by Iles, Greg
Smuts waved his hand to the Vulcan gunner. The Afrikaner donned his targeting goggles and depressed two foot pedals. With a deep hydraulic hum the entire turret rotated to face the airstrip.
Inside the approaching Yak-42, Major Ilyas Karami stood behind the anxious pilot and listened indifferently to Smuts’s flint-edged threats.
“Do they have anti-aircraft guns, Major?” the pilot asked.
“Shut up!” Karami snapped. “You know what to say.”
The pilot picked up his mike. “This is Air Zimbabwe Flight 132,” he said in a quavering voice. “We are in distress. We have an avionics malfunction. Do you read?”
“Major Karami,” crackled Smuts’s voice. “This is your final warning. Turn back now or be shot out of the sky.”
“Your mother fucks goats!” Karami bellowed.
“He knows who you are!” cried the pilot. “The mission’s been compromised! We’re unarmed! We must turn back!”
Suddenly a brilliant line of tracer fire flashed up through the grey clouds. It passed high over the nose of the jet, then swung back and forth, searching out the airborne intruder.
“Allah protect us!” the pilot wailed, instinctively beginning an evasive manoeuver. He had flown MiG fighters in combat, but to sit helpless in an unarmed airliner was a new and terrifying experience for him.
Karami pulled a pistol from his hip holster and laid the barrel against the pilot’s temple. “Land this whore!” he shouted. “Now!”
“Where?” shrieked the pilot.
“I see the flares!” the copilot yelled. “Dive!”
Steeling his nerves, the pilot banked sharply and headed down toward a line of flares laid by Jalloud’s “bodyguards.” It would be a belly-flop landing, but he didn’t care. Never in his life had he wanted so badly to get on the ground.
Smuts cursed as he saw the chain of green starbursts light up the centre line of the runway. “Shoot out the flares!” he screamed. “They can’t land without them!”
“My goggles are going crazy!” the gunner protested. “I can’t see a bloody thing!”
“Take them off! Shoot!”
The roar of the Vulcan blotted out everything. Hess covered his ears and shouted something, but no one heard him. The gunner made a valiant effort to extinguish the flares, but only succeeded in knocking a few out of line. The main effect of the Vulcan was to rip the surface of the newly laid asphalt to pieces.
Suddenly Hess gasped in horror. Dropping out of the sky like a great prehistoric bird was the Libyan Yak-42. It roared past the turret in profile as it fell earthward.
“There they are!” Smuts yelled. “Fire! Fire!”
The gunner depressed his trigger. Scarlet tracer rounds arced from the Vulcan’s flaming barrels, reaching out for the black apparition …
Suddenly the turret’s elevator door hissed open. Smuts turned in disbelief, then dived protectively across Hess’s wheelchair. Inside the elevator—trapped on the floor with his back against the wall—was the surviving Libyan assassin. He screamed a curse, raised his Uzi and fired. Bullets sprayed wildly throughout the confined space, hammering the polycarbonate windows and tearing through the faceplates of sensitive electronic gear. One of the South African technicians took a round in the back of the head and fell dead over his console. The radar technician managed to draw his pistol and get off three shots before a ricochet caught him in the neck. And then there was silence. The Libyan had run out of ammunition.
Smuts heaved himself off of Hess, picked up the dead radar man’s pistol, and shot the Libyan twice through the face. It took him three more seconds to realize the true significance of the silence. The Vulcan had stopped firing! When Smuts whirled he saw why. With no goggles to protect him, his gunner had been blinded by flying glass. Worse, the Vulcan’s electronic targeting system had been damaged beyond repair!
“The prime minister has been hit again!” Dr Sabri cried.
Smuts took no notice of the physicist. He darted to the broad window. The Libyan jet had landed safely! Through his field glasses he watched fifty commandos spill onto the tarmac. He forced himself to stay calm. Soon the Libyans would be at the edge of the shallow bolo that surrounded the house. Inside the killing zone.
He dropped his field glasses and jerked the bleeding gunner from the Vulcan’s operating chair, then climbed in himself. He put his eyes to the visual aiming goggles and scanned the airstrip. Beneath a wide door in the rear of the Yak-42 he saw Arabs lowering some type of artillery piece from the plane by means of winches. Smuts grinned like a demon and opened fire.
