Spandau Phoenix (84 page)

Frightened?"

"Not really. Please, hurry. We must find Hans!"

At that moment the clouds opened. The rain lashed the roof of Horn House in great sheets, then settled into a steady torrent that would soon turn the surrounding gullies into raging rivers.

"Got it!" Stern cried. He cracked the door slightly, then flung it wide.

Ilse darted into the hall. "Where should we start?"

"Beat on every locked door you can find. If Hans is here, he'll be behind one."

"Aren't you coming?"

"You don't need me to find your husband. I've got something else to do."

"What?"

"After what you told me, you ask me that? Move girl!"

Stern spun Ilse around, put a hand between her shoulder blades and shoved her down the hall. She hesitated a moment; then, seeing that the Israeli meant what he said, she started slowly up the corridor.

Stern clenched the broken fork tightly in his fist and set out in the opposite direction.

The JetRanger helicopters skimmed across the veld like great steel dragonflies. In the distance Burton could just make out the copper dome of Horn's "observatory" glinting through the heavy rain. He flattened his palm and dropped it close.to his thigh, indicating that Diaz should fly still closer to the earth. The Cuban muttered something in Spanish, but the scrub brush rose up into the Plexiglas windshield until Burton felt he was tearing across the veld on a horse gone mad. Even the few stunted trees they passed rose higher than the chopper's rotors.

"See it?" Burton yelled, pointing.

The Cuban nodded.

"We should see an airstrip soon. That's our objective.

Set right down on it!"

Burton poked his head back into the crowded cabin and gave the Colombians a thumbs-up signal. Most of them looked airsick, but Alberto-the guerilla observer-grinned back, his square white teeth flashing in the shadows.

Forty seconds later, Diaz wheeled the JetRanger in a wide circle and settled onto the freshly laid asphalt fifty meters from Horn's Leadet.

Burton punched open the Plexiglas door and jumped to the ground. Just as they had practiced a dozen times on the Casilda's afterdeck, the Colombians poured out of the chopper one after another, looking, for all their amateurishness, like a squad of marines securing a hot LZ. A quick glance across the tarmac told Burton that the men on the other chopper were doing the same. "See you after the party!" he shouted to Diaz.

The Cuban shook his head. "English loco, he muttered, twirling his forefinger beside his temple.

The Colombians crouched at the edge of the rotor blast, waiting for Burton to take the lead. The mercenary jumped to the ground and immediately started toward the distant dome at an easy trot. The Colombians, twenty-two in all, followed closely.

Thirty seconds' running brought them up short at the rim of the Wash.

Burton stared angrily into the ravine. He'd been told to expect a shallow trench, no more than a thirtysecond delay. But the summer cloudburst had turned this steep-sided gully into a treacherous river that would take minutes, not seconds, to cross. Three feet of muddy runoff churned through the undergrowth near the bottom, and the water was rising fast, "Move!" Burton shouted, and leaped over the lip of the ravine. He half-fell, half-slid toward the torrent below.

Looking back, he saw the Colombians skidding down behind him. Two minutes later they all stood en the opposite rim of the Wash, huddling against the rain. Burton started slogging westward again without a word. For a few minutes he saw nothing ahead but rain. Then, like a mirage, the whole stunning specter of Horn house appeared out of the downpour.

Burton's blood ran cold. One glance told him that his "inside" informer didn't know his ass from his elbow. The "soft" objective he had been briefed to expect stood like a medieval fortress on a hill at the center of a huge expanse of open ground. Ten men armed with medium machine guns could defend,that house indefinitely against a force the size he had brought.

His ragtag outfit had only one hopesurprise.

The Colombians had not yet picked up on the alarming deterioration of their situation, and Burton didn't intend for them to. "All right, lads!" he barked. "Change of plan! I'd intended to use the mortar to soften the target for you"Burton paused while a bilingual Colombian interpreted"but this open ground changes everything. If I open up before you go in, the target will be warned. Many of you could die in the charge." Burton saw several faces nod warily as the interpreter conveyed his words. "My suggestion is that you all go in at the double-a quick, silent run. You go in very fast and close to the ground. The Israelis favor this tactic, and they've surprised a lot of Arabs with it, I can tell you." He summoned a bluff grin. "Ready, lads?"

