by Jerry Ahern
There was a loud sound of metal falling to the deck between them— the rifle, she realized. There was a hand coming at her, the hand holding the flashlight moving too, the light weaving in a crazy pattern on the cabin ceiling. She felt the hand closing around her throat. She pulled back on the knife handle, almost falling and losing her balance as the knife pulled free from the soldier's chest. She could see the flashlight moving, raising high, then coming down. She moved the knife again, punching it straight forward in her hand.
The flashlight clattered to the deck; Sarah felt something warm and wet all over her right hand. She reached up with her left hand, the soldier's right hand still on her throat. She was starting to black out, trying to pry the fingers loose. Then she started to fall forward, the soldier's body under her in the darkness of the deck. She let go of the knife, fighting to breathe. He was strong.
With both hands she pried at his fingers, the grip loosening a little. She reached behind her, catching up the flashlight, hammering the flashlight against the hand, the fingers falling away from her throat.
The flashlight slipped from her fingers. As she picked it up, she saw red-fingerprints on the lens, like something over an illuminated microscope. Her fingers were sticky with blood.
She started to get up, then stopped. Crouched, leaning against the bulkhead, she spoke:
"God..."
She dropped the flashlight, closing her eyes. Her knife blade had sliced down through the soldier's cheek and imbedded in his throat. Those dead eyes— she could still see them in the darkness, staring at her.
Chapter 24
Natalia found her way beyond the veranda to the beach, looking up and down its length and not seeing Diego Santiago. She smiled. It would have amused her if after she had intentionally solicited the swim he stood her up.
"Diego?" she said, looking at the dark, white-crested surf. "Diego?" There was no answer.
She turned, starting back up the beach, then heard a shout from behind her and turned back to look toward the water. "Here, Natalia, here!"
She raised her right arm for a long, lazy wave toward the figure she saw emerging from the surf, running up the beach toward her. There was enough moonlight that she could see him well. It was Santiago, wet from the swim, his black, curly hair plastered to his forehead. He stopped a yard away from her.
"Turn around so I can look at you," he commanded. She smiled. As she turned a full 360
degrees, she opened the white jacket belted around her waist; the jacket dropped from her shoulders and back to her elbows as she faced him again. "Do you approve, Comrade General?"
"Si— yes, I do indeed, Comrade Major."
Santiago laughed and so did Natalia. He started toward her and she took a step nearer to him. As he reached out his arms, she turned around. "Thank you," she said and shrugged the rest of the way out of the white terry cloth jacket. There was a white-painted metal chair a few feet away by the seawall and she pointed toward it. "Would you?"
"Of course," Santiago said, his voice less filled with enthusiasm. She handed him the bag. He looked at her. "This is very heavy."
"I have my gun in it," she told him, smiling.
"Ha-ha! Honest— I like that." Santiago laughed, then strode across the sand. She watched him as he set the jacket and purse on the chair, then turned to face her.
"I will race you into the water!" she shouted, running across the sand, her shoes kicked away.
Natalia hit the water, hearing the heavy breathing of Santiago beside her. Throwing herself into the surf as the waves flowed around her legs, she then swam out over the first ridge of breakers. The water felt cold to her. She hadn't swum in an ocean for more than a year, she recalled. She turned toward the beach, swimming until she could stand, then walking from the surf, hugging her hands against her elbows, seeing Santiago coming out of the water a few feet away from her.
"Senorita Natalia, por favor...
She turned back and looked at him, brushing hair back from her forehead. "What is it, Diego?" Natalia said.
He walked toward her and this time she did nothing, standing there, waiting for what she knew was inevitable. "What is it, Diego?" she repeated.
"Are you trying to seduce me, or to make me seduce you?" he asked, water dripping from his mustache and from the dark hair on his chest.
"Don't be silly," she told him.
"Then why are you here with me, now?"
"I like the ocean," she told him honestly. Then, looking into his eyes, she said softly, "I'm cold now."
He took a step closer and she let him put his arms around her, felt his hands on her wet back. She closed her eyes as she felt him kiss her. It was not as easy as it had been before, she thought, when she had only been married but not yet in love.
Chapter 25
Rubenstein muttered, "God!" The thing crawling quickly around the base of the palm tree behind which he was hidden looked to be the largest roach he'd ever seen in his life. "Eyuck!" he hissed to himself. He'd read an article once about roaches, and it surprised him not at all that they survived the Night of the War. Some scientists theorized that if all other life on the planet were to be killed, roaches and rats might still thrive. This was a wood roach or American cockroach, he thought.
Smiling, pushing his glasses up off the bridge of his nose, he saluted the creature, muttering, "My fellow American..." He stared beyond the palm now where his real fellow Americans were. Some of the faces he had observed for the last few hours were Hispanic-looking, probably anti-Communist Cubans; some of the faces looked Central European in origin; and some, he thought, were Jews, like himself. The barbed wire was the part that nauseated him, with people living behind it.
