by Iles, Greg
“And the bomb,” Gadi murmured.
Two CT soldiers aimed their shotguns at the shield.
“Captain!” called a voice from the shadows to their right. Hauer felt his heart thump. Peering across the great entrance hall, he spied a figure against the darkness of a corridor to his right. It was Hans.
“Gadi!” called a hoarse voice. “Uncle? Where are you?”
Stern stepped into the brighter light of the reception hall. Hans and Ilse stood in the shadows behind him.
“Jonas!” bellowed General Steyn. “You’ve got some bloody explaining to do!”
Gadi started across the floor, but Stern signalled him to hold back.
Hauer watched in puzzlement as Hans slipped out of the corridor and raced around the edge of the great hall like a runner circling a track. When he skidded to a stop, Hauer drew back in shock. Hans’s hair, face, and clothing were covered with blood. He looked like he had dived on a grenade.
‘Hans! What happened? Were you shot?”
“No time to explain!” Only the whites of Hans’s eyes showed through the blood. “We’re dead unless we can get through those shields. We’ve got a plan, but I can’t explain it now. I want you to find two rooms with windows facing the inner part of the house. There are cameras in some rooms, not in others. Find a room without a camera. If my plan works, the shields should come down for a few moments—just long enough for you to get through. Skirt the wall when you go—there’s a camera by that elevator.” Hans squeezed Hauer’s arm hard; then he sprinted back toward Stern.
Hauer looked questioningly at Gadi. The young Israeli shrugged and started toward the hallway on their left. Hauer and the South Africans followed.
High in the turret, Pieter Smuts watched Major Karami’s commandos charge across the bowl. In a matter of minutes Hauer and his men would be slaughtered. Smuts smiled. His protective shields probably had claw marks on them by now. It was a pity about Linah, of course, but servants were replaceable.
“Pieter!” Hess cried.
When Smuts whirled, he saw his horrified master pointing at one of the closed-circuit TV monitors. Ilse Apfel filled the screen. Her face and clothing were smeared with blood, and she held an Uzi submachine gun in her hands. She screamed silently at the monitor for help. Then she turned away from the camera and fired a burst from the Uzi.
“That’s the elevator camera!” Hess cried. “Open the audio link!”
Instantly the sound of gunfire filled the turret. Ilse turned back toward the camera and screamed. “In the name of God, help us! They’re going to kill us! Herr Horn, please! My husband is wounded!”
At that moment Hans staggered backward into the camera’s field of view and fired a burst from an Uzi he had seized from a dead Libyan. He too was covered in blood. Both the blood and the Uzis had been provided by Major Karami’s dead assassins. Hans and Ilse had rolled in the bloody pools of the reception hall until they looked like walking casualties.
“For God’s sake, Pieter!” Hess pleaded. “Those are Germans down there!”
Smuts shook his head angrily. “We can’t risk it, sir. Hauer and his men could already be inside the house.”
“Can you drop only the elevator shield?”
“No, sir. It’s all or none. That’s the way they’re designed.”
“Then drop them all for five seconds!”
Smuts clenched his fists. Like most Germans, his master could be infuriatingly sentimental. In the same way a man who sent millions to the ovens could love dogs, Smuts thought. For the first time since he began serving Hess, the Afrikaner felt mutiny in his heart. “I think it’s a trick, sir! I see no Arabs!”
Ilse whirled back to the camera, her blue eyes wild with terror. “In the name of God, Herr Horn, save me! Save my baby!”
Hess’s knuckles went white on the arms of his wheelchair. “I don’t see Hauer anywhere,” he said quietly, his eyes scanning the other monitors.
“Not all the bedrooms have cameras!”
Hess’s face contorted with rage. “Those are Germans dying down there, Pieter! She saved my life last night!”
“But—”
“Do it!”
The Afrikaner slammed his right fist down on the console.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Gadi swung himself through the bedroom window even before the black shield had fully retracted. Hauer leaped after him and landed on the cobblestones of a small courtyard. To his right he saw the South African CT troops helping General Steyn to his feet.
“We’ve got to find my uncle!” Gadi cried.
