Bloody Passage - Jack Higgins [55]
He spoke to her in Arabic and she answered in Italian, "Hello, darling, got a cigarette?"
He hesitated then produced a packet from his tunic pocket and said, "What are you doing up here?"
"Oh, I was with one of the sergeants. He was drunk and I got bored so I thought I'd look for a little fresh air."
She leaned back against the wall, raising one knee slightly, arching her body provocatively. He moved a little closer, a glazed look in his eyes and put a hand on her right thigh. At the same moment the other sentry appeared from the darkness a few yards away.
He called out in Arabic. Simone leaned forward, cupped her hand very deliberately between the first sentry's legs, and breathed in his ear. "Can't you send him away for a while?"
The sentry didn't even hesitate. He propped his AK in an angle in the wall, turned, and advanced on his comrade. There was a rapid conversation in low tones, a certain amount of arm-waving, and the second sentry turned and disappeared into the darkness.
He turned and came toward her. "We're entitled to coffee at this time of night," he said. "He's gone to get it. I've told him to take his time."
"That's good," she said, producing the Ceska from her handbag and cocking it. "Now, do exactly as you're told and you'll be all right."
He stood very still for a long, long moment, staring at her and then he threw back his head and laughed and came forward.
"No," she said, panic moving inside her. "Please!" And she was holding the Ceska in both hands.
He looked angry now, teeth bared wolfishly, and reached out to grab, leaving her very little choice. She pulled the trigger, the silenced Ceska coughed once in the heavy rain. A hole appeared an inch above the right eye, he staggered back over the platform edge and disappeared into darkness.
It was like a dream barely remembered on waking and already fading as she turned, swallowing the bile that rose in her throat. She picked up her handbag and hurried back along the ramparts out of the circle of light, stopping where a half turret, which had once obviously housed a gun, projected into space.
She pulled up her dress and unwound the two-hundred-foot line of thin twine as fast as she could, turning herself again and again until she was dizzy. It took far longer than she had imagined and by the time it was finally free she was sweating heavily and quite exhausted. When she took the torch from her handbag and threaded the end of the twine through the wire loop, her fingers trembled.
She paused, listening hard, but there was still no sign of the other sentry returning and she leaned out of one of the embrasures in the turret, switched on the torch, and started to lower it.
There wasn't much left in hand when there was a sudden sharp tug that almost had it through her fingers although as she'd looped the end round her waist she couldn't have lost it altogether. She waited. After a while there was another sharp tug and she started to haul in the line.
In a surprisingly short space of time the end of the main climbing rope appeared. Nino had spliced the end into a large loop which she dropped over one of the stone columns between two of the embrasures.
There was a long pause. She waited, shaking like a leaf, suddenly ice-cold in the driving rain, reaction, she supposed.
A cheerful voice said, "Heh, angel, you're a sight for sore eyes," and Nino hauled himself in through the embrasure.
She hugged him eagerly. "Is everything all right?"
"Sure." He busied himself unloading the large rucksack he'd carried on his back as well as his rifle. "You had us worried."
He had the second coil of climbing rope in his hand already and was paying it out into the darkness. "What happens now?" she said.
"They climb the main rope and I help them on the way with this."
"Will it be all right?"
He grinned, his teeth white in the darkness. "What the English climbers in the Alps call a piece of cake."
She pulled the burnous closer about her, shivering in that driving rain, watching as Nino brought the rope in slowly and steadily