Fire again, you idiot, he told himself.
He burned through the clip. The weapon pumped and he held the rounds into that sector of the forest his ears told him Repp’s shot had come from. He could see the burst kicking up the dust where it hit.
Gun empty, he dropped back fast to the forest floor, hands shaking, heart thumping, still hearing the gun’s roar, and fumbled through a magazine change. Dust or smoke — something heavy and seething — seemed to fill the air, drifting in clouds. But he could see nothing human in the confusion.
Leets knew he had to attack, press on under the cover of his own fire. He scrambled upward, pausing only to waste a five-round burst up the slope on stupid instinct, and twice he slipped in the loose ground cover, dried pine needles woven with sprigs of dead fern, but he stayed low and kept moving.
A burst of automatic fire broke through the limbs over his head, and he flattened as the bullets tore through, spraying him with chips and splinters. Again bringing his submachine gun up, he fired a short burst at the sound, then rolled daintily to the right, fast for a big man, as the German, firing also at sound and flash, sent a spurt of fire pecking through the dust. Leets thought he saw flash and threw the gun back to his shoulder but before he could fire it vanished.
Then seconds later, to the left and above, his eyes caught just the barest flicker of human motion behind a tangle of interfering pines, and he brought the gun to bear, but it too vanished and he found himself staring over his barrel at nothing but space and green light and dust in the air.
But he’d seen him. At last, he’d seen the sniper.
Repp changed magazines quickly. He was breathing hard and had fallen in his dash. Blood ran down the side of his face; one of the machine-pistol slugs had fragmented on a stone near him and something — a tiny piece of lead, a pebble, a stone chip — had stung him badly above the eye.
Now he knew safety lay in distance. The machine pistol had an effective range of 100 meters, his STG 400. It would be ridiculous to blaze away at close range like a gangster. Too many things could happen, too many twists of luck, freaks of chance, a bullet careening off a rock. Repp thought for just a second of the Jewish toy he’d played with back at Anlage Elf: you set it spinning and when finally it stopped a certain letter turned up. Nothing could change the letter that showed. Nothing. That was the purest luck. He wanted no part of it.
He’d get higher and take the man from afar.
The sniper climbed.
Leets too knew the importance of distance. He pushed his way through the trees, forcing himself on. In close he had a chance. He knew the Vampire outfit had to be heavy and Repp would have no easy time of it going uphill fast. He’d stay as close as he could to the sniper, hoping for a clear shot. If he hung back, he knew Repp would execute him at leisure.
The incline had steepened considerably. He drove himself forward, pawing at the trees with his free hand. Loose glass clattered in his stomach and he could feel the sweat washing off him in torrents. Dust seemed to have been pasted over his lips and his leg hurt a lot. Several times he dropped to peer up under the canopy of the forest, hoping to see the sniper, but nothing moved before him except the undulating green of the trees.
Vampir was impossibly heavy. If he’d had the time, Repp would have peeled the thing off his back and flung it away. But it would take minutes to get the scope unhitched from the rifle, minutes he didn’t have.
He paused in his climb, looked back.
Nothing.
Where was the man?
Who’d have thought he could come on like that? Must be an athlete to press ahead like that.
Repp looked up. It was quite steep here. He wished he had some water. He was breathing hard and the straps pinched the feeling out of the upper part of his body.
He and this other fellow, alone on a mountain in Switzerland.
It occurred to him for the first time that he might die.
Goddamn it, goddamn it, why hadn’t he ditched Vampir? To hell with Vampir. To hell with them all, the Reichsführer, the Führer himself, the little Jew babies, all the Jews he’d killed, all the Russians, the Americans, the English, the Poles. To hell with them all. He pushed himself on, breathing hard.
A stone outcrop loomed ahead. Leets paused as he came to it. It looked dangerous. He peeped over it, upward. Nothing. Go on, go on.
He was almost over, slithering, straining his right leg to purchase another few inches.
Here I am, a fat man perched on a rock in a neutral country, so scared I can hardly see.
He had the inches and then he didn’t; for the leg, pushed to its limit, finally went, as Leets all along knew it must. One of the last pieces of German steel that neither doctors nor leakage had been able to dislodge ticked a nerve. The fat man fell, as pain spasmed through him. He thought of it as blue, like electricity, and he corkscrewed out of balance, biting the scream, but then he felt himself clawing at the air as he tumbled backward.
He twisted as he fell and hit on his shoulder, mind filling with a spray of light and confusion. His mouth tasted dust. He rolled frantically, groping for his weapon, which was somewhere else, flung far in the panic of his fall.
He saw it and he saw Repp.
The sniper was 200 meters up, calm as a statue.
He’d never make the gun.
Leets pulled his feet under him, to dive for the Thompson.
Repp shot him and then had no curiosity. He didn’t care about the American. He knew he was dead and that made him uninteresting.
He set the rifle down, peeled the pack off his back.
His shoulder ached like hell, but seemed to sing in the freedom of release. He was surprised to notice that he was shaking. He wanted to laugh or cry. It had seemed seconds between first shot and last; clearly it had been minutes.
It had been extremely close. Big fellow, coming on like a bull. You and I, we spun the draydel, friend. I won. You lost. But so close, so close. That bullet that spattered on the rock near his head, what, an inch or so away? He shivered at the thought. He touched the wound. The blood had dried into a scab. He rubbed it gently.
He wished he had a cigarette, but he didn’t so that was that.
The chocolate.
The driver had given him a piece of chocolate.
Suddenly his whole survival seemed a question of finding it. His fingers prowled through pouches and pockets and at last closed on something small and hard. He removed it: the green foil blinked in the sun. Funny, you could go through all kinds of things, running, climbing, shooting, and here would be a perfect little square of green foil, oblivious, unaffected. He unwrapped it.
Delicious.
Repp at once began to feel better. He had settled down and was again under control. He did not feel good that Nibelungen had failed but some things simply weren’t to be. He hadn’t failed; his skills hadn’t fumbled at a crucial moment.
And pleasures were available: he’d been magnificent in the fight, considering how hard he’d pressed to make the shooting position, the long sleepless night that followed. For a short action, it had been enormously intense.
Repp noticed for the first time where he was. Around him, the Alps rose in tribute to him. Solemn, awesome, like old men, their faces aged with snow, they seemed especially grave in their silence. Far below, the valley looked soft and green.
He realized suddenly he had a future to face. It frightened him a little. And yet he had a Swiss passport, he had money, he had Vampir. There were things one could do with all three.
Smiling, Repp stood. His last duty was now to return. He pulled the pack again onto his back. It did not hurt nearly so much now. Thank God for Hans the Kike and his last ten kilos. He swung the rifle over his shoulder.