Chapter 34 - The Reckoning of Blood and Iron
The armored train groaned as its heavy steel wheels ground against the ice-encrusted tracks.
Inside the central coach, the heat from the potbelly stove smelled of scorched iron, wet wool, and stale black coffee. Across the long oak table, maps of the capital city and the territorial capitol building were pinned down by heavy brass cartridges and dry inkwells.
Clara sat near the stove, her fingers wrapped around a tin cup of boiling water. Across from her, Caleb was cleaning the breech of his Sharps rifle with an oiled cloth. His movements were rhythmic, silent, and unnerving. Every few moments, his eyes would dart to her, lingering on the bruises on her wrist and the sharp, guarded expression that had replaced the soft gentleness of the woman he had left behind.
"You don't use the grand entrance," Nathaniel said, leaning over the blueprint of the capitol building. He pointed a scarred finger at the subterranean foundation beneath the south wing. "Sterling built the executive residence over the old drainage aqueduct from the silver boom. If the militia has fortified the perimeter gates with Maxim guns, walking down Constitution Avenue is suicide."
"The aqueducts were sealed in '78," Judge Vance remarked, adjusting his spectacles.
"Sealed with rotten brick and two feet of lime," Nathaniel corrected. "I hunted runaway miners through those tunnels ten years ago. It leads straight beneath the state treasury vault. From there, a spiral stair comes up behind the Governor's personal library."
"And the guards?" Caleb asked, not looking up from his rifle.
"The Governor's household guard won't be regular infantry," Nathaniel said, glancing sideways at Caleb. "They’re iron-men from the syndicate. Deserters from the border wars. Men who don't care about federal writs or court orders. If we go down into those pipes, we kill everyone we meet, or none of us come back up."
Clara looked at the blueprint. "The ledger won't be in the vault."
Both men stopped and turned toward her.
"What do you mean?" Caleb asked.
"Sterling is arrogant, but he isn't stupid," Clara explained, her voice remarkably steady. "He knows that if federal troops breach the capital, the vault is the first place they will blow open. For the past three months, while his riders were harassing Black Ridge, every shipment of paper leaving the capital wasn't going to the treasury. It was going to the Governor's private salon on the third floor—the room behind the ballroom."
She looked directly into Caleb’s eyes. "He keeps it close because he trusts no one. Not even Vane. If he intends to sign the syndicate treaty tonight, the ledger will be on his desk, right beside the inkwell."
Before Caleb could reply, the train’s emergency brakes engaged with a deafening screech that threw everyone forward. The iron car shuddered violently as metal screamed against metal, the whistle screaming a frantic, continuous warning into the freezing mountain air.
"Ambush!" shouted a deputy from the cupola above.
The heavy plate glass of the observation window shattered into a thousand jagged diamonds. A hail of rifle fire hammered the exterior iron siding like a sudden, furious downpour of lead hail.
"Down!" Nathaniel roared, shoving Clara flat against the floorboards beneath the heavy oak table.
Caleb was already on his feet, his Sharps rifle shouldered before the glass had finished falling. Through the shattered window, through the swirling curtain of snow, Clara saw the flash of muzzle fires along the rocky crest of the cutting.
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It wasn't Vane’s regular cavalry. The men firing down into the train wore heavy gray duster coats and round woolen caps—mercenaries of the syndicate.
A dynamite bundle arced through the blizzard, trailing a sputtering red fuse, landing directly on the roof of the passenger car with a dull, hollow thud.
