Morgan thought of the eyes of the child in the painting. One closed, one open.
“The jets are firing at us,” said the pilot.
“Fly into the helicopter,” said Morgan, pointing ahead.
“Into it! You’re insane.”
“They’ll veer off,” he said. “The jets will back off.”
“And then?”
“Then we will think of what to do next.”
“He’s heading right for us!” Nessa shouted as the Sikorsky came on.
They were low to begin with. The pilot veered to get out of the way, and the aircraft’s doors and rotor blades practically touched the lake.
“Get the sodding buggers!” said Nessa, clenching her teeth against the rising bile.
For three hours, the German bombers attacked Guernica. First they hit it with explosives and firebombs. The people of the town fled into the nearby fields, seeking shelter. The planes followed them there, strafing victim after victim, the aircrews laughing as the bullets danced into the bodies. Red blood pooled everywhere. There was no escape.
Morgan would not be captured. It was not a matter of spending time in prison, or being paraded around as an international prize. He would not give up the Picassos.
“Where do you want me to go?” asked the pilot calmly as the other helicopter veered away. Castello Dinelli sat in the water about a half kilometer away. “Should we land back near the speedboat dock, or follow them all the way to Magadino?”
“Neither,” said Morgan softly. “Go for the castle.”
“It’s fifty meters away. Then what?”
In answer, Morgan slipped the small Glock from his belt and shot the pilot twice in the head. His body slumped forward, but the aircraft continued ahead, its trajectory edging slightly downward but still aimed at the stone walls.
It was not the contingency he had wanted, but there was the consolation of having owned the Picassos, if only for an hour.
Nessa watched the Sikorsky slow as it approached Castello Dinelli.
“I think they’re going to try to land on the castle island, maybe in one of the courtyards,” she said.
The Sikorsky glided toward the yellow stone rampart, its nose tipping lower. It seemed to hesitate, then slide to the left, then crumple into a red burst of flames as it smacked into the wall.
“No!” shouted Nessa. “No, no, no!”
The only answer was a spray of black and red as the Sikorsky’s fuel tank exploded.
SIXTEEN
Nimec had owned a motorcycle when he was in his twenties, and had rented a snowmobile on two separate winter vacations with his ex-wife and son. Riding them was similar, but it could be dangerous to think they were exactly alike. A snowbike’s lower center of gravity demanded a light touch when you leaned and cornered. There were differences in surface traction speeding across snow and ice. And you had to keep your feet on a snowmobile’s running boards, avoiding the habit of kicking one of them out for balance. That was bad enough on a cycle because it could easily hit a road obstruction; it was worse when deep snow might drag hold of you, tearing up an ankle or knee.
He was not a man to make foolhardy mistakes.
Waylon’s experience qualified him for the lead position, and Nimec had jumped his machine out of the utilidor’s exit ramp right at his back, the others following in single file as Cold Corners One vanished behind them in a swirling curtain of snow.
Nimec thought about their next move as they approached the dome. He couldn’t make assumptions about his opposition’s force size or resources. He didn’t have time to worry about their reasons for striking at the base. But their strike’s intent was clear; they’d stuck it to one of the CC’s critical life-sustaining functions, and the immediate question was what they would do next. Whether they would break for it, or wait to ensure that the bleeding they’d inflicted wasn’t stopped.
He gripped his handlebars, plunging directly into the teeth of the wind, his knees bent against the snowmobile’s metal flanks, its powerful engine vibrating underneath him. The best he could manage was a guess, and that guess would determine his tactics. Meaning it had damned well better be a good one. So what did he know about the men who’d hit the water-treatment plant?
The important things weren’t hard to deduce. He didn’t know where they’d come from, but there was only cold desolation for miles around. Since they hadn’t popped out of a hole in the sky, he presumed they must have traveled a very long distance. Someone would need extensive skill and knowledge of the terrain to manage that under the best of circumstances, and in this storm it would be incredibly rough going by any means. In fact, it would have seemed unthinkable to Nimec just a small packet of minutes ago.
Whoever these people were, they had already demonstrated themselves to be capable, selective about their target, and committed to taking it out. Above all, they had shown they had moxie to spare. They would count on the weather getting worse before it got better, know it would be impossible to remount their strike, know they only had one real shot. Nimec thought it apparent that they’d hoped to accomplish their mission on the sneak — but say they had a notion they’d been discovered. They definitely would’ve had to contemplate it. Would men of their caliber and determination withdraw before they were positive of success?
Nimec wondered about it a second. Would he?
“Waylon, you reading me?” he said into the voice-activated radio headset under his hood.
“Loud and clear.”
“How far to the dome?”
“Close,” he said. “Under a thousand yards.”
Nimec was taken by surprise. That was much too close. He couldn’t see anything past Waylon’s tail, and had no intention of rushing in blind.
“Okay,” he said. “Listen up. Here’s how I want to do this… ”
Snow splayed around Burkhart’s bike as he brought it to a stop. The dome was just ten or fifteen yards to his left, its tetrahedral planes and angles smeary in his vision.
Straightening in his seat, he listened to his men move into position around the dome and then abruptly cut their engines. He thought he could see gray scribbles of smoke issue into the flying whiteness from the hair-thin spaces between the dome’s lowered door and doorframe.
Burkhart stared out toward the base. The low wave of light he’d spotted before had fragmented, but that did not mean it had ceased advancing. His eyes narrow behind his helmet shield, he looked over his right shoulder. Was that a faint, rippling trace of it out there?
He believed so. As Musashi had written in his Book of Five Rings, it was better to move strong things from the corners than to push at them straight on. From what Burkhart had learned about the enemy through his intelligence sources, they would know this as well as he did.
His Sturmgewehr across his chest, Burkhart watched, listened, waited. The mission had strayed far from his intentions. He had wanted to get in, deliver a clean blow, and get out. That he was now heading toward an engagement meant he’d very seriously stumbled. No good could come of it — but there was also no retreat.
Burkhart waited in the rampant storm. Then, suddenly, he once again became aware of the swelling, pulsing sound of engines under the wind’s louder clamor… this time coming from all around him.
The corners were closing in.