Chapter 11

There was more to Loch Tweed Castle than met the eye. The magnificent castle, home to British royalty for centuries, had become a dual-purpose palace in 2003.

Nobody was paying much attention to the castle. Nobody ever paid much attention to it. It was big but had deteriorated. There were more impressive castles in this part of Scotland. It was on private land, its historical importance was minor and its original furnishing had been lost in a bad fire in 1961, so there was nothing to study. There was almost no good reason for anyone to want to come to Loch Tweed Castle—and that was just how it was supposed to be.

The Tweed-Smythe branch of the old family had the place now. They liked the extra income from the British government, and it was quite easy to look past the Armageddon devices in the basement.

Hector Tweed-Smythe was smoking a pipe when he came to the front doors. His houseman was right about the large number of unexpected callers. Not a friendly-looking lot, either.

Tweed-Smythe spotted a familiar face in the crowd and waved the man over. For some reason, his old chum was on horseback.

“Good lord, Cottingsharm, this is a party you’ve got! Are you hunting, then?” Tweed-Smythe tried to sound friendly.

“We’re hunting backstabbers, Tweed-Smythe,” declared the belligerent on horseback.

“Well, before you’re off, care to come in for a spot?”

“You’re trespassing,” said the man on the horse.

Tweed-Smythe stumbled over his words. “You’ve gone a little daft, old man. This is Loch Tweed Castle. Been in my family as long as I know of. A man can’t trespass on his own land.”

“This home was stolen from my family by yours.”

“Oh, come on!” Tweed-Smythe was too perplexed to remain unruffled. “This was Cottingsharm land once, I believe. Is that what you’re talking about?”

Cottingsharm smiled disdainfully. “You’re putting on a lousy act, Tweed-Smythe. ’Twas a Cottingsharm built this castle—”

Tweed-Smythe dropped his pipe hand. “What?”

“Only to have it stolen from him by the blackmail of your first Lord Gracel.”

Tweed-Smythe protested. “What are you saying? Gracel built this castle himself. He gave your family a good price for the plot, as I recall. Where did this fairy tale come from?”

“Not a fairy tale, but God’s own truth,” Cottingsharm insisted. “Here!” He thrust a few stapled pages at Tweed-Smythe, who was just now recalling a bit of news about angry Scots that he’d overheard on the tube last night in the kitchen. Hadn’t thought much of it other than to joke to himself that maybe the Scots were starting a war of independence.

“These are made on a copy machine,” Tweed-Smythe protested. “I think they’re from Kinkos.”

“They’re evidence of theft!”

“I’m seventy-one and I never heard tell of a claim by the Cottingsharm to the castle.”

“Your family erased the evidence. Now I have come to reclaim what rightfully belongs to me and my family. Every man here is my blood kin, and you owe every last one of them payback for the wealth that the Cottingsharm line should have shared these last centuries.”

Tweed-Smythe was aghast. Damned if it wasn’t the pansy-arsed Cottingsharm clan, every adult male in the village. The county was rife with stories, both recent and ancient, about their, er, gentle nature. The Cottingsharm folk were notoriously passive and famously cuckolded by the wives from other villages. How in blazes had Frederick convinced this bunch of sheep-lovers to take up arms?

Maybe they were ill. The look in their eyes, and in Frederick Cottingsharm’s eyes, was shiny and sickening. Tweed-Smythe became very afraid.

“Maybe you ought to see what the courts have to say about this, Cott.” Tweed-Smythe handed the pages back to his acquaintance. He remembered his pipe and he put it back in his teeth.

“The courts?” Cottingsharm snarled. “The English courts? They no longer have jurisdiction!”

The pipe came right back out. “I beg your pardon?” Tweed-Smythe asked.

Cottingsharm answered by pulling out his sword. Tweed-Smythe chuckled nervously. “Really, Cott! Come inside and we’ll talk this out.”

“Here’s a better idea.” Cottingsharm thrust the sword into the old man’s heart. Tweed-Smythe died thinking that Freddy Cottingsharm wasn’t quite a pansy-arse after all.

Cottingsharm raised his bloody sword. “Now let’s take what is ours.”

With that, he led his army of friends, relatives and neighbors into the old castle, killing every living thing. Old Mrs. Tweed-Smythe died in the Red Parlor from multiple sword and scythe cuts. The maids were cornered in a linen closet and hacked with farm tools. Four purebred Himalayan cats, and their on-call groomer, were cut down viciously.

Cottingsharm’s old sword didn’t have nearly enough blood on it. “That’s all?”

“That’s not all,” said the man behind the wall in the dining hall as he slid it open to disgorge a half-dozen SAS commandos. “Drop your weapons.”

“In here!” Cottingsharm called excitedly to the others. “Here’s the fight!”

More recruits to the Cottingsharm cause entered the dining room in a hurry.

“Wait—stop! Get back!” The SAS commander was waving his submachine gun at them. This was nothing more than a bunch of civilians with old swords and new pitchforks.

Cottingsharm’s eyes were gleaming. So were the eyes of the others. It was an insane glow, and it didn’t let reality stand in its way.

Cottingsharm didn’t worry about why a team of SAS commandos was staged behind a secret wall in Loch Tweed Castle. He didn’t care about their superior firepower. All he cared about was the need to pop the balloon of anger inflating in his head.

He led the charge, swinging his family sword and shouting like a true Highlander on the attack.

“Ah, bloody hell!” said the SAS team leader. “I guess we have to fire.”

They fired their submachine guns in controlled bursts that took down Cottingsharm in an instant, along with three of his comrades in arms. The rest should have run screaming in the other direction, but they just kept coming. The SAS room-brooms blazed again.

The funny thing was, no matter how many fell, more kept coming in. Who’d have thought there were this many sheep farmers in the whole district? Then the commando’s mind did a quick assessment of the numbers and of the team’s remaining ammo.

“Christ, they’re gonna get to us,” he exclaimed. “Pull back.”

They started the armored wall moving, raising howls of disappointment from the locals, and a few of them threw themselves bodily into the opening to slow it down. The motor strained and the wall shuddered. The SAS guns went dry peppering the bodies before kicking them out of the path of the door.

Shotgun blasts filled the dining room, coming from within the ranks of the locals. The blasts chopped holes in the Scottish ranks, but tore up a pair of commandos, as well. The Scots didn’t care about their own losses and they charged en masse. The wall crunched the bones of those who got in front of it. The bodies went limp—but the wall jerked and finally stopped trying to close. Civilians scrambled through the gap.

The commandos scuttled away, but Cottingsharms were coming as fast as they could shimmy through the door to pursue the SAS.

The standoff occurred when the hundred-yard stainless-steel corridor descended into an expanded working area. The floor was steel plate and the underground chamber was filled with machines operating inside stainless-steel enclosures, some ten feet on a side. The air tasted metallic and the lights above were directed at the ceiling, which diffused it into a harsh, high-key illumination. The sounds from the steel enclosures were … unusual.

It was all unusual, and the Cottingsharms couldn’t seem to care less. They weren’t angry at steel boxes. They were angry with people. People who could fight back and make them even angrier, they hoped.

The shooting started and never seemed to stop, and all the while the steel boxes churned and hummed.