The Bonaparte Secret (21 page)

The options were both limited and unpleasant.

As though to confirm Lang’s fears, Dow nodded to someone behind Lang. Fingers grabbed his shirt and tore it from his body. An instant later, the Chinese colonel stubbed out a burning cigarette against Lang’s left nipple.

Lang was almost deafened by the sound of a scream, a sound he hardly realized came from him.

Gurt was close enough to see the men just inside the massive entrance to the Citadelle. Darkness prevented her from making out their features, but there was enough light from the declining moon to see there were two of them, one on each side of a portal that must have been twenty feet high. She leaned forward along the narrow spine of the small horse, hoping to diminish her stature. Unless one of them chose to use a flashlight, she would appear as indistinct to them as they to her, just one more man returning from a patrol.

She entered without challenge. Her little mount picked up its measured pace, perhaps in the realization the stable and feed were near.

She was abeam the two guards when one of them spoke, a low, guttural sound with a definitely inquisitive inflection.

A question, of course. He wanted to know where the other member of the patrol was. How was she going to answer a question in a language she did not know?

Lowering her voice into what might, possibly, be the range of a male tone, she growled a muttered response imitating the sound of the words she had just heard.

The man who had asked the question spoke again, this time louder. She could see him approaching as his partner reached for the strap of the rifle slung over a shoulder.

Gurt pulled her horse to a stop, slowly slipped her right foot from the stirrup and began to swing a leg over her mount’s spiny backbone in a slow dismount, the casual movement of a man weary from both the hour and his duties just now complete. From the corner of an eye she measured the closing distance between her and the question asker. It would not do to appear too deliberate or in a hurry.

She timed it so he came in range just as her right foot cleared the saddle. With her weight shifting to her left leg, she pivoted in the stirrup, her right foot swinging in a blur of an arc that connected neatly with the man’s jaw.

He staggered backward, just far enough to give Gurt room to unsling the rifle from her back. Dropping both feet to the ground, she grabbed the gun’s barrel and brought the stock down on the man’s head with a crunch that left him sitting on the ground, too dazed to present any immediate threat.

Spinning on her toes, she faced the second guard, now moving to get around the horse between them. Gurt could easily have shot him, but the sound would have alerted anyone within a mile, including whatever garrison now occupied the old fort.

He had no such qualms, as evidenced by his efforts to bring his weapon to bear around a nervous, diminutive horse.

Gurt dropped to a squat, merging her silhouette with that of the animal and effectively disappearing in the darkness. She used part of the one or two seconds before her adversary could find her to draw the bayonet from its scabbard and test its balance in her hand.

With her left hand, she slapped the horse’s rump, causing it to shy away. The man with the gun swung the rifle in her direction. She cocked her right arm. And threw.

The bayonet had not been designed for this sort of use and Gurt had not had time to explore its characteristics. Nonetheless, she had little choice but to throw it. Because of its weight, she had done so not like a knife but more like a spear, straight rather than end over end, more shoulder than the wrist action required to accurately toss a blade.

A thump and a strangled half gargle, half grunt, told her she had hit the mark.

The rifle clattered against the stone of the parade ground. She visualized the man clutching with both hands at the steel that protruded from his stomach or chest.

The rifle now in both hands, she stepped over to where he had been. A figure, faceless in the dark, sat or knelt on the ground, issuing a low moan. With a foot, Gurt pushed him onto his side, bent over and tugged at the hilt of the blade. It was caught on something. She tried to wiggle it free, eliciting a scream of pain. It stubbornly refused to come loose and Gurt doubted she had a lot of time before someone came to investigate the yell.

There was little choice, one she made intuitively on the side of safety rather than humanity. She could tape him up, taking precious seconds, or . . .

She leaned on the hilt of the bayonet until the blade went in all the way and the struggles at the other end ceased.

In a couple of steps, she was beside the first man, whose darkened form was shakily trying to get to its feet. Grasping the rifle by its muzzle again, she swung the stock as hard as she could to connect with the base of his skull. He collapsed in a boneless heap without a sound.

