begin. That, he suspected, would come in a matter of seconds.
McGarvey took the silencer tube out of his jacket pocket, hesitated for just a second, then tossed it off to his left. Immediately he rolled to the right, to the opposite side of the stone pillar.
He got a brief impression of a large man, dressed in a black, jumpsuit, rising up from beneath an overturned pew, and he fired twice, both shots catching the man in the torso, driving him backwards to crash to the floor.
From where McGarvey was lying he could see the East German’s right shoulder and arm, the Kalashikov six inches from his outstretched hand. He was not moving.
McGarvey scrambled across to where the downed man lay and felt for a pulse but there was none. One down, time now to give the others something to think about.
Stuffing the Walther in his belt, McGarvey silently dragged the East German’s body over to the railing. Nothing moved below. By now they’d be waiting just under the balcony, wondering what was going on up here.
McGarvey heaved the German’s body up over the balustrade, balanced it there for just a moment, then rolled it over. It fell the twenty feet and hit the stone floor with a sickening thud. McGarvey wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard someone mutter the single sound, “Ah,” then nothing.
Seeing their comrade like that would slow them down, McGarvey hoped, just long enough for him to prepare himself for the coming assault. He had hoped to take out Schade’s killer, then pick off the others as they came into the nave. But they’d anticipated him.
He understood why when he retrieved the East German’s rifle. The same type of walkie-talkie he’d tossed overboard on his way into the port of Thira was propped up against the overturned pew. The others had been warned about the ambush.
His only hope now was that Lipton had brought his team ashore. Short of that he would hold them off here. The longer he did that, the longer they would remain away from Kathleen and Elizabeth.
He’d made a mistake coming up here. The bitter thought rankled as he dragged another solid oak pew over to the first, and muscled it over onto its side. The bench was at least fifteen feet long and had to weigh several hundred pounds. The thick seat bottom would stop just about anything short of a grenade or a LAW rocket, neither of which was beyond the STASI’s ability to acquire.
But he had run out of options by stupidly forgetting that Spranger was a professional.
His men would be well trained, well disciplined, well armed and well equipped. They would communicate.
Hunkering down between the pair of overturned pews which offered him protection from both stairwells, he ejected the Kalashnikov’s curved magazine and quickly counted the bullets. There were only eleven, and there were no spare clips lying around.
He had reloaded his pistol on the road, on the way up here from town. He ejected the clip. It was empty, which left only one round in the firing chamber.
Twelve rounds with which he not only had to defend himself, but with which he had to prevail and then rescue Kathleen and Elizabeth.
He smiled grimly as he holstered his pistol, and made sure the Kalashnikov’s safety was switched off, the selection lever in the single fire position.
Impossible odds, he thought. But still manageable.
Chapter 59
Lipton stood with the others at the head of the stone stairs to the dock, listening, but the gunfire had stopped for the moment. The young woman seemed to be in better condition than her mother, but neither of them would be able to withstand much more. They seemed weak, and more listless than they should under the circumstances.
Lipton suspected they’d been drugged.
“Tony and Jules will get you ladies off the island, and then call for help,” Lipton told them.
Elizabeth clutched his arm. “My father is here. He’s looking for us, but they know he’s coming. It’s a trap.”
“As soon as we get you to safety we’ll see what we can do to help him.”
Elizabeth looked at Lipton’s team, and laughed, the sound short and sharp. “I’m sorry, but I hope you brought more men with you than this.”
Lipton glanced at Tyrell. “Why is that, Ms. McGarvey?”
“Because there’s a lot more of them than there are of you. And they’re very good.”
“We’ll take care of it,” Lipton said. “But first, you and your mother are getting out of here.”
Elizabeth looked at him for a long time. “Then good luck,” she said, and she took her mother’s arm and they started single file down the stairs.
McGarvey held his breath as he tried to distinguish sounds other than the shrieking wind and the annoying ringing in his ears. He thought he’d heard someone on the stairs behind him, and he had looked over his shoulder, but there was nothing yet.
The flames from the burning helicopter in the courtyard had finally begun to die down, and there was much less light up here in the loft, which was just as well.
If he couldn’t see his attackers, then they couldn’t see him either.
Both stairwells were in darkness, and he kept switching his gaze from one to the other, his eyes barely above the level of the ever-turned pews, so that he almost missed the movement in the west stairwell.
His heart froze, then steadied, as he switched his attention to the opposite stairwell, bringing the Kalashnikov up and resting it lightly on the pew.
“Take a peek,” he muttered softly. “Just a little peek to see what’s going on up here.”
A head and shoulders appeared in the stairwell, and McGarvey fired once, driving the figure violently backward and out of sight.
Switching his aim immediately back to the west stairwell he was in time to see a figure dart left into the shadows toward one of the stone pillars.
He squeezed off a single shot, catching the man in the side, flipping him over the stairwell railing with a desperate cry, and McGarvey heard him crashing down the way he’d come.
Spranger could hardly believe what was happening. Durenmatt was dead, his body lying in a pool of blood on the stone floor where McGarvey had flipped it over the chorus loft balustrade. Scherchen was crumpled in a heap at the foot of the east stairwell.
And Magda was shaking and crying silently with rage over the body of her husband lying in the west stairwell.
Their chopper was destroyed, their pilot and maintenance man dead, and aside from Lessing down on the dock, that left only three: Him and Liese at the east stairwell and Magda on the opposite side.
Liese was staring at him, a slight smirk on her beautiful lips, as if she were saying, I told you so. He had the urge to reach out and slap the look off her face.
Tiny flashes of light were going off inside his head, like police cameras in a morgue, each burst illuminating some morbid scene in the recesses of his mind.
Radvonska’s warning in Rome about McGarvey kept coming back to him, and he kept pushing it away. This operation was falling apart at the edges. Monaco, Japan, the States … all unraveling. All because of one man.
He looked up into the darkness of the loft. The two shots that had been fired had come from a Kalashnikov. Diirenmatt’s, which in itself was so galling he could hardly stand it.
Who was he?
Intense pain from his burns threatened to blot out what little sanity was left to him. Only through sheer force of will was he able to hang on. To think.
They were going to have to leave this place soon. It wouldn’t be long before the Greek authorities began to sit up and take notice that something was going on out here. And Diirenmatt had said that McGarvey had not been alone in the courtyard.
