James Axler – Cold Asylum

“How long, J.B.?” he whispered.

“About three minutes. But those old clockwork detonators aren’t that reliable. Might not even ignite the stuff.”

Outside on the wet, trampled turf, Ryan could hear the horses, moving nervously, and could see half a dozen or so of the pack of hounds, left behind when the main body of the hunt had gone around to the main gate. They whimpered unhappily, too frightened to enter the tower.

“Can’t we go now, Dad?”

“Soon. Real soon.”

“WHAT’S THAT SMELL?”

Guiteau turned to the man behind him who’d broken the silence. “Lamp oil, you stupe. So you all better be fucking careful with those self-lights. Start a fire here and the whole of Sun Crest could go up.”

He’d divided the force on the first landing, sending ten of his men to explore that level and also to try to make contact with the rest of the garrison.

With the baron, Marie and the remainder, he was halfway toward the part of the Tower where the blasters and the rest of Mandeville’s weaponry were kept in their showcases.

His keen hearing caught a sound from the blackness below, and he stopped. It was a whimpering dog. Then came a sound that could almost have been a thudding blow or a punch. And the whimpering stopped.

Fifty feet blow, Michael rubbed the edge of his hand and pushed the corpse of the hound out of the alcove.

“What’s wrong, Guiteau?” Marie hissed.

“Heard Down below, by the door.” The fear that had been simmering at the back of his mind when he’d been thinking about posting a rearguard came flooding back to him. And he remembered the curtained space below the stairs.

But he still wasn’t sure enough to risk annoying the woman by making a mistake.

“Well?” she snapped.

The sec sergeant made a decision. “I’m going to go back down.” He glanced around on the winding stairs, checking the faces in the uncertain shadows.

He spat the command once more, sending six of the sec men toward the next floor, while he and four others readied themselves to descend again.

Baron Mandeville seemed to have slipped away into his own thoughts. He suddenly spoke up, loudly. “What the damnation fuck is going on there?”

“Guiteau suspects a trick,” Marie replied. “Some of the servants are going on to the top of the tower and we are going back down again.”

“We?”

“Keep your voice quieter, Father. Yes. Guiteau, four men and me.”

“And me,” the baron replied less loudly.

At ground level, Ryan and the others had heard the briefly raised voices, but it hadn’t been possible to catch what was being said.

“Less than a minute,” the Armorer whispered. “Best move out into the open before any more of the dogs get brave enough to come in here after us.”

Ryan led the way, picking a careful path over the dead hound, the splintered wood and the body of the woman servant that he’d chilled only short minutes before.

The half dozen sec men emerged on the top landing, feet splashing through the puddled oil and the broken glass from the lamps. They held their lights high above their heads to minimize the risk of igniting the volatile liquid, spotting the corpses of their colleagues. Only one of them saw the device.

The clockwork detonator was two and a quarter inches in diameter, code-marked in trim white paint FMGE 5577, overstamped Special Forces Vietnam.

J.B. had packed it into a nest of black powder, placing a handful of low-caliber ammo in among it. He added a couple of dubious Second World War hand grenades, making sure that the edges of the lake of spilled oil was soaking into the bomb.

And, of course, there was the plastic container, holding a lethal mixture of napthenic and palmitic acids, marked with the single word Napalm.

“What the fuck is” the sec ban began, pointing with the barrel of his rifle.

The dial clicked its way around to zero.

The spark came, detonating the small amount of hi-ex, setting the whole mess off with a thunderous roar of noise and red-orange light.

It converted the six sec men into staggering, fiery dolls, waving their arms and screaming in little voices as the jellied flames consumed them.