Angelika vaulted over the car park fence and sprinted to the pier, slipping under the pedestrian walkway. Vincent aimed and took a shot, but missed and smashed a chunk of concrete from one of the walkway’s support beams. He cursed and powered forward, once again straining in the dark to see where she had gone.
“I can’t see her!” Kim screamed. “The bitch has got away… Damn it all!”
Then the German woman gave her position away by shooting at them and striking Kim in the shoulder. Vincent spun around just in time to see his partner fly backwards with the force of the round and collapse in a heap against one of the car park’s toll booths.
“Go on without me!” she screamed.
The Frenchman had no time to think and instantly dived for cover in the shadows beneath the pier to escape the same fate as Agent Taylor. At least in wounding Kim, Angelika had given her position up, he thought grimly, and climbed up the steps to the boardwalk.
Now, silence fell as he moved forward along the pier. The only sound was the gentle hum of occasional curfew-breaking traffic on Ocean Avenue somewhere behind him. He felt the eerie atmosphere of the pier — bustling with laughter and joy in the day, but now deserted by everyone and everything except a psychopath and a night wind. And somewhere close-by that psychopath was hiding in the shadows.
He moved cautiously forward, gun-raised and ready to fire in a heartbeat. He weaved his way forward to the end of the pier — he knew she was here somewhere. As he went, he checked the stalls and restaurants — now locked up and empty — for any signs of break-ins, but there was no sign of her.
He checked behind a Coke vending machine as he made his way forward but it was clear just like everywhere else. He peered inside the Ice Cream and Treats bar, but still nothing. Angelika Schwartz would be getting a treat very soon, he thought.
Then he saw her at the base of the Ferris wheel. She was moving slowly in the shadows, trying to get around behind him so she could escape back to the beach. He fired a shot and it struck her in the shoulder. She spun around one-eighty and he thought he’d done the job, but then she scampered to her feet and disappeared once again into the night.
He vaulted over the fence where people queued for tickets and saw her at once — she was trying to climb over the rail at the end of the pier. As she clambered over the rail she dropped the canister. Pausing for half a second to retrieve it, Vincent saw his chance and seized it.
He fired and the bullet hit her in the center of her head, just as she had done to Pauling. She dropped like a bag of concrete over the end of the pier landing with a splash in the Pacific below. Vincent ran forward as the canister rolled slowly to the edge and snatched it up in his hands.
He sighed with relief. His boys, wherever they were sleeping, were safe.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Scarlet appeared on the deck wearing a gas mask and holding the Medusa box. At once she saw Kiefel register what had happened while at the same time half a dozen military helicopters flew over the water and surrounded them.
Kiefel, now trapped like a wounded wolf, was more dangerous than ever. Scarlet watched in horror as he dragged the injured President at gunpoint to the edge of the yacht. The German’s desperate swivel-eyed stare told her he knew what would happen if he could no longer use Grant as a human shield.
“It’s over, Kiefel!” Doyle screamed. “Just let the President walk away and you can live.”
“Get away from me!” The German’s head craned wildly as he strained to monitor the latest military chopper arriving on the scene, shining its powerful Xenon short-arc lamp down on him and tracking him as he moved closer to the edge.
“Give it up, Klaus!” Scarlet shouted, keeping her gun aimed squarely at Kiefel’s throat. She knew from her training that putting a nine mil through his throat was the quickest way to cut the nerve signals from his brain to his trigger finger. “You’re lit up like Christmas — you can’t get away!”
“I said get away from me, you animals… and put that gun down at once or I shoot the President.”
“Fine with me,” Scarlet said. “In fact, why should you have all the fun?”
Without wasting a second she moved her gun to the right and shot President Grant in the shoulder. He spun out of Kiefel’s grip and fell overboard.
Doyle gasped in horror. “What the hell?”
“Save your President, Doyle. He hasn’t got long with that wound.”
Still stunned, Doyle immediately dived in after him while Kiefel turned and fired several shots at him as he disappeared into the black water. Scarlet was sure Grant would be fine. It was a clear through and through shot as they said in the trade, and her aim was good enough to know the bullet had gone on its way without hitting anything important.
Kiefel now held his gun in his outstretched arm. It trembled in his hand.
“That’s a Heckler & Koch USP Compact 45 ACP, Klaus, which means it carries twelve rounds. If I’m not mistaken you fired nine at me and Doyle back there after you reloaded, and three right then at the water. You’re out of bullets, and out of luck.”
“So you’re going to shoot me, is that it?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she said. As she spoke, she dragged the metal box out from behind the forward lifeboat. Above their heads several men were shouting orders through megaphones attached to the circling choppers.
Kiefel recognized the box at once. “Was machen sie? What are you doing with that?”
“Irony can be beautiful, Klaus, and it can be ugly.”
Scarlet opened the outer box, calmly and quietly. “For you, it’s going to be ugly.”
She opened the inner box and had to work hard not to recoil in horror at what she saw looking back up at her.
The severed head of Medusa.
She lifted it from the box and walked toward Kiefel.
Covered in sweat, he stumbled back, pointing his empty gun at the Englishwoman’s heart and clicking uselessly on the trigger. He started to climb over the forward rail with a view to jumping in the water, but it was too late. Now he knew why she was wearing the gas mask and gloves.
She held the head up to him and the breeze did the rest.
Scarlet watched in silence as he gripped at his throat, choking. His eyes bulged like boiled eggs as he strained for more air, and then his body began juddering violently. Right before her eyes, almost as smooth as some kind of CGI, she saw him transition to stone and turn into a statue. He reached out to her, his arms extended in a desperate entreaty for mercy, but none was forthcoming.
In the final second before he was solid stone, she stepped up to him and whispered in his ear. “I’m going to take you home and use you as a towel rack.”
As Kiefel finalized the transition to solid granite, he tipped back and crashed into the river with a tremendous splash. Scarlet was disappointed — she’d been serious about the towel rack idea — but, as they said in the movies, que sera, sera.
Devlin knelt beside Lea and looked her in the face. She was still in shock and hadn’t spoken for several minutes.
“What is it, Lea? Jesus woman, you’ve gone as white as a ghost!”
“It’s… I don’t know. It’s freaking me out is what it’s doing, Danny.”
“I don’t understand.”
Devlin peered over her shoulder and gently flicked through the paperwork that had stunned Lea. “What are these words, Lea — Mengloth, Frigg, Eir…?”
“I don’t know — something to do with Norse mythology if I can read Dad’s handwriting properly.”
“Well, he was a doctor.”