The Windchime Legacy

by A. W. Mykel

  Justin touched the long, smooth, sightless barrel, tracing his finger back to the high-powered Redfield scope mounted on it. The stock of the weapon was a simple lightweight aluminum T bar, padded at the shoulder rest. The lightweight stock was fitted into a small detachable pistol-grip handle, just behind the guardless trigger.

  “What you’re looking at is one of the most accurate precision weapons ever made,” Striker said proudly. “I made it from a Winchester High Wall varmint rifle, chambered for six-millimeter cartridges. It was a stock model that I wildcatted myself some four years ago. That extra-heavy barrel gives super stiffness and won’t whip at all. When it comes to precision shooting, you can’t beat a well-made, carefully wildcatted varmint rig. This baby has all of the virtues of the varmint rig, but all the needed attributes for this profession as well. This weapon will break down completely in less than ten seconds. With the right scope and proper load, she’ll hit anything.

  “This particular scope is zeroed for four hundred yards. That means that it will strike dead on the crosshairs between three hundred and ninety and four hundred and twenty-five yards. At two hundred yards, she’ll print three inches high, and strike a foot low at five hundred. With our friend on the roof, it’s not so much a matter of hitting him as it is deciding where to place the shot. I’ll probably go for a head shot, and, with this weapon, it’ll be like hitting the side of a barn.

  “Normally, I’d try to take the target at between one hundred and two hundred yards, although I have taken some from as far away as nine hundred. From four hundred yards out, the sounds will never reach the perimeter area. They’ll be drowned in the city noise.

  “I’ll be using these cartridges. They’re mercury-tipped explosive bullets. I make all of my own loads, and a hit anywhere with one of these will score a kill,” Striker explained.

  (The mercury-tipped explosive bullet is a devastating device, which works by a simple principle. The bullet has a hole drilled down its center from either the tip or the base. A drop of mercury is put into the cavity and the bullet is carefully resealed. The drop of mercury occupies only a portion of the space and is flattened against the back of the cavity when the bullet is fired. When the bullet strikes home it is slowed down, but the heavy drop of mercury continues to move through the cavity at the original speed of the bullet and impacts with the tip, exploding it outward into the target. The power is awesome; the results final.)

  “How fast can you work that rifle? It’s only a single shot, and you have two targets,” Justin asked.

  “Only one target is important. The radio man will be too busy getting off a message when he sees you to notice that his friend on the other roof doesn’t have a head anymore. There’ll be plenty of time for him, after the primary target is taken care of. You just move your ass through the courtyard to the street.”

  “That’s where I come in,” said Fanning.

  “Right. Timing is critical here. The second your friend comes out of that building, you’ve got to blow in through the back of that perimeter. They’ll see you coming, so you’ve got to get to that curb at the same time he does with Chakhovsky. I can’t help you beyond that point, so you’re on your own. I’ll make my own way out.”

  They discussed the details of the operation following the break from the closed perimeter. It would be a foot race the rest of the way.

  Striker carefully broke down his weapon and packed the rest of his gear.

  At the precise minute called for in the plan, the modified Lear roared off of the runway in Reykjavik. They were going in.

  FOURTEEN

  The month following our loss at Stalingrad, we launched our last desperate attempt at victory. But it was not to be. We had fatally underestimated Russian reserve strength and mobilization capabilities. Command of the skies was no longer ours, and our supply lines were cut. The drive was slowed and stalled. In the summer-autumn of 1943, our dream of conquest came to an end. The long retreat home was begun along a path made red with German blood.

  Entry No. 23 from the partially

  recovered Wolf Journal

  Friday morning, Paris: This was the day Dmitri Chakhovsky was to be taken out. There was nothing that Chakhovsky could do, except to sit tight and wait. It was all up to Morsand now, and Chakhovsky trusted him.

