The Blood Lance (21 page)

They worked their way north through the neighbourhoods. Not far from the Krugkoppel Bridge, at the northern end of the Aussenalster, Ethan pulled into a small parking lot. At the dock Malloy could see several boats out in the water. 'Masks down,' Kate said. 'Could be cameras anywhere from here on.'

'Which boat?' Malloy asked as they walked down the plank.

Kate pointed at one anchored some thirty metres off shore. 'The pretty one.'

Chapter Six

The Aussenalster, Hamburg

Saturday-Sunday March 8-9, 2008.

The boat was a twenty foot 1930s era Chris Craft speedboat. It was long and rode low in the water. With only a few easily disabled running lights it would be virtually invisible on the lake.

Ethan took a pair of bolt cutters out of one of the bags and cut a small dinghy free from its anchor close to shore. He rowed out to the Chris Craft, cut the wire securing it, hotwired the Chrysler engine, and pulled the boat to the dock. Malloy and Kate tossed in the gear and climbed aboard.

The boat was made of mahogany and trimmed in chrome. Once out on the water Kate switched off the running lights. Ethan fished out his navigator and began directing her upriver and into the canals.

It was nearly eleven o'clock by the time they came to Hugo Ohlendorf's house. Except for a single security light at the dock the property was dark. Before they moved, Kate settled their craft in the shadows opposite the property.

'Looks quiet,' she whispered.

Ethan pocketed his navigator, climbed out of his seat and opened one of the canvas sacks. He handed Malloy one of the Kalashnikovs and took one for himself. He then grabbed one of the two tranquilizer guns. 'Once we're on the property,' Ethan told them whilst he strapped down his weapons, 'I'll deal with the dog. T. K., you hold the centre of the yard until I call you in. When we take the back door, I want to come in loud.'

'You two are the diversion,' Kate explained. She picked up the second tranquilizer gun. 'I'll be primary on the take-down.'

Ethan pulled out a sledgehammer and some bolt cutters. 'From here on,' he told them, 'no names.'

Kate kicked up the idle and turned the wheel sharply left. Their boat moved in a slow arc through a one hundred eighty degree turn, coming finally to the portside of the Bayliner tied to Ohlendorf's dock.

The moment the two vessels collided, a warning beep sounded from the alarm pad at the gate. 'Go!' Kate said.

Malloy climbed out of the Chris Craft and up across Ohlendorf's yacht. Kate followed nimbly. Ethan tossed the sledgehammer and bolt cutters up to her and then began tying the two vessels together fore and aft.

He was finishing the second knot when the property lit up and an alarm pierced the silence. Ten seconds. Malloy felt a moment of dread. They were still in the canal some forty metres from the house with an iron fence between them and Ohlendorf. The alarm had sounded. Ohlendorf was no doubt moving. Despite this, Ethan finished tying the two vessels together whilst Kate watched patiently.

When he had finished, Ethan sprang up to the larger craft, took the sledgehammer and jumped down to the dock. Malloy climbed down in deference to his aging knees. Kate set the bolt cutters next to the wire anchoring the Bayliner. Ethan walked to the gate and swung the sledgehammer.

The lock broke on the first blow and all three of them started running for the house.

Ohlendorf's German shepherd came out of the shadows without making a sound. He was a trained guard dog, not the family pet. Ethan took the animal with the dart rifle at ten metres, then dropped the dart gun and drew a combat knife. The dog flinched when it was hit but kept coming, fangs bared. Ethan held his left forearm out in a defensive posture. When
the animal lunged for it, he caught its jaw with a right hook. The dog yelped and went down like a sucker-punched brawler. It struggled briefly to rise, but then seemed to lose interest and lay back sleepily in the grass.

Ethan sprinted toward the house, stopping just short of the wall, and turned to face Kate. Kate trotted behind him like a high jumper gambolling toward the bar. She stepped on Ethan's out-turned thigh with her right foot, his shoulder with her left. Without ever losing her upward momentum she sprang easily toward the second storey. Ethan ordered Malloy in whilst Kate scrambled across the roof.

Malloy got to the house just as Ethan kicked open the door.

Hugo Ohlendorf and his wife were reading in bed when they heard the alarm and saw the floodlights suddenly illuminating their property. His wife swore softly and asked what was happening. 'Stay here,' Ohlendorf told her. 'I'll find out.' He set his bookmark in place, and then laid the book on the bedside table as he sat up. He retrieved his stainless steel Beretta 92FS and a loaded clip from the bedside table. Jacking a shell into the chamber of the gun, he slid his feet into his slippers, and stood up.

'Should we call the police?' his wife asked.

They are on the way,' he answered.

Ohlendorf had enjoyed a lifelong love affair with handguns and shot in competition once or twice a month. At fifty-three he was no longer a contender for the highest marks, but he considered himself a solid performer. He had in fact been to his favourite club's shooting range on the previous evening - scoring sixth out of some thirty-six individuals. A good finish, considering the competition, but not his best.

Despite this the gun felt odd in his hand. There was a strange taste of dread in his throat.
Kids
, he told himself. He tried to imagine a group of teenagers driving by as they threw something at the gate, but his body was telling him something else.

He had talked to cops about just such moments as this. They
told him the first emotion was raw fear. The next was denial. So far, he thought, he was staying with the programme. Opening his bedroom door Ohlendorf saw his seventeen-year- old daughter standing in the hall with a look of curiosity. 'Get back inside, Michelle,' he told her.

She stared at the gun in his hand.

'Go back to your room!'

Michelle blinked. 'What's happening?'

'Probably kids at the front gate, but I'm going to make sure.'

'I heard glass breaking,' she told him.

He did not ask her where she had heard the noise, but said again, 'Get back in your room!'

