Greg Iles - Black Cross

He had to stop now .

He gripped the loop-end of his toggle rope in his left hand and focused on the roller-wheel above him. If he tangled the rope in that wheel, he would probably die. There was only one way to make the throw. He slipped his right wrist through the loop-end of the short rope, and with the same hand gripped the wooden handle at the other end — a throwing weight.

He leaned back as far as he could.

The roller-wheel above him whirred like a fishing reel spinning under a shark’s pull. Cocking his right arm, he threw the handle-end of the rope up and over the power line, aiming just behind the pulley-roller, and grabbed for the falling handle with his left hand.

He caught it!

Glancing down, he saw the crossarm of the tenth pylon rushing up to meet him. Thirty yards, twenty — had the British Sarin killed even a single SS man? — fifteen yards . . .

He twisted one end of the rope around each wrist and heaved himself up off the cylinder. The heavy tank shot out from under him like a wild bronco that had finally thrown its rider.

The horsehair toggle rope sang as it raked against the power line, slowing his descent. Was the friction enough? With all his strength he clenched the rope in his vibrating hands.

The toggle rope hit the crossarm with enough speed to snap McConnell’s whole body out ahead of the pylon, parallel to the wires. Momentum tore at his air tank, the harness on his back, his shoulders and wrists — but everything held. Rope, tank, harness, bones, and ligaments. Two seconds after the impact he was hanging suspended from the tenth pylon like a parachutist caught in a tree.

His arms felt as if they had been yanked from their sockets, so he swung his legs up over the crossarm and, in the upside-down position so common to twelve year old tree-climbers, worked his way along to the nearest support leg of the pylon.

Then he looked down.

Sixty feet below, six gas cylinders lay on the snow beside the factory wall. They looked harmless, used up, like scrap metal fallen off a junk truck. For all he knew, they might be harmless.

But they might not.

He looked to his right, down into the camp proper. Black stick figures of varying sizes sprawled on the snow at crazy angles, many concentrated in the area of the inmate blocks.

“God in Heaven,” he said, his voice alien inside the vinyl mask. “It works.”

He struggled to hold down the wave of nausea rising from his stomach. Vomiting in the mask might be fatal, since he could not risk removing it. Had any of the women and children reached the E-Block? Had he released the gas too early? Where was Anna? Stern? Stern had no gas suit. He looked down at his waist. Christ. He’d left his safety belt clipped to the top pylon.

The goddamn thing was useless anyway.

He took two massive breaths from his air tank, then jammed his spikes into wood, bear-hugged the pole and started down.

47

“Did you get the oxygen bottle?” Stern shouted, running toward the flashlight beam at the opposite end of the hospital corridor.

The beam moved down and illuminated a green bottle lying on a dark, reflective sheet. Stern set the kicking bundle that was Hannah Jansen on the sheet.

“Took it from a pneumonia case,” came Weitz’s muffled reply. “You’d better put on that suit.”

Stern lost no time doing that. But as he tried to work the recessed zipper, he realized something was wrong. Weitz could not be holding the flashlight to help him see and at the same time be taping the little girl into the vinyl sheet — which the sounds Stern had been hearing indicated he was doing.

“Who else is here?” Stern cried, throwing himself out of the beam of the flashlight.

“It’s all right!” Weitz said, shining the torch onto another black-suited figure wearing an air tank on its back. The figure looked up from its work. In the glow of the flashlight Stern first saw only a reflection. Then, through the clear vinyl mask McConnell had brought from Oxford, he saw the blond hair and dark eyes of Anna Kaas. She stared back at him for a moment, obviously stunned by the blood and bruising on his face, then pointed at his gas suit and went back to her work.

Stern lost no time zipping up the Raubhammer suit. Suddenly, the hospital lights blinked on, faded, then stayed on.

The bright light paralyzed Stern.

“The emergency generator,” said Weitz. “There’s someone in the basement!” He jabbed Stern on the shoulder. “What did you do with my gun?”

“I gave it to someone.”

Weitz cursed and raced around the corner toward Brandt’s office. Anna held up her revolver and called out, but the buzz produced by the speech diaphragm of her mask died after a few feet. She put down her gun and with Stern’s help sealed the vinyl sheet as completely as possible with the roll of tape Weitz had provided. Stern picked up the bundle — much heavier now with the oxygen bottle added to the child’s weight — and turned toward the hospital door.

Sergeant Gunther Sturm stood beside the stairwell, unsteady on his feet but holding an infantry rifle in his hands. The left side of his tunic was soaked in blood.

As Stern bent to set down the child, Sturm fired.

He missed.

The SS man jerked back the bolt for a second shot.

Though years of conditioned reflexes told Stern to attack the man, something stronger surged through him. He threw himself over Hannah Jansen’s body, shielding her from the bullets even as the inner voice told him he would die for it.

He heard gunshots, but too many too quickly to be the bolt-action rifle in Sturm’s hands. He looked up to see Ariel Weitz barreling out of the side corridor firing Klaus Brandt’s Luger.

Sergeant Sturm returned fire at point-blank range.

The boom of the rifle in the wide hallway had not even died when Weitz hit the tile floor. The sergeant staggered over to the fallen man, pulling back the rifle bolt as he walked. Weitz struggled on the floor, but could not rise or even crawl away. Sturm’s bullet had broken his back.

Jonas started to lunge toward the SS man — then a heavy caliber revolver exploded beside his right ear. He threw up his hand to protect his eardrum, watching in astonishment as Anna Kaas fired three more bullets, spiking Sturm to the hospital wall. The sergeant hung there a moment, his arms flung wide, then dropped like a sack of sausage filling, leaving scarlet streaks behind him.

Anna knelt beside Weitz. The little man was fighting just to breathe. She gently pulled off his mask and airhose.

Weitz was unshaven as usual. A faint smile lit his eyes. “Remember what you said?” he whispered.

The lights in the corridor dimmed again, but stayed on.

Anna squeezed the rubber that covered his right hand. “I’m sorry, Herr Weitz?”

“You said . . . God . . . sees how it really is.” He tried unsuccessfully to swallow. “I hope that’s true,” he gasped, and died.

Anna bowed her head.

Stern touched her shoulder. “Do you have a car, Fräulein Kaas?”

As Anna turned to answer, the hospital lights went out and stayed out. Stern pulled her to her feet in the darkness.

“Greta’s car won’t take us far,” she said. “They shot the tires to pieces. What about Sabine’s Mercedes?”

“No.” Stern heard the muffled screaming of the child in the sealed sheet. “Wait!”

He dropped to his knees and felt his way across Gunther Sturm’s bloody corpse, searching for pockets. He almost shouted with relief when he felt his right hand close over car keys. “We’ve got it!” he said, sliding his palms over the cold tiles in search of the SS man’s rifle. “We’ll pick up McConnell at the pylon.”

He found the rifle, stood up, and slung it over his shoulder. At first he thought the frantic buzzing was some type of insect beside his ear. Then Anna punched him and he realized it was the nurse screaming inside her gas mask. He snapped straight and followed her pointing arm.