At the Narrow Passage (8 page)

Halfway there, carefully concealing ourselves behind trees and bushes,
we split into three groups: the corporal with the gas grenades and one man,
Tracy and a private named Starne, and Sir Gerald, Kearns, the wounded
Corporal Land, and myself.
"Okay," I whispered, "get yourselves into position, hold, and wait until
you hear me fire. Then go into augmentation, and let them have it."
The others nodded, except for Sir Gerald who seemed puzzled at my reference
to augmentation, and we moved apart.
Most of the buildings were dark. One of the servants' houses was lighted,
two windows showing the yellow light of a gas lantern and the forms of
two gray-clad Imperials sitting at a table, apparently playing cards
and drinking something -- German beer, I guessed. The yard immediately
before the villa was lighted by two gas lamps that bracketed the main
entrance. A German staff car sat in the glare of the lamps, and two men
sat in the car, one of them smoking a long black cigar. A single light
burned on the second floor of the main house, off in what I thought to
be the west wing. It was my guess that there we would find the count
and his wife. They were my own special targets.
Kearns was at my side, Corporal Land assisting Sir Gerald a few feet
behind us, as we slowly, carefully circled the house, came in from the
dark rear.
At last, within rock-throwing distance of the house, I signaled for Sir
Gerald to sit down and wait until we had cleared the house. He made an
effort to protest, then seemed to think better of it and slowly sat down,
assisted by Land.
Giving the general a brief parting handshake, I signaled Kearns to circle
back around the house. Land and I moved in closer.
I don't know why I hadn't thought of it before, but I had the second grenade
on my belt, and it would probably do us a lot more good if it were on
the end of Land's rifle. I slipped it off my belt, handed it to him,
and pointed toward a window in the east wing, bottom floor. He got the
message. We parted.
I wondered where the six bodyguards were sleeping, but I had no way of
knowing. We would just have to hope that wherever they were, they would
run into the gas once hell began to break loose in the villa. I figured
they probably would. They wouldn't be expecting it.
Now I was at the window near the center of the rear wall and pressed my
face against the cold panes of glass and tried to peer inside. There
was total darkness. I only hoped that I wouldn't be firing into a
closed pantry.
It seemed that there had been plenty of time for the others to have got
into position. Kearns would now be standing in the shadows a few feet from
the staff car, the safety off his tommy gun, a full clip in it. Tracy
would be near a window of the servants' quarters where a light had shown,
perhaps watching the two Imperials playing cards and drinking beer and
probably wishing that he could have a stein himself. I did too. But
later. Much later.
The time had come. There was no point in waiting.
I stepped back a few paces to be clear of flying glass, aimed the rifle
and its heavy grenade at the window, snapped off the safety, squeezed
the trigger.
The rifle seemed to explode with a tremendous roar in the stillness,
though I knew that the grenade had muffled its sound. And the breaking
of glass seemed just as loud, as did the pop! of the exploding grenade.
I willed electrobiological circuits into operation. All my senses and
responses increased fivefold. Sounds slowed and shifted toward the bass;
what light I could see became redder. The world seemed to be moving with
slow motion now.
For a long, dragging instant it was still again, but only for an instant.
A man yelled, his voice a rumble, a rifle fired, its sound like a distant
cannon's boom, and was answered by another rifle from the servants' quarters.
A voice sounded inside the villa, guttural German, and a light on the first
floor flickered on.
"Come on," I yelled as well as I could from inside the gas mask, leaping
toward the door that was a few feet off to my right. I kicked at it
savagely twice before the latch sprang and wood splintered and the door
swung inwards. Then I leaped into the house; Land was behind me, moving
as rapidly as I in his augmentation.
Now I could see the room from which the light came, down a long corridor;
at the end of it was a parlor or sitting room. A half-naked bull of a
man stumbled to his feet in slow motion like a character in a dream,
clutching for his submachine gun, swearing, yelling.
