by Greg Iles
her silver dinner fork and salad fork with it.
"Take Frau Apfel to her room," said Horn. "Then get to the tower.
I'll be in my study."
"But, sir, with Granville loose-" Horn silenced the Afrikaner by ringing
a hand bell that summoned Linah. "To the tower, Pieter," he commanded.
"I am in no danger."
"Bring the girl," Smuts told Luhr, and hurried out.
"Frau Apfel?" Luhr motioned for Ilse to stand. He forced himself to
smile. As soon as Linah had wheeled Horn Out Of the dining room,
however, he snatched Ilse up by the arm and dragged her into the hall.
"Lock her in!" Smuts called from up the corridor. "Then meet me at the
reception hall elevator!"
When Ilse and Luhr reached the bedroom door, she reached into her pocket
and closed her hand around one of the forks. She thought of driving it
into Luhr's neck, but she did not. Better to let Stern make a move if
he thought the time was right.
Stern didn't get the chance. Luhr turned the knob quickly and kicked
open the door, knocking, the Israeli backward onto the floor.
He laughed, then shoved Ilse inside and jerked the door shut.
Ilse pulled the silver forks from her pocket and tossed them to Stern.
"Get us out of here!" she snapped. "Now!"
When the elevator door opened in the domed observatory tower, Jiirgen
Luhr stepped into a room unlike any he had ever seen. He had once been
admitted to the control tower of Frankfurt International Airport, but
even that see primitive compared to this futuristic command post.
Computer screens, satellite receivers, amplifiers, massive banks of
switches, closed-circuit television monitors, and countless other pieces
of high-tech equipment hung from the ceiling and rose from the carpeted
floor. An eerie green glow bathed the circular room, silhouetting three
men dressed in khaki who ceaselessly monitored the various surveillance
consoles.
One man made way for Smuts, who took a seat before a phosphorescent
radar screen.
"Who is in the helicopters?" Luhr asked.
Smuts smiled thinly. "I'm not sure, but you can bet they're friends of
Lord Granville, our pet English nobleman.
You see those switches there? The red ones?"
"Here?" asked Luhr, reaching.
"Don't touch them! Christ! Look at the markings. North, East, South,
West. When I call a direction, pull the first switch for that heading.
When I call it again, pull the second. Got it?"
Luhr nodded. "What do they do?"
"You'll find out soon enough."
Taking a last look at the radar screen, Smuts moved to the center of the
room, ascended a short ladder, 'and climbed into the strangest
contraption Luhr had ever seen. A monstrosity of steel tubing, pedals,
gears, and hydraulic lines, it looked like something stripped from the
belly of a World War Two vintage bomber. Protruding from this strange
machine were six long narrow metal tubes joined at the center and
extending to within an inch of the dome's wall. Suddenly, Luhr realized
what he was looking at: a Vulcan 20mm rotary cannon. He had seen them
many times in Germany, jutting from the stubby snouts of American A-IO
tank-killing warplanes.
"Hit the blue switch," Smuts ordered.
Luhr obeyed, and watched in wonder as a narrow oblong section of the
domed ceiling receded into a hidden slot in the wall. Smuts touched a
button; the barrels of the Vulcan gun moved forward through the opening
like the barrel of a telescope. Now the gun could be traversed on a
vertical axis.
"Hit the next switch down." Luhr gasped as the middle four feet of the
circular wall sank into the floor with . a deep hum. Through the
bulletresistant polycarbonate glass that now served as the wall, Luhr
could see a 360-degree panorama of the grounds surrounding Horn House.
The sky was heav and nearly black with impending rain. Four hundred
meters to the north, Horn's Leadet and helicopter sat like toys in the
fast-fading light.
"Next," said Smuts.
Luhr hit the final blue switch, immersing the room in near-total
darkness. Only the luminous green radar screens competed with the gray
light outside the turret. Smuts pulled down a leather harness and
buckled it across his chest. Then he grasped two elongated tubes and
positioned them directly over his eyes. Luhr realized they were laser
targeting goggles.
"Sit down and strap yourself in," Smuts ordered.
"Why?ll Scowling, Smuts jabbed a foot pedal. Instantly the turret began
to rotate, throwing Luhr to the floor.
"Don't ever question my orders, Lieutenant."
Luhr scrambled to his feet and buckled himself into the chair. On the
radar screen to his left, two tiny blips crossed the line indicating the
western edge of the Kruger National Park, then turned southwest toward
an H marked on the screen in grease pencil.
"Fifteen kilometers and closing," announced a khaki-clad technician.
"Approach speed 110 knots."
Luhr watched the fuzzy green specks pass slightly to the north of the H,
then veer left and bore straight in. "Who are they?" he asked, unable
to suppress his apprehension.
"Dead men," Smuts replied from the gun cage.
Hans Apfel could not move. He lay in the absolute darkness of a cell
one hundred meters below the earth. This was the same cell in which
Jiirgen Luhr had spent his first night in South Africa. Hans was bound
to a heavy cot with rope and gagged with a thick strip of cloth.