  Morsand’s instructions to Chakhovsky had been explicit. “Stay put, and don’t move out of your room. Don’t look out of any windows, and keep all shades and curtains fully drawn. Keep all lights off at all times, and answer the door for no one until Friday, and then only if the appropriate coded knock is given. Talk to absolutely no one. For three days, you must not even exist. If you do all this, we might be able to get you out of Paris alive. They’re crawling all over Paris looking for you. They want you very badly.”

  Chakhovsky had listened well. Most of what he was told, he knew. For instance, he knew that even one eye peeking out of a window could be filled instantly with a marksman’s bullet. He knew that anyone could be KGB and kill him in an instant. He also knew one other thing that contradicted all of what Morsand had told him and went against all of his better judgment. That was, on the very first day spent in that hole, the time had come when he had to take one very wicked piss, and the single-room apartments had no toilets, sinks, or tubs. He didn’t even have a bottle to piss into. Undoubtably, Morsand had never seen the inside of this place, or he would have accounted for that.

  So three days ago he took his first chance. The only bathroom on the floor was down at the end of the hall. It was a common toilet that all of the tenants of the floor used. He held out until his eyes almost floated out of his skull and then decided to make the try. After all, he reasoned, this was a safe house, and the streets were probably crawling with CIA. Two, maybe three, minutes, that was all it should take. Two trips a day, six until Friday, and then out. The risk seemed acceptable.

  He opened the door and stuck out his head. He froze. There was an old woman walking down the hallway away from his room. She looked about sixty, had bowed, swollen legs, and wore a dirty gray coat. She hobbled tiredly down the hallway, past the bathroom, to the last door in the hallway, near a back stairway. She stopped and, with a tired old hand, inserted the key into her door lock and twisted it open. Before entering, she turned her head and looked back down the hallway.

  Chakhovsky’s head shot back in as soon as he saw her head start to turn. She might have seen him. That was close. He waited a couple of minutes, then checked the hallway again, and left the room.

  He crept down the hallway carefully, in almost complete silence. He got to the bathroom and opened the door. There was a young girl in there, a child. He closed the door quickly and beat a painful retreat back to his room. Ten very long minutes later, he tried again. The bathroom was empty, but the door had no lock. That fact distressed him.

  The bathroom was small, with one open toilet, a sink, and a tub. There had been two toilets once, but only one remained. It had no stall, but marks on the walls and floor showed that it had once been closed in. The sink was big, with a large dirty mirror above it. The tub was an ancient affair, deep, chipped, and rusted. The room was filthy and smelled of urine. He relieved himself with his head half turned, to keep an eye on the unlocked door behind him, as if it mattered. If they wanted him now, they could have him. He wasn’t going to stop pissing for anything.

  After he finished, he opened the door and was surprised to see the wrinkled old woman coming out of her room. She passed him by without even looking at him. He kept his eyes on her until she had begun to descend the stairs to the small lobby below. He looked back at the old woman’s door and saw the young girl he had seen in the bathroom earlier. She had long hair and big round eyes. She looked at Chakhovsky through the open crack in the door and smiled at him, then closed the door. He unconsciously smiled back, but the door had closed, and he was sure that she hadn’t seen it. He returned to his room and lay in the darkness, trying to sleep. But how does a man sleep when he is doing the most dist
asteful thing of his existence, and when men are searching for him with great urgency and determination, for the sole purpose of killing him? Gradually the torment in his mind numbed into sleep.

  Late the following morning, he dared another trip down to the bathroom. It was empty. He sat on the toilet and began a bowel movement. After a few minutes, he felt sufficiently relieved and reached for the toilet paper. Just then the door opened, startling him. The young girl came marching in.

  A wave of embarrassment swept over Chakhovsky. It didn’t seem to bother the young girl in the least. He didn’t know what to do. She began to wash up and started a conversation with him.

  He sat there, with the toilet paper in his hand. He wasn’t about to wipe his ass with an audience, so he decided to stay where he was and ride out the storm, acting as nonchalant as she.

