The Sixth Station(99)

We squeezed into a five-by-three-foot opening cut out of the stone wall, which was hollow all the way around—a double-walled edifice with both an inner and an outer wall. The “doorways” opened into a passageway that went completely around the perimeter. Must have been for defense, I thought. We could hide inside, although we wouldn’t be able to get out if they found us.

Following Pantera’s lead, we crept around and positioned ourselves behind a slit cut into the outer wall. “For arrows,” he whispered.

It was clear that that’s how the inhabitants would have fought off invaders during the Middle Ages.

Pantera handed me a pistol. “Know how to use one of these things?”

“Maybe.”

“Just point and shoot.”

Three men armed with machine guns came stalking around the outer perimeter, heads low. Pantera stuck his Glock through the arrow slit and fired. Once. I heard the sound of impact and the sound of someone going down.

The two others, I could see from my tiny vantage point, flattened themselves against the outer wall and fired into the turrets near us, clearly not able to fire inside the tiny arrow slits.

One moved out and was heading toward the courtyard. Pantera maneuvered out of the wall and threw a rock up to the turret and then slid back in.

He handed me a cylinder. “Flash grenade. If it comes to that, go to the doorway, pull this, and throw.”

The man who had remained on the outer wall came into view and fired into the turret above us, as Pantera picked him off.

The third must still have been moving around toward the courtyard and the southern slope. Pantera held me back.

“Use it if you need to,” he said, referring to the grenade. “It will cause temporary blindness and deafness in the enemy and give you time to get away.”

He then slipped out of the walls through the opening. When he reached the courtyard, I could hear him heft himself up to the courtyard wall with his arms. Then silence.

I took up his former position behind the arrow slit. The armed man started back; I could see his shadow. He looked up and pointed his gun. Did he see Pantera? I didn’t wait to find out. I put my pistol into the arrow slit and squeezed the trigger. I saw him go down. But he wasn’t dead. He was writhing and bleeding from his chest. I could hear him moaning like a wounded dog. He rolled over, got a bead on where the shot had come from, and aimed into the arrow slit.

The shots hit the rock wall millimeters from the slit. From on top, automatic fire blasted the stone wall, and then nothing.

Was he up? I couldn’t look out, or he’d shoot me. I picked up the grenade and slowly crept back to the opening. If he made it into the courtyard somehow, I’d hurl it and then shoot.

Oh, God.

As I was feeling my way against the stone wall, a shot rang out from above. I heard a scream of agony, then silence. Someone had died.

Is it Pantera? Is it the shooter? What do I do?

Just then, Pantera called out as calmly as if he were calling Kmart shoppers to attention: “There were three. All dead.”

“You sure they’re dead? How do you know?”

He moaned back, “Do I tell you how to type?”

“Asshole!”

I could hear him walking and heard him jump back down into the courtyard. He called to me to come back out. Right. Nothing would make me willingly move out from the safety of the inner wall, and, in fact, I scrambled farther in and crouched.

“It’s me, for God’s sake. I told you they’re dead. I’m coming in—it’s fine,” Pantera said. “We’ve got to go.”

I made my way to the opening, gun pointed, and saw Pantera entering. “Who was that? Why did they shoot at us? It was my fault for turning on the phone!”

“Not unless they could climb a mountain in a single bound—they were here—although the signal probably gave them our exact location.”

“I’m so sorry. But I may have killed someone.”

“Don’t get crazy.”

“Who were they?”

“Sent by the same people who also convinced Hussein, Bar-Cohen, and Pawar to lie in 1982.”

“What does that mean?”

“Like the wise man said, ‘All the powers in the world.’”

It hit me then: Three astronomers showed up at the house when they saw a star and found an unwed mother and her baby. And that birth would threaten all the powers in the world. History repeating? This was too much.

“The rest of them—and probably the French authorities—will be up here soon,” he said, taking binoculars from his backpack and surveying the area below. “Let’s move. They’re already here.”

“What do you see?”

I grabbed the binoculars from him and could see dozens of police cars arriving at the bottom of the mountain.