Greg Iles - The Spandau Phoenix

not in .)magazines, not even on television. Horn House-a building #kat

from inside gave the impression of a classical manor Med with ornate

rooms and endless hallways-was actually an equilateral triangle. A

triad of vast legs surrounded a central tower that rose like a castle

keep above the three outer legs. Crowning this tower was a.glittering

copper-plated dome. The observatory, Ilse remembered. Hexagonal

turrets ked each vertex of the great triangle. She half expected to see

archers rise up from behind the tessellated parapets.

With a sudden shiver, she realized that Horn House was exactly what it

appeared to be-a fortress. On the seemingly ureless plain, the massive

citadel stood ofi a hill set in center of a shallow, circular bowl

created by gradually rig slopes on all its sides. Anyone approaching it

would have to cross this naked expanse of ground beneath the gaze of the

central tower.

Ilse pressed down her apprehension and set off across the asphalt, using

the observatory dome as her homeward beacon.

She was quickly brought up short by a deep, dry gully. She d crossing a

shallow defile earlier, but nothing s. She must have crossed it at

another point on her from the house. Easing herself down over the rim,

carefully into the dusty ravine.

Smuts had christened this dry creek bed "the wash and it served as the

first barrier in an impregnable security screen which the Afrikaner had

constructed around his master's isolated redoubt. If Ilse had known

what lay been her and Horn House, she would have hunkered down he Wash

and refused to take another step. The Afrikaner used all his experience

to turn the grassy bowl between the Wash and his master's fortress into

a killing zone from which no intruder could escape alive.

Every square meter of the circular depression was protected by Claymore

mines, explosive devices containing hundreds of steel balls that, when

remotely detonated, blasted outward at an angle and cut any living

creature to pieces in a millisecond. Concrete bunkers, each armed with

an M-60 machine gun, studded the inner lip of the huge bowl.

Each was connected to the central tower by a network of underground

tunnels, providing a secure means of directing fire and reinforcing the

bunkers in the event of casualties. But the linchpin of Horn House's

defenses was the "observatory." The nerve center of the entire security

complex, the great copper dome housed closed-circuit television

monitors, radar screens, satellite communications gear, and the pride of

Smuts's arsenal-a painstakingly machined copy of the American Vulcan

mini-gun, a rotary cannon capable of pouring 6,600 armor-piercing rounds

per minute down onto the open ground surrounding Horn House.

None of these precautions was visible, of course; Pieter Smuts knew his

job. The Claymore mines-designed to be spiked onto the ground

surface-had been waterproofed and hidden beneath small mounds of earth.

The bunkers had sheets of sun-scorched sod laid over their outward

faces.

Even the Vulcan gun slept silently behind the retractable 'lllescope

cover" of the "observatory," waiting to be aimed not at the heavens, but

at the earth.

Oblivious to the matrix of death that surrounded her, Ilse fought her

way up and over'the far rim of the Wash, brushed herself off, and

continued toward the still distant house.

With a soft buzz Alfred Horn turned his wheelchair away from his

security chief and gazed across the veld. Ilse had just topped the rim

of the bowl to the northeast. With her blond hair dancing in the sun,

she looked as carefree as a Jungfrau picnicking in the Grunewald.

Without taking his eyes from her, Horn asked, "Is the helicopter

available, Pieter?"

"Yes, sir."

Horn watched Ilse make her way across the long, shallow depression and

climb the hill to the house. It took several minutes. When Ilse spied

the Ahikaner, she started to avoid the table, but Horn motioned her

over. She stepped tentatively up to his wheelchair.

"Is there any news of my husband?" she asked diffidently.

"Not yet, my dear. But there soon will be, I'm sure." Horin turned to

Smuts. "Pieter, have one of the office girls order some clothes for

Frau Apfel. They can fly them out in the helicopter. And make sure

there's something conservative."

He cast a surreptitious glance at Lord Granville. "For tonight."

The young Englishman stared into his drink.

"Take Frau Apfel with you, Pieter," Horn suggested. "She can provide

her sizes." He turned to Ilse with a smile.

"Would you, my dear?"

Ilse hesitated a moment, then she silently followed Smuts.

She didn't know what to make of Alfred Horn's eccentricities, but she

remembered the Afrikaner's warning against disobeying him. She would do

anything to keep her unborn child off the torture table that waited in

the X-ray ROOMHom watched her walk into the house, a look of rapture on

his face. Stanton observed him with growing disgust. The oldfool's

past it, he thought. There's no stopping things now.

You never learned the natural law, Alfred You pass the torrh to the

young or you die. As Stanton drained the dregs of his Bloody Mary, he

made a silent toast to Sir Neville Shaw.

3.30 P.M. Mozambique Channel, Indian Ocean

Sixty-five miles off the wooded coastline of southern Mozambique, the MV

Casilda hove to in the 370-mile-wide stretch of water that separates the

old Portuguese colony from the island of Madagascar. A medium-sized

freighter of Panamanian registry, her holds were full of denim fabric

bound for Dares Salaam on the Tanzanian coast to the north. After

unloading this cargo Casilda would sail to Beira, the great railhead and

port on the Mozambique coast, where she would take on a consignment of

asbestos bound for Uruguay. But just now she had other business.

Strapped to the aft deck of the freighter like giant insects pinned to a

display board were two Bell JetRanger HI helicopters scheduled for

delivery to RENAMO, the antiMarxist guerrillas in Mozambique- Although

the choppers would eventually be delivered to their official buyers,

they had a job to do first-a slight detour to take. Supplied by a very

wealthy gentleman in South America, the JetRangers were configured as

commercial aircraft-with the papers required for legal transfer all in

order-but a military man might I e quick to notice that they could be

easily modified for combat duty in a pinch.

The sun-blistered man who surveyed the two helos from the shadow of the

wheelhouse awning was just such a man.

An Englishman, and the only white man on the entire ship, his name was

Alan Burton. During the entire five-week voyage, Burton had watched

over the helicopters as if they were his own. In the next two days he

would have to entrust his life to them, and as he did not particularly

trust any of the men he would be working with, he felt that the most he

could do was be sure of the choppers. They were his lifeline.

His way in-his way out.

Casilda had been lucky so far. At no port of call had any customs

officials conducted more than a cursory search of her holds. If they

had, they would almost certainly have discovered the two large crates

secreted in the stacks of bolted denim, which contained a rather

amateurish assortment of assault rifles, ammunition, and grenades.

They might even have discovered the special cargo hidden in Alan

Burton's cabin, but the Englishman doubted it. He had hidden the mortar