a pack of wild dogs that had run down their prey, they kept on firing
and reloading and firing again.
The monks in the front rows turned to flee and ran into those behind.
They struggled together, howling with agony and terror, until the storm
of bullets swept over them, killing and maiming, and they fell upon the
heaps of dead and dying. The floor of the chamber was carpeted with the
dead and the wounded. Trying to escape the hail of bullets the monks
blocked the doorway, plugging it tight with their struggling white-clad
bodies, and now the troopers standing clear in the centre of the qiddist
turned their guns upon this trapped mass of humanity. The bullets socked
into them and they heaved and tossed like the trees of the forest in a
gale of wind. Now there was very little screaming; the guns were the
only voices that still clamoured.
It was some minutes before the guns stuttered into silence, and then the
only sound was the groans and the weeping of the wounded. The chamber
was filled with a blue mist of gunsmoke and the stink of burned powder.
Even the laughter of the soldiers was silenced as they stared around
them, and realized the enormity of the slaughter.
The entire floor was carpeted with bodies, their shammas splashed
and-speckled with gouts of scarlet, and the stone paving beneath them
was awash with sheets of fresh blood in which the empty brass cartridge
cases sparkled like jewels.
'Cease firing!' Nogo gave the belated order. 'Shoulder arms! Pick up the
load! Forward march!'
His voice roused them, and they slung their weapons and stooped to lift
their heavy, tapestry-wrapped burdens.
Then they staggered forward, their boots squelching in the blood,
tripping over the corpses,. stepping on bodies that either convulsed or
lay inert. Gagging in the stench of gunsmoke and blood, of bowels and
guts ripped wide open by the bullets, they crossed the chamber.
When they reached the doorway and staggered down the steps into the
deserted outer chamber of the church, Nahoot saw the relief on the faces
of even these battle hardened veterans as they escaped from the reeking
charnel-house. For Nahoot it was too much. Never in his worst nightmares
had he seen sights such as these.
He tottered to the side wall of the chamber and clung to one of the
woollen hangings for support; then, heaving and retching, he brought up
a mouthful of bitter bile.
When he looked around him again, he was alone except for a wounded monk
who was dragging himself across the flags towards him, his spine shot
through and his paralysed legs slithering behind him, leaving a slimy
snail's trail of blood across the stone floor.
Nahoot screamed and backed away from the wounded monk, then whirled and
fled from the church, along the cloisters above the gorge of the Nile,
following the group of soldiers as they ffarried their burdens up the
stone staircase. He was so wild with horror that he did not even hear
the approach of the helicopter until it was hovering directly overhead
on the glistening silver disc of its spinning rotor.
otthold von Schiller stood outside the front door of the Quonset hut,
