by Greg Iles
"I'm sorry, but I can't let you sacrifice my men without any hope.
of success."
"'They think we're here to help them! We've got a clear path to the
house!"
General Steyn shook his head. "We need reinforcements."
Hauer stared in disbelief. He had come too far to be stopped here by
one man's lack of nerve. He struggled to keep his voice steady.
"General, my only son is down there.
And the longer we wait, the greater the chance that he will be executed.
If I must, I'll go down there alone and on foot."
"You won't have to, Captain."
Gadi Abrams's pledge was punctuated by the chunk of his assault rifle
being cocked. He did not point it at anyone, but the threat was plain
enough. General Steyn's hand moved toward the pistol at his hip.
Gadi ripped his gas mask off and gave the general a look of open
contempt.
"Israel fights," he said quietly. "Germany fights. What of South
Africa?"
General Steyn's red face whitened. He knew he was being manipulated,
but in front of his men the Israeli's challenge
iL
was simply too personal to ignore. He leaned forward into the driver's
compartment and shouted, "Over the top!"
Hans and Ilse dashed down the smoky corridor with towels held over their
faces. Horn House was burning, and the inner complex was sealed against
them. They had searched nearly every room in the outer triangle of the
house, yet they had seen no sign of Stern. Only panicked servants and
their children. Hans carried an attache case in his right hand; they
had brought it from Horn's study.
"Hurry!" Ilse called. "It's the only room we haven't checked!"
As they neared the hospital unit, she wondered why she had skipped it
before. But she knew: the nauseating memory of being strapped to e
X-ray table had simply been too horrible to face again. Now she had no
choice. She felt a jolt of terror as she eased open the infirmary.
door. The room was dark, but the smell of alcohol hit her immediately.
Signaling Hans to follow, she crept through the shadows toward the
interior doors. A crack of light shone beneath one of them.
Halfway to the door, she froze. The sound had stopped her.
The terrifying buzz cut short by the low, metallic clang. Ilse closed
her eyes in remembered terror, then, opened them again. She padded over
to a countertop and felt her way along it. "Here," she whispered,
closing her hand around the base of a heavy niicroscopeHans set down the
briefcase and took the scope.
Ilse turned the doorknob as quietly as she could. As she pushed on the
metal door, the sound came again. Buzz ...
clang. In the eerie amber glow of the X-ray machine's dials Ilse saw a
blond man standing with his back to her. He was peering through the
thick bubble window in the lead radiation screen.
"Are your balls getting warm yet, Jew?" the man called.
He cackled wildly.
Ilse gasped.
The figure whirled.
"You," Hans murmured.
Luhr wore his police uniform, the green trousers tucked into his
spit-polished boots. He looked first at Hans, then at Ilse. He laughed
derisively. "You stubborn Arschloch. Don't you know when to quit?"
He dropped the cable trigger.
This time Funk isn't here to stop me."
"He's the one, Hans," Ilse said hoarsely. "The one who cut the
policeman's throat in Berlin."
"That's right," Luhr said with a laugh. "Just like slaughtering a
fucking pig."
"Steuben," said Hans, his voice trembling. He felt his throat constrict
with unspeakable hatred. He looked down at the microscope in his hand,
then let it crash to the floor.
"Frau Apfel? " cried a weak voice. "Is that you?"
Ilse darted around the lead shield. Jonas Stern lay pale and bloodied
beneath the leather straps that had bound her just two days ago. "Hans!"
she'cried. "Help me!"
Hans heard nothing. He watched Luhr's lips tighten into a thin, pale
line as he dropped his shoulders like a boxer and moved out from the
X-ray machine. Hans's nerves tingled like live wires. Luhr feinted
with his right hand and kicked Hans high in the chest. Hans took the
blow, staggered, steadied himself. Luhr jabbed with his left hand. Hans
did nothing to block it. He felt his right cheek tear, but he ignored
the pain. A crashing roundhouse struck him on the side of the head. He
absorbed the shock, but this time he raised his fists and moved forward.
Backpedaling away, Luhr fired off a right that drilled into Hans's eye
socket.
Hans roared in pain, but he shook the tears out of his eyes and lunged
blindly forward.
As Luhr pivoted to evade him, he felt his back collide with the
faceplate of the X-ray machine. At that instant Hans lashed out. His
fist moxied from his side to the bridge of Luhr's nose without seeming
to cross the space between.
One moment Luhr's face was pale with fury, the next it was covered in
blood. Hans had broken his nose. Luhr screamed in agony, then tried to
bull his way out of the corner. Hans stood him up against the machine
and hit him three times fast in the solar plexus. Luhr sank to the
floor. Hans tasted blood in his mouth. He picked up the heavy
microscope and held it high above his head. His arm shivered from the
weight. One blow would crush Luhr's skull like an eggshell.
"This is for Weiss," he muttered.
"Wait!" rasped a male voice.
Hans turned slowly, the microscope still high above his head. He saw a
tall, wiry man wearing sweat-soaked trousers and an undershirt leaning
unsteadily on Ilse's shoulder.
"Not that way," said Stern, his voice strangely flat.
