James Becker - Echo of the Reich

The man Marcus had sent hadn’t come alone. A second man was waiting outside the mine.

26 July 2012

“What is it?” Angela asked.

“Quiet,” Bronson muttered. “I just saw something. I’m certain there’s somebody outside, walking around near the ventilation shaft. I don’t think our deceased friend was working alone.”

“Oh my God. Is there another way out of here?”

“I doubt it very much, and even if there is, it could take us days to find it. We don’t have any choice: we have to leave this place the same way we entered it.”

“But if you’re right,” Angela said, her voice rising slightly with fear, “whoever’s out there will shoot us down the moment he sees us.”

“I know,” Bronson said. “That’s the problem. Either we have to take him out of the equation before we leave or we have to somehow convince him that we’re not who he thinks we are.”

For a few seconds he considered the problem from a tactical point of view. As long as they stayed inside the mine, they were invulnerable, because the only way the man outside could attack them would be by coming through the ventilation shaft himself, and a man-even a heavily armed man-stuck inside a stone tunnel was a sitting target. Unfortunately, precisely the same argument applied to Bronson if he tried to crawl along the ventilation shaft and then shoot down the man waiting outside. He couldn’t possibly cover the distance from the chamber to the end of the shaft in silence, and the man would be waiting and alert when he finally reached the outside opening. To do that would simply invite a bullet through his head.

Then he glanced down at the overalls he was wearing, and a slight grin appeared on his face.

“What?” Angela whispered.

“I think I know how I can make this work. You’ll have to stay here and wait for me. And don’t argue. There’ll be shooting, but if it goes according to plan, I’ll call you to come out as soon as I’ve taken care of the problem outside.”

Angela looked at him in the gloom of the chamber and shook her head.

“Just be careful,” she said.

Then she took a couple of paces forward, wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed him full on the lips.

Bronson responded immediately, holding her tight and stroking her blond hair back from her forehead.

“I don’t think I’ve ever said it enough,” he said, his voice thick with emotion, “but I’ve always loved you.”

“I know you have. Now stop fannying about and get us out of here.”

Bronson smiled at her, nodded and turned away. He climbed up onto the chair and looked down the ventilation shaft. There was now no sign of movement, no subtle changes in the amount of light visible, but he knew what he’d seen. He took the Walther out of his pocket and screwed on the suppressor. He also checked that he had the Heckler amp; Koch submachine gun with him, but removed the magazine and tucked it into one of his pockets. That weapon would play a crucial part in his plan to ambush the man outside.

Bronson was gambling on the fact that he was dressed in a very similar fashion to the German who’d attacked them inside the mine, and that one man wearing a set of dark blue overalls and emerging feetfirst from a stone shaft should look very similar to any other man doing the same thing. The submachine gun should help to complete the deception.

He made no attempt to be quiet. In fact, he deliberately knocked the butt of the Heckler amp; Koch against the stone wall of the ventilation shaft a couple of times as he climbed up into it. He was sure that the noise of the shots would have been audible outside the mine, though the sound wouldn’t have traveled very far, so the waiting German-and Bronson was hoping that Marcus had sent only two men to the Wenceslas Mine-would be expecting his colleague to reappear at any moment.

As Bronson made his clumsy way backward along the ventilation shaft, the Walther pistol tucked into his pocket and the submachine gun clutched in his left hand, he heard the man outside call out to him in German. He just grunted in reply, feeling with his feet for the end of the shaft, because that was when his plan would succeed or fail.

Then his left shoe scraped over a rocky lip and he felt a faint breath of wind through the thin material of his sock. And then someone tapped his shoe twice. The second man was obviously waiting right beside the entrance to the ventilation shaft, and that was exactly where Bronson wanted him to be.

He maneuvered slightly in the confined space, and slid the unloaded Heckler amp; Koch down his body, butt first, until it projected out of the shaft, and then just held it there for a few moments, waiting for the other man to take it.

Seconds later, he did so, and that gave Bronson just the opportunity he needed. By handing over the weapon, he hoped he’d convinced the man waiting outside that it was his colleague emerging from the tunnel, which should mean that the second man was now holding the unloaded submachine gun-without the magazine just a useless lump of metal-instead of whatever weapon-possibly a pistol-that he was armed with.

Time was now of the essence. As quickly as he could, Bronson wriggled backward out of the shaft, keeping his face turned away from the other man.

Then he heard a disturbingly familiar sound-the series of metallic clicks made when the magazine is inserted into a submachine gun and the bolt is pulled back to cock the weapon-and he guessed that the second German had just converted the Heckler amp; Koch back into a lethal weapon by attaching a new magazine. At close quarters, his Walther pistol would be no match for that weapon.

He had seconds to react.

Bronson scrambled the last couple of feet out of the tunnel and down the rock face, keeping his head facing away from the other man the entire time. In one fluid movement, he dropped to the ground, drew the Walther pistol with its cumbersome suppressor from his pocket, slipped off the safety catch and whirled round to face his opponent.

The German-and Bronson was relieved to see only one man facing him in the small clearing-was looking straight at him, the submachine gun held in both hands, the barrel pointing directly toward him. Something must have alerted the man, perhaps the color of Bronson’s overalls, or simply his failure to reply to his questions as he’d emerged from the shaft. Whatever it was didn’t matter. But it left Bronson with absolutely no choice about what to do next.

He altered the aim of the Walther fractionally, pointing the barrel at the center of the man’s chest, and squeezed the trigger.

Only in films can somebody shoot a weapon out of another person’s hands, or bring someone down with a well-placed shot to a leg or arm. In a real-life firefight, soldiers, policemen and bodyguards aim for the center of mass, the middle of the torso, because that’s where a bullet wound is most likely to incapacitate and, given the inherent inaccuracy of pistols, that also increases the chances of the bullet hitting the target.

Good shots are born more often than they’re made, and Bronson had always been good with weapons.

The flat crack of the silenced pistol echoed off the rock face, and before the German could squeeze the trigger of the submachine gun, the nine-millimeter copper-jacketed bullet slammed into his chest. The shocked expression on his face told its own story, and without a sound he simply fell backward, the Heckler amp; Koch dropping to the ground beside him.

Bronson strode across to where he was lying, the aim of the Walther never varying for an instant, pointing directly at the fallen man. He stopped beside him and looked down, but it was immediately clear that he wouldn’t need a second shot. There was remarkably little blood from the wound because the bullet had clearly ripped apart the man’s heart, and he had effectively been dead even before his body fell.