by Jerry Ahern
“Oh, shit,” Emma Shaw muttered under her breath.
She slowed her approach to so close to stall speed that her palms started sweating inside her gloves.
Semaphore signaling was logical under the circumstances, of course, but this was maddening, trying to remember something she hadn’t studied, hadn’t even thought of in more years than she wanted to count.
The first five letters spelled “B-O-R-N-E.” Then, “E-N-E-M-Y A-T-T-A-C-K I-M-M-” And, she was past him.
But Emma Shaw didn’t have to catch the rest of the words. The message was “airborne. Enemy attack imminent.”
She wished she had some flags, so she could wig-wag back, “How?”
Emma Shaw pulled up her nose and started to climb . . .
Wilhelm Doring’s eyes ached from maintaining the level of concentration he had for nearly an hour, blinking only occasionally, never turning his head away from the narrow V-wedge of rock through which, he knew, the policeman would pass.
Sooner or later, whether Inspector Tim Shaw were eating another one of his sandwiches, smoking a cigarette or having intercourse with a tree, the man Wilhelm Doring despised on such a truly personal level would have to pass through the wedge. Unless, of course, the man gave up and turned back in the direction from which he had come.
And Shaw would never do that, because Shaw wanted this meeting as much as he did, wanted their private war to come to a conclusion here in these mountains however it might conclude.
In a way which was beginning to bother Wilhelm Doring, he almost admired Shaw, the tenacity, the brutality when required, the perseverance. Shaw would have made a marvelous commando leader, because he had daring. Unfortunately for Shaw, however, the policeman overestimated his own abilities. He would never come out of his hoped-for encounter alive.
Darkness was beginning to fall, the sky to the west more incredibly beautiful in its purple light than anything Wilhelm Doring had ever witnessed.
This was the perfect place for death.
As if Death were a god who had heard his thoughts, Tim Shaw started through the V-wedge of rock, into the killing ground.
“Not so smart after all, my friend.” And Doring’s own nearly verbalized thought disturbed him.
Respect for the enemy was something he had learned was a sign of weakness, and he could not afford to be weak now or ever.
As slowly, very slowly, Wilhelm Doring began to raise the sniper rifle to his shoulder, Inspector Shaw stopped, at the midpoint of the V-wedge of rock.
The policeman, Shaw, turned around and went back, disappearing.
“No!” Wilhelm Doring almost said aloud. This could not be. There was no way in which the man could have known that he was waiting precisely there. And, if Shaw had known, wouldn’t Shaw have opened fire?
Through the sniper rifle’s night scope, Doring could see nothing at first, then he detected a wisp of grey in the wind. “A cigarette! A damned cigarette!”
And, despite his anger and frustration, Wilhelm Doring almost laughed.
In the days prior to the advent of noncarcino-genic tobacco, he recalled, there had been warnings on cigarette labels, proclaiming that cigarette smoke—for a variety of reasons—was hazardous to the health.
Cigarette smoking had saved Inspector Tim Shaw’s life for another few moments. Doring rested his rifle, rested his eyes for an instant.
Soon, Inspector Shaw’s cigarette would be burned down, and so would Shaw’s life . . .
When he was a rookie cop, about a quarter century ago, he had been amazed that even in a firearms-intensive society such as the post-War United States, where firearms ownership and practice were encouraged as much as possible—there were men and women who joined the force who had never mastered any firearm at all. But then, he recalled an experience from his youth. As a Scout—he made Eagle, an honor and achievement of which he was still quite proud—he was equally dumbfounded when there were boys and girls of his own age who, it seemed, had never developed any understanding of the woods.
Just as shooting was a natural part of his life, so had been trekking in the woods when he was only a lad. Only with a lot of age and a little wisdom, as Shaw saw it, had he realized that one couldn’t go through life expecting everybody to be motivated to learn. Timothy Shaw was a city boy, and wouldn’t have changed that for the world. Concrete was better than grass, fluorescents at least as fascinating as starlight.