The armour-piercing bullets streaked across the Wash and raced toward the plane. But just as the tracer beam reached the labouring Arabs, Smuts released the trigger. Destroying the jet might not be the smartest option in these circumstances, he realized. With no means of escape, the Libyans might fight twice as fiercely to take the house. As he watched the Arabs beneath the plane, Smuts noticed something sitting about ten metres behind the Yak-42’s tail. It was a pickup truck. What the hell is that for? he wondered.
Then he knew. They’d brought the truck to tow the big gun and to haul their stolen bomb from the house to the plane! Smuts jammed his thumb down on the Vulcan’s trigger. It took longer than normal to acquire the Toyota using visual aiming only, but once he did, the uranium-tipped slugs chewed the Toyota into scrap metal in seconds. The gas tank fire-balled and set aflame three Libyans sheltering beneath the plane.
Smuts climbed out of the Vulcan and went to the panel of switches that controlled his Claymore mines. His only real worry was the heavy gun. He would wait until the soldiers got it away from the plane; then he would destroy men and machine together. He pressed a button on the console and spoke crisply: “Bunker gunners, prepare to fire at will.”
He turned to Hess. “We’d better raise the shields, sir. We can’t risk even one man getting into the basement complex.”
“The prime minister is dead!” howled Dr Sabri from the floor.
Hess rolled his wheelchair over to the bloodied mound of robes lying near the base of the Vulcan. Prime Minister Jalloud—minus the lower part of his face—stared blankly upward at the steel roof of the turret. Two of the Libyan’s bullets had found him.
“The shields, sir,” Smuts repeated, reaching for the appropriate button.
“Wait!” Hess ordered. “Frau Apfel is still in the outer triangle.”
Smuts grimaced with forbearance. “As are Lieutenant Luhr, Linah, the medical staff, the rest of the servants, and the Jew. Sir, we cannot afford to wait.”
The old man’s frantic eyes searched the closed-circuit television monitors above their heads. Although the cameras showed most of the outer rooms, he saw no sign of Ilse.
“But … Pieter, she saved my life! If we shut her outside…”
“The Libyans will never reach the house,” Smuts assured him, his voice taut. “But we must raise the shields, just in case.”
“Very well,” Hess said thickly. “Raise the shields.”
Smuts pressed the button. Throughout Horn House, black anodized metal shields rose up from the floor, blocking every door, staircase, and window leading from the outer wings to the central complex. The Afrikaner sighed with satisfaction.
Suddenly an explosion rocked the turret. Leaping to the window in alarm, Smuts heard the distinctive crump of a mortar. Seconds later a round fell just short of the outer wall of the house. Two more crashed through the roof of the west wing. Horn House was on fire. As if urged forward by the flames, twenty Libyan commandos started across the killing zone at a fast run.
“Damn you, Karami!” Smuts shouted. He climbed back into the Vulcan and opened up on the Libyan mortar position. He quickly silenced one, but a replacement immediately took its place. After forty seconds of continuous firing, the Vulcan’s drum magazine ran out. Smuts screamed at one of his soldiers: “Hurry, man! Load the fucking gun!”
While the Libyan machine guns chattered and the mortar shells rained down on the
outer walls, Smuts scanned the dark rim of the bowl. Just as he started to look away from the horizon, he saw the help he had desperately hoped for. A hundred metres southeast of the Libyans, a squat black shape stood silhouetted against the lesser shadow of the falling night. A pair of halogen headlamps winked once, twice, then died. The black shape crept slowly forward, hesitated again. By God, that’s Graaff, Smuts thought with elation.
“It’s Major Graaff!” he cried. “He made it!” Smuts hammered his fists against the Vulcan in triumph. If he knew Graaff, that armoured car was only the spearhead of a veritable army!
“Drum loaded!” shouted the man beneath the Vulcan. Smuts fired a celebratory burst into the darkening sky, then he opened up on the Libyans with a vengeance.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Poised on the ridge above Smuts’s killing zone, Hauer watched the burst of spectacular tracer fire lance up into the sky from the observatory turret.
“That’s it!” he shouted. “They think Major Graaff sent us! Go!”
