The Sea Runners - Ivan Doig [23]
Wennberg pulled from his breeches a mallet and a chisel. He stepped to where the padlock hung heavy in the ring plate of the hasp, put the chisel to the wood of the doorframe a few inches out to the side of the metal, and quickly rapped a groove in behind the ring plate.
"Now the other," Wennberg decreed huskily. "There'll be commotion to this."
"The rain'll drown most of it," answered Braaf. "Don't stand around telling stories, do it."
Wennberg worked the sharp point of the lengthy pry bar into where he had channeled behind the ring plate. Moved his thick hands toward the outer end of the pry bar for all possible leverage. Was joined by Melander, grabbing beside him on the bar. And both strained outward.
The ring plate wrenched loose, its lag screws tearing wood as they came.
Braaf reached instantly and swung the ring plate and padlock away from the doorframe they had been freed from.
"Done, hair and hide," congratulated Melander. "And we didn't make any more noise than Judgment Day. Now one job more." The tall leader tugged open the powerful door.
Somehow rifles racked together multiply their power, akin to the way that cavalry does by drawing up abreast. The repeat of pattern, the echoing numerousness it implies, as though this concentrated squad is just a swatch from bigger trouble—such impress now met Melander and Braaf and Wennberg, black tubes of barrel and brass ramrod pipes in legions rising straight up from the chain that threaded through each trigger guard. Truth be known, except for an occasional Beaumarchais sportsman's weapon and one hefty American Hawken with an octagonal barrel, the guns here were eccentric old Bakers or Brunswicks bought from Hudson's Bay traders in years past; the Brunswicks in particular were hard-recoiling, scatter-barreled specimens given up on by the British army. None of this could be known to Braaf, Wennberg, Melander. Blast and thunder were their want, not ballistic nicety.
In went Wennberg, then Braaf.
Wennberg pushed down lightly, testingly, on the chain imprisoning the rifles and slid his snippers in atop it to the trigger guard of the first gun. An exertion on the long handles of the snippers, and tempered jaws crushed through the softer brass of the trigger guard.
With care, Wennberg now bent the trigger guard out from where he had made his cut, then cleared the chain through the fresh gap in the brass. Braaf plucked the weapon from him and handed it on out to Melander.
Four more rifles the blacksmith clipped and liberated in the same fashion. "Aye," Melander saying softly each time.
Sharing out their new armory, the trio readied themselves. Wennberg shouldered shut the gun room door, pushed the ring plate and padlock back where they had been, tapped them into place in the original screw holes. Any close cast of look would show at once that the lock was awry but a rare Russian it would be who came home tonight with a quick eye.
Braaf moved in front of the other two; advised under his breath to Wennberg, "Try pick up your hooves this time"; and led.
They exited the clubhouse and through the dark set off together, now west across New Archangel toward the stockade gate, Braaf like a bat choosing the most shadowed route.
The noise exploded atop them then.
Palong! Palong!
Braaf was four running strides away from the frozen Melander and Wennberg before he, and they, realized— Palong! Palong!—how cathedral bells resound to those who sneak about the streets at night.
"Your Russian is fond of bells," a visitor who departed New Archangel with ringing ears once noted down, and the sweet-sad peals from the belfry of the Russian Orthodox cathedral as the hour was rung followed the tall figure and the shorter two across the settlement toward the stockade gate.
A few feet from the sentry lean-to the trio halted, and Melander called in huskily: "Karlsson?"
Out loomed a figure in sentry cap, with a rifle at port arms.
Wennberg grunted a curse and grabbed for the knife inside his rain shirt.
In Karlssons's voice