We waited for it to get better, and when it did, we decided to finish the climb.)
“Mitten in der Nacht? Das glaube ich nicht. Komment Sie mit!” (In the middle of the night? I don’t think so. Come with me!)
The man had been steadily closing in on her. She wrapped the rope twice around her left hand for security.
“Ich habe die richtige Ausrustung. Schau!” (I have the right equipment, look!)
With that, Claudia grabbed one of the ice axes with her right hand, spun to her left, and with a snap, let it fly. The ax hit the man square in the chest. His throat let out a dry rasp of a death rattle as his winter white combat fatigues went red with the gush of blood pouring from his body.
“I don’t know if you can hear me,” said Claudia over her headset as she began pulling furiously on the rope, “but I’m not alone up here. We’ve got to get moving.”
Claudia was able to pull in several more meters of rope and thought surely he was almost there when the snow around her exploded in a hail of gunfire. There wasn’t time to warn Scot. If she stayed where she was, she was a dead woman. She reacted with the speed of a cat who’d stepped onto a hot stove.
Tying off the rope on one of the anchor pitons, Claudia rolled hard to her left toward the shelter of a small snowbank. The bullets fell like a hailstorm as the second sentry ran toward her with his weapon blazing. Claudia fought to pull the gloves from her hands. She needed to remove the pistol from inside her suit. The gloves came free and next was the tape that covered her zipper.
The sentry was getting closer. She could hear his boots crunching in the snow as he rushed in her direction, continuing to fire. Claudia pulled part of the tape away and then yanked down on the zipper. It opened a couple of inches and then stopped. What’s the problem? Looking down, Claudia saw the tape had become caught inside the zipper. Damn it! The opening wasn’t large enough for her to get her hand in and retrieve her gun. She pulled frantically. Come on…come on!
The man was almost all the way up the slope and in only a matter of seconds would have her perfectly in his sights. Claudia kept pulling on the zipper, then remembered her knife. She could cut a hole in the suit and pull her pistol out that way. She unsheathed the blade, pulled the material away from her body, and plunged it in. She ripped in a downward stroke and was about to reach in for her gun when she saw the sentry appear at the top of the slope. She was too late.
As the man stood in front of her, his weapon rising to fire, it was preceded by a little red dot. Laser sight. Claudia watched helplessly as the dot traced up her leg, then her chest, where she lost track of it before it flashed once in her eyes and then came to rest on her forehead.
Suddenly, the sentry’s body tensed and a red dot appeared on his own forehead. For a moment, Claudia didn’t understand, then the sentry’s dot darkened and began to drip. Blood!
Looking to her right, she saw Scot precariously perched half over the lip of the crest. He was still aiming the silenced Makarov at the sentry, who slumped to his knees and fell face first into the snow, a lake of blood forming beneath his head.
Claudia ran to Harvath as he hoisted himself onto the crest and unslung the assault rifle. For several moments he didn’t move and didn’t speak. He just lay in the snow, staring upward.
Finally, as Claudia leaned over him, he spoke. “Wow, talk about a cliff-hanger, eh?”
“Are you okay?”
Scot rubbed his throat and continued to breathe heavily. “I’ll probably be wearing turtlenecks for a while, but I’ll live. How about you?”
“Scared, but I’ll live too. You know that’s the second time you’ve done that?”
“Done what?”
“Saved my life.”
“You pulled me out of the water and off this mountain, so I’d say we’re even,” said Scot.
“Speaking of mountains, I thought you said you were a good climber.”
“I used to be. I don’t know what’s happened. Maybe I’m getting old.”
In most other circumstances, Claudia would have laughed at that. Instead, she just looked down at him, so happy he was alive.
“What happened to your suit?” said Scot referring to the slash Claudia had torn with her knife. “Were you hit?”
“No. I did it myself.”
“What were you going to do? Distract the guy by flashing him?”
“Very funny. I guess I can stop worrying about you now. You’re one hundred percent intact, bad sense of humor and all. Should we check the bodies?”
“Yeah, I guess my little nap time’s over. Where there’s two sentries, there’s bound to be more. We’ve gotta get moving before they figure out we’re here.”
“If you want to rest a few moments more, I’ll check them.”
“No, you take the one I just shot. I think I’d better take the other guy. He looks like he might have an ax to grind with you. Look for anything that might tell us how to get inside.”
They searched the sentries, patting down all of their pockets.
“Anything?” Scot asked.
“No. Just cigarettes. Nothing else useful.”
“My guy’s still warm, like he hasn’t been outside for that long. How about yours?”
“Same thing, I think.”
“Good, they probably just came on duty. Hopefully no one will be expecting them to check in for a while.”
“But this one has a radio. What if he called in?”
“There’s nothing we can do about it anyway. Let’s get going. Grab his weapon. You know how to use it?”
“H amp;K MP5. It’s a common weapon for the Swiss police. We don’t normally use silencers, but I can handle it.”
“Good, let’s move.”
Claudia pulled the weapon from the dead sentry and rolled him to the edge of the crest. Harvath counted to three, and they pushed both sentries over and threw the climbing gear along with them. They kicked up as much snow as they could to cover the blood and headed down the slope.
77
The trail was well marked, even in winter. It twisted and turned as it wove upward around high outcroppings of rock. After a final bend, Scot and Claudia came upon a small ridge that sloped downward, and in the distance she could just make out the church.
“That’s it,” she whispered into her headset.
“Excellent. Let’s see if anyone’s expecting us.”
The pair lay down in the snow, and Scot affixed the nightscope to the assault rifle. He scanned the ridge and the area surrounding the little church. While Scot did that, Claudia emptied the nine-millimeter Parabellum ammunition from two of her SIG clips and loaded up the H amp;K submachine gun.
“It looks quiet. Doesn’t seem like anyone’s raised the alarm,” said Harvath, rising to a crouch. “Follow me.”
He picked a careful path, off the trail, down to the small plateau that held the church. Several times he raised the SG551 to his shoulder and peered through the scope, scanning the area to make sure they were not walking into a trap. So far, so good.
They reached the back of the church, and Harvath tried to look in through the stained-glass windows. It was completely dark inside. He signaled Claudia to stay low, creep around the other side, and meet him in front. He slung the rifle over his shoulder and removed the Makarov from inside his snowsuit. Cautiously, he crept around his side of the building. By the time he got to the front, Claudia was already waiting for him.
“Anybody home?” he whispered.
“Some footprints in the snow. They look new.”