She paused only to scoop up his rifle and add it to the one she already had.

Instinctively, Gurt was moving toward the deepest shadows, the place she would be safest. She was almost there when she heard a scream. It was neither of the men she had encountered, no cry of alarm, but a long, wailing expression of agony more animal than human. But she knew of no animal capable of such a sound.

Whatever its source, she thought it had come from straight ahead, although the rock walls were capable of distorting and displacing sound. She looked closely. Was that a glimmer of light leaking around the edge of a doorway?

Her back to whatever wall was available, she flitted from one pool of darkness to another, one rifle slung over a shoulder, the other at the ready. In less than a minute, she had traveled around half the parade ground and was at the end most distant from the fort’s entrance. She could hear a voice on the other side of the wall, though the stone made it impossible to discern what was being said.

She ran a hand along the stone, inching her way forward until her fingers touched wood. A quick exploration by touch revealed a smooth surface, not the roughness and rot exposure to the elements for two centuries would have produced. A door, a newly installed door, behind which the voice continued.

Gurt was considering what to do next. She peeled back a sleeve and checked her watch. The grayness of predawn would arrive in less than an hour. If she was going to find Lang, she did not have long to do it.

She started to slide past the door when she froze, ear to the wood.

“. . . name is Rolf Lowen. I am a German citizen . . .”

Lang!

Gurt’s fingers raced across the door’s surface until she found the latch, hesitated and returned to the weapon in her hand. When she had taken it on the trail in front of the Citadelle, she had given it the briefest of examinations. Her touch had told her it was an AK-47. She had not had the time to make a more thorough examination.

She opened the slide to slip a finger into the chamber, since she could not see. Empty. She cocked it and began searching for the safety button and automatic-fire switch. Then she put the weapon down and went through the same procedure with the gun strapped across her back.

Satisfied she was as ready as she could be, she depressed the latch and kicked the door open.

The first thing she saw was Lang, strapped to a chair. His face was bloody, eyes nearly swollen shut. There were ugly marks in the skin of his bare chest.

In the instant it took for her eyes to adjust to the light, she saw movement behind his chair—two men, two uniforms . . .

No time for analysis.

Making sure she cleared Lang’s head, she squeezed the trigger, a short burst. The sound of the gunfire was magnified by the stone walls but not loudly enough to cover a scream as one of the men behind Lang threw his hands to a bloody pulp that had been his face. The second danced a macabre jig as five or six bullets pinned him momentarily to the wall before he slid slowly to his knees, leaving an abstract painting of red streaks on the light-colored stone.

For an instant, Gurt feared Lang had been hit. He lunged forward, chair and all, colliding with the third man in uniform, knocking him to the floor.

Gun still in hand, Gurt closed and latched the door before drawing the bayonet from the belt of one of her victims and cutting Lang’s bindings and handing him the second AK-47.

Both her and Lang’s eyes were beginning to swim with tears from the acrid cordite smoke, which was confined by the low ceiling.

He took the weapon, pointing it at the man on the floor while he affixed the bayonet. “What took you so long?”

Gurt shrugged. “Trying to decide if your order to return to the hotel was suicidal or just stupid.”

Lang was yanking the man to his feet, muttering, “Comedian, everybody thinks they’re a comedian.” He shook his head in resignation. “Gurt, this is Lieutenant Colonel Shien Dow, late of the People’s Liberation Army.”

“Late?”

“I have experienced his hospitality and wish to reciprocate. He’s coming with us.”

“But there is no time . . .”

There was a banging on the door.

Dow stood, tugging at his uniform blouse as though to straighten it. “You two are going nowhere.”

Lang ran a hand through Dow’s pockets and came up with his own watch, money clip and BlackBerry. He began to furiously punch the keyboard.

“Lang,” Gurt said as the assault on the door increased, “there is not now the time to send all the ‘wish you were here’ messages you want to Sara and our friends at home. We have need to get out of here first.”

“Just sharing some of the scenery with Miles.” He jammed the BlackBerry into a pocket and pointed to where the blanket hung. “I think the exit is that way.”