  She was a little older than he had originally thought. She seemed to be about thirteen, give or take a year. Her hair was almost blond in the sunlight coming through the window and hung almost to her waist. It was straight and silky. Her eyes were enormous, blue, and they sparkled brightly. She was such a pretty child. She almost reminded him of his beloved Tamara when she was but a child of those tender years. He had always loved her, only her, for as long as he could remember.

  At first, Chakhovsky just listened as she spoke. She was a warm and friendly child. Soon the conversation became two way. His conversation went from polite response to an easy flowing dialogue. She proved to be irresistibly charming, and he soon felt comfortable talking with her, despite his awkward position.

  The seat of the toilet was beginning to hurt his ass. His cheeks were getting numb, and his legs and feet were starting to fall asleep. Finally, the pretty young girl finished and left him. He got up on painful legs and tingling feet. Slowly, the blood began to flow again, and, by the time he got back to his room, he felt somewhat better.

  His conversation with the girl had been a welcome interlude in the immediate danger that surrounded him. It had been nice to forget the fear for a while.

  Later that afternoon, he took another trip to the bathroom, not so much because he had to go, but more to see if the girl was there. He had taken his third big chance, but, unlike the others, this one was unnecessary. He realized through the disappointment of her not being there that what he was doing was wrong. Yet, he could not help himself. There was just something about her that made it important to him.

  Two trips later, his efforts were rewarded.

  She was brushing her long, flowing hair when he walked in. She immediately struck up a conversation, while Chakhovsky pretended to wash.

  Before long, he was sitting on the edge of the old tub, brushing her beautiful hair for her. His heart went out to the lovely child, as she told him her story.

  She lived there with her grandmother. It had been three years now, since her mother and father had died. It had been a murder/suicide.

  Her mother had been a stripper/prostitute when her parents met. They fell deeply in love and were married. Her mother left the profession. Soon after, little Nicole was born; that was her name. She was the endless joy of her father.

  Her mother was not one for motherhood, however, and after about six years began to long for the money, the clothes, and the men of the life she had had before getting married. She began turning tricks in her apartment while her husband was away. Nicole could remember the men coming to the apartment and giving her mother money. She could never understand why they would want to lie on the bed under the covers with her mother. She remembered how they would bounce on the bed and make funny noises, and how her mother would go down below the covers now and then. In the mind of the child, it had all been silly games the grown-ups played.

  Then one day her father came home earlier than expected and caught them. He nearly killed the man she was with and beat her mother very badly. Nicole was terribly frightened by it all. The next day her mother left, leaving little Nicole in the apartment all alone.

  Her father searched for her mother for many years after that. All that time, he took loving care of his sweet Nicole. She was his only reason for living.

  Then, when she was about ten, she remembered her father dressing her up in her best dress and taking her to Sunday mass. That seemed funny, she had thought, because they never went to church. Then her father took her to her grandmother’s place and left. The next morning the police came. Her father had found and killed her mother and then killed himself. He had also killed the man she was with. Nicole had been with her poor old grandmother ever since.

  Her grandmother was a wonderful old woman who worked very hard to keep them going. But she was getting old now, and the work was getting harder for her. Soon Nicole would go to work to help bring in enough money.

  Such an innocent victim, Chakhovsky thought. Children always suffered for the sins of the parents. There was no justice.

  He was sure that she would have everything she wanted someday. She was a child of truly remarkable beauty for being only thirteen. One day she would be an absolutely stunning woman at whose feet men would throw themselves and their fortunes.

  He felt a slight arousal as he brushed her hair, his fingers occasionally touching her soft lovely neck. Her face was so pretty, her eyes so large and warm, her lips so perfectly defined. She was bathed in the scent of innocent femininity.

  It was now Friday, the morning of the final day. He wanted to talk to Nicole one more time, to say good-bye, and to leave some money for her and her grandmother. Morsand’s men would be coming for him in less than three hours, and he would never see her again. He left his room and walked down the hall, taking yet another chance.

