Blood of Vipers Read online

  And all hell broke loose.

  Gunfire erupted from the castle. The officer threw himself to the ground. The man by his side lifted his submachine gun to fire back, but a spray of gunfire caught him across the middle. The other Germans had their weapons up in an instant, returning fire. The officer threw himself over a downed tree and popped up to squeeze off shots with a sidearm.

  Two more Germans took refuge behind a pile of rubble, supporting each other as they fired and tossed grenades toward the castle.

  Another pair got caught in the open and went down, arms flailing. The final three men tried to reach the two behind the rubble, but a bullet slammed into one, and the other two ran for the hillside instead, even as the others yelled at them to stop. A bullet caught one man in the leg and he went down with a cry. The other escaped over the edge of the hill and into the brush. One of the dogs fell to the ground in the crossfire, and lay whimpering.

  Half a dozen men poured out of the ruined castle, and three more came around the other side. They were armed with carbines, submachine guns, and pistols, and dressed in equally mismatched clothes: Russian uniforms with German belts, or Russian army trousers with nondescript tan shirts. One man looked like a Polish cavalry officer. Bearded, clean-shaven, and stubble-faced in turn. The Germans killed one of them and then it settled into a firefight. The two Germans behind the rubble seemed well-armed and one man recovered the body of a dead companion by dragging him back by the ankle.

  Cal had a clean shot at the pair of Germans, but he was reluctant to reveal himself to the wild men who’d poured out of the castle. To his eyes they looked like a mixture of escaped POWs, Russian deserters, and Polish partisans. Maybe they’d welcome a downed American pilot, or maybe they’d put a bullet to his head.

  He had decided to shoot at the Germans and take his chances when two men leaned out of the castle tower and heaved grenades down. One fell short, but the other hit the top of the rubble and bounced into the middle of the two Germans. Too late, they saw what it was and tried to fling themselves to safety. The grenade exploded. The men lay still.

  The air was silent. Cal didn’t move, afraid to so much as jiggle a branch. If Little Hitler was alive behind the downed tree, he didn’t show himself. Cautiously, the men moved forward from the castle. One of the men gave orders in Russian. He was a big, hairy man with a black beard streaked with gray, and a vaguely Turkish look about him.

  Cal picked up the gist of it. Find that last man and finish him.

  But when they got to the downed tree, they shouted back and when they returned, it was clear that Little Hitler had escaped.

  Two of the dogs were dead, but a third lay whimpering, apparently uninjured, but unable to move with its leash tangled around its dead master’s arm. To Cal’s surprise, the hairy man bent, let the dog sniff his hand, petted him with a few affectionate words, and then released him from the leash and shooed him away. The German shepherd slunk off with its tail between its legs. The men walked around, kicking at dead Germans and rifling through their pockets, sharing out weapons, ammunition, boots, wrist watches.

  A moan caught the attention of the partisans. It was the young German who had made a run for it and taken a bullet in the leg. Somehow, they’d forgotten about him in the chaos of the battle. Cal had, too.

  They dragged him back and heaved him next to his dead companions. More men came out of the castle, until there were more than twenty in all. They prodded the injured soldier with boots, pulled him up by his hair and let him drop again.

  The boy grimaced at the rough treatment and pleaded with them to let him live. Or maybe he was trying to tell them that his mother was Polish, or his family had always been against the war.

  It didn’t matter. They were laughing, jabbing him with the butts of their guns, yanking off his boots, kicking at his injury, while the young man cried in pain and increasing desperation. Watching from the tree, Cal’s heart pounded, not just in sympathy for the boy, but in fear for his own life if one of them looked up and saw him perched above their heads.

  They stripped the soldier naked, kicking and jabbing. It was all nasty, mean fun, and no doubt it would end with a bullet to the head. And why not? Hadn’t the Germans done the same thing to countless Poles and Russians who’d fallen into their hands?

  And then one of the men found a photo tucked into the pocket of the boy’s shirt. He passed it around for the others to see, and their voices raised, their jeers turned to hisses and curses. It was a photo of Adolph Hitler, and even signed, from the look of it.

  They pinned the boy down like farmers holding a pig to be slaughtered and he was squealing and bucking like an animal, too, eyes rolled back in his head. The leader drew a hunting knife from the sheath at his belt and stroked the blade with his thumb. When he knelt, he pointed the blade at the boy’s groin and said something that made the other men laugh.

  Cal closed his eyes, horrified. The screaming started moments later. It only lasted a minute, maybe even less. It was enough.

  When Cal opened his eyes, they’d tossed the boy into a pile with the other corpses and the leader was wiping his knife on the pant leg of a dead German soldier. The mob calmed down and the leader gave them more orders. As nightfall finally, mercifully arrived, the men set about butchering one of the dogs. They carried haunches of meat back into the castle, and the smoke of a fire and the smell of roasting meat soon drifted down from the crumbling tower.