General Steyn pointed to a large wooden door across the courtyard and gave a circular flick of his wrist. The shotgun-armed CT troops blew the hinges off the door. Silently they sprinted through the opening and somersaulted into defensive positions, the others close behind them. Hauer was the last man through. Just before he stepped over the threshold, he realized that the firing outside the house had stopped. He puzzled over this for a moment, then forgot it as he followed Gadi and the South Africans down a short corridor and into a huge, windowless room.
Several large crates were stacked in the middle of the floor. A forklift had been parked in front of a door in the far wall. Suddenly, from a hallway to Hauer’s right, Stern and Ilse came running into the room. Sensing danger, Hauer waved them back, but before he could call out, two men wearing Wehrmacht grey uniforms rose up from behind the forklift and opened fire with automatic weapons.
Stern dived to the floor, pulling Ilse down with him. Gadi returned fire. As the bullets flew, Hans came pelting out of the corridor, skidded, then backpedalled into the hall.
“Ilse!” he shouted. “Crawl back here!”
Ilse looked back, but Stern had thrown himself on top of her.
Hauer and General Steyn scrambled back into the hall behind them. The South African CT troops reacted differently. The highly trained commandos considered their Kevlar body armour an offensive weapon. While one soldier fired covering bursts, the other loaded a tear-gas canister into his shotgun and fired at the forklift. Stinging vapour fogged the far side of the room. Without even waiting to hear a cough the South Africans charged, firing as they ran.
“Clear! Clear!” came a shout in Afrikaans.
“That’s it!” said General Steyn. “Let’s go!”
At the forklift, Hauer hugged Hans and Ilse fiercely, but there was no time to speak. At their feet lay the bodies of Smuts’s men, cut to pieces by the South African commandos. The CT troops had already secured the stairwell beyond the door. The steel steps led both up and down. Leaning out over the rail, Hauer looked up and counted six flights of stairs that ended on a wide landing three floors above. Below, the stairs disappeared into darkness.
“The bomb’s downstairs,” said Stern. “A hundred metres down. That’s our objective.”
“But the enemy’s up there,” Hauer argued, pointing with his sniper rifle.
“They don’t matter,” said Stern. “He doesn’t matter.”
“Who?” asked General Steyn. “Horn?”
Hauer cut his eyes at Stern. “If we don’t neutralize that tower, we won’t be able to do a damned thing about your bomb even if we find it.”
Stern laughed softly. “How long do you think those shields will hold those Arabs back, Hauer? Five minutes? Ten? Horn will probably lower them himself, so that the Arabs can kill us for him.”
“Scheisse! Of course!” Hauer cursed. “That’s why the firing stopped. They’re already coming, Stern! We’ve got to get control of that turret gun. You can do what you want, but I’m taking the South Africans with me.”
Without hesitation Stern and Gadi started down the stairs.
Hauer, General Steyn, and the South Africans started up, with Hans and Ilse bringing up the rear. On the top-floor landing Hauer put his ear against the green metal door and listened. He thought he heard voices on the other side, but he couldn’t be sure. Backing away, he saw the South Africans preparing to blow down this door just
as they had the one in the courtyard. He signalled them to wait.
Taking hold of the aluminium knob, he applied a very slight circular pressure. The knob turned.
He glanced back at the South Africans, nodded toward the door, held up a fist, and shook his head. The CT troops gut the message: no grenades. Hauer licked his dry lips beneath his respirator. Then he raised his leg and kicked open the door.
Five men—Hess, Smuts, and three of Smuts’s security troops—looked up in stunned surprise. After one frozen moment, Smuts’s men made the mistake of going for their guns. General Steyn’s troops instantly killed all three with shotgun blasts.
Smuts himself did not resist. He stepped calmly away from the observation window and set down his field glasses. No one seemed to know what to say. General Steyn stepped from behind Hauer and looked down at the wizened old man in the wheelchair. “Thomas Horn,” he said rather pompously, “in the name of the Republic of South Africa, I place you under arrest.”
Still wearing his black eyepatch, Hess looked up at him with contempt.
The general cleared his throat. “You are Thomas Horn?”
