. “Guns of Navarone?”

    “Yeah, that’s the plan.”

    George Sutherland planted his hands on either side of the hatch and heaved himself onto the deck. As big and heavy as he was, that took quite a heave, but he had the muscle for it. It wasn’t actually true that he was particularly jealous. An easygoing and phlegmatic personality combined with nineteen-inch biceps made him one of the most placid husbands Harry had ever met.

    George and his wife were both English, which was the reason Harry had selected them for this expedition. Better still, they’d both been active in London’s theater before a byproduct of a brawl George had gotten into forced them to flee to the continent. The byproduct in question had been the broken neck owned by the brother of one of Southwark’s more notorious criminal gang leaders. Unfortunately, between his drunkenness and the chaos of the melee, George had gotten confused. He’d thought the neck he was breaking belonged to the gang leader himself, which he’d figured would settle the business well enough.

    Once they arrived in London, Harry planned to set up their base of operations in the sprawling slums on the south bank of the Thames across from the Tower, where the theater district was located. That might get a tad awkward, of course, if they happened to accidentally stumble across the same gang leader in their comings and goings. But Harry wasn’t particularly concerned about that problem. There was an easy solution to it, after all.

    Juliet claimed to have become an actress, once she got to the continent where women were allowed to play roles on stage, although she allowed that her parts had been minor. That most likely meant she’d started off as a young woman in London as a whore working the theater district, before she got hooked up with George, who’d been a stagehand. But Harry had never pried into the matter. None of his concern; first of all; and, secondly, having a husband the size of George would have made even a Nosy Parker shy away from the business.

    “You’d better stay below, George,” said Harry. “Big as you are, you’re likely to make them nervous. Give Gerd a hand with the fireworks.”

    Sutherland sucked his yellow crooked teeth, pondering the problem. “Grenades?”

    “I’d rather save the grenades, if y’all don’t mind.” The last phrase was said in English, drawled with a heavy Appalachian accent, tacked onto the Amideutsch that was their standard lingo.

    George smiled, and began lowering himself back into the hold. “Tightwad. But we’ll manage.”

    By now, Grabnar had the small ship heading into the center of the Channel, miles from either shore. Anyone on land who observed the unfolding little drama wouldn’t really be able to make out any of the details, even with an eyeglass. Two ships meet; one leaves; one doesn’t. Who can say what actually happened?

    Matija was also, cleverly, making sure the ship lost headway while he was at it. The pirates pursuing them would notice, probably, but they’d just write it off to panic and lousy seamanship. Harry didn’t think there was much chance they’d get suspicious at all.

    Why should they? The English Channel had been infested with pirates for centuries, going back into medieval times. For the past few decades, piracy in the Channel had been dominated by so-called “Sallee rovers,” because they operated from the port of Salé in northwest Africa, not far from Rabat. They were usually referred to as Algerines, although the members of the crews came from all over Europe as well as the Moslem world. 

    A few rare occasions aside, neither the English nor the French crown had ever made much of an effort to eliminate the vermin—not even after the Sallee rovers, early in the seventeenth century, became bold enough to raid towns and villages in Cornwall as well as attack ships. Partly, that was because neither nation had a powerful navy, and partly it was because the usual victims of the pirates were poor fishermen. The Algerine pirates were more interested in capturing slaves than cargo.

    So, they’d grown arrogant, which was fine with Harry Lefferts. He’d been dismantling overconfident bullies since he was eight years old. Six years old, if you counted Fatso Binghampton.

    He looked around the deck, and then pointed to a tarpaulin piled up untidily toward the bow. “Paul, you set up with a shotgun. You can hide in there until the business starts. Donald, you go back with Matt at the helm, and figure on using rifles when the shit hits the fan. Felix, you stay with me. You’re the best shot with a pistol. You got a backup?”

    Kasza sniffed. “Do I have a backup?”

    “Sorry, didn’t mean to offend you.”

    “Yes, of course I have a backup. Two, if you count the little ankle gun.”

    “Ought to do. Blow ‘em off the rail, scare the shit out of them, George and Gerd will do the rest.”

    “What about me?” demanded Sherrilyn. “If you think I’m just going to sit here looking terrified, you can—”

    “Easy, girl, easy.” Harry glanced at the oncoming pirates. They were still three hundred yards away, too far to really see anything. “Holler down to Gerd to pass you up his ten-gauge. Now’s your chance to prove you can handle a man-sized gun.”

    Sherrilyn’s sniff was on a par with Kasza’s. “He’ll whine at me. He loves that ten-gauge. There’s something unnatural about that relationship, if you ask me. Even for you gun nuts, it’s over the top.”

    Harry chuckled. It was invariably Sherrilyn’s habit to ascribe to the male members of the unit all of the macho sins to which she was even more prone herself.

