* * *

  Julie had decided to start shooting from the vantage point of the gondola. She wouldn’t be able to do that with the Beckworth .50, which Dell had placed in a compartment of the main deck above. The rifle was simply too big, too heavy and too clumsy to deploy effectively in the confines of the gondola.

  But as long as she was using her regular rifle, which was a Remington Model 700, the gondola had advantages. The main advantage was that it had a much wider field of fire than she could get shooting from the main deck—360 degrees, in fact, although the slope of the envelope right behind the gondola gave only a very narrow band through which she could fire.

  In practice, however, her restrictions would be greater than that. Leaving aside the fairly crowded conditions of the gondola, which she’d have to share with the three members of the flight crew, Tom Simpson, and Dell Beckworth, there was a structural problem. Unfortunately, when they’d designed the Magdeburg, Maarten Kortenaer and his fellow Dutch engineers hadn’t foreseen the tactic of firing rifles from the gondola or the main deck compartments. So, while they’d made provision to allow some of the windows to be partially opened to let in fresh air, they had not designed the windows to be removed altogether.

  That modification had to be hurriedly done while the Magdeburg had been en route from Hoorn to pick up Julie at Freising. And they’d only had time to allow for removing about a third of the windows. Still, she’d be able to cover most of her potential targets so long as the Magdeburg was within range and at roughly the right altitude.

  * * *

  Once they reached Freising, there was another impromptu change of plans. After they showed Julie the steel sheets they’d brought with them to build what amounted to a well-protected “shooter’s house,” she vetoed the idea.

  “Do we have any reason to think the Ottomans will have sharpshooters of their own?” she asked. To hell with false modesty: “In my league, I’m talking about?”

  Well… no.

  “Then screw it. Trying to shoot from inside a cramped box will be a royal pain in the butt. If it turns out we need it, we can install it later. Eventually, we’ll probably have to. But not in this fir