As they progressed up the line of covered wagons, Rip thought back to an old war movie where a country boy soldier talked about hunting wild turkeys. Turkeys moved in a line, the man told his fellow soldiers. So they should shoot enemies starting at the back of the line. Like turkeys, those in front would not notice the ones behind them falling off.

He hoped the same idea held true with the wagon train. Twig took the next one, this time also slicing through the canvas and pulling the driver back under the cover before quickly resuming his place.

Blair smiled at Rip as she trotted past, heading for the fourth one. They were halted at an intersection again and she hitched her horse to the wagon before climbing in back. Rip heard not a sound, and felt some mild curiosity as to how, exactly, she disabled the guards.

She hopped out, smiling at him again, and walked around to the front to the driver. He jerked, surprised to see someone approach. He looked even more startled when she climbed up to join him.

“Milady, I—”

“Can you help me? What does this smell like?”

She shoved a rag soaked in chloroform in his face while reaching around with her arm to grab his neck.

He struggled for a few seconds, quietly, before succumbing and slumping down in the seat beside her. Blair quickly tied his hands behind his back and took over the reins as traffic started moving again.

Rip pulled even and nodded at her. They now had control of four out of seven wagons. She nodded back.

At the intersection, Blair turned left while the first two wagons continued straight. Rip followed them. He cast a glance behind his shoulder as Twig and the Veraz sisters turned left and trailed after Blair. Liza was last through the intersection, locking eyes with him across the distance before disappearing in traffic.

Three to go, Rip thought. Of course, we’ve only got two people left. Good thing we have air support.

He looked up in the sky at the Silver Comet, hovering overhead. Now almost directly underneath it, he could see additional ballast bags hanging under the cabin like eggs dangling below a spider. Rip smiled and gigged his horse to speed it through traffic.

Soon enough, he caught up with the third wagon in the shortened train. The horses pulling the heavy load trudged forward slowly enough that he was able to dismount and tie off his own steed to the rear.

When he finished pulling the reins into a simple knot, a head popped out of the flap.

“Oi! What do you think you’re doing?”

He looked up at the surprised face and promptly slugged it. Rather than falling out, though, the man collapsed inside.

Rip frowned and climbed into the wagon. Two other Luddites stared at him with a mix of anger and confusion on their faces. They lunged at him as one, fists flying.

Rip had two things going for him in the confined space. First, he was in far better physical shape than these two. Second, he was enhanced.

He took several body blows from the man on the right while slugging the man on his left repeatedly. When his first opponent went down, he gave his full attention to the second one, hitting the Luddite’s jaw so hard that the man fell unconscious before hitting the floorboards.

Rip rubbed his knuckles and took a look around the enclosed space. Eight sturdy wooden boxes stood stacked in the middle. He pulled out a knife and popped the top off one. Inside, he found twelve bars of gold twinkling in the dim light.

He did some quick math. If the Umbrians followed the same standards his world did, each brick would weigh 27.4 pounds. Twelve in a box would be . . . about 330 pounds.

Multiply that by eight, he thought, and we’re looking at about 2,640 pounds in this wagon alone.

“That’s a lot of gold,” he said out loud.

Rip stepped over one of the men and made his way to the front, still carrying the knife. He cut a slit and reached out to wrap his arm around the neck of the driver.

The man dropped the reins and struggled for a moment, but Rip held on tight, pressing in hard on the man’s carotid arteries. The driver passed out within seconds.

Rip held onto the fellow’s shirt while enlarging the slit with his knife. Then he pulled the unconscious man inside. The horses, seasoned draft animals, continued plodding along with the traffic.

Rip climbed through the slit and looked up. Above, he could make out the angled window of the Silver Comet’s bridge. No doubt Mr. Powell was staring back at him this very moment. Smiling, he took the knife and started making additional cuts on the canvas so he could send the pre-arranged signal to the airship.

He jumped down to walk along the side, cutting all the way to the back. Then he walked to the front about the time traffic paused at another intersection.

At last, his circuit complete, Rip pulled the canvas top off, revealing the four unconscious men and the cargo. They were all framed by thick metal ribs, now denuded. He looked up at the airship and waved.

The trap door in the middle of the cabin opened and a heavy rope with grappling hooks plummeted down to the street. Rip watched, impressed that Powell had lined things up so neatly, as the hooks quickly lowered to street level.

The first man he knocked out groaned. Rip looked down and kicked him in the jaw.

“We need to lose some weight.”

Grunting, he pushed the man off and into the street. A cab driver following them yelled in protest as he reined in his horse to avoid running over the man. Rip smiled and waved. Then he pushed off the other unconscious Luddites.

Rip hurried to unhitch the wagon, releasing the horses. He untied his own horse from the rear. Then he climbed back in and grabbed the dangling hook, attaching it to the wagon’s middle rib. He scrambled back down to the street and waved again at the bridge.

All the ballast bags along the bottom of the ship suddenly burst, dropping water down on the street below. Rip watched in fascination.

Let’s see . . . a gallon of water weighs eight point three five pounds. Wait, the British system was slightly different from the U.S. An imperial gallon weighed an even ten pounds. So, Powell must be dropping at least three hundred imperial gallons . . .

Water hit the street like a sudden rainstorm, splattering everywhere. The ship bounced up, suddenly losing a ton and a half of ballast. At the same time, the industrial winch near the trap door started whining, pulling in the rope.

The wagon lifted up in the air as the Silver Comet’s rear propellers came to life, the engines thrumming hard and its ailerons pointing the massive vessel up.

Rip stood and watched, smiling as the wagon rose another 20 feet. People in the street, recovering from the brief sudden shower, gasped in astonishment and pointed as the wagon levitated above the rooftops.

“I wish we could have extracted all of them like that. But I guess one gold-laden wagon is about all an airship can handle.”

Ahead, the flaps flew back on the second wagon and a guard looked out. He took in the wet street, the unhitched horses and the unconscious men. Then he locked eyes with Rip. Slowly, he looked up. By this time, the wagon was almost to the Silver Comet’s cabin.

His eyes grew wide, and he frantically looked around for the other wagons in the train.

He glanced back at Rip and snarled, ducking back under the flap.

“How come I never get the element of surprise?” Rip grumbled.

The canvas top on the second wagon suddenly fell away. Inside, instead of heavy boxes stacked on the floor, a giant machine gun pointed toward Rip. Black, with several round rotating barrels, the man who first saw him swiveled the muzzle to aim it at him. A second man squatted nearby, feeding in an ammo belt.

Rip stared at the gun with recognition.

“Is that a Gatling gun?”

The Luddite pulled the trigger and sprayed the street with bullets.