But, learning was learning. Tim Shaw’s father had loved the woods, taking every chance he could to get away for a weekend and spend some time in what he called “the great outdoors.” Although boys were always supposed to like that sort of thing, Tim Shaw preferred the city—everything from the baseball park to the beach. Yet, he never resisted learning about the out-of-doors and developing an appreciation for it.
He had learned, for example, that wild things were not particularly fond of the presence of man. Albeit that there were fewer wild species since the Night of the War—essentially, almost exclusively, those which had been returned to the wild—nature was still abundant, especially here in the islands.
Why was it, then, that the birds and insects which would normally have been active at twilight were silent tonight? Why, for example, had the deer whose trail Shaw had been following more as something to alleviate boredom for the last half hour, suddenly veered off almost at a right angle when approaching the notch in the rocks through which Tim Shaw had just been about to walk?
What if, Shaw asked himself, there were a man on the other side?
Granted, Shaw told himself, he was becoming a little paranoid after almost a full day of this, even wondering if the Nazi had taken up the challenge and come after him. Yet—and it was the city-slicker cop reacting now—he somehow knew somebody was out there, waiting. There were some experienced firemen who could tell if flames lay on the other side of a closed door without touching the door in order to see if it were hot. Touching the door was merely confirmation of a fact already known.
There were some experienced cops who could tell if, instead of fire, a man with a gun or knife and the burning passion to use it lay on the other side of a door.
Tim Shaw knew little about fires, but a lot about being a cop—or, at least, he hoped so.
He had taken a single—long—drag on the cigarette, then left the cigarette sitting on the edge of a rock. As silently as he could, he began climbing the big old magnolia tree, hoping it would branch out close enough to the next tree, so that he could work his way around the V-wedge of rock.
And that, birds and insects aside, was the other thing which made him step back, light a cigarette change his line of travel. The V-wedge was the only way through the area unless one kept to the trees.
This, as killing grounds went, was perfect.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Men lay everywhere—the Nazis used females for only the most menial tasks, sexist as well as racist John Rourke thought. As they would pass a fallen guard, the man burning with fever, obviously in physical torment, many of the guards or other personnel with limbs half-suspended at odd angles, some of them jabbering in delirium, one of them would always stop and administer a shot of the vaccine, then a second shot—this was sedation.
Although he had not planned to do so quite so soon, John Rourke had already called in to Commander Washington, signaling the SEAL Team commander and his unit to follow them.
By the time John Rourke, Annie and Paul Rubenstein, Michael and Natalia reached the elevator shafts beyond the bombproof doors, Rourke was certain that his manufactured epidemic had not only struck, but conquered.
Although it was the only means by which he could ever have gained entry to the Nazi headquarters complex, he felt badly for having used it. Bio-warfare of any kind was supremely dishonorable, even in a good cause.
The elevator shafts were enormous tubes, the color of brass—once burnished, now tarnished from neglect. Up through the center of the mountain the tubes ran, disappearing from sight above. Two elevators,
both of them large enough to handle freight the size of a tank, perhaps powerful enough for that, too.
There were no call buttons, but the elevator controls were apparent enough, controlled from a synth-glass enclosed booth mounted into the living rock, accessed by two metal ladders. It was like a control station for a ski lift.
Michael and Paul had already ascended the ladders, found the controllers down, injected them, then began to inspect the controls, calling out their progress as they went. “Think I figured it out, John. To be on the safe side, we should leave somebody down here, just in case there are no controls from above. Be a heck of a long walk down, assuming there are stairs.”
“You and Annie stay, Michael.”
“No! I want to see Momma and—”
“And what good will it do if we can’t get your mother down? I’ll bring her back to you, sweetheart,” Rourke told his daughter, touching his left hand to her shoulder, touching his lips to her forehead. “You and Michael won’t get cheated. I promise you that, darling.”
Annie nodded, rose up on her toes, kissed her father’s cheek.
“The three of us? You and Paul and I?”
“Yes,” Rourke told Natalia. The three of us. Just like in the old days, Natalia.”
