Greg Iles - The Spandau Phoenix

Lear, only twenty meters from the still-burning wreck of its sister

ship. Burton heard its rotors whining as he neared the runway, running

full out.

Then the whine was swallowed by the furious ripping sound of the Vulcan.

Burton looked back. He saw the tenible tracer beam race across the

bowl, leap over the Wash, and streak up behind them. "Run!"

he screamed at Diaz.

The Cuban needed no prodding; he was ahead of Burton already. The

tracer beam actually passed between the two men as it raced toward

Fidel's chopper, churning the earth into a furrow of death.

Then it happened. Fidel lost his nerve. Seeing the tracers closing in

on him, he simply could not control his panic.

With the only survivors of his team less than thirty meters from his

chopper, the terrified Cuban lifted off. Diaz screamed for his comrade

to wait, but the @errified pilot ignored him.

Burton had seen this a hundred times before. Slowing his sprint, he

unslung his MP-5 and dropped to his knees. The only way to stop a

panicked man from bolting was to put an equal or greater throat in front

of him. Burton sighted his submachine gun in on the windshield of

Fidel's chopper and squeezed off a three-round burst.

"Are you loco?" Diaz screamed. "You'll crash him."

"Signal him to put down!"

Fidel's chopper bucked wildly, hovering ten meters off the ground.

Unaccustomed to firing the Vulcan, Jijrgen Luhr had missed the chopper

on the first pass. Tracers danced wildly above the chopper's rotors.

Diaz signaled frantically for his compadre to put down, but Fidel still

seemed uncertain of where the greater danger lay. Burton convinced him

with a sustained burst that fragmented the chopper's windshield. The

JetRanger dropped until it hovered a meter above the runway. Burton

dashed for its side door, passing Diaz on the way. He leaped into the

shuddering machine and trained his weapon on Fidel.

"Don't take off till Diaz is in!"

The little Cuban was close, but not close enough. Without even meaning

to, Fidel jinked his ship two meters higher.

"Down!" Burton roared.

The JetRanger settled, then jerked up again.

Luhr backed his tracers off about forty meters from his target and began

vectoring in again. This time the deadly beam held steady as he walked

it in on the struggling helicopter.

"Jump!" Burton yelled.

Diaz leaped for the chopper's right skid, caught it. Burton got one

hand on the Cuban's collar, saw the fear and anger in his eyes-then he

felt the wild impact. For the briefest instant the tracer beam had

sliced up and nicked Diaz in the side. One bullet plucked him off the

skid as deffly as the finger of God.

The chopper yawed wildly as Fidel sought to avoid the tracer beam.

"Set this whore down!" Burton cried. He fired a round through the

Plexiglas two inches from Fidel's head. The panicked Cuban shrieked in

ten-or. Leaning out of the side door, Burton saw Diaz lying in the mud

below, one arm raised in supplication.

Without any warning the chopper tilted ninety degrees and, whether by

Fidel's design or not, Burton tumbled out.

He caught himself on the skid and hung on with claws of desperation. He

felt the JetRanger start to rise. Fidel had made his decision: he was

clearing out. In a split second Burton made his own.

With a curse on his lips he let go of the skid and fell six meters to

the ground.

He landed badly, but the muddy earth cushioned his fall.

Above him, Fidel's chopper climbed rapidly, but not rapidly enough. Luhr

had finally got the hang of the Vulcan. The fiery stream of slugs

intersected the JetRanger amidships and nearly cut it in two before the

fuel tank_ blew. The chopper fireballed like its sister ship, blasting

wreckage all over the runway.

Burton threw himself over Diaz as the shrapnel tore the asphalt all

around them. Without waiting for any further fire from the Vulcan, he

took hold of the Cuban, heaved him over his shoulder like a sack and

started slogging toward the Wash. If that gunner's still watching the

fireball, he thought, we might just make it. But if he saw me jump,

he's sighting -in on us right now. Ten meters to the edge ... seven ...

ton sped up, leaned forward ...

He leaped.

The two men tumbled head over heels down the steep slope and skidded to

a stop at the edge of a raging flood.

Burton made sure Diaz wasn't about to be swept into the water, and then

he glanced around for a hiding place. The Cuban caught his sleeve and

pulled his face down close.

"Gracias, " he coughed. "Gracias, English."

Burton looked down at the tough little Cuban. Diaz's camouflage shirt

was soaked with dark blood, but his lips and eyes showed the trace of a

smile. "Don't thank me yet, lad," the Englishman said quietly. "It's

going to be a long bloody night."

With the stealth that had carried him safely through four wars and

countless intelligence operations, Jonas Stern made his way back to the

bedroom he had briefly shared with Ilse.

His brain duummed wildly. He had to get back to that telephone.

He had scratched a mark deep in 'the library door with his broken fork

so that he could quickly find the secret room again. But would he get

another chapce? Horn's security chief would surely check the bedroom

soon. The Afrikaner would naturally assume that "Professor Natterman"

had tried to escape with his granddaughter. And when he found Stern

waiting here, what would he think?

Would he believe that "Natterman" had sat like a rabbit in an open cage

while his granddaughter risked her life to escape?

Stern had heard Horn's promise to spare Hans Apfel's life, but he

doubted if the old man's clemency would extend to Ilse's "grandfather."

To survive the next few minutes, Stern knew, he would have to find some

plausible reason for having stayed behind while Ilse fled. Boot heels

were already pounding up the hall when he remembered the Zinoviev

notebook. Snatching it from inside his shirt, he darted to the little

writing desk, mussed his hair, and opened the leatherbound volume at the

middle.

The boots stopped outside his door.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Stern did not look up when Smuts opened the door. He pored over the

thin black volume as if it were a lost book of the Bible. The Afrikaner

stood silent for some time, watching him.

"What are you doing, Professor?" he said finally.

"Reading," Stern muttered.

"I can see that," snapped Smuts. "Where is your granddaughter?"

"I have no idea."

"How did she get out of this room?"

Stern looked up at last. "She picked the lock."

"With what?"

"A fork from your dinner table, I believe."

Smuts frowned. "Why didn't you go with her?

Stern shrugged. "She is young, I am old. With me along she would have

little chance of escape. Without me ... who knows?"

"She did not escape," Smuts said, smirking.

Stern sighed and let a hand fall from the desk to his knee.

"Will you bring her back to me, please?"

"Impossible. She must pay for her insolence."

Recalling Horn's promise of mercy'to Ilse, Stern suppressed a smile as

he brought a hand to his forehead. "She's only a young girl who wanted

to find her husband. Where is the crime in that?"

"Herr Horn will decide," Smuts answered stiffly. "I think you're lying,

Professor. You tried to escape and failed, didn't you? You ran into

the shields."

"You underrate my devotion to history, young man." Stern laid a hand on