“How long ago?”
“Uhh,” Winchell looked at his watch, letting go of the woman’s arms. One lifeless hand made a soft thud as it hit the floor. Liza shuddered.
“Ten, fifteen minutes maybe.”
“Liza, gimme that phone.” Liza stood half in and half out of the building. Her face turned as she contemplated getting closer to the corpses, but she stepped over the woman’s body and handed the phone to Lawson.
He dialed the number for brigade headquarters.
“Staff Duty Officer, 195th Brigade, Second Lieutenant Travers speaking, Sir.” The voice on the other end was young and sleepy. It was also familiar; Travers’s infantry platoon was habitually crossattached to Lawson’s company. He ain’t gonna sleep any more tonight, thought Lawson.
“This is Sergeant Lawson. I’m at the main gate. Both guards are dead, shot. Call the MPs.” He thought for a second. “And Sir, call out that reaction force we got.”
“Sergeant Lawson, what are you talking about? Who’s dead, what’s going on?”
In the distance Lawson heard the muffled sound of automatic weapons firing in spurts — once, twice, three times, again. Time to stop counting. This would take more than MPs.
“El-tee, you go punch that alert siren button right fucking now!”
“And wake up the whole base?”
“Lieutenant, this base is under attack.”
“Lawson…”
“Don’t you hear the gunfire? Just do it!”
Travers listened, hoping that what he had heard on the other end was no more than a drunken sergeant and a backfiring truck. Two more bursts cut the night. He felt his stomach turn over.
“Hold the line, Sergeant Lawson.” Billy Travers felt very small and very scared as he negotiated the cramped duty officer’s cubicle.
Time dragged as Rosy waited. The switch is three steps from the phone, thought Lawson. I’ve pulled duty there so many times I could find it in my sleep. What’s taking that fool so long?
Baumflecken’s twenty-two alert sirens made an almost ghostlike sound: piercing, haunting, the low warble gently rising and falling. When Billy Travers flipped the switch, the sirens’ banshee wail cut through the night. Their singsong groan told everyone on Baumflecken Kaserne that something was very, very wrong.
Inside the Officers’ Club, the team leader, Hohl, prepared to fire one last burst into the bodies draped around the head table when the sirens sounded. No time now, decided Hohl. He looked around. The team had done its work well. Perhaps, thought Hohl, the spectacle of a ballroomful of corpses will be more powerful than a burned building. Still, some fire is necessary to complete the impression. His men had stopped their work and were looking toward Hohl for orders. He took a moment to think the matter through. I must show calm. How did the Americans find out? No matter, our task is just about complete.
He threaded his way between bodies to the head table. A place card would do. To reach a card, Hohl swatted a dead woman’s hand away. Filthy black thing, Hohl thought in disgust, the scum should never have left the jungle. He looked the card over, lit it from one of the candles, and held the card to the tablecloth. Slowly but surely, the fire began to spread. He rallied his men and they headed for the cars. As they moved out he thought about the place card. Stupid Americans, they allow the worst of the races at the highest of functions. The black bitch was an officer: Capt. Emilia Dean, a Negro and a woman. Hohl shook his head and smiled to himself as he counted the raiders out the club door. He felt he had done the Americans a favor by killing her.
Mark Griffin and Alex Stern had sobered up faster than medical science would have allowed. Crouched in the bushes, helpless to move should the terrorist with the AK47 see or hear them, the sirens gave them hope, let them believe their powerlessness would soon end and they might find something other than a nightmare inside.
They heard the shooting stop, then the footsteps out the door and down the stairs. The terrorists headed for the two sedans, which were waiting with motors running. The two men they had seen run behind the club emerged and joined the main body.
“For the glory of Israel!” one shouted, laughing.
“Ja, let them explain this,” said another.
Griffin and Stern looked at one another. Each man was barely visible in the gloom, and each thought the same thing: The speakers had no accents. They spoke perfect, native German.
Stern and Griffin’s unknowing warden fired a long burst into the club facade as he backed into the waiting sedan. The bushes rustled from the falling glass.
The two Americans were up before the cars had gone ten feet.
“Let’s go!” Griffin was ready to give chase.
“Forget it, Mark. We’ll never catch them on foot. Besides, what would we do? The MPs will get them at the gate. I hope.” Doubtful at best, he said to himself. He smelled smoke. “Let’s get inside.”
Lieutenant Billy Travers felt sure that calling the alert meant the end of what he’d hoped would be a promising career. He’d bet his bars on what Lawson had told him. He busied himself with calling each of the brigade’s units, as the alert procedure carefully outlined, and telling them to get all their soldiers ready for war. Twice he caught himself ending his message with “This is not a drill.” It seemed melodramatic but sadly real. Once he finished alerting the subordinate units, he called General Hagan, Colonel Stern, and Colonel Griffin, but no one answered. Then it dawned on him. They — along with every other senior officer; the commander of U.S. Army, Europe; and a bunch of other brass — were at the Officers’ Club. What if they hadn’t heard?
“Simmons!” Travers shouted. Specialist Simmons was his duty driver. “Go fire up the hummvee. I want to go to the club.”
Simmons looked at him dubiously. “The club, Sir?” One hell of a time for a drink, El-tee, Simmons thought, with the whole place at war.
Travers read the thought in Simmons’s face. “To get the general!”
“Oh! Yes, Sir.” Simmons left to warm up their vehicle. Two military police sedans pulled up as Travers was about to leave. A sergeant hopped out of one sedan, looking for orders.
“One vehicle to the front gate, the other follow me!” Travers shouted as he jumped in the running HMMWV and headed off toward the club.
Not knowing what else to do, the MP sergeant did as he was told. He followed Travers, with the siren on his sedan blaring.
Lawson had held the phone as the alert sirens wailed. Good deal, Lieutenant, he thought, good deal. He’d hung up only after Travers had come back on the line and told him what was happening. Now he felt better; now someone was in charge and soon he would have orders. Lawson knew how to execute orders. All the time he was on the phone, talking and waiting, Winchell had stared into the night and Liza had stared at the corpses. Time to get them out of here, Lawson decided. He led the two back to Liza’s car. As they got there, the MPs Travers had ordered to the gate arrived. They jumped from their car, leaving the doors open behind them. One began to yell a question to Lawson.
At that point they all saw two sedans careen around the comer and speed toward the gate. One MP positioned himself to block their exit, holding up his hand as a signal for them to stop.
Too late the MP understood they would not stop. Lawson saw the AK47 sticking out the window of the trail sedan, gangster-style.
“Get down!” bellowed Lawson.
The lead car hit the MP without slowing, his body rebounding off the guard shack and into the street. From the second car came bullets that sprayed the MP sedan, Liza’s car, and the guard shack.