Jake dove to the snow and fired twice at nothing. Just the sound. He waited, his gun and part of his head the only thing above the snow. The scene was an eerie green from the NVGs.
Nature was on Jake’s side. Clouds swirling overhead temporarily blocked the moon. Move now.
Jake jumped to his feet and in a low run, hurtled himself into a group of low pines, the only cover close. Now he had the advantage with the NVGs.
There. Movement across a small open area. Man with a rifle. Jake shot three times and waited.
The first bullet from the rifle smashed a tree branch next to Jake’s head. The second and third whizzed over his head after he ducked down.
“Hey, Jake,” came a voice from across the small opening. “We missed you at the Donau Bar. You’re a crafty one, I’ll give you that.”
Jake keyed his mic and then yelled, “Miko Krupjak. So your boss left you and the other Brothers to stay behind and clean up his mess.”
Miko laughed out loud, his voice echoing through the forest. “You are a funny man, Adams. We all serve at someone’s pleasure. Even you.”
It was hard to pinpoint the location of the man from his voice. Jake could shoot all night and not hit a damn thing. Play the game.
“I work for myself,” Jake assured him. Then he rose slowly and moved ten meters to his right, behind a large pine.
“You work for that fake,” Miko said. “The old grand master.”
Jake looked up at the clouds. They might hold for a few more minutes. No more. He turned his head toward his last position and said, “Looks like your New grand master is the fake. Leaving you like this.”
Bullets struck his old position but Jake was ready, firing his gun five times at the muzzle flashes.
Silence.
He was sure he had heard the thud of bullet on flesh, a distinct sound like no other.
Jake waited for ten minutes, listening carefully to the sounds of gunfire from the castle behind him. Looking up, the clouds had opened and closed a couple of times. Now, a big bank of swirling clouds darkened the night again. Stepping lightly through the snow, Jake crept along, trees his cover, toward the spot he had fired at moments ago. Ahead he saw a body laying flat on its back, a rifle still in the man’s right hand.
As he got closer, Jake took off the NVGs and pulled out his small flashlight. Miko lay in front of him, two blood spots on his chest and one on his forehead. For a microsecond, Jake wondered where his other two shots had hit. Running the flashlight through the snow, Jake saw where a man, Conrad, had run off toward the north.
Jake sat down in the snow and took a breath. He would have to go after Conrad, but the guy would be easy to follow, his tracks no problem to follow.
Then something occurred to Jake. The forest was quiet. No shooting. Not even a helicopter any more.
“What’s going on?” Jake said into the mic.
Nothing.
“Hey,” Jake said. “Anyone out there?”
“Are you all right?” It was Anna.
“Yeah, but Conrad is still on the loose. I got Miko, though. Did the men give up?”
“I’m still on the mountain,” she said. “No word from Toni or Kurt.”
That wasn’t a good sign.
Anna continued, “The polizei are taking the men into custody right now. Should we go down there?”
“No. Stay out of it.”
“The voice from the helicopter,” she said. “It was Franz Martini.”
He had been in the castle at the time, so he didn’t hear that. “That changes everything. You should bring them down then.”
“Super.”
A fresh clip in his gun, Jake moved off after Conrad, following the man’s footprints in the snow. The tracks turned east toward the town of St. Johann. Moving along, stepping in Conrad’s footsteps, Jake tried to figure out how much of a lead the man had on him. Fifteen minutes? Maybe more. He soon came to the first city street and immediately lost the tracks on the hard-packed snow. Even with a good guess, Jake would not find the man here. He was sure of that.
Jake holstered his gun and started back toward the castle — this time walking the road until he reached the first polizei cordon.
“What’s going on up there?” Jake asked one of the uniformed officers, a man with a bruised right eye.
“We think it was a major drug bust,” the polizei man said.
“Hope they got ‘em,” Jake said. “Drugs are killing Europe.”
The polizei man agreed with a nod.
“Could I talk with Franz Martini,” Jake asked the man.
He looked shocked that Jake would know Martini and even more so that he knew Martini was on the scene. But he handed Jake a hand-held radio.
“How are things at the castle, Franz?” Jake asked, turning his back to the polizei.
“Jake? I thought you might still be inside. Where are you?”
“Out on the road with your men,” he said. “I followed Conrad into town and lost him. You might want to cover the airport and set up some road blocks.”
Jake heard Martini barking orders in the background to his men. Then he said to Jake, “Anna is fine. She has Albrecht, Altenstein and Alexandra with her. You know this other woman works for German Intel?”
“Yeah, we’ve met. Thank her for me. She covered my ass in there.” Jake explained what had happened with Conrad and Miko escaping through the tunnel and how Miko would need a body bag.
“We’ll take care of him,” Martini said. He hesitated. “Jake. One of the people out front, one of the two Agency officers…took a bullet.”
Jake’s mind reeled. “Which one?”
“The man. The one who was with you at the warehouse.”
“Will he be all right?”
“No. I’m sorry, Jake.”
He thanked Martini and then handed the set back to the uniformed polizei. Jake sat on the side of the road and thought about his good friend, Kurt Lamar. It was a loss that would be hard to comprehend.
A little later Jake was allowed back up to Conrad’s castle. Toni was talking with Franz Martini, but Jake went instead to the body covered with a blanket. He stooped down and slowly uncovered the blanket from Kurt’s head. A bullet had ripped through most of his neck and another had entered his face halfway down his nose. Imagining the back of his head was probably gone, Jake threw the blanket back and rose, his feet unsteady and his head swirling.
An arm came around his side, and Jake turned to Toni at his side.
“I’m sorry, Jake,” she said. “We were fine until they pulled out the automatic rifles. It all happened so fast.”
He could see she had been crying and he put his arm around her. “I’m sorry too. I should have left Conrad and come down to help you from inside.”
She shook her head. “Then you’d be dead also.”
He lowered his chin to his chest. He felt dead now himself.
“This was his job,” she said. “He knew what he was getting into.”
Jake wanted to ask her why she refused to work with him directly. Why she had been so reluctant to help him. Why she had been so damn stubborn. Maybe he was looking for someone to blame, but then he realized that Toni was not that person. He couldn’t blame her any more than he could blame himself. That’s the only way he could continue to do what he did for a living. And maybe even that should change, he thought. Europe had changed and he didn’t like the direction in which it was heading.
He left Toni there and drifted over to the back of an ambulance, where Anna stood with Albrecht and Altenstein. Albrecht was sitting on the back end with an oxygen mask over his face. All of the skis and rifles lay on the ground next to the rig.
Pulling Anna aside, Jake said, “He all right?”
“Yeah. Just a little too much excitement.”
Jake took her in his arms and held her tight, thankful he had left her on the mountain with her rifles and not gotten her involved in the major shooting.