A bell started ringing. She wondered if she’d caused this to happen by using the emergency exit. But the power was off, so it couldn’t be that. The bell was not an electrical device. It sounded like an actual, physical piece of metal being struck by a flailing hammer. The sound was thready and faltering, as though whatever contraption drove it was already on its last legs. For all that, it carried clearly through the still air of the valley.
A stocky man—Ershut—was silhouetted against the glowing windows of the tavern as he ran in front of them. He had gone outdoors when he’d realized that the building was on fire. He was headed for the front, zeroing in, she guessed, on the source of the noise. She lost him in the darkness. Then she returned her gaze to the windows, noting a dramatic fall-off in the intensity of the light.
The sprinklers must have come on inside the tavern. They were rigged up to some kind of device on the front of the building: water rushing through the sprinkler pipes turned a little wheel that smacked the bell, sounding the alarm even when electrical power was shut off.
The big windows of the tavern began to explode: someone attacking them with a sledgehammer or a rifle butt, venting smoke. Dim flares of orange light shone through in places that weren’t covered by the spray patterns of the sprinkler system. A few minutes later Zula heard the roaring hiss of a fire extinguisher being operated in short bursts and saw those little fires being snuffed out one by one. The bell continued to sound even after the fire had been put out, and it would keep doing so until the system ran out of water or was shut off by operating a valve somewhere.
She had made these observations while moving furtively through the woods, favoring north-facing slopes so that she could get a view down over the Schloss. The sky was getting appreciably brighter. When she had arrived, she’d been able to see nothing except dim gleams of moonlight on roofs, and the pools of illumination cast by flashlights, but now she could see the entire compound, albeit in faint gray on gray, and she could see Ershut and Jahandar moving around even when they weren’t using their lights.
All of which worked to her advantage but told her that she had better move deeper into the woods before it became light enough to making tracking her easy.
She moved another hundred yards back, troubled by the amount of noise she made as she forced herself and the bulky pack through undergrowth. Then she turned back and looked again, since she had picked up bright lights in her peripheral vision.
A car was coming down the road, approaching the dam. She was thrilled to see it and then horrified by the certainty that whoever was inside it was about to be gunned down.
Instead, though, Jahandar approached, waving arms, bringing it to a stop at the far end of the dam. His rifle was slung on his shoulder. He bent down to engage the driver in conversation.
This must be the scrubs—the backup team. The day before yesterday, they must have driven the RV back to Elphinstone and parked it in a campground somewhere. When Zula had made her break, Jahandar or Ershut must have reached these people by phone or walkie-talkie or something, told them to come quick. The car’s rear doors opened up, and a man got out from each side, pulling a bag out behind him, slinging it over his back.
After a few minutes’ more conversation, the car went into movement again, pulling around in a U-turn, and headed back down the road toward Elphinstone.
She heard a pop behind her: the snap of a twig.
She turned around to see Sayed stealing up on her, about thirty feet away.
He was looking right at her. On his feet he was wearing the pink Crocs she had left behind at the campsite. He was movingly awkwardly because of the Crocs and because his hands were occupied by a black pump-action shotgun.
Her movements were no less awkward. But she knew she had to stay out of the range of that weapon, and so she backed away from him. Realizing he’d been sighted, he picked up his pace and began to stumble forward, flailing the gun around dangerously, dropping to his knees as the Crocs slipped on the steep loose ground, spitting and making little exclamations as branches caught him in the face.
The straps of her pack suddenly jerked violently at her shoulders. She thought she’d backed into a tree, that its branches had snagged the pack, spun her around.
Then she went down facefirst. She threw out her hands in an attempt to break the fall, but the palms of her hands skidded outward and she ended up spread-eagled on her belly. The weight of the pack was on her back. A moment later, this was joined by a weight much heavier. A weight that was moving.
“Got her!” said Zakir. His voice was coming from high above her; he was kneeling on her backpack or something. But then there was a sudden violent reshuffling and his entire weight bore down on her with force that might have cracked her ribs. It was certainly squeezing all the air out of her lungs.
“Bitch, how does it feel to be dead?” he asked her.
She only had one move, which made choosing much easier.
Bending her elbow sharply, she brought her right hand back to her left shoulder, groped upward a couple of inches, found the handles of the knives, picked the big one. It was almost wedged in place by Zakir’s weight, but she jerked it free with a convulsive movement. Then, without pause, she reversed the movement and stabbed straight backward, aiming for the sound of his voice.
He gagged on his own scream and rolled off her. As he moved she felt the knife handle twist in her hand. She maintained her grip on it, jerked it out, felt blood spray. She planted both hands and pushed herself up on hands and knees, then rolled away from him, ending up seated on her haunches.
Zakir was kneeling on the ground with both hands clapped over his mouth. His forearms were turning red. Blood began to stream off one elbow, then the other.
She heard an exclamation. Not from Zakir, who had been robbed of the power of speech. She looked up to see Sayed standing there in his Crocs, no more than ten feet away, holding the shotgun slack in his hands, staring in horror at Zakir.