The Magicians of Night - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,120
thought, That’s it... But with almost comic simultaneity he realized he was still alive and that the only jarring came from the truck bouncing over the field. No blast effect, but only light that turned his vision to a whirling mass of purple spots and a noise like the German ammo dumps at Boulogne going up.
The next second the shooting and yelling started, as if all spectators from Goering on down had simultaneously discovered that their hair was on fire. As Saltwood’s vision cleared a little, he saw Storm Troopers dashing from all corners of the field toward the place where the two Reichshonchos were staggering about, half doubled over and holding their eyes. Lights ripped the afternoon brightness like flashbulbs at a Hollywood premiere and someone was running toward the truck, desperately waving the iron-circled magic staff and yelling for him to stop.
He recognized Rhion Sligo.
The truck fishtailed in a cloud of thrown dirt as he hit the brake. Bullets had begun to spatter, but because of the lights still popping with gut-tearing intensity all around them, nobody could aim. Rhion flung himself up on the off-side running board and hooked one arm in a death grip through the frame of the open window—the other hand still firmly hanging onto the staff—and yelled, “Get us out of here FAST!”
Saltwood was already in gear and heading for the fence.
“You know the city?” the little professor panted, as bullets ripsawed the ground a dozen feet away and a few strays pinged off the hood of the truck. “Seven twenty-three Teglerstrasse—it’s out past the Weisensee. Don’t pay any attention to anything you see or hear...”
Seven twenty-three Teglerstrasse was the Gestapo safe house where Sara and her father were kept.
Wire whipped and sang around the radiator, then ground lumpily under the tires. Saltwood pointed to the right. “Blow the top off that pole.”
Rhion shook his head, too out of breath to explain.
“Catch it on fire, then—it’s the phone junction.” What the hell am I saying? This isn’t even REAL.
The pole was in flames as Rhion scrambled through the door and dragged it shut after him, awkwardly because he would not release his hold on von Ram’s infernal stick. Things were not helped by the fact that Saltwood had begun to veer and swerve to avoid the hail of bullets now spattering all around them.
“And get down on the floor. I’m Tom Saltwood, American volunteer—British Special Forces.”
“Rhion Sligo.” He raised his hand in an unsteady Nazi salute and added politely, “Heil Roosevelt.”
And at that moment, far off, barely to be heard above the chaos of submachine guns, shouting, and revving engines, rose the long, undulating wail of air-raid sirens. Tom twisted in his seat, scanning the colorless sky. Through the window of the cab he saw them, the black silhouettes of the escorting Hurricanes, the heavier, blunter lines of a phalanx of Wellingtons and Whitleys, swinging in from the northwest.
“It’s a raid!” He let out a long rebel yell of delight. “It’s a...”
There had been sporadic raids on Berlin for nearly a month, but if Mayfair had known one was due to coincide with his own project, he hadn’t said anything about it. Though the main bomber group was still far off, there must have been one overhead he hadn’t seen—hadn’t heard, either, when he thought of it—for as the first of the swastika-marked cars swung onto the drive to pursue the escaping truck there was a groundshaking roar and every vehicle in the field behind them went up in flames.
“Fast,” Rhion whispered, slumped gray-faced and sweating against the grimy cloth of the seat. “For God’s sake, get out of here fast.”
Like a cow climbing free of a mudhole, the truck heaved itself onto the Alt-Moabitstrasse and ran before the bombers like a stampede before summer lightning.
The first bombs started falling as Saltwood and Sligo hit the outskirts of Berlin. As their truck cut onto See Strasse to avoid the thicker traffic of the city center, a half-dozen yellow-white flares sprang up, dazzling in the waning afternoon light, ahead of them and to their right. “They’re going for the railroads,” Saltwood guessed, veering sharply around a panicked flock of women dragging children across the road to a shelter. “That’ll be the Settiner Station. Those off to the far right will be the Anhalter goods yards... Dammit, lady, look where you’re going!” he yelled as a young blond woman, eyes blank with terror, came pelting out of an apartment house with her arms full of