The Ludwig Conspiracy(146)

Day had dawned now, and the first rays of sun were bathing the bridge in an almost unreal light. The chest-high handrails to the left and right were made of metal, and the planks of the bridge were solid, stable timber with narrow cracks between them. Through one slightly wider crack, Sara could see that the bridge rested on an arched iron structure anchored in the rock on both sides of the gorge. Suddenly she stopped short.

Could that offer a chance?

Looks like I don’t have any choice . . .

Quick as lightning, Sara kicked off her impractical shoes, then feinted a movement to the right, and the next moment climbed over the handrail on her left. Lancelot was so surprised that he let valuable time pass before finally moving after her with a roar. When he reached the middle of the bridge, Sara had already climbed down to one of the iron girders. The giant leaned over the handrail and stared at her, his one sound eye full of hatred.

“That won’t get you anywhere, you bitch!” he shouted. “I’ll pick you off like a bird with a broken wing!”

Running back to the two weapons, which were still lying on the planks of the end of the bridge nearer the castle, he thrust the Glock into his belt and reached for the Uzi semiautomatic. Meanwhile, Sara made her way hand over hand farther down her girder, and from there she climbed down onto a horizontal strut directly under the bridge. She held two posts firmly, one in each hand, and now ventured a brief glance down.

The sight made her suddenly feel nauseated. For a brief moment, the strength went out of her fingers. She just barely managed to cling to the iron.

Some three hundred feet below her, the waterfall poured through a small basin and into the valley. The walls of rock dropping to the bottom were breathtakingly steep. A slight wind blew through her hair and tugged at her clothes.

Now the bridge itself began to swing. It took Sara a moment to realize that the swinging was not the work of the wind but of Lancelot, who was running along the planks with all his weight. She couldn’t see him, but she could hear him all the more clearly for that.

“Where are you? Where?” he shouted into the wind. “Have you flown away, little birdie? Damn it, where are you hiding?”

Sara breathed a sigh of relief. Obviously Lancelot couldn’t see her from where he was behind the guardrails. She heard his heavy boots stamp over the planks, back and forth, faster and faster as he looked for his victim.

“Bloody woman.”

Suddenly the Uzi semiautomatic barked. In alarm, Sara looked up and saw with horror that several bullets had come through the planks. One shot hissed by close to her ear.

“Where are you, Sara?”

Lancelot’s voice was almost cracking. Once again, several planks splintered. Sara pressed her lips together to keep from screaming, and thus giving her hiding place away. What now? It was only a matter of time before one of the bullets hit her. Below her, on the north side of the bridge, she saw an iron basket structure about six feet wide, presumably fitted for building workers. Maybe she could take refuge there? But how on earth was she to travel the hundred feet or so to the structure below the bridge? Sara knew that if she looked down again, everything would probably go black before her eyes. Moreover, any movement would give away her whereabouts. There had to be some other way to do it.

Sara’s brain was working at top speed as bullets pinged off the metal structure around her. At last she formed something like a plan in her head, clouded as it was by adrenaline. She had once done some judo as a child. She didn’t remember much about it, but one rule stuck in her memory.

Your opponent’s weight is your own strength . . .

Sara nodded grimly. More than two hundred pounds could mean a lot of strength.

She took off the belt of her dress, a thin polyacrylic cord that had been nipping at her waist. Experimentally, she tugged at her improvised rope. It seemed as if it would take some weight. The question was, how much?

Holding her breath, she pushed herself in the direction of the guardrail until she was back on the vertical girder by which she had climbed down. Finally, she crawled up, centimeter by centimeter, as if on a climbing pole, until she was directly below the sides of the bridge.

Lancelot peppered the planks with bullets, the floor of the bridge shattering into hundreds of wooden splinters. The noise was so infernal that Sara was afraid she would go deaf. The shots must have been heard down in the valley, but it would certainly be too late for her by the time anyone placed them. She had to act now.

And she did.

In a brief pause between two volleys of shots, she gave a quiet little whimper. It was a very slight sound, but loud enough for her to be sure that Lancelot would hear it.

“What the devil . . .”