“I am not,” Hess said with disdain. “I am Rudolf Hess. And you, General, are a traitor to your nation and to your race.”
General Steyn’s mouth fell open. “You’re who?”
“Ignore him, General,” Hauer snapped. “He’s mad as a sewer rat.”
Hauer turned to Smuts. “Why aren’t you firing on the Arabs?”
Smuts wiped his still-bleeding face on his sleeve and smirked.
“They’ll kill you too,” Hauer pointed out.
“Probably,” Smuts conceded. “But they might not.”
Hauer moved to the bullet-starred polycarbonate wall and looked out. Half the Libyan commandos had already crossed the bowl, and more were coming—black phantoms gliding across the moonlit earth. Hauer looked back and studied the cage that controlled the Vulcan gun.
“General Steyn, can your men operate that gun?”
At a nod from the general, one of the black-suited South Africans pulled off his gas mask, climbed into the cage, and opened fire. The noise was shattering. The gunner knocked down a dozen Libyans in less than twenty seconds. When Smuts’s bunker gunners saw the Vulcan resume firing, they assumed that their chief had gone back over to the offensive, and they added their machine guns to the fray.
Pieter Smuts eased his hand toward the console that controlled the shields on the ground floor. “Touch that and you’re dead,” Hauer warned. Smuts’s hand lingered over the switch until Hauer backed him off with a flick of his rifle.
The Vulcan thundered on, vomiting shells and flame into the darkness.
“Listen to me!” Hess said, struggling to make himself heard. “You…” He pointed to Hauer. “You’re German. In the name of the Fatherland, join me!” Then the old man suddenly looked around in confusion. “Where is Frau Apfel?”
As if on cue, Ilse stepped through the door. Hans had held her outside until he was certain the skirmish in the turret had ended. “She understands!” Hess wailed. “You should all join—”
At that instant the first shell from Major Karami’s howitzer struck the tower. The explosion rocked the entire structure on its foundations. “Everyone out!” Hauer shouted. “Move!”
Pieter Smuts darted across the room, lifted Hess out of his wheelchair, and carried him bodily into the stairwell. Everyone else hurried after them. Only the South African manning the Vulcan remained in the turret, probing for the howitzer through the smoke below.
The group had reached the second-floor landing when the second howitzer shell tore through the turret window and exploded, incinerating man and machinery in a blinding fireball. Stunned by the explosion above, everyone looked to Hauer for instructions.
“Follow him!” Hauer shouted, pointing down at Smuts. Even with Hess clinging to his neck, the Afrikaner had already managed to reach the ground floor. General Steyn and his men started after them, but Hans and Ilse hung back.
Hans grabbed Hauer’s arm. “Come with us!” he begged. “You’ll die here!”
Hauer pointed through a narrow slit-window on the second-floor landing. With the Vulcan out of action, a strong Libyan force had begun charging toward the burning house. And more dangerous, the big howitzer was actually being towed across the bowl under human power. Its progress was slow but steady. “Find Stern,” Hauer told Hans. “There’s nothing you can do here. The basement is the only safe place now. I’ll buy you all the, time I can. Hurry!”
When Hans hesitated, Hauer shoved him down the stairs. Hauer felt a startling surge of emotion when Ilse stood up on her toes, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him on the cheek. She drew back and looked into his eyes. “Thank you for coming for us,” she said. “You are a good father.” She smiled once, squeezed Hauer’s arm, then took Hans’s hand and hurried down the steel steps into the darkness.
Hauer smashed the narrow window with the butt of his sniper rifle and thrust the long barrel through. He rolled his shoulders once, took a deep, breath, and put his eye to the scope. The Libyan infantry were the closest targets, but he ignored them. He had to slow down the artillery piece.
He lined up the reticle, laid his forefinger against the Steyr’s trigger, and squeezed. He knocked down four men in eight seconds. Down on the ground, the big howitzer slowed, then stopped as the men towing it scrambled for cover. Hauer began searching out the infantry, hearing as he did a calm voice in his head: Running target, fifty metres … Fire… Eject shell… Close bolt… Fire!