Two or three Colombians nodded, but most looked a shade paler than they had when they thought Burton's mortar barrage would precede their attack. The Englishman took a final look at his unit. They were a ragged lot by any standard, standing there in the rain, weighted down by bandolero ammo belts, grenades, and LAW rockets. They would have been comic but for the near certainty of their impending deaths.

Looking past them to the distant house, Burton felt a sudden, almost irresistible urge to order them back to the choppers, to save'their miserable lives before they charged the fortress that waited beyond the gray wall of rain. But then he remembered The Deal.

"Move out!" he shouted angrily. "Goddamn it, charge!"

The Colombians stared dumbly for a moment; then they turned and trotted down the slope into the shallow bowl.

One hung back-a teenager named Ruiz, whom Burton had tried to instruct in the finer points of mortar operationwaiting to see if he was needed.

Burton started to nod, then he sensed someone behind him.

He turned to see Alberto, the huge MNR guerilla observer. Burton pointed to the mortar tube he had dropped onto the grass and eyed the guerilla questioningly. When Alberto nodded with confidence, Burton decided he would prefer skill to g6w company today.

He motioned for Ruiz to follow the charge.

Alberto immediately began setting up the mortar, but Burton, impelled by some morbid instinct, crouched on the rim of the grassy bowl and watched the Colombians go in. As his eyes followed the camouflaged figures-running now-he suddenly noticed something odd about the floor of the bowl. Subdividing the approaches to Horn House into measured sections were dozens of small, grass-covered mounds. At first glance they seemed only natural irregularities in the ground-animal spoor, perhaps-but Burton soon realized that the humps were anything but natural. His mind faltered for a moment, not wanting to accept it; then his gut instinct grasped the whole, ghastly scene.

A killing ground.

Those innocent-looking mounds concealed land mines. Burton shouted a warning, but the Colombians had already passed out of earshot.

Alberto raised his head at Burton's shoutThen it started.

Sixteen Claymore mines exploded simultaneously, sending thousands of steel balls scything through the air at twice the speed of sound.

Half the Colombians were shredded into bloody pulp before they could scream. The sound came in waves, deep, shuddering concussions muted by the rain.

Most survivors of the first blast staggered to the ground, mortally wounded. Shrapnel detonated some of the Colombian ordnance.

Grenades flashed in the dusk; one of the LAW rockets exploded in a blinding fireball, consuming the man who carried it.

Burton lay stomach-down, shielding his eyes against the flashes.

Alberto tugged at Burton's pack, groping for mortar rounds so that he could return fire. Burton'slai)ved the hie guerilla's hand away.

"Bloody hell! All you'd do now is pinpoint our position!" He punched his fist into the soggy veld.

"Poor bastards."

In spite of the Englishman's pessimism, Alberto grinned and pointed down the slope to where, unbelievably, a halfdozen Colombians still crawled doggedly toward Horn House. Having gone too far to retreat with any hope of survival, they went blindly on. Forty meters from the great tliangular structure, one of them rose to one knee and let off a LAW

rocket. The smoke trail arrowed across the grass, and the exploding warhead tore a jagged hole in the wall above a shuttered window.

Emboldened by their comrade's success, three wounded Colombians got up and cheered, then charged the main entranee with their AK-47s on full automatic.

At that moment-with a sound like a handsaw n'ppi' tin-Smuts's,Vulcan gun opened up from the observatory.

From the tower, Jijrgen Luhr watched the carnage with morbid fascination. He could not quite comprehend the fact that he had obliterated a dozen human beings with the flick of a switch. The land around Horn House looked as if a hundred plows had passed over it, sowing blood and fire. The remotely detonated Claymores had churned the earth into a smoking graveyard. When the Vulcan gun began to fire, Luhr thought he had gone deaf. White flame spat out of the six spinning barrels; the unbelievable rate of fire made the scarlet tracers look like laser beams arcing across the slope below. Anywhere the gun lingered for a full second, more than a hundred depleted-uranium-tipped slugs impacted in a steady stream of death.