He had left the motorcycle about a mile back in a wooded area, then come the rest of the way on foot. After scouting the perimeter of the camp, he had selected the spot least visible between the guard towers and decided on it as his point of entry. He had brought the big Gerber knife, the Browning High Power and the Schmeisser and spare loaded magazines for each of the guns.
He smiled, remembering how, just prior to leaving, Rourke had tried to talk him out of the Schmeisser.
"What are you going to do for spare parts? What about extra spare magazines? You'd be better off with something else." But, for once not taking Rourke's advice, Rubenstein had decided to keep the gun he called the "Schmeisser"— despite the fact Rourke had told him repeatedly it was an MP-40. He was familiar with it and liked the firepower it afforded.
Rubenstein studied the camp, smiling to himself— a weapon originally developed for the Nazi war machine was now going to help him to break into a concentration camp and perhaps break some of the inmates out.
It was a good hundred yards from the farthest edge of the tree line to the outer fence, Rubenstein estimated. He had searched the St. Petersburg area and found a deserted farm implements store, the windows smashed and yet a few items remaining there. He had scanned the place for radiation with the Geiger counter on his Harley Davidson, then stolen a pair of long-handled wire cutters. Rubenstein remembered when he and Rourke had broken into the back room of the geological supply store and stolen the flashlights that first night they had teamed up. Rourke had explained then that it was no longer stealing, it was foraging.
Rubenstein smiled at the thought: he had foraged wire cutters.
Beyond the first wire fence was a barren patch, extending perhaps twenty-five yards. Rubenstein had studied the ground through the armored Bushnell 8x30s he carried— identical to the ones Rourke used. He could see no signs of recent digging, no signs of depressions in the sparsely grassed ground. He hoped it was not mined.
At the end of the twenty-five yards of open ground was another fence, ten feet high, and this one might be electrified. He wasn't certain; but the way no one of the guards ever walked close to it made him wonder. Beyond that was another ten feet or so of open ground, then a six-foot-high barbed wire fence. Against this fence people were leaning, staring out. At what they star
ed he didn't know. He wondered if they knew.
It had been dark for several hours; he had observed the pattern of the guards.
He checked the Timex on his left wrist— he'd decided to go exactly on the hour, and that was five more minutes.
Chapter 26
Sarah Rourke wished she had a watch. She looked up, trying to determine the time by the position of the moon, but couldn't. She slowed the boat, then brought it to a stop, realizing for the first time that had she not killed the young Russian guard, he would likely have alerted the harbor patrol and she would never have gotten far from the pier. She walked back to the aft portion of the boat. She had dragged the young man's body up from below deck earlier, covering it with a tarp she had found. That was nearly an hour ago, and now as she drew back the tarp, she imagined the skin to have grayed appreciably. But she realized that if it had, it would have been impossible to tell in the moonlight. She reached down, trying to touch the body where it was clothed, but her left hand brushed against the man's left hand as she tugged at the inert form. She drew her hand back. The body was cold, unnaturally cold, like a turkey already plucked, frozen, and left to thaw— touching him felt like sticking her hand inside a turkey to take out the giblets on Thanksgiving morning.
Sarah leaned over the rail. She knew that Mr. Coin, Kleinschmidt, and her two children were waiting farther down the beach, and she wanted to be rid of the body before the children saw. Michael had killed a man, with the same knife— but she didn't want Michael or Annie to see this. She turned and looked back at the body, then shook her head, imagining that the left hand had moved. She hadn't closed the eyes and she should have. They were open, gaping, like fish eyes.
The fish, she thought. She was feeding him to the fish.
She leaned down, again trying to grasp the body to pull it toward the portside rail, and again touching the dead hand. She turned, quickly, bending over the railing, vomiting into the water. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, feeling colder now in the damp shorts and T-shirt than she had felt before.
She bent down to the dead man again, this time grabbing his arms, her hands touching his— but she held them anyway. She pulled the heavy body toward the portside railing, stopping at the bulkhead beneath it, then wrapping her arms around the dead man's chest. As she hauled him up, she could only see the back of his head. She pulled, shoved, twisted, then positioned the body beside the railing.
Sarah had the sudden, horrible thought that if she didn't have the body weighted it would float to the surface. But she couldn't see herself putting the body down, then getting it up and over to the railing again. She stood the dead soldier up beside the rail, then pushed his body forward, and as the head and upper trunk swung out over the water, she could see the man's face.
She screamed as she let go of the body; it tumbled into the darkness of the water.
Sarah Rourke stood there a moment, her body shaking.
"Got to get going," she muttered to herself. She peered over into the dark water and thought she saw him, the eyes staring up at her. Then she turned and ran forward toward the controls, almost slipping on the blood-stained deck.
