colonel, the sun on her face.
“For old times’ sake,” Blok said, and he leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the cheek.
“Until later, Jerek,” Chesna answered, regaining some of her composure. She got into the car and Mouse closed the door, then went around to open the door for Michael. Blok followed on his heels while Boots stood a few yards away.
“It’s been a pleasure, Baron,” Blok said. Michael got into the Mercedes, but Blok held the door. Wilhelm was sliding behind the wheel and putting the key into the ignition. “I hope you and Chesna will enjoy the future you’ve chosen.” He glanced up toward the courtyard entrance. Michael had already heard it: the low growl of a vehicle approaching across the pontoon bridge. “Oh, this I forgot!” Blok smiled, his silver teeth gleaming. “Sandler’s servant got control of the train. They found Sandler’s body, too. The poor man; an animal had already gotten to him. Now explain this to me, Baron: how could someone like you, a pampered civilian with no combat experience, have killed Harry Sandler? Unless, of course, you’re not who you seem to be?” His hand went to the inside of his black SS jacket, as a truck carrying a dozen Nazi soldiers entered the courtyard portal.
Michael had no time to play the offended baron; he shoved his foot into the pit of the colonel’s stomach and knocked him backward to the paving stones. As Blok fell, a pistol was already in his hand. Mouse saw the glint of the Luger’s barrel, aiming at the baron. Something inside him roared, and he stepped into the line of fire and kicked at Blok’s gun hand.
There was a sharp crack! as the pistol went off, and in the next instant Blok’s hand had been knocked open and the Luger spun away.
Boots was coming. Michael raised up out of the car, grabbed Mouse, and hauled him in. “Go!” he shouted at Wilhelm, and the chauffeur sank his foot to the floorboard. As the Mercedes lunged forward, Michael slammed his door shut and a hobnailed boot knocked a dent in its metal the size of a dinner plate.
“Get the gun! Get the gun!” Blok was yelling as he scrambled to his feet. Boots ran for the Luger and scooped it up.
As Wilhelm tore the Mercedes across the courtyard, a bullet hit the rear windshield and showered Michael, Chesna, and Mouse with glass. “Stop them!” Blok commanded the soldiers. “Stop that car!” More shots were fired. The left rear tire blew. The front windshield shattered. And then the Mercedes was crossing the pontoon bridge, its engine screaming and steam spouting from a bullet hole in the hood. Michael looked back, saw several of the soldiers running after them as the truck turned around in the courtyard. Rifles and submachine guns fired, and the Mercedes shuddered under the blows. The car reached the opposite bank, but the right rear tire exploded and now flames were licking up around the hood. “The engine’s going to blow!” Wilhelm shouted as he watched the oil- gauge needle plummet and the temperature-gauge needle riot past the red line. The rear end was slewing back and forth, and he could hold the wheel no longer. The Mercedes went off the road and into the forest, angling down an incline and crashing through thick underbrush. Wilhelm fought the brakes, and the Mercedes grazed past an oak tree and came to rest amid a stand of evergreens.
“Everyone out!” Wilhelm told them. He opened the driver’s door, grasped its arm rest, and popped a latch beneath it. The door’s leather interior covering fell away, exposing a compartment that held a submachine gun and three ammunition clips. As Michael got out of the car and pulled Mouse along with him, Chesna opened a compartment beneath the rear seat that yielded a Luger. “This way!” Wilhelm said, motioning them farther down the incline into thicker tangles of vegetation. They started into it, Chesna leading the way, and about forty seconds later the Mercedes exploded, raining pieces of metal and glass through the trees. Michael smelled blood. He looked at his hands and found a thick smear of red on the fingers of his right hand. And then he looked back over his shoulder, and saw that Mouse had fallen to his knees.
Blok’s shot, Michael realized. Just below Mouse’s heart, the shirt was soaked with crimson. Mouse’s face was pallid, and glistened with sweat.
Michael knelt beside him. “Can you stand up?” He heard his voice quaver.
Mouse made a gasping noise, his eyes damp. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll try.” He did, and got all the way up before his knees caved in. Michael caught him before he fell, and supported him.
“What’s wrong?” Chesna had stopped and come back to them. “Is he-” She silenced, because she saw the blood on the little man’s shirt.
