The Power (73 page)

'Oh, I don't know about that,' said Gaunt, who had
taken no part in the defence of the chateau. 'My bet is
they shot their bolt, back up there, whoever they were. Let's press on, regardless. Get back to Colmar and the
Brasserie before dark. I can feel a drink comin' on.'

Paula stared at him blankly. Jennie raised her eyebrows
to heaven. Tweed ignored him, hauled out his walkie-talkie, called Butler.

The two outriders, Butler and Nield, posted at the front and rear, had stopped their machines without coming to join the conference.

'Butler,' Tweed said, 'keep your eyes skinned for anything unusual. I don't like the peace we have enjoyed so
far.'

'Agreed. Neither do I,' Butler responded.

Nield also agreed when Tweed contacted him, made a similar reply to Butler's.

'Let's get moving,' Tweed ordered. 'Proceed with
extreme caution
...'

Beyond the Col de la Schlucht the road descended at a precipitous angle round a series of hellish hairpin bends.
During their brief stop Paula had been struck by the sinister silence which had fallen over the Vosges. A heavy
silence which you could almost hear. She sat upright,
staring ahead.
The mountain began to rise up sheer to their left. To
the right the abyss became a white chasm with no sign of
where it reached bottom. Beside Newman, in the station
wagon, Marler had laid his tear-gas pistol in his lap, was
craning his neck to check the heights. It was Butler who
issued the early warning.

'Everyone slow to a crawl. Be prepared to stop the
moment I tell you. Two men on top of the big cliff ahead.'

'Message received,' Tweed replied, holding the wheel
with one hand briefly along a short straight stretch.

He had finished speaking when, thirty seconds later, he heard Nield calling him. An urgent note in his tone.

'We're being followed. Bloody great truck. Nestle. A
half-mile behind me and coming like the clappers.'

In the distance, just short of yet another bend, Butler
had propped his machine against the rock wall, had begun
to climb up a ravine. Marler told Newman to stop,
jumped out, Armalite in his left hand, tear-gas pistol in
his right. Keeping close to the rock wall, he ran down the
icy road like a marathon entrant, reached the ravine and
shinned up it close behind Butler.

Paula had focused her binoculars on the rock wall near
the bend. She pursed her lips before she spoke.

'That's a huge granite cliff sheering up vertically from
the road by the bend. Obviously unstable. I'm sure it's
covered with a curtain of steel mesh.'

Tweed nodded as he stopped the Espace. Paula's news
was disturbing. They had something possibly very danger
ous ahead of them - and coming up fast behind them was
this huge Nestle truck Nield had spotted. Tweed didn't
think the two incidents were a coincidence. They were
caught in a pincer movement of potential destruction. It
all had the signature of Norton written across it.

'I'd better go and give them back-up,' Paula suggested.

Tweed swung round in his seat, grasped her arm. He
shook his head.

'Stay here. Marler and Butler will be more than a
match for two thugs. I just hope they clear the way before
that truck coming up behind us arrives. It's going to try
and push us all off the road into eternity.'

'If I run back now past the BMW I could probably
shoot that truck driver,' Eve suggested.

' Stay put. No one moves,' Tweed ordered.

'Are we just going to sit here?' Amberg demanded.

'We are going to do just that.'

'Surely someone can do something,' Amberg persisted.

Two men are doing something,' Tweed replied in the same flat tone. 'You can do something - keep quiet.'

Tweed had experienced similar reactions before. In a
crisis people couldn't just wait. To soothe their nerves
they needed action - anything which involved movement.
So often it was safest to wait - once counter-measures had
been taken. And they had been.

Butler and Marler, using their gloved hands, had hauled themselves up to the top of the ravine. Butler peered over
the rim of a rock. Then he crouched down again and
looked at Marler below him over his shoulder.

Tricky,' he reported. Two thugs about thirty feet
away. Top of the cliff is flat. Boulders scattered in groups
across it.'

'I could take them with the Armalite.'

'Not that simple,' Butler objected. 'They have set up explosives to bring down the cliff on the road ...'

'How do you know?' Marler whispered impatiently.

'Because I can see another of those old-fashioned plun
ger devices like the one on top of the tower at
Kaysersberg. Hang on, you weren't there. They're both
near the handle that only needs pressing to bring down
that cliff. I'm sure of it. And on the road they've got the
Nestle truck coming after them...' Butler had heard
Nield's message just before switching off his walkie-talkie
and knew they were desperately short of time before the
truck arrived.

'We have to lure those thugs away from that plunger
handle,' he told Marler. 'Question is, how the hell do we
do that?'

The stocky American driving the truck was grinning
wolfishly to himself. He had caught a glimpse of the stalled
convoy and was closing the gap rapidly. He wore a woollen
cap pulled down over his low forehead and talked to
himself for company.