Luhr lay gulping for air at Hans's feet. Slowly he got onto then turned
ha( and stared at the tanned stranger. The beaked nose ...
weathered, hawklike face. "I've seen you," Hans said.
"Yes, Sergeant," Stern replied. "You have. Now pick that man up and
put him on the table."
"We don't have time for this!" Ilse cried. "The house is burning!
We have to find a way through those shields! A few exposures won't even
hurt him!"
"Put that animal on the table!"
Hans stunned Luhr with a kick to the head, then he hoisted him onto his
shoulder and hauled him around to the X-ray table. As soon as he dumped
him there, Ilse strapped him down with the leather restraints.
"Get out!" Stern barked. "Both of you!"
Hans watched fascinated as the Israeli lifted the broken microscope from
the floor and smashed it down onto the cable trigger Luhr had dropped.
"Shut off the power," Stern commanded.
Ilse found the ON/OFF switch and flipped it. Stern fiddled with the
tangled mess in big hands for a few moments, then dropped it and stepped
up to the bubble window in the shield.
"Turn the power back on."
Ilse obeyed. The entire room seemed to vibrate for four seconds; then
it went still. Luhr's scream of terror rent the acrid air. Again the
X-ray unit fired. The indescribable buzz ... clang chilled Ilse'
s
heart. Stern had permanently closed the circuit in the cable trigger.
The X-ray tube would continue to fire, recharge, and fire again until
someone finally shut off the power or a fuse burned out. Luhr shrieked
like a man trapped in a pit of snakes.
Hans looked up at Stern's lined face. He saw nothing written there. Not
satisfaction, not hatred. Nothing at all.
"Let's go," said Stern, pulling his eyes away from Luhr's struggling
body.
Ilse held up the black briefcase Hans had been carrying.
"We've got the Spandau papers. We found them in Horn's study.
The other book, too."
"The Zinoviev notebook?' Ilse nodded. "Everything."
"Good girl." Stern grabbed her arm and hustled her into the hall.
Hans backed slowly out of the room, his eyes still glued to the bubble
window in the lead shield. The X-ray machine continued to fire in
four-second intervals.
Four hundred meters of open ground separated the ridge of the bowl from
Horn House. The Armscor had covered barely a hundred when a fierce
hammering assaulted Hauer's ears. They were taking fire from the Libyan
machine-gun positions on the ridge behind them. Captain Barnard was
sitting in the Armscor's shotgun seat. Hauer grabbed his shoulder.
"Can you raise the tower on that radio, Captain?"
"I can try."
"Do it! Tell them to give us cover!"
Pulling off his helmet and respirator, Bernard began working through the
frequencies on the radio. Hauer glanced back into the crew compartment.
At the Arrnscor's firing slits, the black-clad team of commandos worked
their R5
carbines like men on an assembly line. One man's head and shoulders
were thrust into the tiny turret mounted atop the Arinscor; he swiveled
the .30 caliber machine gun between the Libyan positions with deadly
accuracy. Yet Libyan bullets still pounded the vehicle's armor. Hauer
turned again and watched Horn House growing larger in the Armscor's
reinforced windshield: 250 meters and closing.
Suddenly an alien voice began speaking inside the vehicle.
"Phoenix to Graaff ... Phoenix to Graaff ... Do you read?" The tension
in Pieter Smuts's voice was like a cable stretched near to breaking.
"Phoenix to Graaff! Where are your reinforcements?"
"Answer him!" Hauer told Captain Barnard. "Tell him Graaff's manning
our turret gun!"
Hauer looked out at the house again: 160 meters. He gave Bernard an
encouraging punch on the shoulder; then he ducked back into the crew
compartment to confer with General Steyn.
The instant Hauer left the compartment, the driver lashed out with his
elbow and struck Captain Barnard in the side of the head. The Arrnscor
lurched to a halt 140 meters from Horn House. Hauer flew forward and
crashed against a steel bulkhead; only his helmet prevented him from
cracking his skull. The driver snatched u the radio microphone and be,
p gan transmitting rapidly in Afrikaans: "Arinscor to Phoenix! Armscor
to Phoenix! It's a tri( Trap!
Trap! Major Graaff isn't here -- -" Dazed, Hauer lunged back into the
driver's compartment.
He did not understand Afrikaans, but he recognized a warning.
Taking hold of the driver's head, he wrenched with all his might, hoping
to snap the man's cervical vertebrae. The driver went suddenly stiff,
then limp.
"Take the wheel!" Hauer shouted at Captain BamardWhile Hauer dragged
the driver back into the crew compartment, Captain Barnard scrambled
into the driver's seat and wrestled the Armscor into gear.
The vehicle lurched forward, back, then began rolling toward the house
again.
Hauer laid the senseless driver against the Armscor's side hatch and
tore off his own respirator. "Another traitor!" he yelled to General
SteynGeneral Steyn ripped off his gas mask. His face was flushed with
anger and disbelief. At his feet the traitor squirmed and flung his
arms upward. In a fit of rage Gadi kicked open the Armscor's side hatch
and shoved the driver out onto the veld. By the time Gadi shut the
hatch, a Libyan machine gunner had riddled the man's body with .30
caliber slugs.
