snowdrift. Emerging covered in snow but still crouched low, he was greeted by a second burst of fire. Rounds plowed into the snow about him and thudded into the wood. He couldn't see his attacker, but the window frame gave him a point of reference. He would be in one or the other of the two lower corners unless he was an idiot or wearing stilts. At this stage of the game the Bear wouldn't have been surprised by either possibility. Further muzzle flashes located the sniper in the left lower corner. Looking like a giant snowman, the Bear moved into firing position. He fired the. 44 Magnum four times.
The heavy hand-loaded slugs smashed through the wooden walls of the old farmhouse. Two rounds missed and shattered a jar of mung beans and a container of pickled cabbage. The remaining two slugs hit Hansel in the neck and the lower jaw. The first round smashed his spinal column, killing him instantly. The second round nearly decapitated him.
Hearing Hansel's warning shout, followed shortly by automatic weapons fire, Gretel, who had been holding the petrified Vreni at the edge of the choust while Sylvie adjusted the rope, immediately let go of his victim and jumped through the hose onto the stove and into the living room below. He ran into the kitchen toward Hansel, arriving just in time to see his friend's head blown off. Irrational with shock, Gretel skidded across the blood-slicked wooden floor, flung open the kitchen door and fired a long, low, scything burst into the darkness.
Vreni, released by her captor but still bound hand and foot and blindfolded, tottered at the edge of the choust. Fascinated, Sylvie watched as her terrified victim swayed back and forth and then, too weakened from stress to recover her balance, dropped with sickening sound into the hole.
The rope snapped taut.
The old farmhouse was set into the natural slope of the mountain. The plan was that Fitzduane, being younger and fitter than the Bear, would make his approach from the second-floor level. As he remembered it, an entrance there led into a workroom and then into the bedroom. It was possible to go from the living room to the bedroom either by going through the choust or by leaving the house through the kitchen and going up a steep path to the other entrance on the second floor.
When the firing started, Fitzduane, whose climb up the hill had taken longer than expected, was not yet in position. He debated giving supporting fire from where he was, but the overhang of the roof protected the terrorists inside the house from his line of fire, and he didn't think ineffective noise alone would do much good. The reassuring roar of the Bear's Magnum made up his mind, and he concentrated on trying to get to the second-floor door to take the terrorists from two sides. There was a lull in the terrorists' fire; then it increased. It was hard to be sure, but now there seemed to be at least two automatic weapons firing at the woodshed behind which the Bear was sheltering.
Fitzduane had misjudged his angle of approach and was too far up the slope. He slithered down inelegantly toward the workroom door. No window overlooked it, which made him feel better. He tried the handle. It was locked. He waited for the next burst of firing and opened up with the dead terrorist's Skorpion at the lock surround. The silencer killed most of the noise, but the door still held. He cursed the miserable. 32 rounds.
He fired again – this time a long burst – and the lock gave way. He darted into the room and rolled to gain cover, changing the clip and recocking the weapon as soon as he stopped. He switched the fire selector from automatic to single shot. At a cyclic rater of 750 rounds a minute, he didn't think a single twenty-round magazine was going to do him much good any other way. He tried not to think of what might have happened to Vreni. The terrorists were still there, so there was a chance they hadn't finished their business. There was a chance she was alive. He had to believe she was alive.
There was more shooting from below him, and then a round smashed through the outer wall beside him, flinging splinters into his face and causing him to drop to the floor.
'Terrific,' he muttered to himself. A virtually simultaneous boom identified the shooter as the Bear. That was always the risk with combining high-powered weapons and strategies of encirclement. You ended up shooting each other.
He wiped the blood from his face. The splinters stung, but the injuries weren't serious. He inched forward until he came to the bedroom door. Using the long handle of a sweeping brush he'd found in the workroom, he lifted the latch and opened the door very slowly.
He could see nothing but a faint patch of night sky through the window. He listened for any sounds of breathing or movement from the room, but there were none. He mentally tossed a coin and then flicked on the flashlight for a brief look around the bedroom.
It was as he remembered it, but none of that registered. All he could grasp was one brief glimpse of Vreni hanging – and then darkness. For long seconds Fitzduane fought to retain his sanity as one hanging face dissolved into another in an endless kaleidoscope of horror. The words of the pathologist in Cork – it seemed an age ago – came back to him: “He might still have been alive…”
He moved forward instinctively, keeping under cover, and snatched one more brief look with his flashlight. Her lower body was concealed by the choust through which she had dropped. Her head and torso were still in the bedroom. Fitzduane felt the last of his hope drain out of him.
He grasped Vreni by the shoulders, hoisted her body out of the hole, and rested her legs on the bedroom floor. With some of the weight now relieved, he was able to remove the noose from her neck. Her body was limp and totally unresponsive, but he could do no more for the moment. He should try artificial respiration, but there was a gunfight going on below him, and the Bear was in harm's way. He lay on the floor and peered down through the choust into the sitting room below. He could just make out one figure silhouetted against the window. The Bear was still firing from outside, but Fitzduane knew he must be running low on ammunition.
Fitzduane considered dropping down through the choust but decided that there were easier ways of committing suicide. He'd be in a crossfire from the two terrorists and in the Bear's line of fire – and he'd have to leave Vreni. There was only one practical alternative: he'd have to fire down through the choust. The angle was awkward, but by using his left hand to balance himself, he was able to fire the Skorpion with his right hand, pistol fashion.
The silhouette at the window jerked when it was hit and then vanished below the window ledge into the darkness. Any illusions that the wound was serious were shattered when a burst of flame spat from the hole. Rounds whined off the cast iron of the stove and embedded themselves in the wooden walls and ceiling.
There was a smashing of glass and the sound of a body dropping outside, then another. Fitzduane looked out the bedroom window and saw a figure running toward the small barn located at the end of the track farthest away from the village. It had sounded as if both terrorists had jumped out of the ground-floor window when they discovered they were being fired upon from both sides – so where was the second one?
Wood splintered, and the front door was smashed off its hinges to hit the floor with a reverberating crash. There was a shout from below. Fitzduane looked down through the choust to see the Bear grinning up at him, looking pleased with himself. He held up the Magnum.
'Seems to work,' he said, 'but if I'm going to travel around with you, I'd better learn to carry more ammunition. I'm out.'
'Your timing's off,' said Fitzduane. 'One's still in close; the other legged it for the barn. I don't think peace has broken out yet.'
A round black object came hurtling through the broken living room window and rolled across the wooden floor. Fitzduane flung himself away from the choust.
There was a vivid flash, and a wave of heat blasted up through the hole, knocking Fitzduane backward. The hanging rope, severed by flying shrapnel, came tumbling down, engulfing him in its coils and invoking an instant feeling of revulsion, as if the rope itself were contaminated. He disentangled himself and crawled to the side of the window. He looked around the frame cautiously and could see a figure zigzagging toward the barn. He fired repeatedly, but he was still shaken from the shock of the explosion – and then the gun was empty.
He ducked down behind the windowsill as return fire coming from the barn bracketed his position. No ammunition. A bloody unhealthy situation that was heading toward terminal unless he could com up with some answers. Think.
He remembered something from his last visit: the incongruity of Peter Haag's army rifle hanging in the bedroom. He fetched it. It was a substantial weapon compared with the Skorpion, but not of much use unless he
