Greg Iles - Black Cross

Colin Munro laughed appreciatively.

“Fires a pistol cartridge, but it’s reliable.” McShane loaded a clip and handed the weapon to Stern. “I presume you’re a dab hand with this, Mr. Butler?”

“I’ve held one.” Stern took the Schmeisser and, holding it waist-high with both hands, aimed at a man-sized pile of sandbags thirty meters away.

“Hold on!” said Munro. “That’s a close-in weapon, lad. Step out to the marker there. Give yourself a chance, man.”

Stern smiled back at McShane, then pulled the trigger. He fired four three-round bursts — all of which struck the target in the chest area — then sprayed two nearby targets with the remaining shells in the clip.

“ That’s what I’m talking about!” Munro shouted at the Frenchmen. “Fire discipline!”

McShane gave Stern a sidelong glance. “This is my ringer, Colin. Calls himself Mr. Butler.”

“Is he as good with a pistol?”

“Better,” Stern said.

McShane loaded another clip into the Schmeisser and handed it to McConnell. “Mr. Wilkes?”

The submachine gun didn’t feel entirely foreign in McConnell’s hands, but when he fired — missing the sandbags completely — he realized he did not have even a semblance of control over the weapon.

“What do you say, Colin?” McShane asked.

“What can I say? Give me two weeks and I’ll turn him around.”

“We dinna have one week.”

“Give him a ladies’ gun, then. Small revolver. Best results without training.”

McConnell flushed at this, though he knew he shouldn’t give a damn. While Stern laughed, he stepped back and selected a worn bolt-action Lee-Enfield .303 from the rifle rack. “Anybody down in that target pit?” he asked, pointing two hundred meters downrange.

“Don’t know,” answered Munro. “But I don’t see as it matters much.” He grinned at McShane. “If you think you’ve hit it, you can run down there and fetch the target.”

McConnell chambered a round, then raised the Enfield to his shoulder. He looked down the open sights and drew a bead on the black bullseye. It was odd, he thought, the way the body seemed to remember things the mind let slip away. He rolled his shoulders once, feeling the faintest breeze at his back, and adjusted his aim slightly for the drop of the bullet.

He squeezed the trigger.

Munro barked a short laugh. “Five quid says that was Maggie’s drawers, Ian.” Then he said more kindly, “Have another go, son.”

McConnell worked the bolt three times in quick succession, feeling better with each shot. Then the chamber clicked empty.

“Dinna worry,” McShane said, “we’ll get you a revolver.”

“Damn me, would you look at that!” exclaimed Munro.

Downrange, someone in the pit had raised the red pointer used to indicate hits. The red circle hovered over the bullseye. The weapons instructor picked up a walkie-talkie from the table.

“That you, Bill?” he asked.

“Righto, Colin,” crackled the reply.

“Fun’s fun. Now give us the real score.”

“What do you mean? I was stowing some targets down here when you opened up. You shot the bleedin’ eye out of it, as usual.”

“Wasn’t me, Bill. I think we’ve got ourselves another Alvin York up here.”

McShane looked curiously at McConnell. “Mr. Wilkes?”

“Deer hunted when I was a kid,” McConnell said. “Everybody did, where I’m from.”

“Your family obviously didna go hungry.”

McConnell enjoyed the look of puzzlement on Stern’s face. “They tell me my grandfather was a sharpshooter for Benning’s Brigade. Maybe that had something to do with it.”

“U.S. Army?” Munro asked.

“Confederate States of America.” McConnell laughed.

Sergeant McShane put the Lee-Enfield back into the rack. “Two bloody mystery men,” he mumbled. “That’s what I’ve got here.”

Stern was still staring at McConnell.

“Right,” McShane said. “One more stop this morning. The Death Ride. Get your toggle ropes ready.”

The Highlander set off across the meadow, moving almost silently through the brown bracken like the expert hillman he was. As McConnell and Stern followed, Mark saw a huge vertical rock face in the distance. Something was moving across it like small insects. Then he realized that the insects were men. He breathed a sigh of relief when McShane turned away from the cliff.

The sergeant marched until they reached the river Arkaig, which was in flood from the recent rains, then worked his way along its bank. The cold gray water tumbled over rocks and tore through thickets with a high-pitched rushing sound. McConnell saw a huge limb slide past like a boat broken free of its moorings.

“Here we are,” McShane said.

“Where?” Stern asked.

McShane pointed skyward. “The Death Ride, gentlemen.”

Fifty feet above their heads, McConnell could just make out a black cable stretched taut from a treetop to the base of another tree across the river. The angle looked to be about fifty degrees. There was no safety net. Sergeant McShane laid his hand on a plank step nailed to the tree beside them. It was one of several dozen that led up to a tiny platform in the topmost branches, like the crow’s nest of a ship.

“Death Ride,” Stern said mockingly. “I don’t see how this child’s game can possibly help our mission.”

McShane sighed with forbearance. “When you get where you’re going, Mr. Butler, I think you’ll find this exercise was a great help.”

“You know where we’re going?” Stern asked.

“I know you’d better be gettin’ your backside up this tree.”

McShane took Stern’s toggle rope and threaded the wooden handle through the loop at the other end, creating a flexible hoop. “Throw the loop over the cable,” he said. “Then twist your wrists into each end and jump. Gravity does the rest.”

With a last scornful look, Stern scaled the ladder like a fireman. McConnell followed more slowly. Once on the platform, Stern tossed the looped toggle rope over the wire as McShane had instructed. Then, without any hesitation, he seized an end in each hand and threw himself out into space.

McConnell watched him sliding across the river like a runaway cable car. Stern’s face remained confident until he reached a point halfway down the rope. At that moment someone on the opposite bank began firing a semiautomatic rifle. When McConnell saw Stern jerk his knees close up into his body, he knew something was wrong. A few blank gunshots added for show shouldn’t worry a combat veteran like Stern. Then McConnell realized what was happening.

Stern was dodging real bullets.

Sergeant McShane was signaling for McConnell to go. His conscious mind screamed that he should climb back down to the ground, but something pushed him on. He tossed his toggle rope over the cable, twisted his wrists into loops on either side of it, and leaped off the platform. He felt the wind in his face, saw the river flashing up to meet him, heard the shriek of rifle bullets passing within inches of his body. Then the river bank knocked his knees up into his chin.

Stern pulled him to his feet. “Come on! I’m going to get that bastard!”

Two bullets slammed into a tree less than a meter away. Stern dove to the ground and screamed, “ Arschloch !”

“All right, gents!” McShane shouted across the river. “You’ve seen one use for the toggle rope. Plenty more to come. Back on this side, now.”

Stern beat the bushes for five minutes, but the sniper had vanished. He was still seething when they finally managed to ford the river and rejoin Sergeant McShane.

After lunch — a brief affair of beans and cabbage soup — Sergeant McShane led Stern off to receive some special instruction that apparently he alone needed. McConnell was handed a sealed box which he soon discovered held a textbook and a notebook. The textbook was a volume on colloquial German, prepared by some branch or other of British intelligence. Into it someone had inserted a loose sheet headed “Common SS Commands and Responses.” The notebook contained some very interesting handwritten information on organic phosphates — the building blocks of nerve gases — and also some schematic drawings of apparatus that would likely be involved in the production of such gases. He wondered if this information had originated in Britain or Germany.