The Armscor shivered as another Libyan machine gunner locked onto the
tail of the armored car. Hauer grabbed General Steyn's arm. "I don't
know if the tower heard that warning, but-" The sudden, steel-ripping
roar of the Vulcan obliterated both Hauer's voice and the rattle of the
Libyan machine guns.
Hauer leapt up to a firing slit. His stomach rolled as he watched the
blazing tracer line march toward the nose of the Armscor. He had seen
similar guns on American tank-killing planes on maneuvers in Germany.
The rotary guns mounted in their stubby snouts spewed out 5000
depleted-uranium slugs per minute-enough to turn a T-72 tank into a
burning hulk in seconds.
Captain Barnard swerved to avoid the oncoming tracer beam, but the
Vulcan gunner simply adjusted his fire.
Barnard screamed as the shells churned up the earth directly in front of
the Armscor. Then suddenly-miraculously-the fiery stream of death
winked out.
"He's jammed!" Hauer shouted. "Go! Go!"
The Annscor surged forward. Like a hailstorm from hell, slugs pounded
the vehicle from every side as Smuts's bunker gunners opened up from
their concealed positions. Hauer peered out through a gun port, trying
to pinpoint the source of the fire.
"Bunkers!" he shouted. "They're dug into the hill!"
From a slit on the Annscor's right side, Gadi fired his R5
assault rifle in careful, three-round bursts, aiming for the muzzle
flashes of the bunker guns. "Momser!" he shouted, but no one heard
him. The noise inside the Armscor had reached a deafening level.
Hauer was leaning into the driver's compartment to urge Captain Barnard
forward when Pieter Smuts detonated the first string of Claymore mines.
Two Claymores exploded directly beneath the Armscor, hurling the
eighteen tons of hardened steel into the air like a child's toy. The
vehicle tottered on its three right wheels, then crashed back onto all
six and continued toward the house. Another string of Claymores
exploded in front of the Armscor; hundreds of steel balls scythed into
its hull, shattering the polycarbonate windshield. Captain Barnard
screamed in pain, but the Arrnscor kept rolling.
Hauer's mind raced: they still had more than a hundred meters to cover.
The mines could be handled, but not under the fire of the tower gun. If
the gunner cleared his weapon in the next thirty seconds, they didn't
stand a chance. The Vulcan had to be silenced.
"Stop!" he roared. "Turn this thing sideways and stop!"
Captain Barnard-not enthusiastic about hitting any more mines
himself-gladly obeyed. Hauer turned back to General Steyn and his men.
"Pour it in! I'm going Out!"
One of the masked men jumped down from a firing slit, ripped off his
respirator and grabbed Hauer's arm. It was Gadi. "If you go out there,
you're dead!" he yelled.
Hauer jerked his arm free. "Just keep those bunker guns
off me!"
While Gadi stared, Hauer snatched up his sniper rifle and unlatched the
Armscor's side hatch. The full din of battle filled the vehicle.
Holding the Steyr-Mannlicher close against his body, Hauer took a deep
breath, and leaped outside.
He hit the ground hard and rolled beneath the huge vehicle, praying no
one had seen him. He got to one knee. There was almost enough room for
him to stand beneath the Arrnscor's undercarriage. The six giant wheels
provided a wall from behind which he could fire in relative safc Bracing
his right knee behind one of the giant tires, raised the Steyr to his
shoulder and sighted in on the tower.
The last light of dusk had almost gone. He had no nightvision scope,
but the standard Kahles-Helios ZF69 optical scope was excellent.
Even in near darkness it brought the tower in nicely.
When Hauer saw the turret in detail, he groaned. At 120 meters,
accuracy wasn't the problem. With the Steyr, he could fire ten bullets
into a sixteen-inch circle from six times that distance. The problem
was the "glass" he saw for-ming part of the turret's circular wall. It
would undoubtedly be made of transparent composite armor. Through the
scope he searched for a weakness suited to his weapon. The turret
rotates, he realized, noticing the huge gears mounted beneath the
observatory dome. But I can't damage those gears. Twelve seconds later
Hauer spotted his chance. Just where the Vulcan's six barrels protruded
from the "glass," a narrow port had been cut so that the gun could be
traversed vertically. Hauer felt the hair on the back of his neck rise.
He could see men working frantically to clear the jammed weapon.
He laid his cross hairs on the tiny port and chambered a round into the
breech. The Steyr accepted a ten-round magazine, but like most sniper
rifles it was bolt-action. He would get one perfect chance, then nine
snap shots. He took a deep breath and pressed his b(>dy into the huge
tire that shielded him. He felt the reassuring weight of the rifle on
his shoulder, the wooden stock cool and familiar against his stubbled
cheek. The sound of the battle grew dim and distant as he focused on
his target, melding his eye with the tiny crack between the Vulcan's
barrels and the armored glass. In his mind, the coin-sized target
expanded into a saucer, then a dinner plate ...
His finger settled firmly on the trigger.
Squeeze ...
