“I’ve told no one.” This had to be Schroeder. The words came out between wheezes of pain. “The secret of what we did dies with me.”
“You had better hope so,” said a third voice, lower than even Schroeder’s and menacing.
There were two of them, maybe more. Anika had only one option. Her cell phone was in her backpack. All she needed to do was move far enough away so her call to the police wouldn’t be heard. She took a cautious step backward and then another.
The pain came suddenly and was unlike anything she’d ever felt. A hand had come over the top of the wall and buried itself in her hair, the thick fingers threading down to her scalp. She was nearly lifted off her feet. Her skin felt like it was about to be ripped from her head. She cried out, batting at the arm, but even a small movement made the agony even more unbearable.
“I’ve got someone.” It was yet another male voice, one that sounded younger than the first two. “A woman.”
The pain forced Anika onto her toes, and still the man pulled her higher. Held immobile, she began to scream. The gate was wrenched open, and a man approached her with an automatic pistol in his hand. He was tall and fit with blond hair and a dark expression.
Only when he was behind her with the pistol pressed against her back did he speak. “Okay, Karl, I’ve got her. Let her go.”
The strain on her hair vanished, and Anika would have dropped to the ground had the gunman not propped her up with one hand while keeping the weapon screwed into her kidney. He forced her forward with a savage prod.
The walled garden was overrun with weeds and the uneven flagstones were slick with moss. There were a rusted iron table and a couple of mismatched chairs next to the door that led to the house. Otto Schroeder lay on a chipped concrete bench with two men standing over him. One of them must have been Karl, the one who’d grabbed her. A fourth figure stood back in the shadows. Anika guessed that he was the leader of the group. She couldn’t see his features, but somehow he seemed older than the others.
She focused her attention on Schroeder, and when she realized what they had done to him, hot vomit shot into her mouth. Fear had stripped away her ability to remain clinical. One of Schroeder’s legs had been flayed open, and a large slab of tissue had been carved away. Blood pooled in the gruesome wound and spilled over onto the patio. Anika looked into the old man’s gray face and was amazed to see defiance in his watery eyes. At some point in his torture, he’d bitten into his lip or tongue because more blood dripped from his face.
“Who are you?” the man who had grabbed her, Karl, asked. He was a near copy of the one with the gun, big and blond with shoulders like an executioner’s gallows. His partner was holding a long knife. In the fading light Anika saw crimson on the blade.
Her silence was from fright, not resistance. She knew that since she’d seen their faces, they would never let her live. The man with the knife had a container of salt in his free hand, and he poured a measure into the long gash in Schroeder’s thigh. The old soldier tried to fight the pain and failed. His scream echoed in Anika’s head. All the trauma experience in the world couldn’t inure her to this kind of human suffering. She prayed unconsciousness would spare him the agony.
“Who are you? Or do I dump the rest of this into his leg?”
“It doesn’t matter,” the man in the shadows said so quietly that Anika almost didn’t hear him. “Kill her.”
Karl had taken one step toward her when suddenly he flew back as if jerked on a string. Fragments of gore exploded from the side of his head. The sound of a shot came at the same instant. The man holding Anika pushed her away and wheeled toward where he thought the gunfire had originated. She fell heavily and tried to scramble under the bench, Schroeder’s blood smearing against her skin and clothes. Another shot rang out and a piece of stone above the bench exploded. The torturer who’d poured the salt into Schroeder’s leg had been at that spot a fraction of a second earlier. He had drawn his own weapon, a small machine pistol that had been under his dark jacket. He fired a long burst over the wall, the gun buzzing like a saw. Hot brass arced from the weapon in a tight necklace.
Anika pressed her hands to her ears as more shots rang out: high whipcracks of rifles, the deeper boom of handguns, and the staccato ratchet of the machine pistol. Chips of stone filled the air, carving visible streaks through the thickening gunpowder smoke. A fresh spray of blood landed on her, and she knew Schroeder had just been hit. Yet the former soldier hadn’t reacted. It was either a fatal shot or his body was now beyond pain. She peered into the smoky gloom and saw the leader of the torturers. He was backed against the house, a weapon in his hand. He spotted Anika and the pistol’s aim dropped to her position. Closing her eyes was a reflex.
She never heard the shot. A frantic burst of rifle fire covered all other sounds. She did feel the impact, a razor slash of fire that tore along her outer thigh. The fusillade pouring into the garden had distracted the leader and thrown off his aim. Crying out and clamping a hand over the long wound, she wriggled deeper under the bench. Her body was drenched in sweat. She was sobbing and didn’t care. A bullet ricocheted against a metal chair, and a burned ember of steel fell into the blood, sizzling obscenely as it cooled.
Out of the gloom, the torturer lurched toward her, his body spasming as the rifles found their mark. He took half a dozen hits before falling to his knees and then collapsing to the ground. His eyes were fixed in death. Anika noticed that his knife had fallen just out of her reach. She twisted to see if the leader was still there and saw two silhouettes running through the haze, racing toward the open farmhouse door. Bullets pounded into the building after them, sparking more shrapnel from the stone. An instant later, a car’s engine rumbled to life and the big Mercedes pulled from the house.
Just as quickly as the firefight had started, it was over. The echoes of gunfire faded even as Anika’s hearing returned.
She spat the taste of gunpowder from her mouth, not knowing if she should move from her hiding place. She wanted to lie there forever. Then she heard Schroeder moan above her and knew she had to tend to him. It was instinctive.
Okay, AK, move. Painfully, she rolled from under the bench, clutching at the oozing wound in her leg. Nothing happened when she raised her head, no gunfire, no shouts.
The bullet had caught Otto Schroeder in the lower chest. The blood bubbling from the neat hole appeared carbonated. A lung shot. Fatal if he didn’t get attention immediately. She looked into his face. Schroeder stared at her with the certainty of his own death.
“Help!” Anika shouted into the twilight, hoping to draw the attention of whoever had fired into the garden with rifles, the people who’d just saved her life. “Help us please!”
There was no response from beyond the garden walls. A minute might have passed — she didn’t know. Whoever had just saved her by killing two of Schroeder’s torturers and chasing off the others was not coming. Anika was on her own. Ignoring the throb radiating from the gash in her thigh, she turned to the old man. Schroeder’s breathing became more shallow, and less blood was coming from his injuries. Even if she called an ambulance right now, she doubted it would arrive before he died.
She knelt gingerly next to his head, taking one of his big farmer’s hands into hers. All she could offer was comfort.
“You’ll be okay, Mr. Schroeder.” Her sympathy felt flat. Both knew it was an empty platitude.
“I was told someone would come for me,” Schroeder breathed through bleeding lips. “But I beat them. They didn’t get what they wanted.”
“Who were they?” Despite everything that happened, Anika wanted to know.