“I don’t see them now,” Spranger said, glancing again across the dark sea. If anything the night had deepened as the rain increased, though dawn would be here in less than two hours. He wanted to be gone by then. The pilot had assured him that despite the weather, as long as they had a little daylight he could get them up to Athens. The chopper was ready to fly. All that was needed was to remove the camouflage canopy covering the machine, and undo the tie-downs on the undercarriage and the rotor blades.
“They could be American Special Forces,” Lessing was saying nervously. “McGarvey could have called for help.”
“Not him,” Spranger disagreed. “We saw the Dhodhóni heading back to Thira. He’s definitely coming here overland.”
“Pardon me, Herr General, but you cannot possibly know enough about the man to form such a judgment. Not so soon after you first learned of him.”
Spranger had handpicked his people from the survivors of East Berlin. They were the best of the best. All of them, Lessing included, were respectful of his authority, but no one was frightened or intimidated by him, which was as it should be.
But with this now, Lessing could not be right. Because if he was, they were in very deep trouble.
Once again he bent over the scope and peered through the eyepiece. The light intensification circuitry gave the surface of the sea a gray, ghostly cast. But as before there was nothing out there. Absolutely nothing.
“You may be right, Bruno, but it does not alter the fact I can’t see a thing now,” Spranger said. He stepped aside. “Take a look for yourself.”
After a moment, Lessing bent to the scope, and studied the distant darkness for several long seconds. When he looked up he still did not seemed convinced. “I’m truly sorry, Herr General. You are correct, there is nothing out there now. But I did see something.”
“Could have been a piece of flotsam, or even a glitch in the little black box.” Still Spranger’s eyes were drawn to the sea, a slight edge of fear creeping into his head. With McGarvey, you should expect the unexpected.
He’d carried the walkie-talkie down with him in case McGarvey decided to make contact again. Dürenmatt came on.
“Ernst, where are you?”
Spranger unslung his comms unit. “On the dock. Bruno thought he saw something, so he fired at it.”
“McGarvey is here,” Dürenmatt responded so quickly he stepped on some of Spranger’s transmission.
“Say again, Peter.”
“I said, McGarvey is here. Walther is down. I left my position for less than a minute to take a piss and when I returned, he was down. From where I’m standing I can see that he took at least one hit.”
“I’m on my way,” Spranger shouted. The detonator was still upstairs in the great room.
“What about me?” Lessing demanded.
“We’re getting out of here. If you don’t hear from me in the next ten minutes, go to the chopper. But Gott in Himmel, Bruno, keep your eyes open down here.”
Lipton and his five SEALS were in the water. They’d deflated their boat, and buoyed it just beneath the surface with a sea anchor. Tyrell carried a portable LORAN set, which, although it weighed less than twelve ounces, could bring them back to within fifty feet of the exact spot so they could retrieve their gear.
The antenna mast on Lipton’s communications radio was fully extended for maximum range. The LAMPS III chopper would be on station out of visual range somewhere just over the horizon to pick up his radio transmissions and relay them to Operations aboard the Nimitz.
“Saturn, Saturn, this is Mercury, acknowledge,” he radioed.
Commander Rheinholtz responded immediately. “This is Saturn.”
“We’re going in.”
“Negative, Mercury. Negative.”
“We’re taking fire, so we must assume that Brightstar is in trouble and the subjects are in jeopardy. We have no other choice.”
The radio was silent. Lipton could imagine Rheinholtz on the horn with Washington trying to get a reading on this latest development. But that would take time: Too much time.
Lipton keyed his radio. “Will advise,” he said. “Mercury out.” He switched off the transmitter, sealed it in its waterproof case, and on signal, he and his four SEALS submerged to a depth of ten feet, and on his lead made their way directly to the island.
At least they didn’t have the German woman to contend with, Elizabeth thought as she tried to pick out something, anything, in the black night from her window. But there was nothing out there, nor had there been any further shooting.
Their leader, the one they called Ernst, had taken the woman away. But that had been hours ago. Until the gunfire over the past two or three minutes there had been nothing. They had not been given food or water, but they had not been bothered again.
“Do you see anything, Elizabeth?” her mother asked, in a weak, frightened voice.
Elizabeth shook her head and came away from the window. Her heart was hammering and she was having a little trouble catching her breath. It was her father they’d been shooting at, she was convinced of it. Just as she knew that she was going to have to warn him about the explosives planted in the wall just below their cell.
She put her ear to the door and held her breath to listen. But there were no sounds from the other side. Nothing. No more shooting, no sounds of running footsteps, no shouting, not a sound.
Stepping back she bunched up her fists and hammered them against the thick, wooden door. “Father,” she screeched. “Father! Are you there?”
56
THE SUDDEN CESSATION OF GUNFIRE SEEMED EVEN MORE ominous than its start. The first shots had echoed off the church walls nearly two minutes ago, but now there was nothing, no returning gunfire.
McGarvey and Schade pulled up just within the apse where the altar had once stood and looked out the narrow window into a broad courtyard area, what might have been the monastery’s kitchen garden in ancient times.
