Ring of Fire II(207)

By now, the news had spread all over the area, including some of the details. "The rafts were gone," one of the down-timers pointed out. He was sitting with a friend at a table nearby.



Denise sniffed. "Big deal. All the guy in charge—and I think he's got more brains in his little toe than Knefler does—had to do was hire a few men to pole the rafts downriver. There's day laborers hanging around all over the place, in Jena. Probably told them they needed to pick up something in Halle and take it down to Magdeburg. Off goes whichever idiot came in pursuit—his name's Knefler, did I mention that? It's spelled 'k-n' like in numbskull—while the guy with the brains keeps heading up the Saale valley. Hasn't it struck any of you geniuses yet that Mr.-Whoever is good at this? Why would he have been wearing such a flamboyant outfit just to buy some cargo rafts—if he hadn't been trying to draw attention to himself?"



She was pretty proud of that deductive logic. Maybe she oughta become a detective when she grew up. Finished growing up. Which she was practically there. She'd bet Minnie would partner with her.



On the other hand, she'd neglected to mention that Mr.-Whoever-He-Was had been wearing the same outfit when he arrived at her father's storage place to load the wagons. Obviously, just to make sure every idiot in Grantville connected Obvious Dot A to Blatant Dot B. The Grantville police chief and Captain Numbskull had squeezed that information out of her, despite her misgivings about what they'd do with it, but she saw no reason to weaken her case by divulging it to these layabouts.



Lannie took a swallow from his own beer. "You think?"



"Sure. What sort of lunatic would make his escape further into the USE?"



The same down-timer wasn't ready to let it go. "Not so foolish, that. Before he gets to Halle, he can offload the rafts and make his way into Saxony. Probably he's working for John George."



Denise opened her mouth. Then, decided it wasn't worth the effort to get into an argument with somebody who was obviously not playing with a full deck.



Right. Sure. That made sense. In six months, the elector of Saxony was staring in the face an all-out invasion by Gustav Adolf. Fat lot of good some tech transfer would do him at this stage of the game. Except give Gustav Adolf another Cassius Belly. Or whatever the name was of that ancient Roman guy who'd caused a war.



Denise might be willing to concede that John George was that stupid. But none of the up-timer traitors were that dumb, except maybe Jay Barlow and Mickey Simmons. Even Suzi Barclay wasn't that dumb, just nuts. No, wherever the lousy defectors were going, it was someplace they figured could hold off the USE, at least for a while. That meant Austria, probably—that had been Noelle's guess—or maybe Bavaria.



Lannie finished his beer and stood up. The motion was just a little bit too exaggerated to be that of a completely sober man. Which, given Lannie, was no surprise. He wasn't actually drunk, just in his more-normal-than-not state of a pleasant buzz. Lannie's alcoholism wasn't so bad that he couldn't get by in life, with his rare skills. Jesse Wood hadn't been willing to accept him in the air force, but the Kellys used him for their test pilot.



"Okay, then," he said. "Give me a ride back to Grantville on your bike, kid. I'll nail the bastards for you."



Denise frowned. "What are you talking about?"



He slapped his chest. "When the cavalry falls down on the job, you gotta call in the air force. One of the planes at the facility—that's the Dauntless—is finished and ready to go."



Denise stopped laughing after a while. Then, shrugged. "Sure, why not? I'll take you there. I'm warning you, though. Those hands of yours better not move around any while you're holding onto me."



Lannie looked aggrieved. "Hey, there's no call for that. Besides, I ain't crazy enough to piss off your dad."



Denise squinted at him. "You start groping, and my dad will be the least of your worries."

The Saale Valley, south of Saalfeld



"It has to be them," Noelle pronounced.



Eddie sighed and wiped his face. His whole body ached, from spending three days in the saddle. Especially his thighs. "No, actually, it doesn't. They passed through Saalfeld yesterday evening, in bad lighting, and the guards we talked to didn't recognize anybody. Just three wagons, which they didn't give more than a cursory inspection if they gave them any at all, because they most likely got bribed. Those are not exactly elite troops in that garrison, now that nobody's worried any longer about another raid deep into the Thueringerwald. Even if they weren't been bribed, they probably wouldn't have bothered to check the wagons anyway. You have any idea how many times heavily loaded wagons pass through Saalfeld?"