Ring of Fire III(38)

“We’ll do it,” he announced, his mind finally made up. “Bonnie, are you willing to give it a try?”

She spread her hands. “Yeah, sure.”

He nodded and turned to Böcler. “Heinrich, I want you to go with her.”

The secretary started to protest. “But the refugees—”

Tom held up his hand. “They’re fine. You’ve already got things well enough organized there. They can manage on their own for the next two days. The real danger to them now is that we won’t reach Regensburg at all.”

Böcler frowned. “But why do you want to send me to Regensburg?”

“Because you’re a top-notch organizer. Bonnie isn’t—no offense, Bonnie, but you’re not—and besides, she’s got to concentrate on the technical side of making the bombs.” A charming analogy came to him, and he couldn’t help but smile. “She’s Oppenheimer, you’re General Groves.”

“Excuse me?” That came from Böcler. Bonnie Weaver was staring at Tom as if he’d just grown horns.

“Never mind,” Tom said. “Up-time analogy. Something called the Manhattan Project. Bonnie, explain it to him—”

“Oppenheimer?” Bonnie demanded. “I’ve got a high school diploma! With a B-minus grade point average!”

Rita started laughing.

“—when the two of you have a spare moment. The thing is, Heinrich, you’re only going to have a few hours to put together a lot of bombs. You’ll have to organize people to get it done. Find suitable bomb cases—I figure by now Regensburg has got to have started producing small barrels that can hold gasoline. Big glass jars would work too, if they’ve got decent lids, but that’s probably asking for pie in the sky.”

Glassmakers in the seventeenth century could do phenomenal work, but they weren’t really set up yet to mass produce things like Mason jars. Such containers in the here and now were mostly pottery. Speaking of which...

“See if you can find big clay pots and something to plug them with. That should work too. But probably the trickiest part of the work will be coming up with suitable fuses.”

He stuck a big finger almost under the secretary’s nose and waggled it in a warning gesture. Then, for good measure, waggled it under Bonnie’s nose.

“But don’t get too fancy! I don’t want to risk having one of these things going off in the gondolas. If the best you can come up with is just a fuse you light at the last minute, when you’re shoving the bomb over the side, that’ll do.”

Böcler was frowning again, but the expression this time was simply that of a man pondering a challenge. “How many bombs do you want?”

“I’m not sure.” He turned to Filippo Franchetti. “How many do you figure you can handle in a couple of airships? Figure each bomb will be about this size”—his hands sketched out in midair a roughly spherical object about the size of a two-gallon jug—“and will weigh somewhere around twenty pounds.”

“It will be three airships,” Franchetti said, almost idly, scratching his chin as he contemplated the problem. “We just got word from Bamberg before we landed. The Petrel has returned from Amsterdam. Don Estuban is sending it down to join us tomorrow morning. He told me to tell you the ship is at your disposal for the duration of the crisis, as are the Pelican and the Albatross.”

Apparently, Miro had decided to use the crisis as an opportunity to rack up lots and lots of brownie points with the SoTF’s administration. He was certainly racking them up with Tom himself, even though he’d never met the man.

“The problem is not the weight,” Franchetti said. “It’s the space needed—as well as the need to handle them safely. Two men to fly the ship, two men to handle the bombs, one man to choose the times and the places to drop the bombs.”

Stefano cleared his throat. “Some of those tasks do not require men, uncle.” He held up his hands in a vigorous gesture, as a man might protest any suggestion of heretical leanings. “Yes, yes, certainly to manage the bombs themselves! But Dina Merrifield and Mary Barancek have already helped fly the Pelican.”

He now bestowed a solemn nod at Rita. “And I am quite sure that Mrs. Simpson would make a splendid...ah...what is the term I want?”

“Bombardier,” Tom suggested.

“Fucking moron,” was his wife’s countersuggestion. “What else can you call someone who tosses lit firebombs from a flimsy hot air balloon?”

“Dirigible,” said the Franchettis, sternly and simultaneously.