Snow Wolf Read Online Free PDF

nothing to laugh at really. Prodding the
phenomenon with his bayonet, he had been hit by a sniper's bullet. A clear shot
from two hundred meters, into the right flank of his bare ass.
    Manfred Kass was used to making mistakes.
    But the mistake he was about to make that
December morning in the woods outside Lucerne was to be the biggest of his
life. He knew the forest reasonably well. Which paths led where, and the
locations of the best rabbit grounds. The rabbits made tasty stew to accompany
the fresh, floury bread he helped bake six nights a week. And the thought of
food made him hungry as he stalked through the forest, snapping the breech of
the shotgun closed as he came closer to the clearing in the woods.
    The light was reasonably good and getting
better. A faint watery mist lingering on the low ground, Not perfect light, but
good enough for him to get a clear shot.
    As he stepped carefully toward the
clearing, he heard the voices. He halted and rubbed his stubbly jaw. He had
never met anyone in the woods that early and the sound of voices made him
curious. it occurred to him that he might have come across a courting couple,
still out after a late Friday-night dance in Lucerne, who had come to make love
in the woods. It sometimes happened, he supposed. But he had not seen any car
parked on the road, nor any bicycle tracks in the forest.
    As Kass moved through the trees to the
edge of the clearing, his eyes snapped open, and he halted, riveted to the
spot.
    A man wearing a dark winter overcoat and
hat stood in the center of the forest clearing. He held a revolver in his hand.
But what shocked Kass, stunned him, was that it was aimed at a man and a young
girl kneeling in the wet grass, their faces deathly white, their hands and feet
bound with rope.
    As Kass stumbled back, his belly churned
and his body broke out into a cold sweat. The kneeling man was crying in
pitiful sobs. He was middle-aged, his face painfully thin and sickly gray, and
Kass noticed the dark bruises under his eyes and the cuts on his hands
indicating he had been savagely beaten.
    The child was crying too, but there was a
white cloth gagging her mouth and tied behind her long dark hair. She was no
more than ten, Kass guessed, and when he saw the frightened, pitiful look on
her face, her body trembling with fear, it made him want to vomit.
    And then suddenly Kass's anger flared,
his veins no longer ice, but boiling now, because there was something pitiful
and debauched about the man and the young girl kneeling there as if waiting for
death.
    He looked at the man. His weapon had a
long, slim silencer, but from where Kass stood he couldn't see his face, only
his profile. But he noticed a vivid red scar that ran from the man's left eye
to his jaw, the blemish so livid that from a distance it looked as if someone
had painted it on.
    He was talking to the man kneeling in the
grass, and in between his sobs the kneeling man was pleading. Kass couldn't
hear the words but he could see that the man with the scar was not listening,
realized that what he was about to witness was an execution.
    And then it happened. So fast Kass hardly
had time to react.
    The scar-faced man lifted his revolver
until it was Lebel with the kneeling man's forehead. The weapon gave a hoarse
cough. A bullet slammed into the man's skull and his body jerked and crumpled
on the grass.
    The child screamed behind her gag, her
eyes wild with raw fear.
    Kass swallowed, wanted to scream too,
felt icy sweat run down his face. He felt his heart was about to explode with
terror. He wanted to turn back, to run, not witness what was about to happen,
but for the first time he seemed to realize that he held the shotgun in his
hands and that unless he did something the child was going to die.
    He saw her struggle helplessly as the
executioner pressed the tip of the barrel to her head and prepared to squeeze
the trigger.
    As Kass fumbled to raise his shotgun, he
called out hoarsely, "Halt!"
    A brutal, hard