all grayish purple and moist and veined with blue and red. Then his guts started to spill out the side of him, piling over his fallen rifle, and the blood rushing out of him carried away the strength that kept him standing, and he dropped.
"Holy Mary mother of God," Wilfried said. Puke slopped from a corner of his mouth as he backed away from the wreckage of his comrade. Then he looked past Mackie and yelled, "No-"
Anneke aimed her Kalashnikov at the small of the ace's back. Fear knotted her finger sphincter-tight.
Mackie phased out. The burst splashed Wilfried all over the wall.
Molniya stood with hands on knees and his back against the side of a stripped Volvo, pulling in deep breaths of diesel-flavored Berlin night. It wasn't a part of town in which. strangers cared to spend much time alone. That didn't concern him. What he feared was fear.
What came over me? I've never felt like that in my life. He'd fled the apartment in a bright haze of panic. No sooner had he stepped outside than it evaporated like water spilled on a sun-heated rock in the Khyber. Now he was trying to collect himself, unsure for the moment whether to carry on with his errand or go back and send a couple of Wolf's vicious cubs.
Papertin was right, he told himself. I've gotten soft. IFrom above came a familiar heavy stutter. His blood ran like freon through his veins as he raised his head to see fireflashes dancing on chintz curtains two stories up.
It was all over.
If I'm not found here, he thought, then maybe--conceivably--the Third World War won't happen tonight.
He turned and walked away down the street, very fast.
Hartmann lay on his side with the floorboards throbbing against the bruise they'd made on his cheekbone. He'd kicked the chair over as soon as things started happening.
What in hell's name went wrong? he wondered desperately. The bastard wasn't supposed to talk, just shoot.
It was '76 all over again. Once again Puppetman in his arrogance had overreached himself. And it may just have cost him his ass.
His nostrils buzzed with the stink of hot lubricant and blood and fresh moist shit. Hartmann could hear the two surviving terrorists stumbling around the room shouting at each other. Ulrich was dying in wheezes a few feet away. He could feel the energy running-from him like an ebb tide.
"Where is he? Where'd the fucker go?" Wolf was saying. "He went through the wall," Anneke said. She was hyperventilating, tearing the words out of the air like pieces of cloth.
"Well, watch for him. Oh, holy Jesus."
Their terror was stark as crucifixion as they stood trying to cover all three interior walls with their guns. Hartmann shared it. The twisted ace had gone berserk.
Someone shrieked and died.
Mackie stood for a moment with his arm elbow-deep in Anneke's back. He took the buzz off, leaving his hand jutting from the woman's sternum like a blade. Blood oozed greasily around the leather sleeve on Mackie's arm where it vanished into her torso. He enjoyed the look of it, and the intimate way what remained of Anneke's heart kept hugging his arm. The fools hadn't even been looking his way when he slipped back through the wall from the bedroom, not that it would have helped them if they had. Three quick steps and that was it for redheaded little Comrade Anneke.
"Fuck you," he said, and giggled.
The heart convulsed one last time around Mackie's arm and was still. Putting a slight buzz on, Mackie pulled his arm free. He swung the corpse around as he did so.
Wolf was standing there with his cheeks quivering. He brought up his gun as Mackie turned. Mackie pushed the corpse at him. He fired. Mackie laughed and phased out.
Wolf emptied the magazine in. a shivering ejaculation. Plaster dust filled the room. Anneke's corpse collapsed across the senator. Mackie phased back in.
Wolf screamed pleas, in German, in English. Mackie took the Kalashnikov away from him, pinned him against the door, and taking his time about it, sawed his head in two, right down the middle.
Riding in the armored van with the particolored lights of downtown Berlin washing over her and the faces and weapons of the GSG-9 men who sat facing her, Sara Morgenstern thought, What's come over me?
She wasn't sure whether she meant now or before weeks before, when the affair with Gregg began.
How strange, how very strange. How could I have ever have thought I loved ... him? I feel