He resisted the compelling impulse to run. Follow the plan, he admonished himself. The breeze was starting to waft the smoke down the street toward the west. He had calculated he'd have five minutes.
He pressed himself against the building next to the door. Before his eyes he saw the detailed layout of the entire checkpoint area he'd drawn, from photographs, maps, descriptions. Every feature charted and measured — and memorized.
He stepped off. He counted his steps — deliberately, evenly taken. Each step the exact length of his stride scale.
Eight — nine — ten. He stopped. He would be in the middle of the street. He made a quarter-turn to his right and stepped off again.
He collided with a man. A soldier? He could not see.
“To the left!” he shouted, glad that he had anticipated the situation and decided how to deal with it. “To the left, you idiot! He's over there!” The man rushed off into the obscuring smoke.
Krebbs went on. Six — seven — eight… All around him the air and smoke reverberated with the shouts and sounds of confusion. Sirens screamed, horns blared, the noise of soldiers and travelers blindly milling about was everywhere.
Suddenly two powerful searchlights blazed on. Unable to penetrate the dense white smoke, the intense beams of light were reflected back at the guards, blinding them. As he had known they would. He knew they would not fire, not knowing what to fire at.
Unable to see, himself, he stepped off his calculated paces. Deliberately. Accurately. Resisting the urge to hurry. To run.
He stopped. He reached forward. It was there. The first barrier boom. He ducked under it. Again he started off, counting his measured steps. Ahead of him, he knew, lay three massive concrete barriers placed so that a car was forced to zigzag a slalom course through them.
Three — four — five. The dense smoke enveloped him, clung to him, concealed him. Through his mind ran the phrases used to describe this warfare smokescreen: To blind hostile observation. Cause confusion. Minimize firepower. Conceal activities…
It did all of that and more. The chaotic din around him bore irrefutable witness.
And he went on. Ten — eleven — twelve…
Colonel Gerhardt Scharff was furious. Livid. He fumbled his way down the steps from the guard tower. He raged at the thickly billowing smoke.
Krebbs had tricked him!
The white smoke blinded him. He turned and screamed up the stairs. “Turn of the verdammte searchlight, you idiots! Turn it off!”
The light went off. A few seconds later the other beam also died.
Scharff was on the ground. In his hands he clutched his automatic rifle. His mind whirled. What was Krebbs planning to do? How could he stop him?
How could he kill him?
The man would have only a short time to negotiate the obstacles of the checkpoint. The smoke would soon dissipate — at least become lighter. It had been a single explosive discharge. The smoke was not being replenished from a continuous source. That was in his favor. He took heart. He was not beaten yet.
Where would Krebbs try to cross? He could not see either. The most direct — the fastest — way was down the pedestrian path along the street. He tried to orient himself. As fast as he could, he began to grope his way toward the lane leading into the forbidden area…
Krebbs took the last step before reaching the first concrete barrier. He stuck out his arm to feel it.
Nothing.
A chill went through him. Had he gone wrong? Miscalculated? Angled off from the straight line? Was he lost?
With his hand stretched searchingly before him, he quickly took another step forward. At once his fingers bent against the cold, rough concrete. He had been only inches off.
Immediately he began to run along the wall, letting his hand scrape across it, not wanting to lose it, oblivious to the burning abrasion of his skin.
He reached the end. Quickly he turned the corner and, carefully positioning himself, started out toward the second barrier — counting to himself:
One — two — three…
Scharff located the beginning of the pedestrian path. He began to run as fast as he dared in the heavy fog. Almost at once he collided with a guard.
“Halt!” the man shouted. “Halt or I shoot!”
“Out of my way!” Scharff barked at him. “I am Colonel Gerhardt Scharff. State Security. Ausweichen! Los!
“You will have to prove your identity, Herr Oberst,” the guard said firmly. “Emergency orders are in effect. No one passes here!”
Scharff thought furiously. While he was arguing with that voice in the fog, his quarry would get away. The smoke was thinning out a little. He peered into it. Faintly he could make out the figure of the guard barring his way.
“Understood,” he snapped.
He stepped closer to the man. Suddenly be jabbed his rifle butt up and struck the guard a crushing blow on his jaw. He could hear the crunch of shattering bone. As the man collapsed at his feet, he jumped over him and ran down the path…
Krebbs felt the tension as a physical thing straining to erupt from his chest. The final concrete barrier lay ahead. The smoke was still too dense for him to see it. He stepped out, counting his strides toward it:
Seven — eight — nine—
His shin hit a sharp obstacle, sending waves of pain up his leg and his side. A car. Halted between barriers.
Trapped by the smoke — unable to see. Desperately he groped his way around it, trying to estimate his steps. He was clear—thirteen — fourteen—
He stopped counting. Ahead, faintly visible through the slowly dissipating smoke, lay the last barricade.
He ran to it. Around it. A few more steps to the final barrier boom. He reached it, ducked under it. Visibility was returning. Before him stretched the empty no-man's-land. Fifty meters. Fifty meters to freedom.
He raced down the street.
The flesh crawled on his back — exposed to his enemies. Any second he expected to feel the bullets slam into him.
Or — feel nothing at all.
He ran on…
Scharff was beginning to be able to distinguish objects as he sped down the pedestrian path. The smoke was rapidly blowing away.
He neared the final barrier across the lane. Beyond lay the buffer zone. He hoped he was in time…
On the watchtower the guard peered into the dissipating smoke. He thought he could see movement far out toward the forbidden zone.
The defector!
He grabbed his fog binoculars. He searched the area. There! He spotted him. Running. On the pedestrian path.
Scharff raced out into the no-man's-zone. Suddenly he tensed. Ahead he could see a man running toward the black-and-white-striped barrier boom to the west.
Krebbs!
He was almost there.
“Scharff stopped. He brought his rifle up. He found his prey in his scope…
On the watchtower the guard steadied his submachine gun on the parapet.
And opened fire…
3
The scorching black sand and ash of the gently sloping volcanic field stretched unrelieved before them to the mountains on the far horizon. A peculiar rash of bleached-yellow bushweeds grew sparsely all over the smooth black expanse, giving the desert a strange, unreal appearance — like a huge photographic negative.