  Cal was feeling faint with hunger, and so he pulled out the Logan Bar from his emergency vest and cut off slices with his knife. Blasted D ration, a barely palatable hunk of chocolate and oats, with just enough sugar to keep it from triggering the gag reflex, but not enough to get rid of the bitter flavor. Good thing, too—if it was tasty, he’d have eaten it the first time his stomach grumbled at the end of a long mission.

  The thunder of artillery grew louder in the distance. The northern horizon was now glowing, too, and a giant arc of red curved from west to east. Dry, powdery flecks fell from the sky and the air tasted like ash. Or maybe that was the D ration.

  Light flared to the north, followed several seconds later by an enormous boom. When the Russian sentinel turned to watch, Cal holstered his pistol and dropped to the ground.

  Inch by inch he crawled forward on his belly, until he reached the safety of the darkened woods below. When he was out of eyesight, he rose to his feet, winced at the aching muscles and the wobbly, injured ankle, and began the long climb down from the hillside, anxious to put as much distance as possible between himself and the men at the castle.

  The thunder of bombs and artillery and rockets continued unabated, and Cal was grateful. Anything to blot out the screams of the dying German boy, still ringing in his head.

  4.

  Later that night, Cal came out of the woods and was creeping past a barn when a woman screamed from inside.

  It wasn’t a scream of warning, and it wasn’t anguish over a child who had just died of its injuries, but terror, not so different from the cries of the young German soldier as the partisan brought the knife toward his groin. The woman spoke rapid-fire German, high and frightened. A slap and a cry.

  None of your business. Keep going.

  Earlier, stumbling across the road, he’d spotted no German troops on the move, and no refugees, either. Overturned wagons littered the ground, together with dead horses, trunks that spilled blowing papers, muddy clothing, even an abandoned sewing machine. Half a dozen dead bodies.

  He’d left the road and entered the pasture sometime after midnight, oriented himself west, toward American lines. The artillery sounded more distant, the glow on the horizon duller, but gunfire chattered to the east, in the direction of the burning village he’d spotted earlier.

  Shortly thereafter, he came upon the farmhouse with its windows smashed, the door splintered. Two dead pigs lay between the house and the barn, and a cat shot away in terror as he surprised it around the side of the barn. And now the screaming woman. He stopped, put his
hand against the exterior wall of the barn to steady himself.

  Keeping going, keep walking.

  But his cold .45 sat in his hand, as if it had jumped there of its own accord. Before he could think about it again, he made his way around the front of the barn. The doors hung open, a lantern sat to one side, its flame casting the room in shadows.

  A single soldier in a Russian uniform bent over the screaming woman with his hand at her throat. Her dress was torn, and she struggled beneath the man’s bulk, pleading in German. The Russian soldier was trying to get his pants down with his other hand, but both his wrists and hands were covered with so many looted watches and rings that he was having a hard time finishing the job.

  A farmer—presumably the woman’s husband—lay to one side with blood streaming from his forehead and a glazed look on his face. A dead dog lay next to him, neck a bloody hole.

  Cal crossed the distance to the Russian soldier in two steps, and lifted the gun as the man turned toward him, surprise written across his face. He reached for something, but Cal didn’t wait to find out what it was. His finger squeezed on the trigger. The gunshot exploded in the confined space. The man fell on top of the woman, who started to scream. Cal looked down, stunned, unable to believe what he’d done.

  A movement caught Cal’s eye. He whirled with the pistol to discover the farmer crawling toward the Russian’s jacket, where the dead soldier’s rifle lay.

  Cal waved the gun. “Don’t think about it, Pops.”

  The man continued to crawl toward the gun. The woman cried at her husband, “Nein! Nein! Englisch!”

  The man hesitated.

  “Not English, lady. I’m an American. But if he makes one more move, I’m going to blow a hole in his brains the size of Berlin.”

  She kept screaming at her husband, and at last he gave up and sat up and touched the blood on his forehead. When he looked at Cal, his eyes burned with hate.

  “No thanks necessary, you ungrateful Kraut. Now crawl over there.” He gestured with his pistol. “Back. Move it. I haven’t got all night. That’s it. More.”

  Cal picked up the dead soldier’s rifle, and then made his way to the woman’s side. The farmer groaned and tried to rise to his feet.

  “Cool it, pal. I’m not going to hurt your lady.”

  He helped the woman stand. Apart from some bruising about the neck she looked okay. She straightened her dress, then spat on the dead Russian. “Frontschweine.”

  “Move away,” Cal said. “I need a look. Let’s see what stupid thing I did this time.”

  He bent over the dead Russian. Dammit. And to protect Germans, too.

  Maybe the man had something that would help keep him alive. He searched the man’s belongings. A hunk of dry, nasty-looking bread, cartridges, a hunting knife, and a bunch of stolen loot: rings, old coins, more watches, a pair of binoculars that looked English made. Finally, a picture of an elderly woman with a scarf wrapped around her head. Mom? Grandma? What would the old lady say if she could see her beloved boy’s last, murderous hours on earth. Would she be ashamed? Or proud?

