The Last Survivor (A Wilde/Chase Short Story) by Andy McDermott Read Free Book Online Page A

betrayed her fear.
    ‘You will walk to me, or I will shoot you in the knees and drag you. Either way, you
will
come.’ He lowered his aim. ‘I will count to three. One. Two—’
    ‘
Herr Kroll? Können Sie mich hören?
’
    A woman’s voice, from outside the apartment. Kroll whirled, darting into one of the side rooms and taking cover in its entrance as he aimed at the hallway. ‘Who is there?’ he barked. ‘Do not come any closer, or I will kill her!’
    The woman spoke again in German. Nina didn’t know what she was saying, her knowledge of the language limited, but she realised who it was:
Natalia!
That meant Eddie was here as well – but where? If he had let the young woman get this close, then he had to be closer …
    Eddie crept to the opening in the wall, peeking warily through.
    Nina was in the far corner of the room. She didn’t see him, looking towards Kroll, who replied to Natalia with a bark of ‘
Nein!
’ He followed up with an angry tirade, the Englishman picking out enough to get the gist of what he was saying – that the Nazis would never be defeated.
    Determined to prove him wrong, he leaned out a little further, both to survey the rest of the room and to try to catch Nina’s attention without drawing Kroll’s.
    A flash of horror at the sight of the noose. The Nazi was going to finish what had been started in Argentina three months earlier. But this time, Eddie didn’t have a gun or a Molotov cocktail to even the odds, only his fists and feet.
    He located Kroll in a doorway, seeing that he was armed with a Heckler & Koch USP Compact automatic, then looked back at Nina. His wife was still watching Kroll as he continued his rant – waiting for an opening that she could use to escape, he realised with pride. The redhead was stubborn even in the face of death. He risked waving a hand, hoping she would catch the movement in her peripheral vision.
    She turned her head – and saw him.
    Surprise and relief jostled for position on her face, the latter winning out. He gestured, trying to communicate silently that he was about to slip through the gap and creep up on the Nazi. She nodded in understanding —
    Kroll paused, his gaze flicking back towards Nina – and noticing that her expression had changed. He turned to find out why …
    And spotted Eddie at the opening
    His gun came up—
    Eddie threw himself backwards to the floor as bullet holes exploded in the drywall where he had been standing. Plaster fragments spat over his face, briefly blinding him. He rolled to get clear – as another bullet ripped through the wall and blasted concrete chips out of the floor beside him.
    Kroll fired another shot at the wall, hoping to hit the man who had been lurking behind it, then rushed towards Nina. ‘Get off me!’ she yelled, pushing him away—
    The USP’s butt cracked against her head. She gasped, feeling as if he had just driven a spike into her skull. Before she could recover, the Nazi dragged her to the centre of the room.
    He tugged the noose down over her head and yanked on the cable hooked over the pipe, pulling the loop tight around Nina’s neck. The redhead clawed at it, managing to clutch her fingers around the wires, but he kept up the pressure, forcing her knuckles against her throat. She struggled, but was unable to break loose of his hold – and before she could resist, he had lifted her on to the crate.
    He hauled harder on the cabling. Nina’s eyes went wide with fear as the noose pulled upwards and tightened still further around her neck. She almost fell, desperately shifting her weight to remain upright. The crate’s upper surface seemed to shrink to a pinhead. She struggled to choke out a word: ‘
Eddie!
’
    Eddie heard his wife’s strangled cry. He jumped up, grabbing one of the ductwork sections as he rushed to the opening.
    Nina was wobbling on top of a wooden box, the hangman’s rope taut above her. Kroll turned away from his prisoner to locate her husband, raising his