Tags:
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Science-Fiction,
adventure,
Thrillers,
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Suspense fiction,
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Outer space - Exploration,
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Human Beings - Origin,
Moon - Exploration,
Human Beings,
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ground, hitting the German in the chest. He twisted to his backside and fired another shot, hitting the nearest of the Argentine guides, dropping him and the machete he was holding.
The small German grabbed two of the Argentine guides by the arms and started running. The larger man knew his orders, but they were shouted out anyway as the man with the satchel made his way through the beach scrub.
“Kill him!”
Lee rolled as the submachine gun opened up. One bullet struck his calf as his own bullets hit another of the Argentine men. Lee grabbed the man’s body and used it as a shield, bullets stitching the dead man’s back. Lee was momentarily stunned when the corpse reared its head as one of the heavy caliber rounds struck its face. The head hit Lee’s nose painfully, bringing a flood of tears across his vision. He fired blindly with the dead man still against his chest. One of the small bullets hit the last Argentine in the right eye, flinging him backward. Lee rolled again, knowing the last man standing, the German with the machine gun, was aiming right at him. Just as he expected several bullets to slam into him, he heard the loud click. The SS man’s weapon had jammed on him. Lee suddenly found the strength to stand. Then he realized that somewhere along the roller-coaster ride of his derring-do he had lost the small .32. He looked at the German, who was trying desperately to clear his machine gun.
“Jamming right when you don’t need it to is a common failure of that particular weapon type, isn’t it, Fritzy?” Lee swiped at his eyes and then charged the large man just as he tossed his weapon away, grinning as he too leaned forward and charged Lee.
The two large men collided like charging locomotives. Lee lost his fedora from the impact. The German was powerful, but he was like most SS officers, unused to tangling with someone who fights back, giving Lee the advantage. Several blows to the German’s back and ribs brought on a fit of coughing. Then Lee brought his hand up into the blond man’s face and pushed up on his nose, crushing it into his brow. With the German grunting in pain, Lee took the man to the ground and then just as quickly brought up his right hand with the fingers extended outward. With every ounce of strength he had remaining he brought the fingers down and into the German’s Adam’s apple, sending his fingertips into the hardened cartilage of his throat. The pressure Lee brought to bear didn’t stop until his hand had sunk to the SS officer’s spine.
Garrison Lee, a former lawyer, and then one-term U.S. senator from Maine, rolled free of the dying man and lay beside him. His hand moved in the sand and he soon found one of his Colt .45s lying next to Isabel’s body. Then he saw his hat and forced a smile, a tired expression that didn’t come naturally at that moment. He slammed the hat onto his head and then cocked the weapon and waited, seeing nothing more threatening at the moment than the moonlit trees around him. He lay still as he tried to get his breathing under control.
He slowly reached out with his free hand and touched the wound on his leg. He knew the bullet had gone all the way through his calf just to the left of the tibia and assessed that the blood flow was of an acceptable level. He raised himself into a sitting position and was in the process of trying to undo his belt buckle for use as a tourniquet when he heard movement to his front. The man he had hit in the face with the .32 wasn’t as dead as Lee had thought. The man was up and charging.
“This isn’t my night,” Lee said as he brought the .45 up and aimed as quickly as his adrenaline-drained body would allow. He aimed with his left hand and fired the first of three rounds into the man’s face, chest, and abdomen. Still the Argentine came on.
Lee tried to roll to his left as he once more fired the Colt, but he wasn’t fast enough as the machete arced toward his exposed face. At the last second he
MR. PINK-WHISTLE INTERFERES