“Just like in the old days, John,” she nodded, smiling. “Paul, it’s the three of us,” Natalia sang out toward the control booth.
“On my way,” Paul called out. He took the ladder easily, hands on the outer supports, feet along the sides, slowing his descent, never stopping it. As he jumped the last few feet, Paul turned toward them, went to Annie and took her in his arms. “We’ll pull this off,” he told her, then kissed her.
John Rourke called up to his son, “Michael! Get us an elevator. Keep a lid on things here.”
“Be careful, Dad. Natalia—Paul—”
“Always,” John Rourke told his son.
There was an exceedingly loud pneumatic hiss, a split second later the door was opening to the elevator on their right.
“Third floor, ladies’ lingerie,” Paul remarked as he stepped inside.
Natalia thwacked the fore-end of her M-16 with her left palm. “Let’s go!” She looked up toward the control booth, toward Michael, then stepped inside.
Rourke followed them in. There was a complete control panel, several floors blocked off by card access, it appeared, not open to conventional access by using the buttons to program. Paul called up toward Michael, “Can you get us onto the floors requiring a key?”
“I don’t know. Which one you want?”
John Rourke considered for a moment, then called to his son, “Try the third from the top. As best I could judge, that was where the hospital was.”
“Right! Hold on; these suckers are fast, I bet,” Michael shouted.
The doors thwacked shut as Annie called to them, “Be careful!”
There was a sudden lurch, the sensation of movement all too quick to be comfortable. John Rourke slung his HK-91 forward on its sling at his side.
Natalia whispered, “Like the old days, the three of us.”
Chapter Fifty
The idea, of course, would be to pop the guy while he lay in wait, if he lay in wait at all. As soon as Tim Shaw navigated the last limb—the trees here grew so densely that moving in them was almost easy—he would have a clear view of the other side of the V-wedge and know if there were someone waiting—just enough light still filled the sky in the west that all was not in perfect shadow yet.
Popping the guy, even if he was a Nazi, was not to Tim Shaw’s liking. He’d killed men in the line of duty and likely would do so again, if he survived now. But he’d never walked up to somebody in cold blood and just blown the person away.
Under the circumstances, however, he doubted there would be any choice.
The limbs of the trees had creaked a bit under his weight, but that was all right, because the wind was picking up and all the tree limbs were creaking. There would be no way that his unnamed enemy would know the difference, could know it.
Shaw’s hat was crushed and stuffed inside his multipocketed bullet-resistant vest, his rifle strapped tight across his back, muzzle down, as he prepared to make the transfer from the tree he was in to the next one, the limb looking more solid than the one he’d already navigated.
“Nice and easy,” Shaw whispered to himself.
He moved his left food onto the limb of the new tree, exerting his weight to test it. So far, so good. His arms stretched out and he found a handhold, crouched and started to slip onto the new limb.
There was a crack, loud as a pistol shot in a whorehouse, and Tim Shaw was suddenly weightless, then just as suddenly he was falling. Involuntarily, Shaw snarled, “Shit!”
He fell through a series of branches, never-ending, it seemed, but he knew that they would end. Twigs and leaves tore at his exposed skin, slapped him. He hit something very hard, his fall ceasing for a split second, then there was a second crack, louder than before—and this time it was a rifle shot.
A bullet whined past Shaw’s face.
He looked down, seeing only blackness, trying to judge the angle from which the shot had originated. He could not. A second shot, this one grazing his left tricep. Pain consumed him and he shook his head to clear it, knowing what he had to do if he even hoped not to die. He faked a scream of pain—which wasn’t hard because his left arm felt like it was on fire—and shouted, “Damn it!” Then he rolled out of the tree limb and let himself fall, trying to pull his legs under him so that he could hit the ground and roll, trying to gauge how great the distance was. He’d been up thirty feet or more to start with, had no idea how much distance remained between him and the ground.
He found out, impacting before he got his legs under him, his right knee striking something hard and his entire right leg going numb with pain. He was able to roll, his hands hitting the ground a microsecond before, his right wrist nearly breaking. But he pushed himself right so that he’d spread the impact.
