WITH THE LIGHTNINGS(81)

"All right, Ganser!" Daniel Leary shouted from the Ahura's bow. "That's your warning! Come out unarmed with your hands up or Lieutenant Mundy will blow you all into a crater in the street. Now!"

Adele retrieved the Kostroman pistol. If the gangsters tried to fight, she could at least use it.

"How do we know you won't just shoot us?" Ganser called from inside the office. He began to cough; a rosy haze of brick dust swirled from the shattered walls.

"You know we will shoot you if you don't give up!" Daniel said. He jumped from the ship.

"Master!" Hogg cried. Daniel ignored the servant and walked up the seawall's slope in plain sight of anyone looking out a window of the office. He was still unarmed.

"Last chance, Ganser," Daniel said cheerfully.

Somebody threw a submachine gun out the door. More guns followed. Sailors looked over the edge of seawall, some of them aiming weapons they must have taken from Kostromans in the initial confusion.

There was a long pause before the first of the thugs scuttled through the doorway, her hands raised and her eyes closed. Others crept behind her.

Adele felt her muscles relax without her conscious volition. She sat down in the truck bed because otherwise she would have fallen.



Daniel watched as Woetjans and Dasi finished tying the Kostromans with wire stripped from the back garden of one of the nearby houses. Daniel was willing to pay if the owner complained about the ruin of his snap beans, but nobody came from the house.

Daniel wasn't in a mood to volunteer anything.

Munsford and Olechuk were dead. Whitebread's belly looked like a rat had chewed her, but the wounds were superficial. The pellet had hit the carton she was carrying. It sprayed her with terne plate and fish stew instead of disemboweling her as direct impact would have done.

"You said you wouldn't kill us!" said Ganser, desperate to keep the question in his mind out of his voice. He was a fat man and already half bald despite being younger than Adele.

"Yes," said Daniel, thinking of Munsford and Olechuk. "I did say that."

Lamsoe was in line for an armorer's warrant. He and Tairouley were cutting down the Ahura's flagstaff to mount the automatic impeller.

Hogg and the bulk of the detachment were on a scrounging expedition through the harbor's other vessels. The Ahura was in generally good condition, but she'd been laid up without maintenance for long enough that there were a few problems. Daniel's quick check had convinced him that the batteries wouldn't hold enough of a charge to keep the vessel under way long by themselves. The last thing they needed was a ship that was a sitting duck except in bright sunlight.

"Sir," said Woetjans quietly. Air-hardening ointment sheathed her right forearm to replace the skin she'd scraped off in diving over the seawall to safety. "They must have some friends at least in the houses here."

She nodded toward the facades. Stray projectiles had blown holes in the bricks; curtains fluttered behind a shattered windowpane. "If we leave them alive, they'll be free before we're out of the harbor. And the right man with an impeller can nail something as big as the boat from here to the horizon."

"You promised!" Ganser cried. "You promised—"

Dasi bent down and slapped the Kostroman with a hand as hard as a boot. Ganser screamed, spraying blood from lips cut against his teeth.

"Shut up," Daniel said in a quiet voice, "or I'll have your mouth taped."

If the tape covered Ganser's nostrils as well, the thug's face would darken until it was almost black; and then he would die. Like Munsford and Olechuk.

It'd be simpler just to tie a boat anchor to Ganser's ankles and those of the ten surviving members of his gang before dropping them into the harbor. There'd be nothing to watch but bubbles in that case, however.

"I didn't promise them anything, sir," Woetjans said. "Come on, Dasi, let's get this lot over the seawall."

Several prisoners began to scream or plead, but to Daniel's surprise most of the Kostromans continued to lie in numb silence. They'd been sure they were going to die from the moment they'd surrendered. It was the only sensible course for their Cinnabar captors to take.

And Daniel couldn't do it.

Woetjans rolled Ganser over on his belly and gripped the wire that bound the prisoner's wrists and ankles behind his back. She walked toward the harbor, hunching as she dragged her burden over the slick, wet bricks.

Adele Mundy walked out of the office. She'd been cleaning the pistol she'd used to end the attack almost before it started.

"No," she said. "Put them down."

Woetjans slacked the wire and looked at Daniel. "Sir?" she said.

Dasi stepped back from the two thugs he'd started to lift. They babbled in high-pitched voices. He kicked them to silence, one and then the other, as he waited for Daniel's response.