He could only breathe through his nose. No sound had reached his ears
for hours, save the occasional sibilant hiss of a ventilator blowing air
into his cell.
Suddenly, a deep, buzzing alarm blasted through the basement complex.
Every muscle in Hans's body contracted in shock. What was happening? A
fire? For the hundredth time he expelled every ounce of air from his
lungs and tried to shift his body on the cot. It was no use. He had
never felt so
'
helpless in his life. Yet despite his fear for Ilse, one desperate hope
flickered in his brain: Is it my father?
"I've almost got it," Stern grunted, working feverishly at the lock on
the bedroom door. By intertwining the tines of Ilse's stolen forks and
snapping off several, he'd managed to fashion the dinner fork into a
serviceable lock pick.
"Hurry!" Ilse urged. "I don't think we have much time."
"Did Horn seem upset?" Stern asked, still working. "Surprised?
Frightened?"
"Not really. Please, hurry. We must find Hans!"
At that moment the clouds opened. The rain lashed the roof of Horn
House in great sheets, then settled into a steady torrent that would
soon turn the surrounding gullies into raging rivers.
"Got it!" Stern cried. He cracked the door slightly, then flung it
wide.
Ilse darted into the hall. "Where should we start?"
"Beat on every locked door you can find. If Hans is here, he'll be
behind one."
"Aren't you coming?"
"You don't need me to find your husband. I've got something else
to
do."
"What?"
"After what you told me, you ask me that? Move girl!"
Stern spun Ilse around, put a hand between her shoulder blades and
shoved her down the hall. She hesitated a moment; then, seeing that the
Israeli meant what he said, she started slowly up the corridor.
Stern clenched the broken fork tightly in his fist and set out in the
opposite direction.
The JetRanger helicopters skimmed across the veld like great steel
dragonflies. In the distance Burton could just make out the copper dome
of Horn's "observatory" glinting through the heavy rain. He flattened
his palm and dropped it close.to his thigh, indicating that Diaz should
fly still closer to the earth. The Cuban muttered something in Spanish,
but the scrub brush rose up into the Plexiglas windshield until Burton
felt he was tearing across the veld on a horse gone mad. Even the few
stunted trees they passed rose higher than the chopper's rotors.
"See it?" Burton yelled, pointing.
The Cuban nodded.
"We should see an airstrip soon. That's our objective.
Set right down on it!"
Burton poked his head back into the crowded cabin and gave the
Colombians a thumbs-up signal. Most of them looked airsick, but
Alberto-the guerilla observer-grinned back, his square white teeth
flashing in the shadows.
Forty seconds later, Diaz wheeled the JetRanger in a wide circle and
settled onto the freshly laid asphalt fifty meters from Horn's Leadet.
Burton punched open the Plexiglas door and jumped to the ground. Just
as they had practiced a dozen times on the Casilda's afterdeck, the
Colombians poured out of the chopper one after another, looking, for all
their amateurishness, like a squad of marines securing a hot LZ. A
quick glance across the tarmac told Burton that the men on the other
chopper were doing the same. "See you after the party!" he shouted to
Diaz.
The Cuban shook his head. "English loco, he muttered, twirling his
forefinger beside his temple.
The Colombians crouched at the edge of the rotor blast, waiting for
Burton to take the lead. The mercenary jumped to the ground and
immediately started toward the distant dome at an easy trot. The
Colombians, twenty-two in all, followed closely.
Thirty seconds' running brought them up short at the rim of the Wash.
Burton stared angrily into the ravine. He'd been told to expect a
shallow trench, no more than a thirtysecond delay. But the summer
cloudburst had turned this steep-sided gully into a treacherous river
that would take minutes, not seconds, to cross. Three feet of muddy
runoff churned through the undergrowth near the bottom, and the water
was rising fast, "Move!" Burton shouted, and leaped over the lip of the
ravine. He half-fell, half-slid toward the torrent below.
Looking back, he saw the Colombians skidding down behind him. Two
minutes later they all stood en the opposite rim of the Wash, huddling
against the rain. Burton started slogging westward again without a
word. For a few minutes he saw nothing ahead but rain. Then, like a
mirage, the whole stunning specter of Horn house appeared out of the
downpour.
Burton's blood ran cold. One glance told him that his "inside" informer
didn't know his ass from his elbow. The "soft" objective he had been
briefed to expect stood like a medieval fortress on a hill at the center
of a huge expanse of open ground. Ten men armed with medium machine
guns could defend,that house indefinitely against a force the size he
had brought.
His ragtag outfit had only one hopesurprise.
