Shots echoed from the opening above, followed by a tremendous fusillade, followed by silence. Then a rush of voices: Eccoli! Di là!
D’Agosta glanced up to see a few heads craning out over the gulf. A hand with a gun appeared, aiming right at him. He was a sitting duck. Christ, it was over.
Pendergast’s gun cracked from far below: his final round. The shooter was hit square in the forehead; he staggered, fell, then came hurtling silently past, headed for the rocks below. D’Agosta looked away, resumed his descent as quickly as he dared.
From the opening above came more commotion. D’Agosta saw another figure appear cautiously, this time with the automatic weapon in hand. D’Agosta recognized the stubby form of an Uzi.
He flattened himself against the rock. Pendergast had vanished out of sight below. Where the hell was he?
He heard the Uzi go off in short bursts, rounds humming past his ear. He tried fishing out with his leg, searching for another foothold, but realized he was protected only by a thin shelf of rock overhead; if he moved again, he would be exposed.
Another burst confirmed the fact: he was pinned.
“Pendergast!”
No answer.
More shots came, stinging his face with splinters of stone. He shifted one foot, probed.
Another burst, and he felt one of the rounds nick his shoe. He pulled his leg back. He was hyperventilating now, gasping for breath as he clung to the tiny purchase. He had never felt so terrified in his life.
More shots, the stone fragmenting.
They were shooting through the thin shelf above him. Even if he didn’t move, they’d get him. He felt blood running down his cheek from where the stone chips had cut him.
Then he heard a single shot, this time from below; a scream from overhead; and then another man hurtled past, Uzi flying.
Pendergast. He must have reached the bottom and retrieved the dead man’s weapon.
D’Agosta began to climb down in a panic, slipping, recovering, slipping again. There was another shot from below, then another—Pendergast covering him, keeping the opening above clear of men.
The rock began to level out a little and he half climbed, half slid the last twenty feet. Then he was on his feet at the top of a scree slope, soaked in perspiration, heart hammering, his legs like jelly. Pendergast was here, crouched behind a rock, firing up again at the opening.
“Get the device and let’s go,” he said.
D’Agosta rose, scrambled down to the thicket of bushes, and retrieved the weapon. One of its bulbs was slightly dinged, and the device looked a little smudged and scratched, but otherwise it seemed undamaged. He slung it over his shoulder and raced for the cover of the trees. Pendergast joined him a moment later.
“Down. To the Greve road.”
They took off downhill, leaping and running through chestnut trees, the sound of shots behind and above growing fainter and fainter.
And then, suddenly, Pendergast stopped again.
In the ensuing silence, D’Agosta heard a sound rising from below. The measured baying of dogs.
A lot of dogs.
{ 82 }
Pendergast listened for a moment, then he turned to D’Agosta. “The count’s boar-hunting dogs. With their handlers. Coming up from below.”
“Oh, my God . . .”
“They’re trained to fan out into an impenetrable line, trap their prey, and surround it. We’ve no choice. We’ve got to go up and over the top of the mountain. That’s our only chance to escape.”
They turned and began scrambling up through the steep woods, moving at an angle to the slope, away from the castle. It was a tough, nasty ascent: the chestnut forest was full of brush and brambles, the ground wet and the leaves slippery. D’Agosta could hear the baying of the dogs below, dozens and dozens it seemed, overlapping into a cacophony of noise. The sounds echoed clear across the valley, from one end to the other. They seemed to be getting closer.
They climbed through an especially steep section of forest and broke out onto a gentler slope, planted in vines, leaves yellow in the fall air. They ran uphill between the rows, stumbling and panting through the wet clods, sticky earth clinging to their shoes.
There was no question: the dogs were gaining.
At the far end of the vineyard, Pendergast paused a second to reconnoiter. They were in a couloir between two mountain ridges. Above, the ridges narrowed as they approached the summit, about half a mile away. The castle lay below them on its own projecting shelf of rock, grim and dark.
“Come on, Vincent,” Pendergast said. “There’s not a moment to lose.”