Two men were hurriedly removing a camouflage tarp from a large helicopter with Greek markings. Their weapons, a pair of Kalashnikov assault rifles, were propped against a fuel drum eight or ten feet behind them.
So far as McGarvey could tell there were no others standing guard with them, but it was clear that they were in a big hurry to get out of here despite the rain and the strong winds which tore at the big sheet of canvas. Flying would be an iffy proposition at best.
“Could it have been your team doing the firing?” McGarvey asked.
Schade shook his head. “That was no M-16, sir. Maybe a Kalashnikov. Besides, we’ve got specific orders to conduct no operations on Greek soil.”
The helicopter looked like a stretched version of the old Bell Ranger. She would be capable of carrying a dozen people in addition to her pilot and copilot, and with luck and a skilled crew she’d make Athens, or almost any point along the nearly deserted Turkish coast to the northeast.
“If their lookouts are equipped with low-light optics they might have spotted the raft and opened fire,” Schade said.
McGarvey looked at him. “What would Lieutenant Lipton do in response?”
“That’s hard to say.” Schade shrugged. “But I’d guess that he would probably go into the water and come ashore. At least I think he would.”
“If that’s the case, this chopper is the only way out,” McGarvey said. “It’d be too bad if something happened to it.”
“It would probably upset them a whole lot.”
“Enough to kill us, if they get the chance. It’s not your fight, kid.”
“It is now, sir,” Schade said. “I’ll go right, you take left?”
McGarvey nodded. “Watch yourself.”
They slipped out of the church through a side door off the nave. The chopper was at least a hundred feet from them across the courtyard. The wind and rain continued to worsen, and the two men who were nearly finished removing the camo tarp were completely absorbed in their task.
Keeping low, Schade moved away from the chu
rch wall, angling around to the right, keeping his attention completely on the two men at the helicopter.
McGarvey started to the left, holding back against the wall until he got to a point directly behind the men, but his internal alarm system was going off like a fire bell. Something was wrong here. Some inner sense was telling him to pull Schade back.
Then he had it. The guard outside by the obelisk had looked back toward the church. Somebody was here. On an upper floor. With a clear sight line not only toward the path, but down here into the courtyard as well!
He was about warn Schade when a Kalashnikov opened fire from above and behind, exactly where he had just realized they were most vulnerable, and the young man went down in a heap, taking at least two hits.
The two men by the helicopter dropped what they were doing and spun around. They’d been well trained. Neither of them hesitated for an instant. One sprinted for the weapons leaning against the fuel barrel, making himself a moving target, while the other dropped sideways, to present less of himself as a target, and dug into his shoulder holster for his pistol.
McGarvey shot him first, one round in the man’s right hip, sending him sprawling off-balance with a cry, and the second in the side of his head, smashing his mouth so that he aspirated his shattered teeth.
Immediately switching his aim, McGarvey fired again, the bullet smacking into the second man’s chest just as he was snatching up one of the Kalashnikovs. The force of the hit shoved him backwards, the bullet disintegrating inside his heart, killing him instantly.
Except for the wind the night fell silent.
McGarvey moved farther along the wall. The shooter would have spotted his approximate position.
Schade half rolled over and groaned.
“Stay where you are, Bob,” McGarvey called urgently, and Schade stopped moving. It was impossible to tell from here exactly how badly he was hurt, but McGarvey figured he couldn’t be in very good shape. By rights with two hits he should have been dead.
“Come out into the open, Mr. McGarvey, or I will kill your friend,” someone said from above.
“Ernst Spranger?” McGarvey called, but he didn’t think it was. The accent was German but the voice was different.
“Do as I say or I shall kill him.”
“In that case I would destroy your helicopter,” McGarvey shouted.
“You might damage the machine with a pistol, but repairs could be made,” the East German said. He had moved too. Now his voice came from directly overhead.
“You would be delayed.”
“That is of no consequence, Mr. McGarvey. You would be dead, and we would leave.”
“You’re forgetting something,” McGarvey said, leaning out away from the wall in an effort to catch a glimpse of the man above. But he was able only to see a section of open archway.
“It’s you who are forgetting something. There is only you against all of us. In addition we have your wife and daughter.”
McGarvey said nothing. Instead he hurried back to the right to a spot just behind Schade. The younger man lay on his side, his gun hand stretched out ahead of him, his left hand clutched to his chest. He seemed to be saying something, but McGarvey couldn’t make it out.
“Step out into the open, Mr. McGarvey, and I promise that your wife and daughter will not be harmed. We will have no further need of them once we have you.”
A door on the far side of the courtyard opened with a crash and a man carrying an assault rifle burst outside.
“Peter,” the man shouted at the same instant he spotted Schade, who had started to rise up on one elbow.
“Don’t,” McGarvey shouted.
Schade had pulled something from inside his jumpsuit and was tossing it toward the helicopter with his left hand when the man above opened fire and the man across the courtyard started to fall back.
In the last possible instant, realizing what was about to happen, McGarvey threw himself against the church wall, burying his face in the dirt and covering his head with his arms.
