Victor O'Reilly - Games of The Hangman

Fitzduane searched quickly through the car. He found two Browning automatic pistols and an automatic shotgun – but no ammunition. He guessed the attackers must have tossed it into the snow, but there was no time to look. He picked up the fallen terrorist's Skorpion and a spare clip of ammunition. He felt as if he were reliving a nightmare. It wasn't rational, but he blamed himself for not having saved Rudi. Now his twin sister was in mortal danger, possibly because of his actions in involving her in the investigation, and he was going to be too late again. "Let's move it," he said, a break in his voice. His body vibrated with tension. He felt a hand on his arm.

"Easy, Hugo," said the Bear. "Take it very easy. It won't do the girl any good if you get yourself killed."

The Bear's words had the desired effect. Fitzduane felt the guilt and blind rage subside. He looked at the Bear. "This is how we'll do it," he said, and he explained.

"Just so," said the Bear.

They split up and moved toward the farmhouse.

Sylvie had endured the most brutal training, designed in part specifically to cauterize her feelings, and she had been through Kadar's initiation ceremonies, which were many times worse. She prided herself on being quite ruthless when carrying out an assignment – ruthless in the full sense of the word, without pity – and yet the execution of Vreni von Graffenlaub made her stomach churn.

Kadar had seemed amused when he gave the orders, as if he were enjoying some private joke. "I want you to hang the girl," he had said. "Let her die in the same way as her twin brother. Very neat, very Swiss. Perhaps we'll be establishing a new von Graffenlaub family tradition, thought rather hard to perpetuate from generation to generation under the circumstances. Oh, well. Her father should appreciate the symmetry."

The locks on the farmhouse door had given them little trouble; they were inside in less than a minute. They had found Vreni cowering under a duvet in the living room that led off the small kitchen. She had a lamb clutched in her arms, and her eyes were tightly closed. She wanted to believe that it was all a horrible dream, that the sound of the door opening and the footsteps were all her imagination, that the telephone still worked, that if she opened her eyes, everything would be cozy and normal in the farmhouse.

Gretel had torn the lamb away and slapped the cowering figure until she had been forced to look at him. Then, with one vicious slash, he had cut the throat of the bleating animal, the blood gushing over the petrified girl, her fear so great that they could smell it, the screams stillborn in her paralyzed throat.

The living room ceiling was too low for their purposes. Instead Gretel prepared for the hanging. He could watch the track leading from the village through the kitchen window, and he could just see the shadow where Santine was standing in for the security guards in the distance. There was some visibility thanks to a weak moon reflecting off the snow, but patches of cloud were frequent. At those times it was hard to see anything with certainty, and imagination made shadows move. Fortunately he knew he would get early warning from Santine in the Mercedes, so he gave in to the more compelling distraction of the preparations for the hanging.

The Bear's luck gave out when he tried to close in from the woodshed, which was located only about twenty meters from the farmhouse. The detective's movements, slowed by the snow that had banked up around the shed, around the distracted Hansel, whose first action was to snatch up his walkie-talkie and swear at Santine. He knew the gesture would be fruitless even before his reflex movement was completed, so he dropped the silent radio, shouted a warning to Sylvie and Gretel, and fired at the shadowy figure moving toward him.

Unhit but shaken by the blast of fire, the Bear rolled back into the cover of the woodshed and sank into a snowdrift. Emerging covered in snow but still crouched low, he was greeted by a second burst of fire. Rounds plowed into the snow about him and thudded into the wood. He couldn't see his attacker, but the window frame gave him a point of reference. He would be in one or the other of the two lower corners unless he was an idiot or wearing stilts. At this stage of the game the Bear wouldn't have been surprised by either possibility. Further muzzle flashes located the sniper in the left lower corner. Looking like a giant snowman, the Bear moved into firing position. He fired the. 44 Magnum four times.

The heavy hand-loaded slugs smashed through the wooden walls of the old farmhouse. Two rounds missed and shattered a jar of mung beans and a container of pickled cabbage. The remaining two slugs hit Hansel in the neck and the lower jaw. The first round smashed his spinal column, killing him instantly. The second round nearly decapitated him.

Hearing Hansel's warning shout, followed shortly by automatic weapons fire, Gretel, who had been holding the petrified Vreni at the edge of the choust while Sylvie adjusted the rope, immediately let go of his victim and jumped through the hose onto the stove and into the living room below. He ran into the kitchen toward Hansel, arriving just in time to see his friend's head blown off. Irrational with shock, Gretel skidded across the blood-slicked wooden floor, flung open the kitchen door and fired a long, low, scything burst into the darkness.

Vreni, released by her captor but still bound hand and foot and blindfolded, tottered at the edge of the choust. Fascinated, Sylvie watched as her terrified victim swayed back and forth and then, too weakened from stress to recover her balance, dropped with sickening sound into the hole.

The rope snapped taut.

The old farmhouse was set into the natural slope of the mountain. The plan was that Fitzduane, being younger and fitter than the Bear, would make his approach from the second-floor level. As he remembered it, an entrance there led into a workroom and then into the bedroom. It was possible to go from the living room to the bedroom either by going through the choust or by leaving the house through the kitchen and going up a steep path to the other entrance on the second floor.

When the firing started, Fitzduane, whose climb up the hill had taken longer than expected, was not yet in position. He debated giving supporting fire from where he was, but the overhang of the roof protected the terrorists inside the house from his line of fire, and he didn't think ineffective noise alone would do much good. The reassuring roar of the Bear's Magnum made up his mind, and he concentrated on trying to get to the second-floor door to take the terrorists from two sides. There was a lull in the terrorists' fire; then it increased. It was hard to be sure, but now there seemed to be at least two automatic weapons firing at the woodshed behind which the Bear was sheltering.

Fitzduane had misjudged his angle of approach and was too far up the slope. He slithered down inelegantly toward the workroom door. No window overlooked it, which made him feel better. He tried the handle. It was locked. He waited for the next burst of firing and opened up with the dead terrorist's Skorpion at the lock surround. The silencer killed most of the noise, but the door still held. He cursed the miserable. 32 rounds.

He fired again – this time a long burst – and the lock gave way. He darted into the room and rolled to gain cover, changing the clip and recocking the weapon as soon as he stopped. He switched the fire selector from automatic to single shot. At a cyclic rater of 750 rounds a minute, he didn't think a single twenty-round magazine was going to do him much good any other way. He tried not to think of what might have happened to Vreni. The terrorists were still there, so there was a chance they hadn't finished their business. There was a chance she was alive. He had to believe she was alive.