“Wait!” General Steyn called to the Armscor’s driver. “Look at that tracer fire, Hauer. That’s a rotary cannon. This vehicle’s tough, but they could blow us to pieces in seconds with that gun.”
Hauer ripped his respirator aside. “General, you gave me tactical command of this operation!”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you sacrifice my men without any hope of success.”
“‘They think we’re here to help them! We’ve got a clear path to the house!”
General Steyn shook his head. “We need reinforcements.”
Hauer stared in disbelief. He had come too far to be stopped here by one man’s lack of nerve. He struggled to keep his voice steady. “General, my only son is down there. And the longer we wait, the greater the chance that he will be executed. If I must, I’ll go down there alone and on foot.”
“You won’t have to, Captain.” Gadi Abrams’s pledge was punctuated by the chunk of his assault rifle being cocked. He did not point it at anyone, but the threat was plain enough. General Steyn’s hand moved toward the pistol at his hip. Gadi ripped his gas mask off and gave the general a look of open contempt. “Israel fights,” he said quietly. “Germany fights. What of South Africa?”
General Steyn’s red face whitened. He knew he was being manipulated, but in front of his men the Israeli’s challenge was simply too personal to ignore. He leaned forward into the driver’s compartment and shouted, “Over the top!”
Hans and Ilse dashed down the smoky corridor with towels held over their faces. Horn House was burning, and the inner complex was sealed against them. They had searched nearly every room in the outer triangle of the house, yet they had seen no sign of Stern. Only panicked servants and their children. Hans carried an attache case in his right hand; they had brought it from Horn’s study.
“Hurry!” Ilse called. “It’s the only room we haven’t checked!”
As they neared the hospital unit, she wondered why she had skipped it before. But she knew: the nauseating memory of being strapped to the X-ray table had simply been too horrible to face again. Now she had no choice. She felt a jolt of terror as she eased open the infirmary door. The room was dark, but the smell of alcohol hit her immediately. Signalling Hans to follow, she crept through the shadows toward the interior doors. A crack of light shone beneath one of them.
Halfway to the door, she froze. The sound had stopped her. The terrifying buzz cut short by the low, metallic clang. Ilse closed her eyes in remembered terror, then, opened them again. She padded over to a countertop and felt her way along it. “Here,” she whispered, closing her hand around the base of a heavy microscope. Hans set down the briefcase and took the scope. Ilse turned the doorknob as quietly as she could.
As she pushed on the metal door, the sound came again. Buzz … clang. In the eerie amber glow of the X-ray machine’s dials Ilse saw a blond man standing with his back to her. He was peering through the thick bubble window in the lead radiation screen.
“Are your balls getting warm yet, Jew?” the man called. He cackled wildly.
Ilse gasped. The figure whirled.
“You,” Hans murmured.
Luhr wore his police uniform, the green trousers tucked into his spit-polished boots. He looked first at Hans, then at Ilse. He laughed derisively. “You stubborn Arschloch. Don’t you know when to quit?” He dropped the cable trigger. This time Funk isn’t here to stop me.”
“He’s the one, Hans,” Ilse said hoarsely. “The one who cut the policeman’s throat in Berlin.”
“That’s right,” Luhr said with a laugh. “Just like slaughtering a fucking pig.”
“Steuben,” said Hans, his voice trembling. He felt his throat constrict with unspeakable hatred. He looked down at the microscope in his hand, then let it crash to the floor.
“Frau Apfel? ” cried a weak voice. “Is that you?”
Ilse darted around the lead shield. Jonas Stern lay pale and bloodied beneath the leather straps that had bound her just two days ago. “Hans!” she cried. “Help me!”
Hans heard nothing. He watched Luhr’s lips tighten into a thin, pale line as he dropped his shoulders like a boxer and moved out from the X-ray machine. Hans’s nerves tingled like live wires. Luhr feinted with his right hand and kicked Hans high in the chest.
Hans took the blow, staggered, steadied himself. Luhr jabbed with his left hand. Hans did nothing to block it. He felt his right cheek tear, but he ignored the pain. A crashing roundhouse struck him on the side of the head. He absorbed the shock, but this time he raised his fists and moved forward. Backpedalling away, Luhr fired off a right that drilled into Hans’s eye socket.