He never had a chance. I squeezed the trigger of my Enfleld, firing from
the hip, and opened a great hole in the man's left breast. He seemed
to float back, stunned by the impact, but hung onto his submachine gun,
slowly fighting to bring it up. I worked the bolt of my rifle, cursing
its awkwardness when my reactions were so fast, threw another shell
into the chamber and squeezed it off as the submachine gun in the dying
man's hand came to languid life, emitting a trail of bullets my eyes
could almost see individually that chipped plaster from the hallway and
ceiling. But the German suddenly lost his face as my bullet and Land's
both plowed through flesh, bone, brains.
The gas was slowly drifting up around us, pale white in the light from
the parlor, drifting down the corridor terribly slowly as a predawn breeze
blew in from the open door behind us.
There was a second man in the parlor, wearing only the underclothing
he had been sleeping in, and his eyes were still dazed by sleep when I
jumped into the doorway -- no more than a blur to his eyes -- and put
a bullet in his chest and another into his stomach. His dying gurgle
was a deep, bass rumbling and his slow-moving hand tried to grab for the
pistol that lay a few feet from where he fell across a heavy oaken table,
his blood terribly red against the old, dark wood.
I felt almost sorry for the man. He had probably never even had a chance
to see me.
There was a crashing from the front of the house as Kearns kicked open the
door, cautiously sprayed the entrance hall with submachine-gun bullets,
then came on in, yelling for blood. He had already left two men dead
behind him.
Land and I met him in the huge living room, an oak-paneled, fireplaced
stadium of a room.
I cut out my augmentation and signaled for the others to do the same.
The world shifted back into normal time and I felt a sudden, brief weakness.
A human body can't operate like that for very long.
"Where are the rest of them?" Kearns' muffled voice asked through his mask.
"Damned if I know," I said.
We split up, moved through the house, Kearns and Land searching for
the remaining bodyguards, I for the stairs that would lead up to the
second floor.
It didn't take me long to find them. Big as they were, they were hard
to miss even in the dark.
Right at that moment I should have augmented again, but I didn't. I was
too confident, I suppose.
I dropped my rifle on the sofa in the enormous hall at the base of the
stairs, pulled a flashlight from its clip on my belt with my left hand,
the heavy Harling with my right. I flashed the light up the huge, broad
stairs -- and stumbled back as a pistol bullet cut along my left ribs.
"
Halten Sie!
" a voice called from the darkness above me.
I flashed the light up, saw a naked man standing at the head of the
stairs, and shot him down. The heavy Harling slug seemed to lift him
upward and throw him backward.
I was reeling back, cursing the pain in my side, thinking that somehow
I ought to know the man who even now was tumbling down the stairs,
smashing against the rungs of the banister, grabbing for a handhold on
them, stopping his fall, reaching for the pistol that had tumbled down
the stairs with him.
Holding the light on him and trying to forget about the pain in my side,
I went up the stairs two at a time and realized who he was. Count Albert
von Heinen.
He lay still when I reached him, blood oozing from a wound in his stomach,
looking up at me, fire and hatred in his eyes, foul German curses on
his lips.
Out of my own pain I hit him across the mouth with the back of my left
hand, still holding the flashlight, and wondered how many of his teeth
I was breaking.
"Shut up!" I told him.
Somewhere a woman was screaming, sbrilly, hysterically.
Mathers?" Kearns yelled from the darkness below.
"Von Heinen's up here," I yelled back, pulling my gas mask off my face,
letting it hang by its straps around my neck. "I shot him, but he's still
alive. Watch him. I'm going on up."
I heard Kearns' heavy feet on the stairs below, but I didn't look back.
I went on up to the room at the head of the stairs where the light shone
and a woman screamed.
The door was standing open, and the woman was too terrified to try to
stop me.
She stood with her back against the wall near a rumpled bed that was
virtually surrounded by mirrors. She was as naked as Von Heinen, short,
beautifully rounded, with the dark skin and dark eyes of the people
of Mediterranean France. Lovely as she was, she certainly wasn't the
count's blond American wife.
"Don't move," I told her and then repeated it in both German and my
broken French.
She didn't, other than to sob hysterically, her hands at her throat,
making no move to cover her exposed body.
There was no one else in the room, but then I hadn't expected there
would be.
I slipped the flashlight back into my belt, crossed over to where the
woman stood rooted in fear, grabbed her hands away from her throat,
and slapped her twice with all the force I could muster.
"
Set ruhig, stille!
