“Hang back,” he said, and glanced over his shoulder at Rice. “I want to check things ou—”
The first outpouring of fire from below silenced him mid-sentence.
Nimec ducked sideways as the gunfire split the darkness, throwing himself against the stairway’s handrail, motioning for the others to do the same. He twisted his tac light to its flood setting, saw the figure of a man launch off the wall to the right of the bottom stair, and triggered a burst of return fire from his VVRS. The man slipped out of sight, into the shadows, but then Nimec saw another man swing his gun up at him. He released a tight hail of bullets, saw the man drop to the floor, or ground, or whatever the hell was waiting for him down there at the base of the stairs.
There was a second volley from the bottom, this time coming out of the darkness at his left. Rice had his gun up, his own tactical light set on “spot,” beaming a concentrated circle of brightness onto the center of the shooter’s chest.
He squeezed out a rapid burst and the man crumpled.
“Okay, move it!” Nimec shouted, bounding down the stairs, leading his men down the stairs, thinking there was no sense in them making stationary targets of themselves here on these goddamned stairs at this point.
More movement as he reached the bottom landing — a third gunner. Nimec raked the gloom with fire, heard an agonized cry, saw a body fall straight from the knees, a fine mist of blood glittering in the throw of his flash. At the same moment one of the Sword ops racing down the stairway behind him — Rice? — he wasn’t sure in the confusion — loosed a sustained barrage and took out another of the waiting shooters.
Silence then. Absolute silence.
Nimec took a quick glance back at his men, all of them down on the lower landing with him now.
“Everybody okay?”
Three nods.
Nimec stood warily, moved his gun from side to side, sweeping the area in front of the stairs with his tac light. Four men lay dead below them, NVGs over their eyes. He wondered if there had been any more waiting, thought of the one who’d opened fire and slipped clear of his initial return burst. Was he among those sprawled on the ground?
He had no sooner asked himself that question than the answer was violently delivered.
Burkhart sprang from where he’d concealed himself to the right of the bottom landing, raised the barrel of his weapon, released a crisp stream of fire. Bullets studded the risers beneath Nimec, throwing up a bright shower of sparks.
Nimec gestured his men back, his finger continuously squeezing the trigger of his VVRS as he leaped down the stairs and attempted to track the source of the volley with its flash attachment.
Darting clear of his shots, Burkhart brought up his gun for another staccato burst, heard a single sharp tak! as one of his own bullets ricocheted off the handrail… and then felt a slap on the upper left side of his chest, followed immediately by a hot needle of heat in the same region.
His finger still looped around his rifle’s trigger, Burkhart looked down at himself. Blood seeping through the front of his parka where the rebounded bullet had struck his heart, the strength seeping from his hand as shots continued to spurt from the Sturmgewehr’s barrel in loose, wildly straying patterns, he looked down at himself.
He could have almost smiled at the sublime jest as he fell.
Nimec crouched beside the dying man, heard him struggling to say something to him, couldn’t make out what it was.
He leaned closer, removed the man’s night-sight goggles, pulled the balaclava from his face, and for a moment focused on an odd crescent-moon scar on the man’s right cheek.
“Die Ironie des Lebens,” Burkhart said in German.
Nimec shook his head, unable to understand.
Burkhart realized his mistake. He pushed his head off the stone ground, coughed up blood.
“The irony of life,” he managed to say in English.
Or thought he did in his fading confusion.
In fact, the words never left his mouth.
EPILOGUE
“The sister took the child,” said nan as Gorrie sat down at the table.
“What sister?”
“The Mackay infant. The sister will take him. Seems to be a fine family. The husband is an engineer.”
“Good for him then,” said Gorrie. A fresh loaf of bread sat wrapped in a napkin on a plate at the center of the table. “You baked this bread?” he asked, taking off the cloth and finding it warm.
“I did.”
Gorrie broke out a thick piece and began buttering it. “Got home early from school?”
“No earlier than normal,” said his wife.
“I was worried about the child,” admitted Gorrie. “I was worried what he would think growing up.”
“They wouldn’t have told him.”
“Not a thing to keep a secret,” he told his wife. “Sort of thing can’t be held inside. At least now he’ll know the truth. Hard thing, but better than what he might have thought.”
Nan busied herself at the stove. She’d made a roast and mashed potatoes — elaborate fixings for a weekday. She carved a few slices and presented a plate as properly as if they had been in a fine restaurant.
“What’s all this, Nan?”
“We call it dinner,” she said.
“Aye.” He swirled a bit of gravy into the potatoes. She’d used an extra helping of butter in them, exactly as he liked them despite the doctor’s warnings about cholesterol. “The runny tap in the loo?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re buttering me up for something, sweets. Out with it.”
Instead of the laugh he expected, Nan sat down at her place with her elbows on the table, propping her chin in her hands. “Frank, now be honest — were you worried about the child?”
“As I told you.”
“Did it make you — have you thought — do you feel as if…”
They would not have to have been married for so long for him to know exactly what she was thinking, but having been married for so long — twenty-six years that fall — they found it difficult to speak of certain subjects. The fact that in their case the number of these subjects was limited did not ease the difficulty.
“Very old rocks,” Gorrie said softly.
“It is.”
“To be honest, I hadn’t given it a thought, not in that way. Just doing my job, as it had to be done.”
She picked up a forkful of potatoes and ate slowly. When her mouth was empty, she said, “You would have made a lovely father. You still might.”
Gorrie laughed. Then he looked into her face. She was no centerfold nudie girl, but Scotland was not the place for one. She was made of harder stuff — more beautiful in her way than any centerfold, he thought.
“Do you want a child, Nan?” he asked.
“Sometimes I think of it. But—” Her eyes glided from his and scanned the kitchen before returning. “I think I’m content, if that’s the word.”
“You would tell me if you changed your mind.”
“I would.”
“Forty’s not too old these days.”
“I wish I were forty. Is that what you’re doing, slicing years from your age?”
“Just yours,” said Gorrie, starting in on the meat.