'Won't be long now. I'll ram the lot of you over the edge
down into that abyss. You'll end up dead meat.
Maybe
spring before what's left of you is found. Old bones
...'

With two accomplices he had earlier hijacked the big
vehicle as the original driver crossed the Vosges. They had cut his throat and thrown the body into one of the crevasses
in the ice. But not before the American now driving had
pulled off the victim's woollen cap. He felt the cold.

The truck was loaded to the roof with supplies, adding to
the enormous weight of the juggernaut. The weight was now helping the driver to keep going, holding the surface
of the snow-covered road well.

'Another five minutes,' he said to himself. Then it will
be all over for you poor schmucks
. . .'

Marler had eased himself up the ravine alongside Butler.
He peered over the rim of the boulder, looked at the side of
the ravine where they had pressed away snow during their
ascent. With his gloved hand he began digging and clawing
at a small piece of protruding rock while Butler held his
tear-gas pistol. The rock came loose, Marler tested its
weight in his hand and nodded.
'Give me back the pistol,' he said. 'With luck this will get
them well clear of the explosive box. You take the one
with the sheepskin, I'll sort out the thug with the wind
cheater , if it works.'

'It has to,' Butler said, glancing at his watch.

Marler hoisted himself higher up, being careful to hide himself behind the boulder. Sheepskin was standing with binoculars pressed to his eyes, obviously wondering why
the convoy had stopped moving. Windcheater hovered
dangerously close to the plunger handle.

About thirty feet away from where the thugs waited,
well inland from the brink of the cliff, was a scatter of
very large boulders massed close together. Marler raised
his arm, aimed for the centre of the scatter, threw the
rock.

'Hey, Don, what the friggin' hell was that?' called out
Sheepskin, dropping his binoculars looped round his neck with a strap.

'Came from over there, Jess,' Windcheater replied. He
pointed to the scatter of boulders. 'We'd better take a
look. They could've sent up someone. Get ready to take
him out

Gripping machine-pistols, both Americans advanced
alongside each other, their gaze fixed on the boulders.
Marler smiled to himself as he half-crouched, half-stood
behind the boulder. He used it to rest both arms to steady
his aim. Very stupid to walk next to each other. He
pressed the trigger.

The shell struck a boulder just in front of the two thugs,
burst, flooded the air with tear-gas. Earlier Marler had
noted the icy breeze at la Schlucht was no longer blowing.
Marler and Butler moved like greyhounds as the Americans Coughed, spluttered, staggered, held a hand to their
eyes, still clutching the machine-pistols.

Despite the pain of the tear-gas both thugs were stag
gering at surprising speed back towards the plunger. Mar
ler realized that a lot of the deadly vapour had exploded
away from the targets. They were nerve-wrackingly close
to the plunger when Marler reached Don, whose vision
was obscured. He saw only silhouettes.

Marler had dropped his pistol, was holding his
Armalite with the barrel across his chest, gripped at both
ends. He drove it with a ferocious thrust against Don,
forcing him backwards, preventing him from making any
use of his own weapon. At the last moment Don realized
he was on the edge of the brink.

'No! For Chrissakes
. . .'

Marler, careful where he placed his own feet, gave one final savage shove. The American fell back into space. In a bizarre gesture he hurled his weapon away from himself. Marler caught it with one hand in mid-air. With a
high-pitched yell of pure terror the American plunged
down. At this point the lip of the cliff protruded well over
the road below. The piercing yell continued echoing
round the Vosges as the somersaulting body, arms
flailing, missed the road and plunged on down, down,
down into the abyss.

At almost the same moment Butler hammered the
barrel of his Luger down on to the hand of Jess, forcing
him to drop the weapon. He then struck his adversary
across the face, left, right, left.
The onslaught drove Jess back and back. He was close to the edge when Butler
brought the barrel down on his skull with all his force.
Jess collapsed out of sight, following his fellow American
in to the chasm.

Marler and Butler had worked as a perfect team, keeping to the original plan, each tackling the thug closest to him. Butler was breathing heavily as Marler ran back to retrieve his tear-gas pistol. When he returned Butler had recovered his breath, was operating his walkie-talkie.

'Tweed. Cliff laced with explosives. Later we can get down the shallow slope south of the cliff, join you on the
road. Get Cardon to grab my machine if he can. Pete can
be bait for the truck. We'll take it from there . . .' 'Agreed,' Tweed's voice answered tersely.
There was very little time left. He gave Nield brief
instructions. Nield acknowledged. Tweed signalled to
Newman to move on, told Cardon the plan, started the
Espace moving, warned Gaunt via Jennie over her walkie-
talkie to get moving, keep close ...