" I told her. "
Wo ist Gräfin von
Heinen?
"
"Here!" a voice said in English from behind me.
I spun, looked into the barrel of an Imperial automatic, calculated my
chances if I went into augmentation now, shrugged and let the Harling
drop from my fingers. I wasn't worried.
Sally Beall von Heinen was a beautiful woman, dressed in a thin, revealing
gown that hid very little of her and I could not help wondering why the
hell Von Heinen wanted to bundle with the sobbing girl near me when he
had a wife like this one.
Heavy feet had come up the stairs at a run, were now slamming down the
hallway. Countess von Heinen turned, found herself facing Kearns' tommy
gun, faltered for a moment, fired wildly, hitting nothing.
I jumped, my fist coming down heavily on her right arm, grabbing her waist
with my left arm, pulling her to the floor. I didn't need augmentation
for this.
She struggled, fought, spat, scratched, clawed for my face, cursed,
grabbed for the gun she had dropped, her gown tearing open. I didn't
have time to appreciate the view. I threw a fist into her jaw, snapping
her head back. She barely moaned as she lost consciousness.
"You okay?" Kearns asked after he pulled his gas mask off.
"I'll live," I said, rising to my feet and gingerly touching my injured side.
"Von Heinen?"
"He needs attention, but I've seen men live for days with worse."
Gunfire rattled from below.
"Land's found the rest of 'em," Kearns said.
"Stay here. Watch them."
I grabbed up the Harling from the floor, jerked out my flashlight, and
headed back down the stairs, pulling my gas mask up and switching back
into combat augmentation.
By the time I reached the ground floor the firing had stopped, but I
could still hear the low rumble of movement. I ran down another hallway,
into a room where a gas lantern sputtered feebly, its glow red. Land
leaned against the wall, his uniform dripping blood, his chest a series
of ragged holes, a grim, bitter smile on his face. He had lost his gas
mask somewhere.
He feebly pointed toward the four men in the room, sprawled across
the bloody beds and floor. One had the top of his head blown away,
and another had a great hole where his stomach should have been, and
both were very dead. I couldn't see the other two very well, but they
weren't moving either.
I cut out my augmentation and Land quit grinning and slid down the wall,
leaving a wide red swash, and then he lay still. I didn't need to feel
his pulse to know that he was dead too. I just wondered how he had lived
as long as he had, cut apart as he was.
As I turned and went back toward where Kearns was guarding the count and
his wife, I heard a few ragged shots from outside the building, but by
the time I had climbed the stairs and pulled my mask off again they had
all ceased. I just hoped that the last shots had been fired by our boys.
Kearns and I found a robe to put on Countess von Heinen, covering her body
and the torn gown, and then we tied her hands behind her back. Leaving
her to regain consciousness as she would, we carried Von Heinen himself
back up the stairs and laid him on the rumpled bed.
"Put a compress on that to try to stop the bleeding," I told Kearns.
"I'll tie her up," pointing to Von Heinen's mistress who was returning to
wide-eyed, fearful consciousness after having fainted during the fracas.
After tying and gagging the dark-haired girl -- I hadn't bothered to find
anything to put on her -- I sat her in a corner and began searching for
clothing for Von Heinen. We couldn't take him out naked as he was.
By the time we had finished dressing the count there were sounds coming
from below.
I grabbed my pistol, moved cautiously to the head of the stairs, peered
down. There was just enough light in the hallway for me to see three
figures, two of them supparting the third between them.
"Hold it there," I yelled, fairly sure who they were.
"Eric?" Tracy's voice, muffled and distorted by his gas mask, called back.
"Up here."
"It's me, Starne and Sir Gerald."
"We've got Von Heinen and his wife. Come on up," I told him.
"Just let me rest, old chap," I heard Sir Gerald say.
They lowered him to the sofa where I had dropped my rifle earlier --
now it seemed like hours -- and came up the stairs.
"What about the others?" I asked.
"Not sure," Tracy answered, loosening his mask. "Dead I think."
Then I could see his face. He had a nasty gash across his cheek that
ended where his mask had covered his mouth and nose. There was a rip
down his left leg that looked painful, but not serious. Well, he and
three others had wiped out nearly a full company of elite troops.