The Colombians had not yet picked up on the alarming deterioration of
their situation, and Burton didn't intend for them to. "All right,
lads!" he barked. "Change of plan! I'd intended to use the mortar to
soften the target for you"Burton paused while a bilingual Colombian
interpreted"but this open ground changes everything. If I open up
before you go in, the target will be warned. Many of you could die in
the charge." Burton saw several faces nod warily as the interpreter
conveyed his words. "My suggestion is that you all go in at the
double-a quick, silent run. You go in very fast and close to the
ground. The Israelis favor this tactic, and they've surprised a lot of
Arabs with it, I can tell you." He summoned a bluff grin. "Ready,
lads?"
Two or three Colombians nodded, but most looked a shade paler than they
had when they thought Burton's mortar barrage would precede their
attack. The Englishman took a final look at his unit. They were a
ragged lot by any standard, standing there in the rain, weighted down by
bandolero ammo belts, grenades, and LAW rockets. They would have been
comic but for the near certainty of their impending deaths.
Looking past them to the distant house, Burton felt a sudden, almost
irresistible urge to order them back to the choppers, to save'their
miserable lives before they charged the fortress that waited beyond the
gray wall of rain. But then he remembered The Deal.
"Move out!" he shouted angrily. "Goddamn it, charge!"
The Colombians stared dumbly for a moment; then they turned and trotted
down the slope into the shallow bowl.
One hung back-a teenager named Ruiz, whom Burton had tried to instruct
in the finer points of mortar operationwaiting to see if he was needed.
Burton started to nod, then he sensed someone behind him.
He turned to see Alberto, the huge MNR guerilla observer. Burton
pointed to the mortar tube he had dropped onto the grass and eyed the
guerilla questioningly. When Alberto nodded with confidence, Burton
decided he would prefer skill to g6w company today.
He motioned for Ruiz to follow the charge.
Alberto immediately began setting up the mortar, but Burton, impelled by
some morbid instinct, crouched on the rim of the grassy bowl and watched
the Colombians go in. As his eyes followed the camouflaged
figures-running now-he suddenly noticed something odd about the floor of
the bowl. Subdividing the approaches to Horn House into measured
sections were dozens of small, grass-covered mounds. At first glance
they seemed only natural irregularities in the ground-animal spoor,
perhaps-but Burton soon realized that the humps were anything but
natural. His mind faltered for a moment, not wanting to accept it; then
his gut instinct grasped the whole, ghastly scene.
A killing ground.
Those innocent-looking mounds concealed land mines. Burton shouted a
warning, but the Colombians had already passed out of earshot.
Alberto raised his head at Burton's shoutThen it started.
Sixteen Claymore mines exploded simultaneously, sending thousands of
steel balls scything through the air at twice the speed of sound.
Half the Colombians were shredded into bloody pulp before they could
scream. The sound came in waves, deep, shuddering concussions muted by
the rain.
Most survivors of the first blast staggered to the ground, mortally
wounded. Shrapnel detonated some of the Col
ombian ordnance.
Grenades flashed in the dusk; one of the LAW rockets exploded in a
blinding fireball, consuming the man who carried it.
Burton lay stomach-down, shielding his eyes against the flashes.
Alberto tugged at Burton's pack, groping for mortar rounds so that he
could return fire. Burton'slai)ved the hie guerilla's hand away.
"Bloody hell! All you'd do now is pin-point our position!" He punched
his fist into the soggy veld.
"Poor bastards."
In spite of the Englishman's pessimism, Alberto grinned and pointed down
the slope to where, unbelievably, a halfdozen Colombians still crawled
doggedly toward Horn House. Having gone too far to retreat with any
hope of survival, they went blindly on. Forty meters from the great
tliangular structure, one of them rose to one knee and let off a LAW
rocket. The smoke trail arrowed across the grass, and the exploding
warhead tore a jagged hole in the wall above a shuttered window.
Emboldened by their comrade's success, three wounded Colombians got up
and cheered, then charged the main entranee with their AK-47s on full
automatic.
At that moment-with a sound like a handsaw n'ppi' tin-Smuts's,Vulcan gun
opened up from the observatory.
From the tower, Jijrgen Luhr watched the carnage with morbid
fascination. He could not quite comprehend the fact that he had
obliterated a dozen human beings with the flick of a switch. The land
around Horn House looked as if a hundred plows had passed over it,
sowing blood and fire. The remotely detonated Claymores had churned the
earth into a smoking graveyard. When the Vulcan gun began to fire, Luhr
thought he had gone deaf. White flame spat out of the six spinning
barrels; the unbelievable rate of fire made the scarlet tracers look
like laser beams arcing across the slope below. Anywhere the gun
lingered for a full second, more than a hundred depleted-uranium-tipped
slugs impacted in a steady stream of death.
The rain and darkness obscured the remaining attackers, but Smuts seemed
to have no trouble finding them. Wearing ear protectors now, he worked
the pedals with practiced skill, traversing the gun with remorseless
accuracy. Watching Smuts's slit-eyed face behind the Vulcan, Luhr
actually pitied the men who remained alive.
Four floors below the observatory, Robert Stanton, Lord Granville,
watched the weapons he had known nothing about blast his dreams of power
