Aaron Elkins - Fellowship Of Fear

He was too late. They were both running for him, scattering people and knocking over the light metal tables.

Glasses and pitchers shattered on the ground. Dr. Rufus, directly in the men’s path, stood up and reached out a hand to stop them. Without breaking stride, the blond one knocked him to the stone floor with a brutal forearm blow to the face.

"He has a gun! Watch out!" Dr. Rufus shouted from the ground through blood-smeared lips, his voice shocked and weak.

John had risen from the chair and was reaching into his jacket when they got there. The bald one rammed his gun against Marti’s throat, making her cry out. John dropped back into the chair at once, his face gray. The blond one, flat-faced and powerful, shoved Gideon into his chair and snatched the book, with the paper inside, from the table. Then, from behind, he caught Janet’s throat roughly in the crook of the same arm and forced her to rise, gasping. He jammed the gun hard into the small of her back; she winced and made a soft, frightened sound.

Gideon’s mind was raging with anger and panic. If they hurt her… He tried to speak but choked on the words. Let her alone, he thought, take the damn paper, but let her alone, let her live…

Marti was also pulled to her feet, and both women were dragged to the railing with guns pressed into their backs. The terrace was suffused with a weird, panting silence. Gideon’s heart pounded terrifically. Let her live, let her live..

The blond climbed awkwardly over the railing, keeping his hold on Janet’s throat. Breathing hoarsely, he began to pull her over the railing with him. Gideon gathered himself to leap, but John pushed him back down. The man looked quickly over his shoulder at the drop of three or four feet to the vineyard below. Janet, her face stony with terror, struggled suddenly, throwing him off balance. The gun gleamed evilly as he waved one arm to regain his equilibrium. The other arm shifted to get a more secure grip on Janet’s throat.

And Gideon launched himself. It seemed to him that he flew the entire ten feet without once touching the ground. Certainly he was in the air when he struck, so that the full weight of his body was behind the rigid arm and outstretched hand that caught the man full in the face. His long, powerful fingers twisted, squeezed, and shoved at the same time. The man’s arm flew from Janet’s neck as he was flung backwards off the terrace to land jarringly on his feet in the dirt below.

Gideon swept Janet from the railing and onto the terrace floor with a backward swipe of his arm, and then fell on top of her and rolled on his side to shield her from the gunman. But the gunman wasn’t shooting. He stood stunned for a second, then picked up the book, which had fallen to the ground, and began to run clumsily down the hill through the rows of grapevines.

The bald man, in the meantime, had managed to pull Marti over the railing, while keeping his gun pointed at John’s head. When he dropped with her to the vineyard below, one of her heels caught in the soft, plowed earth, tearing off her shoe and twisting her sideways toward the ground. The man had her by one arm, trying to pull her to her feet, when he looked up to see John vaulting over the railing in a great, arching leap. He stumbled back out of the way, firing one jerky shot at the big airborne body coming down on him, but missed wildly. John landed awkwardly on one foot and one hand, and staggered off balance toward Marti, who lay face-down and still. The bald man fired and missed again, then began to run down the hill after the blond man. John fell as he reached Marti, but managed to take her in his arms. She hugged him fiercely. He buried his face in her shoulder for a moment, then stood up quickly.

Gideon began to get to his feet, and to help Janet up. As he did so, he saw three figures moving diagonally across the vineyard a few hundred feet below, running in a path that would cut off the two men floundering down the slope.

John pulled his pistol from a shoulder holster and shouted at the escaping men. "Stop! Halt! Police! Polizei!"

They kept running. He fired once in the air, then took quick aim and shot at them.

"Oh, dear God," Janet said. Gideon pulled her to him and hid her face against his chest.

John fired again. Both men dropped into crouches behind a row of vines and returned several shots in a rapid spatter of gunfire.

The Rheinterras, which had been so strangely hushed, erupted with noise and action. Bullets ricocheted and clattered, tables overturned, people screamed and ducked. Gideon dropped to the floor again, with Janet still in his arms. On the ground just below the terrace, he could see John, seemingly unhurt, bent over low and trying to peer through the rows of grapevines. One of his hands was on Marti’s shoulder, keeping her near the ground.

Gideon heard a far-off shout, unmistakably a command. He looked in the direction of the sound. Farther down the hill, behind a low stone fence near the road, were the three men he had seen cutting across the vineyard. They were pointing squat, ugly handguns at the crouching men. The three were in identical postures. Each was on one knee, calmly sighting along the gun held in his extended right hand while the left hand cupped the right wrist.

They were a different breed, those three. Gideon could see that from two hundred feet away. Not like the tense, crouching men with the book; not like John, excitable and gallant; certainly not like Gideon himself, who could move from violent, courageous fury to hesitant timidity and back again, all within a few seconds. These three were professionals, emotionless, just doing their savage job, and terribly sure of themselves. Gideon knew the two crouching men would die. A cold droplet of sweat ran down the middle of his back.

The crouching men turned toward the shouted command, craning their necks to see through the vines. John held his fire and watched. The terrace was silent and breathless once again. The sound of a heavy truck shifting gears was somehow carried up from the Rheingoldstrasse along the Rhine, faint and strangely mundane. People on the terrace began to sit up or get tentatively to their knees. Janet pulled her face away from Gideon’s body and started to rise. He put his hand on her arm to check her, and they both watched, leaning on their elbows.

The crouching men finally saw the ones at the stone fence and fired, once each, before the men began firing back. The sounds were flat and unimpressive on the open hillside, like the tiny explosions of penny firecrackers. But Gideon could see how the powerful repercussions jerked the hands of the men at the stone fence as if they were puppets with strings around their wrists. Only their hands moved. They didn’t duck or flinch or shift their positions. They remained, each on one knee, straight-backed and impassive, firing slowing and steadily.

The blond, beefy man with the book was hit first. He stood up suddenly, almost angrily, his back slightly arched, and flung the book over his shoulder. Then he seemed to leap backwards off his feet, landing flatly on his back. He twitched and began to rise, getting as far as his knees and waving his gun drunkenly, but facing the wrong direction. He put a hand on a vine support to steady himself, then twitched wildly one more time and fell forward into the row of vines. There he lay still, his upper body supported and shaded by the trellis, his knees and feet on the ground. Gideon saw the gun slide gently from his fingers and knew he was dead.

The bald man, who had seemed momentarily benumbed by the sight of his partner dangling from the vines, now shook himself, snatched up the book, and began to sidle rapidly between two planted rows, scrambling along in the dirt on his hands and knees, his fat thighs pumping. The vines gave him little protection, Gideon saw; when he came to the end of the row, he’d be completely in the open. Gideon wished he would surrender. His naked skull looked vulnerable and pink; it would stand up to bullets about as well as a soft-boiled egg.