A tremendous thunderclap burst in the courtyard, and McGarvey was lifted off the ground two feet by the force of the explosion, the night sky lighting up as if a thousand suns had suddenly switched on.
57
SPRANGER MANAGED TO FALL BACK INSIDE THE CORRIDOR AS the helicopter exploded. Nevertheless a spray of burning fuel burst through the open door, scorching his left arm to the shoulder, the sleeve of his nylon jumpsuit instantly melting, his skin turning an angry red and even black in big patches.
He howled in pure, blinding agony, the searing, white-hot pain rebounding inside his head, threatening to blow off the top of his skull.
Through the momentary haze that clouded his vision, making rational thought all but impossible, he focused on Liese and the others who’d followed him up here. They were bunched in a knot, staring in horrified fascination at him, waiting for him to collapse.
But he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing that their general was human. He couldn’t allow it, because if he did they would no longer follow him, especially not where he was leading them and the others when they got off this island.
For a flat-footed instant, standing in the church corridor, the heat from the burning helicopter making sweat pop out all over his body, he found himself wondering if he wasn’t making a colossal mistake. He’d been married once, and had one child. But that seemed like another lifetime. They had fled to the West, leaving him to face his suspicious superiors and his contemptuous colleagues.
He had no explanation, he’d told them. But even if they had crossed to the West to trade secrets for their asylum there was nothing to worry about.
Arbeit macht frei. Work makes one free. It had been the inscription over the gates of the concentration camp at Auschwitz, and it had become the unofficial motto of the STASI.
Thirty-six hours after his wife and child had crossed the border into West Berlin, they were dead. It was winter, and the chimney of the heater in the apartment where they’d been temporarily housed by the West German authorities had backed up, deadly carbon monoxide quickly filling the rooms.
Spranger had never looked back. Never, until now, for just this moment.
He shook himself out of it, conscious that the lapse had lasted only an instant, and must have gone unnoticed by the others under the extreme circumstances. Now, because of the pain, his awareness had become almost preternatural.
“My God, Ernst, is it the helicopter?” Liese cried.
“Yes, it’s gone,” Spranger croaked, his voice ragged. He struggled to control himself. “But it doesn’t matter. McGarvey is dead.”
“Ernst, are you there?” Dürenmatt’s voice came from the walkie-talkie slung over Spranger’s unburned shoulder.
With difficulty he pulled it around and keyed the talk button. “We’re in the dormitory corridor across from you.” He pushed the transmit button.
“ … thought you were dead. The fire … it’s everywhere. Did you see him?”
Spranger’s gaze turned to his rifle which he had dropped when he’d been burned. Its stock was scorched. “What are you talking about, Peter? Where are you?”
“You don’t know?” Dürenmatt screamed. “It’s McGarvey, he brought someone with him. He brought help.”
“Yes, I know this,” Spranger radioed, although he did not, although there had been a shout from across the courtyard, and not from the one who’d tossed the grenade. Two of them out there? The one by the helicopter had surely been incinerated in the explosion. But the other … ?
“I’m on my way,” Dürenmatt shouted breathlessly.
“We’ll meet you in front. We’ll have to slip out through Thira.”
“ … stupid bastard! It’s McGarvey! He’s headed your way through the church!”
Down on the dock Bruno Lessing didn’t know what to do. He’d heard the explosion, of course, and had monitored the transmissions between Spranger and Dürenmatt, so he knew that escape by air would be impossible. But he
was also convinced that someone or something was coming at them from the sea, although he couldn’t make out a thing from where he huddled out of the rain just within the rock alcove.
He had seen something on the water, maybe a thousand yards out, more or less, and he had fired at it.
He played with the Kalashnikov’s safety catch, switching it on and then off, the metallic snick barely registering in his ears.
But then what had looked to him like a small boat and several men had simply disappeared as if it had never existed. After Spranger had left, Lessing had searched the sea again with the starlight scope with no results.
“But it was there,” he muttered to himself, checking his watch again. The ten minutes were up. It was time to go, only now there was nowhere for them to go to. The chopper was no longer an option.
Spranger would get them out of this. He always had in the past, and this time would be no different. The man was nothing short of brilliant. Even though none of them had been able to figure out the real reason why they’d grabbed the two women or had brought them here, they were all equally convinced that the general knew what he was doing. With the Egk woman snapping at his heels, the man had no other choice.
Lessing grinned nervously thinking about her, and the nape of his neck prickled. She was gorgeous, but looking into her eyes was like looking through windows into hell. She might be worth a roll in the hay, but he suspected that an ordinary man would be driven absolutely mad by the experience.
He flicked the rifle’s safety catch down, then up, no longer certain in which position the weapon was safetied.
East Berlin in the old days—hell, barely five years ago—had been simpler. There were safe havens. Even now they’d been offered the chance to come to Moscow, but no one was enticed. The Russians were having their problems. No safety there.
No safety anywhere, he thought glumly. Now they were even taking orders from the slant-eyed Japs. It was galling.
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