Doctor London, Angh, Eddie and Three-Rivers were improvising stretchers at the edge of the forest behind them. Doc had actually had to wrestle with the squirrel when he appropriated the little animal’s cell-phone-pouch backpack full of cocaine to use as a local anesthetic. Doc had gotten pretty well clawed up before Three-Rivers had talked the squirrel down, and then Doc had reluctantly let the two-pound animal have a little snort.

So T.T. had not been overly surprised when the squirrel had scampered onto his back in his war paint, tuxedo and feathered had, and clucked once in his ear as they broke camp and followed the infiltration team at about a quarter mile’s distance. He knew the whole thing about the squirrel talking and being some reincarnated wino named Gerald Hicks, was just a story that Three-Rivers told to impress people. The kid was a showman and probably a charlatan. Regardless, T.T. could not help but like him. He sort of liked the squirrel too.

You know, it was the boy and the squirrel that talked you out of the suicide.

He brushed the squirrel’s head with the wholly beard that had been growing in on his jaw as they crept toward the torch-lit town gate in the distance. The squirrel clucked and he whispered back, “Quiet Mister Hicks.”

He was the last man back, just behind the chief. The Cherokees did not trust his woodcraft, and wanted him to hang back until the charge. He had the pole-axe clutched in his right hand. The others were all armed to the teeth: bows and arrows, war clubs, spears, tomahawks, knives. They were a mean, mean bunch.

This is where you belong Mister Redbone. Make Grandmamma proud.

Seamus and Jay, with Bruco being helped along by the two Nanticoke guides, had just made it to the gate, as the Cherokees crouched low to the frozen ground in the thickening snowfall. There was now six inches of light powder on the ground, and the world was silent except for his breathing.

The gates opened and the 11 Piscataway—I wish I were with them—began to run forward in silence. The five figures were welcomed by two footmen and an officer as a musketeer looked down from the wall on either side of the gate. Then came the signal. The report of the nine-millimeter auto shattered the silence as Jay blew the officer’s face off and Bruco and Seamus took down the footmen while the two Nanticoke shot the musketeers in the chest and throat from below.

As agreed upon there was no battle cry. They just ran as fast as they could for the gate. Bruco and the two Nanticoke warriors and 11 Piscataway were to take to the catwalk behind the stockade wall and circle the interior wall, killing any soldiers that might be there to turn the light landward cannons on the Cherokees. These men were to continue around the perimeter of the fort, never descending from the walls, to give the impression that there was a general assault on the walls from all directions, and to focus the defenders on the walls as the Cherokees pushed into town and headed straight for the Governor’s House, on the hill at the terminus of the one main cobblestone street. All of the side streets were rutted dirt tracks.

Jay and Seamus were headed to the powder magazine to blow it, and were to meet the Cherokees on Madre Maria Hill where the white-painted Governor’s House stood three stories tall before a wide stone courtyard; the only impressive building other then the church. The church was to be spared, in hopes that the women and children would flee there where they could be easily rounded up after the men had been slaughtered in the streets.

The last ten Cherokees through the gate had arrows wrapped in greased straw, and were told to spread out and grab lanterns and torches, and begin setting the buildings on fire. After each had set three buildings on fire they were to scatter and put arrows in as many Spaniards as possible. Jay wanted some rovers spreading mayhem while the main force pushed uptown to the Governor’s House.

You are about to commit an inexcusable Christian sin.

They were racing for the gate in a swirl of midnight snow. He looked to his right and left and saw the others falling behind, though not for lack of trying. His ego and natural drive to win kicked in and he pulled ahead of the Cherokees like they were standing still. The men might not have been screaming their war cry. But the squirrel hanging on to his collar was. If he would not have known better he would have sworn that the squirrel was screeching at the Cherokees for being too slow. Of course, that was just his imagination playing tricks on him.