    Gun nut? She owned at least twenty, that she’d admit to. And when it came to the Ultimate Macho hang-up, Harry was convinced there was no greater practitioner in the world than Sherrilyn Maddox. The woman simply could not resist a challenge. Evel Knevel with tits. Before the Ring of Fire, she’d been one of the high school’s P.E. teachers. She’d been a rock-climber, sky-diver—you name it, if the sport was dangerous and within the pocketbook of a West Virginia schoolteacher, she’d done it.

    She’d also been an avid hunter, and while she wasn’t in Julie Mackay’s league—nobody was—she was undoubtedly one of the best shots in Grantville. She’d brought home her deer every year, never later than the second day of hunting season. Her second deer, rather, because she’d already gotten one during bow-hunting season.

    Needless to say, the charge of lesbianism had followed her like a trailing mist for years, despite the fact that Sherrilyn had been no slouch at proving otherwise. With Harry himself once, in fact, in a fling that had only lasted three weeks but was still a fond memory. Very fond memory, indeed, the way that a man who’d been only twenty himself at the time will remember an affair with a woman eight years older than he was.

    Sherrilyn was a lot of fun and somebody you could always count on, even if part of that was counting on her to blow you off sooner or later. The truth was, outside of a purely formal bow in the direction of male chauvinist instinctive disapproval, Harry hadn’t hesitated at all when she’d volunteered to transfer from the Thuringian Rifles to his unit. Leaving aside the fact that he knew Sherrilyn could cut the mustard, guts and mayhem-wise, her being a woman might come in handy for the unit someday.

    Every man in the unit had raised a fuss at the idea, of course. And then, of course, every one of them had hit on her as soon as she joined. Fat lot of good it did them. They would have bounced anyway, even if Sherrilyn hadn’t heard about the ruckus they’d raised over her transfer—which she didn’t hesitate to rub in the faces of the would-be Casanovas once she arrived.

    Harry could have told them, but hadn’t bothered. Good ole boys, sure, but they just weren’t suave and debonair enough to have profited from his advice anyway. The only way you hit on Sherrilyn Maddox was to get her intrigued by a challenge. Standard issue lines were a pure waste of time. The way Harry had pulled it off was to ignore her altogether until he ran across her one day in a bar over in Clarksburg, where he was drinking with a fake license, and she’d started making suggestions herself.

    “I dunno,” Harry had said, looking at her dubiously. “Word is you’re a rock-climber. Is that true?”

    After she confessed to an enthusiasm for the sport, a little shudder had swept his shoulders. “Jeez, Sherrilyn. Your hands must be like sandpaper. Strip the skin right off a man’s back.”

    Worked like a charm.

    He smiled at the memory, as he watched the ten-gauge getting hoisted out of the hold and into Sherrilyn’s hands. He could hear Gerd’s voice coming from below, although he couldn’t quite make out the words themselves. From the tone, though, Gerd was sure enough whining and grousing. There was something a little kinky about his love affair with that monster, even if Harry didn’t think it quite crossed the line into outright perversion.

    He looked at the pirate ship. Two hundred yards away.

    “Hey, Paul! We ought to be starting to get drunk around now.”

    Maczka frowned at him. Harry’s unit had a capacity for prodigious alcohol consumption, when they relaxed. But they were stone sober any time they were on duty. Then, realizing what Harry was getting at, his frown deepened.

    “I don’t think we got any empty bottles. Hate to waste good liquor, pouring it out.”

    Sherrilyn looked up from checking the loads in the shotgun. “Pour it into one of Juliet’s bowls. We’ll make a punch for the celebration afterward.”

    Paul nodded and lowered himself down the hatch.

    “Bring up my second-best hat, while you’re at it!” Harry hollered at him. Then, went over to Sherrilyn and sat down beside her.

    “You’ll need the hat to keep your face hidden. Mostly covered by a blanket, lady weight-lifter or not, and even pushing forty like you are, ain’t no way anybody’s going to mistake you for a guy, up close.”

    “Harry, have I ever told you that you have the worst come-on lines of anybody I know?”

    “Sure. The morning after we spent the first night in bed together. I couldn’t tell if you were really pissed, though, the way you were laughing.”

    She chuckled, softly. “Walked into that one, didn’t I? Okay, genius boss, what’s the plan?”

    “You open it up. That ten-gauge will deafen ‘em, even if you miss—which you hardly can’t, at this range, as short as Gerd sawed down the barrels.”

    “Ill bust my shoulder if I try to fire this thing without—”

    “I ain’t stupid,” Harry cut her off.  “Don’t bother getting up. You don’t really gotta aim it anyway, just point it in the general direction.” He nodded at the blankets covering her and Juliet. “You don’t need both of them now. Roll one of ‘em up tight and use it as a brace for the butt.”

    Sherrilyn thought about it for a moment, and then nodded. “Okay, that’ll work. Well enough, anyway. But the blanket—the one that’ll still me on us, I mean—”

    “Way ahead of you, Sherrilyn. I should have said you’ll open up the shooting. I’ll start the whole business by yanking the blanket off you and waving it at the foe. Works for matadors, and these guys are way dumber than any bull.”

