Two Graves

73

PENDERGAST, WEDGED INTO A BROKEN GUN PORT IN A half-ruined wall of the old fortress, had watched the colonel’s boats approach the docks. At first he had believed it was part of the feint they had originally planned; but then, in a horrific moment, he realized the colonel had diverged from that plan.

He was headed straight for the docks.

Pendergast believed he understood the colonel’s reasoning: speed was of the essence. He and the colonel had discussed this line of attack, back in Alsdorf, and dismissed it because of the danger, however small, of an ambush. There was always the possibility that, at the sounds of the attack on the town, the men in the fortress could move quickly enough to arrange a trap—or arm a trap that was already in place. The colonel had dismissed this possibility, but ultimately Pendergast’s view had prevailed.

But, it seemed, not prevailed enough.

Pendergast watched the approach, his heart accelerating. It might work. Indeed, now he could also see that the colonel had brought far fewer men than agreed upon—with such a small force, surprise and speed became essential.

If it worked, so much the better. But it was a risk—a huge gamble.

And then, at the first eruption of fire, the docks punched up into the air, the men blown back into the water, the two vessels lurching sideways—Pendergast felt the utter stillness of shock take over. All had instantly changed. He heard the distant rattle of automatic gunfire and saw, behind a sheltered ridge just below the castle walls, the faint flashes of muzzle flare. He couldn’t see the ambushers from his vantage point, but he estimated they must comprise a moderate force—perhaps a hundred, a good portion of the fortress’s complement—well trained and organized. As the smoke from the explosions on the dock began to clear, the full dimensions of the debacle sank in. Many of the invading force had been killed outright or badly wounded, and the survivors were being mowed down in the water. But the colonel himself seemed to have survived, along with a handful of his men. Pendergast watched as they made their way behind a screen of boulders along the shore; ran for more cover farther around the hill, losing a man on the way; and then completed the final dash toward the opening in the wall, during which another soldier was cut down. Four men and the colonel made it to the breach and immediately disappeared.

Five soldiers. And himself. Six against a fortress of well-armed, highly trained fighters who were genetically bred for ruthlessness and intelligence, on their own turf, defending their land, their town, their fortress—their very reason for existence.

As Pendergast considered the problem, he began to realize that there might not be any paths to success remaining. His only consolation was that the least predictable of all human activities was war.

Scrambling down from his perch, Pendergast sprinted along a tunnel, ducking into a side passageway when he heard the approaching sound of soldiers’ boots. They went by and he flitted back out, descending a ruined staircase that headed into the foundations of the fortress. He could hear, echoing upward, the beginning of a firefight from within the walls: the defending soldiers were converging, no doubt, fighting the last of the colonel’s men at the gap or just inside.

The sounds of firing grew louder as he reached the massive, sloping basement tunnel encircling the interior of the curtain wall. He heard boots behind him again and had just enough time to swing into an unlocked lab and close its door before they passed. More shooting, bloody gargling screams. The Brazilians, at least, were putting up a remarkable fight.

He ducked back out into the passage and continued on until he came to a dogleg, beyond which a group of German soldiers was hunkered down, apparently pinned by fire from the Brazilians. The narrow tunnels, heavy stone walls, and endless alcoves and hiding places helped defray, at least to a degree, the Brazilians’ severe disadvantage in numbers. Listening intently, Pendergast surmised that the Brazilian soldiers must be in a highly defensible redoubt inside the wall itself, fighting hard but hemmed in on all sides. They were doomed unless they could break free.

Pendergast crept around the corner, waited for a loud explosion, and then—using the sound as cover—dropped one of the German soldiers with a shot to the femoral artery in the thigh, where the direction his shot had come from would not be as obvious. He waited again, took another opportunity to drop a second German. It was as he had hoped: the soldiers, not realizing they were taking fire from behind, retreated toward him in some confusion, thinking instead they were being exposed to fire from an unknown direction ahead. Pendergast quickly fell back into the lab to let them pass. He then moved out—now in front of the retreating group—and, rifling one of the bodies he had shot, retrieved several grenades and two full Sturmgewehr magazines, all the while taking periodic cover as he was fired on by the panicked Brazilian troops.

Now rearmed, Pendergast made a loop back to the lab, wired all the grenades together, and tied a breakaway knot around the spoon levers. Next, he searched around for a thin wire, and—finding one—pulled out the pins from all the grenades. With infinite care, he moved back into the tunnel, listening for the pauses between explosions and gunfire. At the correct moment, he sprinted down the tunnel, stopping at a point where the roof was webbed with cracks from the resurgent ground. Rolling a gurney out of an adjacent lab, he climbed onto it, affixed the bundle of grenades to the ceiling with a chock, and unrolled the thin wire he’d found in the lab from the breakaway knot holding the grenade levers. He shoved the gurney back into the lab and crouched in the doorway, listening again.

After a moment he let fly with several massive bursts from his gun. “Sie sind hier!” he shouted. “Schnell! Hurry, over here!”

He followed this cry with more bursts of gunfire. “Hurry!”

The German soldiers fell back rapidly toward him, crouching and firing as they retreated, crab-like.

Pendergast let loose another burst of automatic fire, then cried for help. “Hilfe! Hilfe!”

As they approached, Pendergast jerked the wire, releasing the spoon levers on the cluster of grenades—and then ducked into the lab, shutting the steel door behind him. A moment later, a massive explosion sounded in the hallway. The tiny window in the door blew out; the door itself was ripped from its hinges and flung into the room. Pendergast, crouching against the rear wall, stood up and dashed through the doorway into choking stone dust and plaster, running amid falling blocks as the tunnel partially unraveled and began to cave in around him. Still in choking dust, with visibility zero, he came up to the colonel’s redoubt.

“Colonel, it’s Pendergast!” he cried in English and then in Portuguese. “Me ajude!” And then: “Follow me—we have only a moment!”

He turned and ran back into the blinding dust, the colonel and his four remaining soldiers following.