“They’re coming!” Wilhelm said. “They’re right behind us!” He held the submachine gun at hip level and clicked off the safety as his gaze scanned the woods. They could hear the voices of the soldiers, getting closer.
“Oh no.” Mouse blinked. “Oh no, I’ve messed myself up. Some valet I turned out to be, huh?”
“We’ll have to leave him!” Wilhelm said. “Come on!”
“I’m not leaving my friend.”
“Don’t be a fool!” Wilhelm looked at Chesna. “I’m going, whether he comes along or not.” He turned and sprinted into the forest, away from the advancing soldiers.
Chesna peered up the incline. She could see four or five soldiers coming down through the brush. “Whatever you’re going to do,” she told Michael, “you’d better do it fast.”
He did. He picked Mouse up across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, and he and Chesna hurried into the shadows of the trees. “This way! Over here!” they heard one of the soldiers shouting to his companions. A burst of submachine gun fire came from ahead, followed by a number of rifle shots. There was a shout: “We’ve got one of them!”
Chesna crouched against a tree trunk, and Michael stood behind her. She pointed, but Michael’s eyes had already seen: in a clearing just ahead, two soldiers with rifles stood over Wilhelm’s writhing body. Chesna lifted her pistol, took careful aim, and squeezed the trigger. Her target staggered back, a hole at his heart, and fell. The second soldier fired wildly into the trees and started to run for cover. Chesna, her face grim, shot the man in the hip and crippled him. As he fell, her next bullet went through his throat. Then she was on her feet, a professional killer in a sleek black dress, and she ran to Wilhelm’s side. Michael followed, quickly making the same judgment as Chesna: Wilhelm had been shot in the stomach and the chest, and there was no hope for him. The man moaned and writhed, his eyes squeezed shut with agony.
“I’m sorry,” Chesna whispered, and she placed the Luger’s barrel against Wilhelm’s skull, shielded her face with her other hand, and delivered the mercy bullet.
She picked up the submachine gun and pushed the Luger down into Michael’s waistband. Its heat scorched his belly. Chesna’s tawny eyes were wet and rimmed with red, but her face was calm and composed. One of her black high heels had broken, and she kicked the shoe off and threw its partner into the woods. “Let’s go,” she said tersely, and started off. Michael, with Mouse across his shoulders, kept pace with her though his thigh wound had opened again. His exhaustion was held at bay only by the realization of what would happen to them once they fell into the Gestapo’s embrace. Any hope of finding the meaning of Iron Fist and communicating that secret to the Allies would be lost.
There was a movement on the left: the glint of sunlight on a belt buckle. Chesna whirled and sprayed a burst of fire at the soldier, who dropped to his belly in the leaves. “Over here!” the soldier shouted, and fired two bullets that thunked into the trees as Chesna and Michael changed direction and ran. Something came flying through the woods at them, hit a tree trunk at their backs, and bounced off. Three seconds later there was a ringing blast that knifed their eardrums, the concussion sending leaves flying. Dense white smoke billowed up. A smoke grenade, Michael realized, marking their position for the other soldiers. Chesna kept going, shielding her face as they tore through a tangle of thorns. Michael heard shouts from behind them, on their left and right. A bullet whizzed past his head like an enraged hornet. Chesna, her face streaked with thorn slashes, stopped in her tracks in underbrush near the edge of the road. Two more trucks had pulled off, and were disgorging their cargo of soldiers. Chesna motioned for Michael to back up, then she guided him in another direction. They struggled up a hillside through dense green foliage, then down again into a ravine.
Three soldiers appeared at the top, silhouetted against the sun. Chesna fired her weapon, knocked two of the men down, and the third fled. Another smoke grenade exploded on their right, the acrid white smoke flooding across the ravine. The hounds were closing in, Michael thought. He could sense them running from shadow to shadow, salivating as their gun sights trained in. Chesna ran along the bottom of the ravine, bruising her feet on stones but neither pausing nor registering pain. Michael was right behind her, the smoke swirling around them. Mouse was still breathing, but the back of Michael’s neck was damp with blood. The hollow crump of a third smoke grenade went off amid the trees to their left. Above the forest, dark banners of crows circled and screamed.
