shriek. The ranks of dancing monks opened to let him through, and he
rushed like an animated scarecrow with his skirts flapping around his
thin legs straight at Colonel Nogo.
"Get back, you old maniac!" Nogo warned him, and lifted the muzzle of
his assault rifle to fend him away.
Jali Hora was far past any earthly restraint. He did not even check, but
ran straight on to the point of the bayonet that Nogo was aiming at his
belly.
The needle'pointed steel stabbed through his gaudy robes and ran into
the flesh beneath them as easily as a gaff into the body of a struggling
fish. The point of the bayonet emerged from the middle of his back,
pricking through the velvet cloak, all pinkly smeared with the old man's
blood.
Spitted upon the steel, Jali Hora wriggled and contorted, a dreadful
squeal bursting from his bloody lips.
Nogo tried to pull the bayonet free, but the wet clinging suction of the
abbot's guts held the steel fast, and when Nogo jerked harder, Jah Hora
was tossed about like a puppet, his arms flapping and his legs kicking
and. dancing comically.
There was only one way to free the blade of a bayonet that was trapped
like this., Nogo slipped the rate-of-fire selector on the AK-47 to
"Single Shot'. He fired once.
The detonation of the shot was muffled by Jali Hora's body, but was yet
so thunderous that for a moment it stilled the outcry of the monks. The
high-velocity bullet tore down the entry track of the blade. It was
moving at three times the speed of sound, creating a wave of hydrostatic
shock behind it that turned the old man's bowels to jelly and liquidized
his flesh. The suction that had held the bayonet was broken, and the
blast of shot hurled Jah Hora's carcass off the point of the blade,
flinging it into the arms of the monks who were crowding close behind
him."
For a moment longer the strained, unnatural silence persisted, and then
it was shattered by a higher, more angry chorus of horror from the
monks. It was as though they were compelled by a single mind, a single
instinct. Like a flock of white birds they flew at the band of armed men
in their midst and descended upon them, intent on retribution for
murder. They counted no cost to themselves, but with their bare hands
they tore at them, hooked fingers clawing for their eyes, seizing the
barrels of the levelled rifles. Some of them even grasped the blades of
the bayonets with their naked hands, and the razor steel sliced through
-flesh and tendons.
For a short while it seemed that the soldiers would be overwhelmed and
smothered by the sheer weight of numbers, but then those troopers
carrying the stele and the coffin dropped their loads and unslung their
weapons, The monks crowded them too closely for them to swing the
rifles, and they were forced to hack and stab with the bayonets to clear
a space around them in which to do their work. They did not need much
room, for the AK47 has a short barrel and compact action. Their first
burst of fully automatic fire, aimed into the monks at belly height and
point-blank range, scythed a windrow- through them.
Every bullet told, and the full metal jacket ball whipped through one
man's torso with almost no check, going on to kill the man behind him.
By now all the troopers were firing from the hip, traversing back and
forth, spraying the packed ranks of monks like gardeners hosing a bed of
white pansies. As one magazine of twenty-eight rounds emptied they
snapped it off and replaced it with another, fully loaded.
Nahoot cowered behind the fallen pillar, using it as a shield. The roar
of gunfire deafened and confused him. He stared around him and could not
credit the'carnage he was witnessing. At such close range the 7.62 round
is a terrible missile, which can blow off an arm or a leg as efficiently
as an axe-stroke, but more messily. Taken in the belly, it can gut a man
like a fish.
Nahoot saw one of the monks hit in the forehead. His skull'erupted in a
cloud of blood and brain tissue, and the gunman who had shot him laughed
as he fired. They were all caught up in the madness of the moment. Like
a pack of wild dogs that had run down their prey, they kept on firing
and reloading and firing again.
The monks in the front rows turned to flee and ran into those behind.
They struggled together, howling with agony and terror, until the storm
of bullets swept over them, killing and maiming, and they fell upon the
heaps of dead and dying. The floor of the chamber was carpeted with the
dead and the wounded. Trying to escape the hail of bullets the monks
blocked the doorway, plugging it tight with their struggling white-clad
bodies, and now the troopers standing clear in the centre of the qiddist
turned their guns upon this trapped mass of humanity. The bullets socked
into them and they heaved and tossed like the trees of the forest in a
gale of wind. Now there was very little screaming; the guns were the
only voices that still clamoured.
It was some minutes before the guns stuttered into silence, and then the
only sound was the groans and the weeping of the wounded. The chamber
was filled with a blue mist of gunsmoke and the stink of burned powder.
Even the laughter of the soldiers was silenced as they stared around
them, and realized the enormity of the slaughter.
The entire floor was carpeted with bodies, their shammas splashed
and-speckled with gouts of scarlet, and the stone paving beneath them
was awash with sheets of fresh blood in which the empty brass cartridge
cases sparkled like jewels.
"Cease firing!" Nogo gave the belated order. "Shoulder arms! Pick up the
load! Forward march!'
His voice roused them, and they slung their weapons and stooped to lift
their heavy, tapestry-wrapped burdens.
Then they staggered forward, their boots squelching in the blood,
tripping over the corpses,. stepping on bodies that either convulsed or
lay inert. Gagging in the stench of gunsmoke and blood, of bowels and
guts ripped wide open by the bullets, they crossed the chamber.
When they reached the doorway and staggered down the steps into the
deserted outer chamber of the church, Nahoot saw the relief on the faces
of even these battle hardened veterans as they escaped from the reeking
charnel-house. For Nahoot it was too much. Never in his worst nightmares
had he seen sights such as these.
He tottered to the side wall of the chamber and clung to one of the
woollen hangings for support; then, heaving and retching, he brought up
a mouthful of bitter bile.
When he looked around him again, he was alone except for a wounded monk
who was dragging himself across the flags towards him, his spine shot
through and his paralysed legs slithering behind him, leaving a slimy
snail's trail of blood across the stone floor.
Nahoot screamed and backed away from the wounded monk, then whirled and
fled from the church, along the cloisters above the gorge of the Nile,
following the group of soldiers as they ffarried their burdens up the
stone staircase. He was so wild with horror that he did not even hear
the approach of the helicopter until it was hovering directly overhead
on the glistening silver disc of its spinning rotor.
otthold von Schiller stood outside the front door of the Quonset hut,
with Utte Kemper waiting a pace behind him. The pilot had radioed ahead
while the jet Ranger was in flight, so all was in readiness to receive
the precious cargo it was carrying.
The helicopter raised a cloud of pale dust from the landing circle as it