Greg Iles - The Spandau Phoenix

and closed her hand around one of the forks. She thought of driving it

into Luhr's neck, but she did not. Better to let Stern make a move if

he thought the time was right.

Stern didn't get the chance. Luhr turned the knob quickly and kicked

open the door, knocking, the Israeli backward onto the floor.

He laughed, then shoved Ilse inside and jerked the door shut.

Ilse pulled the silver forks from her pocket and tossed them to Stern.

"Get us out of here!" she snapped. "Now!"

When the elevator door opened in the domed observatory tower, Jiirgen

Luhr stepped into a room unlike any he had ever seen. He had once been

admitted to the control tower of Frankfurt International Airport, but

even that see primitive compared to this futuristic command post.

Computer screens, satellite receivers, amplifiers, massive banks of

switches, closed-circuit television monitors, and countless other pieces

of high-tech equipment hung from the ceiling and rose from the carpeted

floor. An eerie green glow bathed the circular room, silhouetting three

men dressed in khaki who ceaselessly monitored the various surveillance

consoles.

One man made way for Smuts, who took a seat before a phosphorescent

radar screen.

"Who is in the helicopters?" Luhr asked.

Smuts smiled thinly. "I'm not sure, but you can bet they're friends of

Lord Granville, our pet English nobleman.

You see those switches there? The red ones?"

"Here?" asked Luhr, reaching.

"Don't touch them! Christ! Look at the markings. North, East, South,

West. When I call a direction, pull the first switch for that heading.

When I call it again, pull the second. Got it?"

Luhr nodded. "What do they do?"

"You'll find out soon enough."

Taking a last look at the radar screen, Smuts moved to the center of the

room, ascended a short ladder, 'and climbed into the strangest

contraption Luhr had ever seen. A monstrosity of steel tubing, pedals,

gears, and hydraulic lines, it looked like something stripped from the

belly of a World War Two vintage bomber. Protruding from this strange

machine were six long narrow metal tubes joined at the center and

extending to within an inch of the dome's wall. Suddenly, Luhr realized

what he was looking at: a Vulcan 20mm rotary cannon. He had seen them

many times in Germany, jutting from the stubby snouts of American A-IO

tank-killing warplanes.

"Hit the blue switch," Smuts ordered.

Luhr obeyed, and watched in wonder as a narrow oblong section of the

domed ceiling receded into a hidden slot in the wall. Smuts touched a

button; the barrels of the Vulcan gun moved forward through the opening

like the barrel of a telescope. Now the gun could be traversed on a

vertical axis.

"Hit the next switch down." Luhr gasped as the middle four feet of the

circular wall sank into the floor with . a deep hum. Through the

bulletresistant polycarbonate glass that now served as the wall, Luhr

could see a 360-degree panorama of the grounds surrounding Horn House.

The sky was heav and nearly black with impending rain. Four hundred

meters to the north, Horn's Leadet and helicopter sat like toys in the

fast-fading light.

"Next," said Smuts.

Luhr hit the final blue switch, immersing the room in near-total

darkness. Only the luminous green radar screens competed with the gray

light outside the turret. Smuts pulled down a leather harness and

buckled it across his chest. Then he grasped two elongated tubes and

positioned them directly over his eyes. Luhr realized they were laser

targeting goggles.

"Sit down and strap yourself in," Smuts ordered.

"Why?ll Scowling, Smuts jabbed a foot pedal. Instantly the turret began

to rotate, throwing Luhr to the floor.

"Don't ever question my orders, Lieutenant."

Luhr scrambled to his feet and buckled himself into the chair. On the

radar screen to his left, two tiny blips crossed the line indicating the

western edge of the Kruger National Park, then turned southwest toward

an H marked on the screen in grease pencil.

"Fifteen kilometers and closing," announced a khaki-clad technician.

"Approach speed 110 knots."

Luhr watched the fuzzy green specks pass slightly to the north of the H,

then veer left and bore straight in. "Who are they?" he asked, unable

to suppress his apprehension.

"Dead men," Smuts replied from the gun cage.

Hans Apfel could not move. He lay in the absolute darkness of a cell

one hundred meters below the earth. This was the same cell in which

Jiirgen Luhr had spent his first night in South Africa. Hans was bound

to a heavy cot with rope and gagged with a thick strip of cloth.

He could only breathe through his nose. No sound had reached his ears

for hours, save the occasional sibilant hiss of a ventilator blowing air

into his cell.

Suddenly, a deep, buzzing alarm blasted through the basement complex.

Every muscle in Hans's body contracted in shock. What was happening? A

fire? For the hundredth time he expelled every ounce of air from his

lungs and tried to shift his body on the cot. It was no use. He had

never felt so

'

helpless in his life. Yet despite his fear for Ilse, one desperate hope

flickered in his brain: Is it my father?

"I've almost got it," Stern grunted, working feverishly at the lock on

the bedroom door. By intertwining the tines of Ilse's stolen forks and

snapping off several, he'd managed to fashion the dinner fork into a

serviceable lock pick.

"Hurry!" Ilse urged. "I don't think we have much time."

"Did Horn seem upset?" Stern asked, still working. "Surprised?

Frightened?"

"Not really. Please, hurry. We must find Hans!"

At that moment the clouds opened. The rain lashed the roof of Horn

House in great sheets, then settled into a steady torrent that would

soon turn the surrounding gullies into raging rivers.

"Got it!" Stern cried. He cracked the door slightly, then flung it

wide.

Ilse darted into the hall. "Where should we start?"

"Beat on every locked door you can find. If Hans is here, he'll be

behind one."

"Aren't you coming?"

"You don't need me to find your husband. I've got something else to

do."

"What?"

"After what you told me, you ask me that? Move girl!"

Stern spun Ilse around, put a hand between her shoulder blades and

shoved her down the hall. She hesitated a moment; then, seeing that the

Israeli meant what he said, she started slowly up the corridor.

Stern clenched the broken fork tightly in his fist and set out in the

opposite direction.

The JetRanger helicopters skimmed across the veld like great steel

dragonflies. In the distance Burton could just make out the copper dome

of Horn's "observatory" glinting through the heavy rain. He flattened

his palm and dropped it close.to his thigh, indicating that Diaz should

fly still closer to the earth. The Cuban muttered something in Spanish,

but the scrub brush rose up into the Plexiglas windshield until Burton

felt he was tearing across the veld on a horse gone mad. Even the few

stunted trees they passed rose higher than the chopper's rotors.

"See it?" Burton yelled, pointing.

The Cuban nodded.

"We should see an airstrip soon. That's our objective.

Set right down on it!"

Burton poked his head back into the crowded cabin and gave the

Colombians a thumbs-up signal. Most of them looked airsick, but

Alberto-the guerilla observer-grinned back, his square white teeth