The Sandler Inquiry Part 113

The small craft rocked, then eased slightly. The rifle was moving with the boat.

"Put your hand on the barrel," he said, propping it on the railing.

"Help me steady it' She did.

"All I can do is aim high and hope' "You know your way around rifles"

she commented.

He glanced at her, taking his eyes off the cross hairs for only an instant.

"My father taught me," he reminded her, realizing the irony.

"We used to go deer hunting."

She looked at the deck of the submarine.

"An impossible shot,"

she said.

"d.a.m.n!"

He aimed high, waited for the peak of the wave, sighted the weapon again. He fired in that one instant the boat stood atop the wave crest.

They watched the deck. No reaction at all. The bullet had sailed into the gray expanses over everything. He lowered slightly and fired again on the next crest. Nothing. A third time. Nothing.

Zenger stood, seeming to brush the dirt and water off himself, secure in the knowledge that the pursuing ship had run out of fuel and was stranded. Perhaps the submarine would wham it on the way home. Why not?

Thomas lowered his sight dramatically, approaching desperation.

He fired the first of the last three bullets in the magazine.

The sailors on the deck and Zenger looked in his direction with suddenness. Perhaps theyd heard the rifle for the first time. The wind had shifted slightly. Instead of blowing from the side it now blew from behind the smaller boat.

They could hear the noise. And they'd looked below them, hearing the sound of a steel bullet hit the seamless iron hull of the submarine.

Thomas fired again. A second or two later a large yellow deck light several yards from Zenger seemed to burst and extinguish itself. Now the sailors began to scramble, back toward the hatch which would lead them down and under the deck to safety.

Zenger stood alone on the deck, looking back as if to inquire indignantly as to who was shooting at him. Never imagining that another shot could come so close.

A siren sounded on the submarine. A dive signal.

"He's got us beat'" Leslie cursed.

Thomas fired again. And missed.

He felt a sickened sensation in his stomach.

The siren on the submarine was still audible through the gray mist.

Thomas glared through the sight at his tormentor. Almost instinctively, Zenger sensed that his opponents had thrown at him their last offensive weapon.

The master spy stood calmly on the dleck, exhilarated at being shot at and missed, and grinned in their direction.

Then, with the quintessence of the American gestures that he'd learned over thirty years, the spy raised two hands toward the small boat. Each hand's extremity was marked with a sole upraised center finger, the universal but particularly American gesture of ill will.

"We're beaten" Thomas mumbled bitterly. He slapped the rifle in a fury.

"We can't be" she snapped coldly.

He looked at her in frustration and almost anger. What did she want him to ?

"Try another magazine" she said.

And disbelievingly she 'held out another steel-cased magazine, six long bullets therein.

He looked at her and looked at the weapon. He looked at the deck of the submarine.

Zenger had turned. He walked defiantly and c.o.c.kily toward the open hatch which would lead him on a fluorescent and air-purified trip to another world, one in which he would be a hero.

"No way," Thomas Daniels said.

"He's gone' ' She grabbed the rifle from his hands as an inspecting dill sergeant might. Quickly her hands had torn out the empty magazine, sent it overboard and slammed the full magazine into its place.

The wind felt the same. The boat eased from its rocking for a few seconds. She braced herself against a cabin wall and held the rifle's b.u.t.t against her shoulder, quickly bringing the weapon into a perfect firing position. Her movements were precise, practiced, and comfortable.

Moments later she began firing, aiming not quite so high and not quite as left ward as Thomas had. She pulled the trigger quickly in a rapid succession, firing four, five, and then six shots, trying to spray the area where Zenger was.

There was a delay of several seconds before any bullet sailed the distance between the rifle and the submarine. Thomas souinted and watched.

He had no idea which bullet found its mark, whether it was the first or the final. But the fact remained that as Zenger stepped the last few yards to the hatch, the lower half of his skull exploded with the impact of a viciously tumbling bullet.

The man's body went limp and fell immediately, the red explosion in the back of the head being instantly apparent even at that great distance.

The gray rain continued to fall.

Other sailors emerged from the watch, gawking, incredulous at first.

Thomas and Leslie stared with their naked eyes as three sailors pulled the fallen body toward the hatch.

Leslie set down the rifle. She had no quarrel with the Russian sailors. They had their duty just as she and Thomas had had their-S.

The seamen reclaimed a body; Thomas and Leslie had reclaimed a soul, an ident.i.ty. The body had always belonged to the Soviet Union. The ident.i.ty? That had been borrowed.

Leslie picked up a floodlight from the small boaes cabin. The light could be flashed on and off. She blinked an internationally understandable cease-fire signal to them.

The sailors stood on the deck, working nervously for a few seconds, hoisting the fallen, semi beheaded body by its red shoulders.

They dragged it below.

Minutes later the submarine began to move. Thomas and Leslie wondered if it would ram them or sink them; it easily could have.