When her door had closed, he proceeded down the darkened hallway. The phone began ringing. The security company. If he did not answer quickly, they would call the police. Let them make the call, he thought. His hands were wet with fear and his chest was tight. Broken glass. That meant they had crossed into the property. The coppery taste of adrenalin was strong now, and the darkened house, his private retreat from the world, seemed a terrible and frightening place. He wanted the police. More than anything he yearned for some calm professional to tell him everything was fine, but for the next ten or fifteen minutes he was on his own.

He whispered again the reassuring denial,
kids
, though now the imaginary kids had got older and bigger and far more dangerous. He recalled what his police-friends had told him. After the initial fear and denial, you start thinking about what happens if you shoot someone who isn't armed. . . or you wonder if your muscles are going to freeze up. They told him sometimes just lifting his weapon or taking a single step forward was more than a man could handle.

Ohlendorf had never known that kind of fear and had no idea if he could actually get past it. He was standing several steps beyond his daughter's bedroom door and suddenly getting as far as the stairway seemed impossible. His chest ached and he stank with fear. Then, at the sound of the back
door splintering, a strange thing happened. He felt the next emotion: anger. Sometimes you freeze, they told him, but sometimes you lose your fear and you move forward because you don't like it that someone is in your house!

He settled on one knee at the top of the stairs without remembering taking the steps to get there. He braced himself against the plaster wall and peeked through the banister. He heard crystal breaking in the dining room, a chair tossed across the floor. He waited for them to come to him and thought about target practice. Then a new fear pierced his hard emotional shell, a strange fear, all things considered. He was, he thought, going to have to kill someone! It was curious how his body reacted to the thought of doing that. It was not at all like arranging someone's death. When he did that he invariably felt an erotically charged sense of power. Say the word, wire the money to an account and a life was extinguished - sometimes a very important life! There was nothing like it, but this was going to happen right in front of him. He was going to have to pull the trigger and see the blood, explain himself to the police, and watch his wife and daughter dealing with it! No anonymity here. No matter what happened in the next few seconds he was going to answer for it.

There was more breakage below. At least two men from the sound of it. One of them came into view - a black figure from head to foot. He wore a mask and carried a Kalashnikov. At the sight of the gun, Ohlendorf hesitated. A Kalashnikov was capable of firing ten rounds
per second
. If the other man was also carrying such a weapon the moment he fired one round from his Beretta they were bound to open up on his position. Ten rounds per second for three or four seconds would take the wall out - and him with it. His only chance was to wait until they both came into the open. Whilst he waited, hoping as he did that he could take them down before either man could respond, Ohlendorf felt something sting his
back. He tried turning to discover what had happened,
but he was immediately dizzy. He tried to swat away
whatever was stinging him and then he began tipping forward.

He was dreaming as he hit the first step, out cold before the next.

Ethan saw Ohlendorf tumble toward the landing on the stairwell and moved up fast to break his fall. Ethan checked the pulse and then lifted Ohlendorf over his shoulders.

'You lead, Man,' Kate whispered as she came down the stairs.

Malloy went out the way they had come. At Kate's command he stopped in the middle of the backyard, turning to cover their retreat. There was no sign of a second individual coming for them. No more lights had come on inside the house. From the dock Kate called to him over the headset. 'Get to the boats! GO!'

Malloy sprinted toward the dock. Kate covered his retreat but there was no need for it: though the lights were still on and the alarm still rang, nothing at all moved in their wake. Kate cut the wire holding the Bayliner and jumped onboard. Ethan waited on the Bayliner's portside with Ohlendorf on his shoulders. 'Help me get him over,' he said.

Kate dropped to the Chris Craft, Malloy climbing down after her. Together he and Kate took Ohlendorf's body into the smaller of the two vessels. Kate sat at the wheel whilst Malloy settled Ohlendorf's unconscious body on the floor.

'Everything okay?' Kate asked.

'Got it,' Ethan answered over the headset. He was still inside the Bayliner. Its twin engines rumbled and then the two boats moved away from the dock together, the Bayliner's lights blazing.

Once they had entered the lake Ethan tied off the steering wheel. He set the Bayliner on a southeastwardly course that would let it run the length of the lake before colliding with the shore. He then swung down into the Chris Craft and cut free of Ohlendorf's yacht. The Chris Craft tipped left, dropping behind the Bayliner, and then turned right, cutting across the wake like a dark shadow on the water.

Seven minutes after the alarm had sounded they heard the first police sirens heading north along the road. A minute or so later they saw a police boat breaking across the Aussenalster making a run at the brightly lit Bayliner. Three minutes later they saw the police boat running alongside it, whilst the Chris Craft slid quietly into the Alte Rabenstrasse dock. Kate and Ethan wrestled Ohlendorf up to the dock. Ethan then carried him to the parking lot. Malloy jogged ahead and got the car started.

They rolled into the street thirteen minutes after the alarm had sounded.

St. Pauli District, Hamburg

Saturday-Sunday March 8-9, 2008.

They turned onto a quiet street and saw a cop car coming in the opposite direction. It was moving fast without lights or siren. Malloy let his car drift toward the kerb. When it turned out that the cop was not interested in them he rolled back to the centre of the road and watched the cop in his rear view mirror.

'They're closing off the roads,' Ethan said. They came to a stoplight and saw another cop car slowing through the intersection, then roaring on - again no lights, no sirens. They turned onto a major artery and found a bit of Saturday night traffic. Close to the Reeperbahn, traffic slowed to a crawl and Malloy took a series of side streets until he turned into the courtyard parking area behind Dale Perry's bar.

Kate grabbed their two canvas bags. Ethan got Ohlendorf out of the backseat and dropped him over his shoulder. Malloy led them into the back of the bar and down the stairs.