They wouldn’t come, of course, in the dark. They’d come in the light, at dawn, when they could see him. They’d come when the odds were better.
If they came.
Would they? That was the real question. They’d won, after all, they’d stopped him, they’d saved the Jewish swineboy and the money and perhaps even the Jews, if there were any left. Sensible men, professionals, would most certainly not come. They’d be pleased in their victory and sit back against unnecessary risks. In their position, he’d make the same decision. Go up a strange mountain after a concealed marksman with one of the most sophisticated weapons in the world? Foolish. Ridiculous. Insane. Impractical.
And that’s when he knew they’d come.
Repp felt himself smile in the dark. He felt happy. He’d reached the last step in his long stalk through the mind of his enemies; and he’d realized just how much now, when it was all over, all finished, when as a species the SS man was about to disappear from the earth, he realized how much he wanted to kill the American.
Roger blinked twice. His mouth felt parched dry.
“Now just a sec,” he said.
“We’ll never have a better chance. We can do it. I guarantee it.”
“Money back?” was all Roger could think to say.
“Money back.” Leets was dead serious.
“H-h-h-h-he’s long gone.” Damn the stutter.
“No. Not Repp. In the night he thinks he’s king.”
“I’m no hero,” Roger confessed. He felt a tremor flap through him.
“Who is?” Leets wanted to know. “Listen close, okay?”
Roger was silent.
“He can see in the dark, right?”
“Man, it’s daytime out there for him.”
“No. Wrong. Eichmann said they thought they were trying to work out a way to make this Vampire gadget lighter. So Repp could carry it.”
“Yeah.”
“He said it was some kind of solar-assist unit. The thing would take some of its power from the sun.”
“Yeah.”
“You see any sun around here?”
“No.”
“It’s run-down. It’s out of juice. It’s empty. He’s blind.”
Oh, Christ, thought Roger. “You want us to go out there and—”
“No.” Leets was very close, though Rog could not see him. But he could feel the heat. “I want you to go out there.”
Repp was blind now. These were rough hours; lesser men, alone in the night and silence, might have yielded to the temptations of flight.
He was thinking, marvelously alive, taking sustenance from the intricacies of the problem that now faced him.
The chief dilemma was Vampir itself. Now that it was dead, it was forty kilos of uselessness. In a fire fight, things happened fast. You needed to be able to move and shoot in fractions of seconds. Should he remove the device?
On the other hand, it was unique. It might be worth millions to the proper parties — perhaps even the Americans. It also might make a certain kind of future more feasible than others.
A running gunfight, if such a thing were to occur in the next few hours, might push him all over the face of this mountain. If he dismounted Vampir and hid it, he might never find it again, or he might be hit and unable to get back to it.
The decision then came down to his confidence.
He decided for Vampir.
“No, Roger,” the captain repeated. “You. You’re going out there.”
“I, uh—”
“Here’s how I’ve got it doped out. He doesn’t know how many we are. But mainly he doesn’t know we know Vampire’s out of juice. So he’s got to figure that if we come, we come at first light. So this is how I figure it. A two-step operation. Step one: Rog goes fast and hard for the mountain. You’ve got nearly an hour till light. Work your way up, keeping out of gullies, moving quietly. Nothing fancy. Just go up. His range at Anlage Elf was four hundred meters. So to get in range with your Thompson you’ve got to get at least two hundred, two hundred fifty meters up the slope. You got it?”
Roger couldn’t think of a thing to say.
“Step two: at seven-thirty A.M. on the fucking dot, I’m coming up the stairs. Wide open, flat out.”
Roger, for one second, stopped thinking about himself.
“You’re dead,” he said. “You’re flat cold dead. He’ll drill you after the first step.”
“Then you kill him, Rog. You’re close enough so when that subsonic round goes off you can get a fix on it. He doesn’t know you’re there. Now the key point in all this is wait. Wait! As long as you’re still, you’re fine. You start moving around and he’ll take you. It’s how these guys work, patience. After he fires, there’ll be at least half an hour, maybe an hour. It’ll be rough. But just wait him out. He’ll get up, Roger. You may be surprised at how close he is. He’ll probably be wearing one of those camouflage suits, spotted brown and green. Now, aim low, let the rise of the gun carry the rounds into him. Five-, six-round bursts, don’t risk a jam. Even when he’s down, keep shooting. When you use up that first magazine, put another in. Shoot him some more. Don’t fuck around. Try and get some slugs into the brains. Really blow them all over the place.”
Roger made a small noise.
Leets had taken the boy’s weapon and was checking it over. “You’ve fired a Thompson, I suppose? Okay, that’s a thirty-round mag in there. I’ve set it on full auto, but no round in the chamber. Now this is the M-one, the Army model. The bolt’s on the side, not on the top like the ones you see in the gangster movies. Just draw it back, it locks; you don’t have to let it go forward again, it fires off the open bolt.”
He handed the weapon back.
“Remember, wait him out. That’s the most important thing. And that shot of his, it won’t sound like a shot. It won’t be as loud, like a thud or something. But you’ll hear it. Then wait, goddamn it, how many times do I have to say this? Wait! Wait all day, if you’ve got to, okay?”
Roger stared at him, openmouthed.
“Your move, Rog. Match point coming up.”
He wants me to go out there? Roger thought in horror. The distance from the corner of the wall to the mountain seemed immense.
“Remember, Rog. It all starts happening at seven-thirty.”
Leets clapped the boy on his shoulder and whispered into his ear, “Now go!” and sent him on his way.
The light was growing. He could see the convent seem to solidify magically before and below him out of gray blur. Quiet down there, a body in the courtyard, otherwise empty.
Repp pressed the magazine release catch and a half-empty magazine slid out. He reached into his pouch, got out a full one, and eased it into the magazine housing.
He cocked the rifle and, leaning over it, peered down the slope through the trees. The light was rising now, increasing steadily; and birds were beginning to sing. Repp could smell the forest now, cool and moist.
The night was ending.
If there was a man, he would come soon.
Repp waited with great, calm patience.
Leets knew it was nearly his turn.
He crouched in the shadow of the wall of the convent, breathing uneasily, trying to conjure up new reasons for not going. It was quite light by now and the second hand of his Bulova persisted in its sweep, pulling the two larger hands along with it. Roger had made it but Leets couldn’t think about Roger. He was thinking about the long one hundred yards he had to cross before he reached the cover of the trees. A fast man could make it in twelve seconds. Leets was not fast. He’d be out there at least fifteen. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi … out there forever, fifteen Mississippis, which was nearly forever. He figured he’d catch it about the sixth or seventh Mississippi.