As he picked off the commandos one by one, he wondered how long he had before the howitzer team pinpointed his muzzle flashes and decided to redecorate the second level of the tower with a 105mm shell.
Alan Burton lay prone on the rim of the bowl, watching the Libyans cross the killing zone. He had seen the howitzer destroy the rotating gun turret, and he had almost decided to try to cross the bowl himself when he saw the Libyans falling to Hauer’s rifle. At least somebody up there knows what he’s doing, Burton thought with admiration. Clearly he would have to find an alternate route into the house. The renewed chatter of the bunker guns gave him the idea. He peered through the darkness at the nearest one, a concrete pillbox dug into the shallow slope forty metres to his right. All he could see was a narrow horizontal slit with a flashing machine gun barrel protruding from it sporadically, searching out targets in the gloom. The bunkers serve the tower, he thought. They’re permanent installations. So how are they supplied? From the source? No from the house. But how?
“Tunnels,” he said aloud. “Bloody tunnels.”
Crouching low, Burton crab-walked around the rim of the bowl until he lay directly over the concrete bunker. Then he pulled three grenades from his web belt and laid them on the ground. Pulling the pin on the first grenade, Burton swung himself down, lobbed it through the narrow firing slit, and rolled back up onto the lip of the bowl.
The explosion shook the ground beneath him. The machine gun fell silent. Grey smoke poured from the firing slit. Grabbing the other two grenades, Burton dropped down in front of the bunker. One metre below the slit he noticed a padlocked steel handle set in the bunker’s grass-covered face. Escape hatch, he thought. Arming another grenade, he jammed it against the lock and hopped back onto the roof of the bunker. The blast tore the hatch right off its hinges.
Covering his nose and mouth with his shirtfront, Burton disappeared through the smoking hatch like a rabbit down its hole.
Hauer’s lungs were on fire. He had just flung himself down the twenty flights of stairs to the basement complex, thanking God with every step that he had run out of ammunition before the howitzer gunners spotted him. Now he worked his way through almost total darkness toward the voices he heard at the far end of the dark laboratory. When he finally reached open space, he saw eight people standing in front of a shining silver wall with great doors set in its face. Someone was speaking English very loudly, but Hauer didn’t recognize the vo
ice.
When he was only five metres from the group, he finally saw what held centre stage. Lying prone on a wheeled cart like truncated guided missiles were three bulbous, metal-finned cylinders. Ominous and black, they seemed to hold everyone away by some invisible repulsive force. No one had noticed Hauer yet, so he hesitated, trying to gauge exactly what was happening.
Jonas Stern stood with his back to the glinting storage vault, speaking in low, urgent tones to General Steyn, who faced him across the bomb cart. Gadi stood on Stern’s left, an assault rifle hanging loosely in his right hand. The two surviving South African CT soldiers, still masked and helmeted, stood directly behind General Steyn. Smuts had propped Hess against a nearby wall, his wasted legs splayed out before him. Hans and Ilse stood arm in arm beside Dr Sabri.
Hauer slung his empty rifle over his shoulder, strode through the semicircle and interposed himself between Stern and General Steyn.
“Captain Hauer!” said General Steyn. He jabbed a finger at Stern. “Do you know what this madman wants to do? He’s talking about detonating one of these weapons!”
Hauer had already guessed as much. What he could not understand was why Stern had told General Steyn about his plan at all. Perhaps the South Africans had surprised the Israelis in the process of arming the bombs. Hauer looked at Smuts and pointed to one of the bombs. “Exactly what are we looking at here?”
When Smuts did not respond, Dr Sabri said, “You are looking at three fully operational nuclear weapons, sir.”
Hauer studied the bespectacled young Arab. “And you are … ?”
“He’s a Libyan physicist,” Gadi said irritably. “We’ve established that already.”
“Hauer,” Stern said evenly, “the situation is hopeless. You know that as well as I, and General Steyn knows it better than both of us. There is no way out of this building. In a matter of minutes the Libyans will break through. When they do, Israel is lost. Unless—”
“Unless you blow the northern half of South Africa to hell?” General Steyn bellowed.
Ilse’s voice rose above the others. “How much time do we have? I haven’t heard any explosions for a few minutes.”