Hans roared in pain, but he shook the tears out of his eyes and lunged blindly forward. As Luhr pivoted to evade him, he felt his back collide with the faceplate of the X-ray machine. At that instant Hans lashed out. His fist moved from his side to the bridge of Luhr’s nose without seeming to cross the space between. One moment Luhr’s face was pale with fury, the next it was covered in blood. Hans had broken his nose. Luhr screamed in agony, then tried to bull his way out of the corner. Hans stood him up against the machine and hit him three times fast in the solar plexus. Luhr sank to the floor.
Tasting blood in his mouth, Hans picked up the heavy microscope and held it high above his head. His arm shivered from the weight. Luhr lay gulping for air at his feet. One blow would crush Luhr’s skull like an eggshell. “This is for Weiss,” he muttered.
“Wait!” rasped a male voice.
Hans turned slowly, the microscope still high above his head. He saw a tall, wiry man wearing sweat-soaked trousers and an undershirt leaning unsteadily on Ilse’s shoulder. “Not that way,” said Stern, his voice strangely flat.
Slowly Hans lowered his arm as he turned and stared at the tanned stranger. The beaked nose … weathered, hawklike face. “I’ve seen you,” Hans said.
“Yes, Sergeant,” Stern replied. “You have. Now pick that man up and put him on the table.”
“We don’t have time for this!” Ilse cried. “The house is burning! We have to find a way through those shields! A few exposures won’t even hurt him!”
“Put that animal on the table!”
Hans stunned Luhr with a kick to the head, then he hoisted him onto his shoulder and hauled him around to the X-ray table. As soon as he had dumped him there, Ilse strapped him down with the leather restraints.
“Get out!” Stern barked. “Both of you!”
Hans watched fascinated as the Israeli lifted the broken microscope from the floor and smashed it down onto the cable trigger Luhr had dropped. “Shut off the power,” Stern commanded.
Ilse found the ON/OFF switch and flipped it. Stern fiddled with the tangled mess of wires in his big hands for a few moments, then dropped it and stepped up to the bubble window in the shield. “Turn the power back on.”
Ilse obeyed. The entire room seemed to vibrate for four seconds; then it went still. Luhr’s scream of terror rent the acrid a
ir. Again the X-ray unit fired. The indescribable buzz… clang… chilled Ilse’s heart. Stern had permanently closed the circuit in the cable trigger. The X-ray tube would continue to fire, recharge, and fire again until someone finally shut off the power or a fuse burned out. Luhr shrieked like a man trapped in a pit of snakes.
Hans looked up at Stern’s lined face. He saw nothing written there. Not satisfaction, not hatred. Nothing at all.
“Let’s go,” said Stern, pulling his eyes away from Luhr’s struggling body.
Ilse held up the black briefcase Hans had been carrying. “We’ve got the Spandau papers. We found them in Horn’s study. The other book, too.”
“The Zinoviev notebook?” Ilse nodded. “Everything.”
“Good girl.” Stern grabbed her arm and hustled her into the hall. Hans backed slowly out of the room, his eyes still glued to the bubble window in the lead shield. The X-ray machine continued to fire at four-second intervals.
Four hundred metres of open ground separated the ridge of the bowl from Horn House. The Armscor had covered barely a hundred when a fierce hammering assaulted Hauer’s ears. They were taking fire from the Libyan machine-gun positions on the ridge behind them. Captain Barnard was sitting in the Armscor’s shotgun seat. Hauer grabbed his shoulder.
“Can you raise the tower on that radio, Captain?”
“I can try.”
“Do it! Tell them to give us cover!”
Pulling off his helmet and respirator, Bernard began working through the frequencies on the radio. Hauer glanced back into the crew compartment. At the Armscor’s firing slits, the black-clad team of commandos worked their R5 carbines like men on an assembly line. One man’s head and shoulders were thrust into the tiny turret mounted atop the Armscor; he swivelled the .30 caliber machine gun between the Libyan positions with deadly accuracy. Yet Libyan bullets still pounded the vehicle’s armour.
Hauer turned again and watched Horn House growing larger in the Armscor’s reinforced windshield: 250 metres and closing.