The muzzle of his rifle pressed against Dow’s head, they crossed the room single file. Gurt pulled the blanket aside, revealing Lang had been correct: it was the entry into the fort proper. As the last one to leave, Lang fired a single shot into the generator, instantly turning the room into blackness. A couple more shots at the door were intended to discourage those eager to get in. It wouldn’t stop anyone, but it sure might slow them down.

Behind Gurt, Lang was pushing Dow, holding the rifle against the Chinese’s head with the other. “Turn left. I think there’s a ramp there leading up to the next row of guns.”

“But we need to get out, not up,” Gurt protested.

“Right through how many armed Chinese soldiers? We sure as hell can’t shoot our way out.”

“But—”

“But turn here and start up the ramp.”

At the top, they stood behind a circular row of entrances to gun rooms that opened off the common ramp. The outside of the ramp, the one facing the parade ground, was bordered by a low wall perhaps four feet high. Over the wall, they were afforded a view of an anthill of activity as flashlights darted back and forth in a pattern that suggested confusion more than purpose.

“Now what?” Gurt wanted to know. “We fly out like birds?”

“Not quite yet.”

For the first time since leaving the lower level, Dow spoke. “Mr. Reilly, your situation is hopeless. You are surrounded by over a hundred trained officers and men of the People’s Liberation Army, enough to completely search this place as soon as it is light. When they see what you have done to two of their comrades down below, I doubt they will be in a charitable mood. I certainly am in no position to guarantee the woman’s safety . . .”

Lang cut him short. “You’ve just seen what ‘the woman’ can do and you’re concerned about
her
safety? I’d worry about your men, were I you.”

Dow bobbed his head. “You may joke now but as soon as it is light, you will find little to amuse you.”

Lang shoved Dow against the wall with one hand, handing the rifle to Gurt with the other. Then he removed the bayonet, pressing its point against the colonel’s crotch.

“If we’re here by the time it’s light, you’ll be eligible for the Vienna Boys’ Choir.”

“Surely you don’t think you can threaten—”

Lang pushed a little harder, gratified by Dow’s gasp. “Get your men’s attention. You are to instruct them exactly as I say.”

Dow snorted. “Absurd! You’ll kill me.”

“Actually, I have other plans for you, but they don’t have to include the first part of your sex-change surgery.”

Lang lowered the bayonet and grabbed a handful of the colonel’s crotch through his pants. He raised the cutting edge of the bayonet about a foot above the clump of cloth. “On three you join Eunuchs Anonymous. One, two . . .”

Dow had apparently experienced a speedy attitude adjustment. Or perhaps a realization Lang wasn’t kidding. “Wait! What is it you require of me?”

Lang told him.

“Absurd! You will never succeed!”

Lang shrugged, a gesture he realized was now visible in the smoky light of predawn. “For your sake, you’d better make sure it does.”

Dow stood against the low wall, cleared his throat and began to speak in a loud voice. Crouched behind him, Gurt and Lang could see the men below cease their frenetic activity and look upward to their commander.

“How do we know he is not telling his men where we are? You do not know Chinese.” Gurt whispered.

“I don’t, but you must admit he has a major incentive to do as I ask. Forget the hearts and minds. When you literally have someone by the balls, they are very likely to agree with you.”

The light had grown sufficiently for Lang to see the skeptical look on her face. “You better be right or . . .”

The alternative was never spelled out. Below, the men fell into lines forming ranks. At a command from Dow, echoed by a half-dozen subordinate officers, the men crisply did a right face and marched toward the Citadelle’s entrance.

Although they moved too quickly for Lang to count, he noted they moved five to the rank, five files to the group. He guessed he was watching between a hundred and a hundred and ten men march parade-style out of the fortress.

Dow, his face now visible in the light growing in the east, wore the expression of a man whose team is well ahead of the point spread. “I did as you asked, Mr. Reilly. My men will cross the pathway to where the forest begins. No matter what they do, they will be between you and escape.”