The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

more seconds, then stopped. So close, he thought. So very close to saving
herself. It was a pity. She'd been a pretty girl, but she'd chosen to murder and
torture, and she'd also chosen to die, and if she'd changed her mind at the end
– didn't they all? Well, not quite all – that was merely renewed proof that the
brutal ones were cowards after all, nicht wahr?
Aber naturlich.
'This television is broken,' he said, switching it off. 'Better get a new one to
keep an eye on Prisoner Hassler-Bock.'
'That will take about an hour,' the guard supervisor said.
'That's fast enough.' The detective removed the cassette from the same tape
recorder he'd used to show the touching family scene. It went into his briefcase
with the other. He locked the case and stood. There was no smile on his face,
but there was a look of satisfaction. It wasn't his fault that the Bundestag and
Bundesrat were unable to pass a simple and effective death-penalty statute. That
was because of the Nazis, of course. Damned barbarians. But even barbarians were
not total fools. They hadn't ripped up the autobahns after the war, had they? Of
course not. So just because the Nazis had executed people – well, some of them
had even been ordinary murderers whom any civilized government of the era would
have executed. And if anyone merited death, Petra Hassler-Bock did. Murder by
torture. Death by hanging. That, the detective figured, was fair enough. The
Wilhelm Manstein murder case had been his from the start. He'd been there when
the man's genitals had arrived by mail. He'd watched the pathologists examine
the body, had attended the funeral, and he remembered the sleepless nights when
he'd been unable to wash the horrid spectacles from his mind. Perhaps now he
would. Justice had been slow, but it had come. With luck, those two cute little
girls would grow into proper citizens, and no one would ever know who and what
their birth mother had once been.
The detective walked out of the prison towards his car. He didn't want to be
near the prison when her body was discovered. Case closed.
***
'Hey, man.'
'Marvin. I hear that you did well with weapons,' Ghosn said to his friend.
'No big deal, man. I've been shooting since I was a kid. That's how you get
dinner where I come from.'
'You outshot our best instructor,' the engineer pointed out.
'Your targets are a hell of a lot bigger than a rabbit, and they don't move.
Hell, I used to hit jacks on the move with my .22. If you have to shoot what you
eat, you learn right quick to hit what you aim at, boy. How'd you do with that
bomb thing?' Marvin Russell asked.
'A lot of work for very little return,' Ghosn replied.
'Maybe you can make a radio from all that electrical stuff,' the American
suggested.
'Perhaps something useful.'
CHAPTER 10
Last Stands