  As he passed by the bathroom, he noticed that the door was open. He looked in and was pleasantly surprised to see Nicole. He walked in as she was brushing her teeth.

  “Good morning, Nicole,” he said in perfect French.

  “Good morning, monsieur,” she replied with garbled words. Her mouth was filled with toothpaste. She made a half turn to him and smiled a greeting.

  Chakhovsky was almost stopped in his tracks. She was wearing alarmingly brief panties and a very sheer top that he could see right through. Her hair was pinned up, giving her an older appearance. And her body—it was delicate and lovely. Her small budding breasts were beautiful, her hips rounded like a woman’s. He became instantly aroused.

  She stared at him with her big eyes. Her lips were parted and rounded slightly, as she moved the toothbrush in and out of her mouth with slow exaggerated motions. The foam was building and running down from her mouth to her chin, the brush still moving in and out, slowly, with an erotic rhythm. She stood there completely unashamed of her exposure.

  “I…I came to see you because…eh, because I must be…be leaving today,” he said, licking his drying lips and swallowing.

  She just looked at him, still moving her brush. Her tongue came out and licked around the handle of the brush.

  He gulped loudly. “I was hoping to talk to you before I left. I would like to give you and your grandmother something. Is she home?” he asked.

  She shook her head. The brush was just on her lips now. Her tongue toyed with it teasingly. Then the brush was in her mouth again, deep, to the back of the throat, moving in a slow pumping motion. The foam ran down the handle and over her fingers.

  Chakhovsky was on fire. His blood was racing like hot steam through his veins. He wanted to sit down to hide his mounting excitement.

  She stopped brushing and bent over into the sink to spit out the foam. As she bent forward, her loose-fitting top hung well down from the waist. From his position he could see her lovely young breasts hanging downward. His eyes moved to her ass and to the soft bulge between the thighs. There were light-colored pubic hairs sticking out at the rims of the panties.

  “Monsieur,” she began as she straightened up, “when do you leave?” she asked.

  “In a couple of hours,” he replied.

  She looked at him, her eyes saddened. “I wou
ld like it if we talked some more before you leave. Maybe you could brush my hair for me one more time?” she asked.

  “Ye…Yes, I…I would like that,” he stammered.

  “Oh, that will make me very happy,” she said as she started for the door. “Come, we can talk in my room,” she said.

  He followed her the few steps to her room, his eyes on her ass. Her walk was fascinating. It was in his mind how suddenly beautiful she seemed to him. There was something about young, innocent beauty that went through him like a wildfire. He was helpless when confronted by it.

  He followed her into the room. She closed the door behind them. She walked over to her dresser and opened the top drawer. Chakhovsky’s eyes were riveted to her body. She took out her hairbrush and another top to put on. She tossed the brush onto the bed. “We can sit there while you brush my hair,” she said.

  He dutifully walked over to the bed and sat down, glad at the opportunity to conceal his obvious erection.

  “It is a pity that you must leave so soon. I will miss our talks and the nice way you brush my hair,” she said. “But at least we have these few hours.”

  She pulled the sheer top up over her head and removed it. She was fully exposed. Her young breasts were beautiful. Chakhovsky was swallowing his tongue. She picked up the other top and unfolded it as she walked toward him. She looked into his eyes. They were raping her.

  She walked closer to him, very slowly and deliberately. She was two feet away from him, her breasts at eye level. “Do you like Nicole, monsieur?” she asked in a soft whisper.

  His mouth was sand as she drew nearer. He could only nod.

  She dropped the top to the floor and took the brush out of Chakhovsky’s hand. She reached out and brushed his cheek lightly with soft strokes, barely touching his skin. It was like electricity shooting through him. She inched closer, cupping her hand behind his neck, gently encouraging his face forward. She coaxed his face closer as she brought her wonderfully soft breasts to him.