On hands and knees, Lang felt his way along the rocky path. Within minutes, his back began to throb at the unusual angle at which it was bent. Progress was slow, one hand in front of the other, making sure where he could place each knee. Once or twice, he had to stop as unseen rocks were dislodged and tumbled noisily into the void on either side. He would pause, listening for any human reaction.
So far, there was none.
After what seemed like painful hours, but his watch’s luminous dial described as twenty minutes, Lang could no longer see the Citadelle’s form against the sky. He was so close it filled his vision. Starting to stand, he froze in midcrouch as an orange dot caught the periphery of his vision. Either the cigarette smoker they had seen from the trail or another nicotine lover.
Lang moved a few inches to his right and squatted, trying to pick up a silhouette, a shape, anything that might give him an idea as to the smoker’s exact position. The mass of the old fortress and its shadow from the moon blacked out everything in front of him. His fingers searched the uneven ground at his feet and closed around a stone slightly larger than a softball.
He waited.
The cigarette glowed with what turned out to be the last puff before it was discarded in an arc of burning ashes against which Lang could see a single figure not three feet away.
Lang purposely cleared his throat.
The man in front of him grunted in surprise and Lang was close enough to hear the small sounds of movement. Pebbles underfoot crunched; metal struck metal as a weapon struck a belt buckle.
Lang timed his swing with an accuracy learned on the Agency’s long-ago training fields. Rock met skull with a grinding crunch and a grunt. He fell against Lang.
Quickly moving from under the still body, Lang searched his victim until his hand touched a weapon still grasped in unconscious hands. Running a hand down a stubby barrel, Lang quickly identified the gun as an AK-47, type 63/68. There was no chance he could see the markings stamped into the metal that would reveal its origins. He set it down beside him and fumbled off his backpack.
Minutes later, he was finishing binding the man’s arms and legs with duct tape. Task completed, he taped the man’s mouth shut and stood, slinging the rifle over his shoulder. No doubt the guy would regain consciousness shortly-he was already moaning-but Lang intended to be long gone before his companions found him in the early- morning light.
For a full five minutes, Lang stood still, listening for any evidence his presence had been detected. He heard none. Still, he didn’t dare approach the fortress by the front, the site of the only entrance. Surely it would be guarded. He had prepared for a less-orthodox entry. He moved gingerly to the side of the path. Keeping a precarious balance, he reached a point where he could see a slice of the night sky, its stars outlining the wall of the Citadelle.
Climbing that wall was out of the question without some sort of help, help that just might be provided by…
Lang took a length of rope from his backpack and uncoiled it. Blindly, he tied a slipknot into one end. Twirling the rope above his head like a cowboy chasing an errant steer, he let it slide through his fingers. Rope met rock wall with a faint slapping sound and Lang reeled it in to try again. On the third effort, the rope settled around a cannon’s muzzle protruding a foot or so from its gun port. Lang threw his weight backward, drawing the knot tight. He gave several exploratory tugs to make sure it was fast before he slung the pack back onto his shoulders and began to climb.
Unlike many fortifications that had been built with a slight slope to deflect artillery fire, the Citadelle’s walls were vertical. Above the gun port toward which he was climbing, Lang could see two more, their silent barrels protruding into the night like the gargoyles of a Gothic cathedral.
His foot found a niche in the mortar between two stones. Pulling on the rope as he braced against the wall, he was able to “walk” up the face of the fort perpendicular to it. Above his head, he could see the cannon getting ever closer. Another step, perhaps two, and he would be there.
The gun was finally within his reach. Taking one hand from the rope, he stretched toward it. At the same time his foot hit a trickle of water, a patch of moss, something slick that broke the traction between his rubber- soled shoe and the rock surface, sending him swinging pendulum-like across the face of the stone.
He clung to the rope, an umbilical cord of life that held him above a drop of thousands of feet. The swing ended abruptly as his momentum slammed him into a protruding stone, perhaps the top of another gun port. The impact knocked the breath out of his lungs and blurred his vision with colorful spots that spun in front of his eyes. Gasping to refill his lungs, he felt his grip on the line slip before his concentration could return from the pain of colliding with unforgiving rock.
He drifted back and forth in space, the cannon’s muzzle taunting him with unreachable proximity. His shoulder muscles were in rebellion, sending jolts of pain radiating from neck to wrist. Hands beginning to spasm from the physical tension, he forced one after the other to inch his way up the remaining few feet of rope toward the gun.
He was almost there when he felt an almost imperceptible slack in the line. The swinging motion had somehow loosened the knot in the rope. It was coming loose.
If it did, the next stop would be nearly a half mile below.
Gurt was trying to get comfortable sitting on a craggy rock, the reins of the two horses in her hands. Her watch told her Lang had been gone only a few minutes, but the wait was becoming burdensome. They could just as easily have found some outcropping of stone to which to tether both horses. Unspoken had been the thought that the two of them, Gurt and Lang, should not be at risk at the same time. Manfred should not be in danger of becoming an orphan at a single stroke. She accepted the reasoning, but being left out of any action still rankled her.
Waiting was something she had been trained to do. The hours or days she had spent in anticipation of completing some Agency operation had taught her the virtue of patience. At a time when gratification was expected instantly, satisfaction even quicker, where information could be exchanged in nanoseconds, waiting was an acquired talent that exceeded simple inactivity. In the world Gurt had inhabited, long periods of apparent idleness could be terminated violently and unexpectedly.
Waiting, professional and useful waiting, required mental alertness behind a facade of indolence.
For all of those reasons, Gurt was sufficiently attuned to her environment to detect the sound. It wasn’t the light breeze whispering among the boulders that littered the mountainside, it wasn’t the exfoliation of a rock contracting as it cooled from the previous day’s heat and it wasn’t the sound of some stray animal. She was unsure what she had heard but it was none of those.
She released the horses, who made no effort to escape or even stray but stood dumbly, heads down as though confused as to what to do next. She lay flat, making certain she would not be outlined against the starry sky.
This time she identified the sound: horses slowly walking down from the Citadelle above. The muffled creak of leather against leather told her these were not grazing animals but saddled mounts, presumably with riders. And they were definitely coming her way, because there was no other way to go.
She could hear voices now, words she could not understand, but their inflection indicated surprise, perhaps at finding two saddled, riderless horses in the middle of the precarious trail between fortress and forest. A beam of a flashlight ran across the ground, missing her by inches. The next time she might not be so lucky.
And there would be a next time, probably in the following few seconds if the tone of curiosity she heard in the voices increased. If these men were guards of some sort, the two riderless horses would not be ignored.
She reached out, preparatory to moving as far down the slope as she could before the sheer drop-off. Her hand touched something solid, rough. A large outcropping of rock. She belly-wriggled toward it. Looking up, she saw two figures, half horse, half man, dark cutouts against stars beginning to dim as they were devoured by the moon’s brighter light. She could not be certain but she thought she saw what might be a weapon slung across each man’s shoulder.
She made out each careful step of the two newly arrived horses. She even imagined she could detect the impact of each hoof on the stony surface. They had to be within feet of her. The light breeze brought her the smell of horse sweat and damp leather. Could she also feel the animals’ body heat on her skin?
Another beam of light swept the area, barely giving Gurt time enough to roll behind what she hoped was the