He slammed up against something in the dark and just lay there, trying to grab a breath, realizing he had grossly miscalculated and was about to pay for it.
And he heard a voice above him with an undisguised German accent, but the English otherwise perfect. “I want you to know, policeman, who it is who has taken your life.”
Shaw’s left arm, despite the gunshot wound and the impact, moved okay and he was already snaking his hand toward the .45 that he could still feel there tucked inside the waistband of his trousers. His back ached terrifically and he thought that it might be broken, but never having broken his back before, he had nothing with which to compare the feeling.
The rifle strapped across his back was perhaps what had caused it when he hit.
Yet, he could wiggle his toes and somewhere he remembered reading or hearing that the ability to do that might be a good sign.
The wind was heightening dramatically now, the rustle of trees everywhere about him like a chorus of voices. His left fist closed on the butt of the .45. But he realized all along that the Nazi would be looking for a play like that, be ready for it. So, at the same time, he had begun moving his right hand. In his vest pocket on the right side he had the little Smith & Wesson revolver.
The Nazi stood over him now and Shaw looked up at the biggest knife blade he’d ever seen, realizing anything that was about to cut into you looked big, even a little switchblade. “So, what’s your name, motherfucker?”
The Nazi stooped over him with the knife and started to speak. Tim Shaw drew the .45, knowing it was too obvious, too slow, the Nazi rearing back, kicking, the man’s foot impacting Shaw’s left wrist, sending the 45 flying as Shaw’s fingers went totally numb.
And the Nazi laughed. “I had expected better, policeman.” Then he bent forward, bringing the knife down toward Tim Shaw’s throat.
Tim Shaw twisted the little enclosed hammer revolver in his pocket. Only the shell of the vest was bullet-resistant, the sewn-on pockets ordinary cloth. Shaw asked, �
��Then how’s this, buddy?” as Shaw pulled the revolver’s trigger, the gun still in the pocket.
The Nazi’s body lurched upward, as he staggered back. Shaw shook his little gun free of the pocket, pointed it. The Nazi was three or four feet away. Shaw fired a second shot, like the first one aimed for the throat and face. The Nazi’s knife flew from his hands, his hands went groping to his face. There was a shriek like no human sound Tim Shaw had ever heard before.
Shaw fired a third shot and the Nazi’s body was flung back into the darkness.
Tim Shaw’s right arm sagged to the ground, no longer able to support the weight of his gun and his hand, and his eyes started closing. If the guy was still alive, things would be very bad.
As Shaw’s eyes finally closed because the pain was too intense to keep them open, he wiggled his toes one more time, mumbled the words, “So far, so good,” and then just lay his head back, listening to the murmuring voices of the trees and feeling the coolness of the night wind.
Chapter Fifty-One
Rourke, Rubenstein and Natalia stepped from the elevator. Rourke had guessed right. This was the same floor Rourke remembered, where he had seen Sarah. Bodies lay strewn about the floor, slumped over the charge desk. While Rourke and Natalia waited at the elevator—John Rourke barely able to make himself do the sensible thing and wait—Paul found a chair, then wedged the chair in the elevator door, to keep the elevator from closing.
They still might require a fast means of escape.
“Washington’s men should be out front in another seven or eight minutes,” Natalia announced after a glance at the diminutive ladies’ Rolex on her wrist. Their arctic outerwear had been left on the lower level, and Natalia was dressed as she so frequently was over the course of the time they had known one another—a black, close-fitting jumpsuit, a shoulder holster over it with her suppressor-fitted Walther PPK/S hanging inverted from it. Her double full-flap holster rig nested above her hips with the twin stainless steel Metalife Custom L-Frame Smith & Wessons with the flatted barrels—engraved into the barrel flats were American eagles. In an all but unnoticeable pouch at her right thigh, the pouch a pocket within the jumpsuit, was her WeeHawk bladed Bali-Song knife. Held tight in her tiny right fist was the pistol grip of her M-16, the gun slung cross-body, left to right.
