The Baltic War(249)

"Yes, Your Majesty. I can deal with the French."



"I want that French army crushed, Lennart. Defeated isn't good enough. I want it crushed. I want France—that bastard Richelieu—so thoroughly whipped that they'll hide in their holes for at least a year. Come next spring, I'll be giving John George of Saxony and that treacherous brother-in-law of mine in Brandenburg what they deserve—and I don't want to have to be watching over my shoulder for a French army coming, while I'm about it."



"Understood, Your Majesty. But I can't do anything about that cavalry force that overran the Wietze oil fields."



"No, of course not. But we've found out more about that. Turenne was in command, in turns out. A splendid commander, no question about it—but he's in very bad odor with the French high command. His success at Wietze combined with their humiliation here at Luebeck will tie the French army up in a faction fight that'll go on for . . . God knows how long. Nobody holds grudges like those arrogant French noblemen."



"True enough. Very well, Your Majesty. I'll be off to my work, then."





The Thames


"Just leave the boat," said Anthony Leebrick. "But make sure you tie it up properly, Richard. Adrift, it's likely to draw attention."



Towson gave him a look that was not filled with admiration. "Indeed. And what other sage advice do you have, O my captain? Make sure that I don't drive the wagon stark naked, shouting in every village we pass through that we're the ones who just carried out the biggest escape from the Tower of London in English history?"



Leebrick gave him a grin that was somewhat sheepish. "Well . . . point taken."



Gayle Mason, meanwhile, had been giving the wagon that Patrick Welch had brought out of the nearby village's stable a look that was even less admiring. "I thought Harry's coffers were the envy of Midas. He couldn't afford anything better than this?"



"Which is exactly why I'm riding one of the horses," Julie said. "No way I'm trusting my spine to that thing."



"Swell." Gayle gave the horses in question an equally skeptical examination. "But as I believe you know, 'Gayle Mason' and 'horseback' go together about as well as ham and—and—and—whatever. Not eggs. Maybe tofu. Or rutabagas."



Spotting the smile on Oliver Cromwell's face, Gayle asked him: "And what's so funny?" The expression on her face, however, removed the crossness of the words themselves. Now that she and Oliver had been able to spend some time together in person, the very peculiar quasi-romance that had developed over months of nothing but conversations on walkie-talkies seemed to be . . .



Coming along quite nicely, she thought. Still early days, of course.



"Actually, I think your Harry Lefferts is something of a genius at this work." Cromwell nodded toward the beat-up old wagon and the four nags that drew it. "This won't draw any attention at all. Not anywhere in the English countryside, and certainly not in the Fens."



Alex Mackay swung into the saddle of one of the other horses. Gayle thought there was something vaguely comical about the motion. He went into the saddle with all the ease and grace you'd expect from an experienced cavalry officer, of course. Much the way a champion motocross racer might climb onto a tricycle.



Those other horses weren't quite nags. Not quite. But she hoped they didn't pass any glue factories along the way, or the horses would head for it unerringly.



"All right, all right. Oliver—you too, Darryl—give me a hand loading the radio gear into this heap, will you?"



To Gayle's gratification, "give me a hand" meant that Oliver took one end of the heavy damn thing and Darryl took the other. To her was left the proper chore of giving orders.



"But be careful putting it into the wagon. Be very careful."



Cromwell grunted, as he helped lift the thing up to the wagon's bed. "Fragile, is it? You wouldn't think so."



"I'm not worried about the radio."





By the time the Achates and its little flotilla reached the estuary of the Thames, Mike was starting to recover from his seasickness. So he was able to have an actual conversation with Greg Ferrara when the radio call came in, relayed from Amsterdam, instead of simply half-listening and being unable to speak in fear the effort would just make him vomit.



"Jesse freed up one of the Belles to fly me into the airfield at Wietze, Mike. By the time I got here, some of Hesse-Kassel's cavalrymen had already arrived and secured the area. What's left of it, anyway."



"How bad's the damage?"



"Well . . . in one sense, not all that bad. The French—it was Turenne in command, by the way; he left us a note—couldn't have carried enough in the way of explosives in a purely cavalry expedition to really demolish something like an oil field. So they didn't even try. They just wrecked or carried off as much equipment as they could and torched all the buildings."