Chapter 27
Paul Rubenstein glanced at his wristwatch. Running in a low crouch, he started out of the palms and toward the first of the ten-foot wire fences, the Schmeisser slung from his right shoulder, the wirecutters in his left hand. He was slightly winded by the time he'd crossed the distance to the first fence. And as he reached it he dropped into a deeper crouch, glancing quickly from side to side, the wire cutters already moving in his hands. Starting at the bottom of the fence he clipped a single cut, approximately four feet high. Because of the heaviness of the wire, another cut was needed. He cut horizontally across the top of the first cut, then pulled the barbed wire outward, toward him, slipping through in the darkness and pulling the "gate" in the wire closed behind him. He glanced toward the guard towers, then hit the dirt, flattening himself, the Schmeisser out in his right hand. A searchlight beam crossed over the ground less than a foot away from him.
The searchlight moved on, and so did Rubenstein, running across the grassy area, zigzagging just in case there were a minefield, hoping by some miracle he would miss them all by not running in a straight line. He reached the opposite fence line, breathless again. He started to reach his hand toward it, then stopped, his hand recoiling. There was a rat on the ground less than a foot from him, the body half-burned.
"Electrified," he cursed to himself.
Rubenstein glanced from side to side, quickly trying to determine whether to go back or whether there were some other way to cross the fence. "Damn it!" he muttered, then snatched at the big Gerber knife and started digging in the mixed dirt and sand. He couldn't go through the fence, couldn't go over it— so he'd go under it. He glanced up, flattening himself on the ground, sucking in his breath, almost touching the fence with his bare hand. The searchlight moved down the center of the open space between the fences, missing him by inches. As soon as it passed, keeping himself as low to the ground as possible, he began again to dig.
For once he was grateful he wasn't as big or as broad-shouldered as Rourke, he thought. He scooped dirt with his hands, widening the hole under the fence. The searchlight was making another pass and he flattened himself to the ground, as close to the fence as possible, this time noticing the searchlight that scanned, more frequently and more rapidly, the ground between this fence and the interior fence. That, at least, was not electrified. With the hour, all the prisoners in the compound had been herded inside the tents under which they were sheltered, and the compound grounds were empty of life. But earlier he had seen hands, faces— all touching that fence. It was possible, he thought, as he began again to dig, that the smaller fence was electrified after the compound was cleared, but he had to take the chance.
The small trench under the fence seemed wide enough now and, slipping into position, just missing another pass of the searchlight, he started through on his back. His shirt pulled out of his pants, and he felt the dirt against the skin at the small of his back.
He pushed on, then stopped— the front of his shirt was stuck on a barb in the lowest strand of wire. Perhaps there was no power in the lowest strand, he thought; perhaps the material in the shirt just hadn't made the right contact. He didn't know. He sucked his stomach in lest his skin touch the barb. Rubenstein looked from side to side, past the fence and back toward his feet, seeing the searchlight starting again. It would pass over his feet, reveal his presence.
There was a sick feeling inside him, his mind racing to find a way out. He had to gamble, he thought. He touched, gingerly with his shirt-sleeved elbow, at the wire. Nothing happened. Rubenstein reached out with both hands, freeing the shirt front from the barb, then pushed through, under the wire, the searchlight sweeping over the ground as his feet moved into the shadow. He was through!
The young man got to his feet, still in a crouch. He stared back at the wire a moment, then reached into the pockets of his leather jacket. There was nothing he could use, but he had to know. Taking the wirecutters, he reached under the fence's lowest strand, using the cutters like a slave hand in a laboratory, picking up the dead rat and sliding it under the fence toward him. He looked at the charred creature, and his mouth turned down at the corners in disgust. He hated the things. He lifted the rat with the tips of the cutters and tossed the already-dead body against the wire second from the bottom of the fence. Then he drew back, his right arm going up toward his face. The body clung to the wire a moment, smoking, electrical sparks flying. Paul's stomach churned and he felt like throwing up, but instead watched the searchlight as it swept toward him; then he darted across the few feet of ground to the low fence, hiding beside it, gambling it wasn't electrified as he touched the cutters to the lowest strand, then the one above it.
"Thank God," he whispered, letting out a long sigh. As the light passed inches from where he crouched, he began to cut the wire, using the same pattern he had be
fore, cutting up approximately four feet, then across approximately three feet.
Looking over his shoulder, the wire cutters in his left hand now, he folded back the fence section and started through, into the compound.
He folded the fence section back, in a crouch, the pistol grip of the Schmeisser in his right fist, the muzzle moving from side to side as he surveyed the compound. He could see a guard— one only— walking slowly around the grounds, fifty yards from where he was. Rubenstein. still holding the wirecutters, started toward the nearest tent in a low, dead run. He pushed his way inside the tent.
Paul Rubenstein stopped, the smell that assailed his nostrils nauseating him, a buzzing sound in the air as flies swarmed throughout the tent. He looked in the faces of the people under the glow of the single yellow light hanging from a drop cord in the center of the tent, the flies and moths buzzing close to it. The faces were young, old, all of them weary, some of them sleeping, flies crawling across them. There was a child, moaning beside a sleeping woman. He stepped closer to them, and he kicked away the mouse nibbling at the child's leg.
