Greg Iles - The Spandau Phoenix

bull his way out of the corner. Hans stood him up against the machine

and hit him three times fast in the solar plexus. Luhr sank to the

floor. Hans tasted blood in his mouth. He picked up the heavy

microscope and held it high above his head. His arm shivered from the

weight. One blow would crush Luhr's skull like an eggshell.

"This is for Weiss," he muttered.

"Wait!" rasped a male voice.

Hans turned slowly, the microscope still high above his head. He saw a

tall, wiry man wearing sweat-soaked trousers and an undershirt leaning

unsteadily on Ilse's shoulder.

"Not that way," said Stern, his voice strangely flat.

Luhr lay gulping for air at Hans's feet. Slowly he got onto then turned

ha( and stared at the tanned stranger. The beaked nose ...

weathered, hawklike face. "I've seen you," Hans said.

"Yes, Sergeant," Stern replied. "You have. Now pick that man up and

put him on the table."

"We don't have time for this!" Ilse cried. "The house is burning!

We have to find a way through those shields! A few exposures won't even

hurt him!"

"Put that animal on the table!"

Hans stunned Luhr with a kick to the head, then he hoisted him onto his

shoulder and hauled him around to the X-ray table. As soon as he dumped

him there, Ilse strapped him down with the leather restraints.

"Get out!" Stern barked. "Both of you!"

Hans watched fascinated as the Israeli lifted the broken microscope from

the floor and smashed it down onto the cable trigger Luhr had dropped.

"Shut off the power," Stern commanded.

Ilse found the ON/OFF switch and flipped it. Stern fiddled with the

tangled mess in big hands for a few moments, then dropped it and stepped

up to the bubble window in the shield.

"Turn the power back on."

Ilse obeyed. The entire room seemed to vibrate for four seconds; then

it went still. Luhr's scream of terror rent the acrid air. Again the

X-ray unit fired. The indescribable buzz ... clang chilled Ilse's

heart. Stern had permanently closed the circuit in the cable trigger.

The X-ray tube would continue to fire, recharge, and fire again until

someone finally shut off the power or a fuse burned out. Luhr shrieked

like a man trapped in a pit of snakes.

Hans looked up at Stern's lined face. He saw nothing written there. Not

satisfaction, not hatred. Nothing at all.

"Let's go," said Stern, pulling his eyes away from Luhr's struggling

body.

Ilse held up the black briefcase Hans had been carrying.

"We've got the Spandau papers. We found them in Horn's study.

The other book, too."

"The Zinoviev notebook?' Ilse nodded. "Everything."

"Good girl." Stern grabbed her arm and hustled her into the hall.

Hans backed slowly out of the room, his eyes still glued to the bubble

window in the lead shield. The X-ray machine continued to fire in

four-second intervals.

Four hundred meters of open ground separated the ridge of the bowl from

Horn House. The Armscor had covered barely a hundred when a fierce

hammering assaulted Hauer's ears. They were taking fire from the Libyan

machine-gun positions on the ridge behind them. Captain Barnard was

sitting in the Armscor's shotgun seat. Hauer grabbed his shoulder.

"Can you raise the tower on that radio, Captain?"

"I can try."

"Do it! Tell them to give us cover!"

Pulling off his helmet and respirator, Bernard began working through the

frequencies on the radio. Hauer glanced back into the crew compartment.

At the Arrnscor's firing slits, the black-clad team of commandos worked

their R5

carbines like men on an assembly line. One man's head and shoulders

were thrust into the tiny turret mounted atop the Arinscor; he swiveled

the .30 caliber machine gun between the Libyan positions with deadly

accuracy. Yet Libyan bullets still pounded the vehicle's armor. Hauer

turned again and watched Horn House growing larger in the Armscor's

reinforced windshield: 250 meters and closing.

Suddenly an alien voice began speaking inside the vehicle.

"Phoenix to Graaff ... Phoenix to Graaff ... Do you read?" The tension

in Pieter Smuts's voice was like a cable stretched near to breaking.

"Phoenix to Graaff! Where are your reinforcements?"

"Answer him!" Hauer told Captain Barnard. "Tell him Graaff's manning

our turret gun!"

Hauer looked out at the house again: 160 meters. He gave Bernard an

encouraging punch on the shoulder; then he ducked back into the crew

compartment to confer with General Steyn.

The instant Hauer left the compartment, the driver lashed out with his

elbow and struck Captain Barnard in the side of the head. The Arrnscor

lurched to a halt 140 meters from Horn House. Hauer flew forward and

crashed against a steel bulkhead; only his helmet prevented him from

cracking his skull. The driver snatched u the radio microphone and be,

p gan transmitting rapidly in Afrikaans: "Arinscor to Phoenix! Armscor

to Phoenix! It's a tri( Trap!

Trap! Major Graaff isn't here -- -" Dazed, Hauer lunged back into the

driver's compartment.

He did not understand Afrikaans, but he recognized a warning.

Taking hold of the driver's head, he wrenched with all his might, hoping

to snap the man's cervical vertebrae. The driver went suddenly stiff,

then limp.

"Take the wheel!" Hauer shouted at Captain BamardWhile Hauer dragged

the driver back into the crew compartment, Captain Barnard scrambled

into the driver's seat and wrestled the Armscor into gear.

The vehicle lurched forward, back, then began rolling toward the house

again.

Hauer laid the senseless driver against the Armscor's side hatch and

tore off his own respirator. "Another traitor!" he yelled to General

SteynGeneral Steyn ripped off his gas mask. His face was flushed with

anger and disbelief. At his feet the traitor squirmed and flung his

arms upward. In a fit of rage Gadi kicked open the Armscor's side hatch

and shoved the driver out onto the veld. By the time Gadi shut the

hatch, a Libyan machine gunner had riddled the man's body with .30

caliber slugs.

The Armscor shivered as another Libyan machine gunner locked onto the

tail of the armored car. Hauer grabbed General Steyn's arm. "I don't

know if the tower heard that warning, but-" The sudden, steel-ripping

roar of the Vulcan obliterated both Hauer's voice and the rattle of the

Libyan machine guns.

Hauer leapt up to a firing slit. His stomach rolled as he watched the

blazing tracer line march toward the nose of the Armscor. He had seen

similar guns on American tank-killing planes on maneuvers in Germany.

The rotary guns mounted in their stubby snouts spewed out 5000

depleted-uranium slugs per minute-enough to turn a T-72 tank into a

burning hulk in seconds.

Captain Barnard swerved to avoid the oncoming tracer beam, but the

Vulcan gunner simply adjusted his fire.

Barnard screamed as the shells churned up the earth directly in front of

the Armscor. Then suddenly-miraculously-the fiery stream of death

winked out.

"He's jammed!" Hauer shouted. "Go! Go!"

The Annscor surged forward. Like a hailstorm from hell, slugs pounded

the vehicle from every side as Smuts's bunker gunners opened up from

their concealed positions. Hauer peered out through a gun port, trying

to pinpoint the source of the fire.

"Bunkers!" he shouted. "They're dug into the hill!"

From a slit on the Annscor's right side, Gadi fired his R5

assault rifle in careful, three-round bursts, aiming for the muzzle