The rain and darkness obscured the remaining attackers, but Smuts seemed to have no trouble finding them. Wearing ear protectors now, he worked the pedals with practiced skill, traversing the gun with remorseless accuracy. Watching Smuts's slit-eyed face behind the Vulcan, Luhr actually pitied the men who remained alive.

Four floors below the observatory, Robert Stanton, Lord Granville, watched the weapons he had known nothing about blast his dreams of power into oblivion. If Alfred survives this night, he thought desolately, what will Shaw give me?

Not afucking thing, that's what! He shook his head in wonder.

Not one member of the assault teaxn remained standing!

Unbelieving, Stanton pressed his palm against the windowpane, watching in horror as the Vulcan's terrible tracer beam climbed the slope, then disappeared over the ridge. Seconds later a fireball mushroomed into the sky. Probably a helicopter, he realized. Stanton could bear no more. He knew he had but one chance now: to find Horn and allay any suspicion that he was connected with the attack. If Burton is killed, he thought hopefully, I might just bring it off. He dashed into the dark hallway and made for the study, almost sure that Horn would be closeted there.

Scurrying through the vast reception hall, he saw Ilse jerk back into one of the corridors, but she meant nothing to him now. In seconds he would be fighting for his life. A quick sprint brought him to the study door, which he found unlocked. He burst through it like a man in blind panic. A green-shaded lamp burned at Horn's desk, but the old man was not there. Then, slowly, Stanton made out the wheelchair, silhouetted against the rain-spattered picture window.

Scarlet tracers sliced through the darkness outside, giving the room a surrealistic sense of drama, like the bridge of a ship during battle.

"Alfred!" Stanton cried with exaggerated relief. "Thank God you're safe!"

Slowly Horn rotated his wheelchair until he faced the young Englishman.

His face was haggard, but his solitary eye burned with black contempt.

"So, Robert," he rasped, "you would be my Judas."

Ilse tore through the halls like a madwoman. She had searched every unlocked room and pounded on every locked door in the house, but she'd found no sign of Hans. Nor had she seen Stern since they parted at the bedroom door. She had found one useful thing. In a spartan bedroom decorated only by an eight-by-ten photograph of a younger, uniformed Pieter Smuts, she'd found a Beretta 9mm semi-automatic pistol in a holster hanging from the bedpost. She wasn't sure she could use it, but she had no doubt that Stern could. Or Hans, if she could find him.

Approaching the reception hall at a full run, she saw Lord Granville sprint across it in another direction. She skidded and tried to backpedal into the narrow corridor, but she was, too late-Stanton had seen her. Yetjust as she turned to flee, she heard the Englishman's footsteps echoing down one of the main passageways-away from her.

Carefully she crossed the reception hall and peered down the corridor into which Stanton had vanished. What's he after? she wondered.

What is so important that he would ignore me running loose?

Another prisoner, perhaps? Hans?

Ilse darted down the hallway after Stanton. Toward the far end of the dark corridor she saw a vertical crack of light. As she neared it, she heard voices. One was unmistakably Stanton's,the other ... she couldn't be sure. Pulling off her shoes, she slipped quietly through the door.

She pressed herself flat against the paneled wall of the study.

Alfred Horn sat hunched in his wheelchair before a large picture window, barely discernible in the shadows. Beside an ornate desk four meters away stood Lord Granville.

He was gesticulating wildly with his hands.

"I told you, Alfred!" he shouted. "Smuts is insane! He knows nothin,9

of my loyalty! I'm your partner for God's sake!"

"You are a liar and a coward," Horn said evenly. "And you care for nothing but money." He swept a hand toward the window, where sporadic tracer fire still illuminated the grounds in short bursts.