    Paul emerged from the hold, with Harry’s hat perched on his head. He was climbing the ladder a bit awkwardly since he held a bottle in each hand. Both were filled with clear liquid. Water, presumably, taken from the supply they boiled for drinking purposes.

    “You hear that, Paul?”

    “You start it, Sherrilyn’s shoots first, the rest of us pitch in afterward.”

    “Right. Pass it on to everybody else, will you?”

    Paul leaned over and handed Harry one of the bottles and the hat. Then, moving more easily with one hand free, came the rest of way out of the hatch and headed toward the stern where Donald Ohde was talking to Matija Grabnar. He still had time to pass along the plan to them and get back to the tarp in the bow before the pirates got close enough to make an accurate count of the crew members of their prospective victim.

    Not that it really mattered if the count was a little off. By now, realizing that escape was impossible and resistance even more so, the ship’s crew would be in semi-chaos. A man might be on deck one minute and cowering somewhere in the hold, the next.

    Speaking of cowering…

    Harry leaned over Sherrilyn and looked at Juliet. Sutherland was still sucking away on her pipe, looking as placid as a cow.

    “Can you really act?” he asked.

    She took the pipe out of her mouth. “The audience adored me. I’ve told you before—I would’ve been a star except jealous rivals kept me down.”

    “Right. So you did.” He looked at the pirate ship. One hundred and fifty yards. “Well, here’s your chance to prove it, Lady Sutherland. I’ll give the signal.”

    She nodded, still as placid as ever, and put the pipe back in place.

    “Okay, then,” Harry said. “We got a few minutes to relax. Contemplate philosophical thoughts. Whatever does the trick.”

    He settled back comfortably against the rail and tilted his head toward Sherrilyn.

    “Whaddaya say we get laid afterward?”

    “I never screw the boss.”

    “Okay. I’ll resign my commission. Become one of the guys.”

    “I never screw guys in my unit.”

    “Damn, you’re a hard-ass, Sherrilyn. Fine. I’ll quit the army. Become a civilian. How’s that?”

    “Like I said, Harry. You’ve got the worse come-on lines I ever heard. Three complete losers in a row.”

    “Oh, hell, that’s nothing. I can come up with way worse come-on lines than that.”

    She gave him a skeptical glance. “Prove it.”

    “Look, Sherrilyn, you just gotta face facts. You’re a natural dyke, all there is to it. Your desperate efforts to go straight are just distorting your soul. Spend a night with me in the sack and the experience will be so repulsive that you’ll finally be able to see your way to dykedom and sexual freedom.”

    Maddox burst into laughter. Loud enough and long enough that Harry started worrying. Even with the wind blowing, the pirates were getting close enough to hear.

    “Hey, cool it, willya? Or at least make it sound hysterical.”

    That shut Sherrilyn up in an instant. “I don’t do hysterical,” she said, scowling.

    Harry looked at the Algerine ship. One hundred yards off, now. From the looks of the figures crowding in its bow, he estimated a crew of somewhere around thirty men.

    “Any minute, Juliet.”

    She removed the pipe from her mouth and spent a few seconds making sure the tobacco wasn’t still burning. There wasn’t really much chance that smoldering tobacco could set a ship on fire, but anyone familiar with wooden sailing ships wasn’t going to take any chances. That done, she stowed it somewhere in her skirts.

    “Just say the word.”

    Harry saw that Donald and Matt were starting to pass their bottle back and forth, and decided it was time to emulate them. So, he took a swig from the bottle Paul had handed him.

    Water, sure enough, with the flat taste of boiled water that hadn’t been any too good to begin with. There was a reason that people in the seventeenth century didn’t usually drink the stuff.

    He passed it over to Sherrilyn. By now, she had the hat on, tilted forward to cover most of her face. She took a swig from the bottle, careful not to tilt her head too far back in the doing.

    They passed the bottle back and forth a couple of times. Just taking sips, really. The only purposes of the exercise was to make the oncoming pirates think the despairing crew had decided to indulge themselves in one last hurried drunk before entering years of enslavement and hard labor at the hands of Moslems who weren’t supposed to drink liquor at all.

    True, the Moslems on that ship were probably none too faithful about the business, especially since at least half of them would be Europeans whose conversion was pretty much a formality. Algerines treated their Christian slaves harshly in order to goad their relatives into ransoming them. But if the goad failed, after a few years they were usually fairly lenient about letting a slave convert to Islam and getting out of servitude. A fair number of the pirates on that ship would have once been slaves themselves.

    That didn’t make Harry any more inclined to show them mercy, of course. A man got his ticket punched on the wrong train, that was his problem. In the Lefferts school of theology, being stupid was the eighth mortal sin. If he’d been the guy bringing the stone tablets down the mountain, he’d have added Thou shalt not be a cocksure dumbass to the other ten. He couldn’t see where God would have objected, after all, being no dummy Himself.

    “Okay, Juliet,” he said. “Showtime.”