“You sound like you’re scheming, Larry.”
“Me? I’m a guileless American, remember? Anyhow, I’ve seen enough. As you’ve said, now we need to mount an attack as soon as possible.”
North nodded, looked over his shoulder: dispersed back along one-hundred and fifty yards of open woods, the platoon was hiding as best it could. “Moving them all up to attack positions is not going to be a short job, unfortunately.”
Hastings, hanging a few feet back, shrugged. “We could advance at night, attack under cover of darkness.”
North shook his head. “A night attack is no good, particularly since we don’t have detailed information about the interior of the abbey. Major Quinn and I asked Herr Schoenfeld about the layout: he’d never been inside. Not surprising for a Protestant. Not surprising for a Catholic, either: the sisters and townsfolk were not mutually welcoming. Besides, any earlier layout could have been changed dramatically by now.”
“Then sir, should we move at night and attack at dawn?”
“Hastings, what part of the phrase ‘quick attack’ is confusing you? With every passing minute, there is an accumulating chance that one of the enemy—either a walking patrol, or another mounted lookout--will alert Prum to the fact that we never really left the region and are now poised, weapons drawn, on his doorstep. Being discovered that way—or by some other bit of bad luck—would constitute a situation that we can safely characterize as Very Bad Indeed. Besides, moving at dark could give us away just as surely as moving in daylight: we don’t know this ground, Hastings. And we’ve not been close enough to the abbey itself know the best positions to assault from, or the most concealed avenues of moving into them.”
Quinn thought for a moment. “I think I can help with that.”
“What? How?”
“Well, you’ve groused about my taking four of your very best soldiers, so I guess I’ll see if they live up to the hype. I’ll take the four of them forward as a pathfinder force. We’ll blaze a trail along the best-concealed pathways to assault positions. Give us about an hour. Once we give you the signal to get the rest of the platoon moving up in drips and drabs, we’ll start looking for ways to get a sniper into an optimal position and, if possible, wriggle into some far forward positions for directing the start of the attack.”
North frowned. “So you’re going to go bounding off into the bush—the rather sparse bush—with Volker, Templeton, Winkelmann, and Wright—on your own?”
Quinn shrugged. “Yeah. You said they’re the best. And you need to manage traffic back here. Got a better plan?”
North looked at Quinn, found the subtly diffident cheeriness of the American unnerving, and studying his eyes for a second, resolved never to play poker with him again: he had learned how to become well-nigh unreadable.
Quinn crossed his arms. “I’ll ask again: do you have a better plan?”
North sighed. “Damn it, no: I do not. So get moving—and no foolish risks, Larry.”
Larry beamed. “Only sensible risks: I promise.” And then he was gone into the thickets that led away from the copse and down the slight incline toward the abbey.
***
As North waited for Quinn to meet him and point out any new details about the abbey and where he’d positioned of the sniper, the Englishman scanned the skirmish line of his troops. They were fanned out along the edge of the smaller but thicker copse to which Larry’s pathfinders had brought them. Wright, clearly the shrewdest of the four troopers that the American had selected, had waved them into the positions, outlined the broad outlines of the attack his commander was recommending.
Peering over the one hundred twenty-five yards separating them from the abbey’s walls, North had to admit that the American’s attack concept was a good one, and he had selected good positions from which to spring it. Likewise, the concealment on the approaches had been more than adequate, and, best of all, Quinn had them positioned due east of the abbey. This put them well away from the primary source of traffic—the west-leading road to Biberach—and therefore, to the notional “rear” of the hidden sentry who kept watch over it.
The ground between the copse and the main building was mostly clear, but a smattering of low bushes had grown wild in the year of its abandonment, providing a few points of cover for a conventional approach. But at this range, and with the element of surprise against troops armed with single-barreled, muzzle-loading weapons, North and his lead squad would make a straight rush over the ground. His two supporting squads would provide covering fire until the lead squad was ready to enter the main building, at which point they would deploy to the cover of the bushes. Eventually, a few men would head down the road to set up a flanking position to the south and—