  He kept the binoculars, and decided to take the rifle and the cartridges with him as well. No sense having these two shooting at him as he left their property.

  Meanwhile, the German couple started a heated argument, no doubt something about whether or not they should try to kill him now or wait until morning to rush off to find Little Hitler, or someone similar. Cal had what he needed. Time to hightail it out of here.

  But as he turned to go, the woman grabbed his sleeve and asked him something.

  “No spreken ze Deutch, lady. Now let go of me before I’m doubly sorry for saving your Nazi hide.”

  She let go and rushed toward the back of the barn, calling out as she went. He kept an eye on her, but backed his way to the open barn door as she reached a pile of hay and tore it away in big handfuls. Whatever she had back there, he was not interested. But to his surprise, the woman reached into the pile and pulled out a girl who had been hiding beneath the hay. She looked about seventeen or eighteen, very pretty with corn silk hair in a braided bun coming undone at the back of her head. The mother brushed hay from the girl’s hair and dress and pushed her toward the American pilot.

  “Oh, good Lord. No, I’m not taking your daughter with me. Is that what you want? I can’t keep her safe out there. I’ll be damn lucky to keep myself alive.”

  The girl came toward him, trembling. She clasped her hands in a pleading gesture. “Please, you will help us, yes?”

  “And you speak English. Of course. Just my luck.”

  “Please. It is very dangerous. You are Ami, yes?”

  “American? Right. Cal Jameson, Lieutenant, U.S. Army Air Forces. Your enemy, and don’t you forget it.”

  “Americans are in Leipzig. You take us there, please. More safe.”

  “Listen, I’ve got enough trouble as it is, trying to stay alive.”

  “Mother and father, too. We leave in morning, yes? Your name is Cal? I am called Greta.”

  “No, I don’t want to know your name. And I’m leaving now, you understand? Not morning. And I’m going alone.”

  The girl opened her mouth to say something else, but a gunshot sounded outside the barn. Close, perhaps as near as the farmhouse, only a few dozen yards away. Cal grabbed the barn handles and pulled the doors shut.

  The German farmer reached for the lamp and the barn plunged into darkness. Cal cursed and groped for the rifle. When he had it, he edged back until he pressed against the wall, kept the Russian gun between his feet, the pistol in one hand, and the other hand outstretched in case the farmer came at him in the dark.

  Voices sounded outside the barn, laughing and jeering. A man broke into song in Russian. Another man joined him. They sounded drunk. Two more men shouted from farther away.

  The girl’s voice came from his side. “How many?”

  “Go back to the hay,” he whispered. “Bury yourself and don’t come out.”

  Greta made too much noise obeying, but at least she was out of the way. Cal replaced the lost bullet in his pistol, and then stood waiting for the door to open. There was enough light outside from the moon and the glowing horizon that he should get one good shot, maybe two. And then, if he picked up the rifle...

  No good. The others could simply light the barn on fire and burn them alive.

  The song continued for several moments. More words, more drunk laughter. Another gunshot, this one a few hundred yards away. One of the Russians outside the barn yelled something that sounded like, stop shooting, you idiots.

  And then the voices trailed away. The singing picked up again, this time from nearer the house.

  Cal cracked the barn door. He saw nobody in the shadows.

  The three Germans made their way to his side a few moments later.

  Greta tugged on his sleeve. “You see? They will kill us. You must help.”

  “All right, but only until dawn. Then, you can find more Germans if you can and I’ll find a place to hide.”

  He had no idea how much of this the girl understood, but she nodded and spoke to her parents. The mother sounded grateful, the father grudging, but he seemed to agree.

  “Hurry up,” Cal said. “Before they come looking to join Ivan in some recreational raping. Do you have any bags. Any food?”

  “No, nothing,” Greta said.

  “You people didn’t give this much thought, did you? All right, let’s go.”

  5.

  Cal had second thoughts by the time they climbed over a low stone wall and passed into the next farm some twenty minutes after leaving the barn with the dead Russian. The girl’s father—Greta said his name was Hans-Peter and her mother was Helgard—stared at him suspiciously whenever Cal spoke to his daughter. Say the village up ahead was still held by Germans. What would keep Hans-Peter from shouting for help from the first friendly soldier they saw?

  Once they were clear of the farm, Cal gave Helgard the bandage from his C-1 vest, which s
he wrapped around her husband’s head to stop the bleeding from the gash above his left eye.

  They followed a rutted farm road that passed along a canal to their left. Hedges of willow and privet rose to the right. Perfect place for an ambush. The Germans spoke in whispers, which he tried to hush at first, but the gunfire had receded and he gradually relaxed. Even the artillery had taken a lull and he heard frogs croaking their spring mating calls, oblivious to the chaos that enveloped the human world.

  Hans-Peter and Helgard started arguing in low, intense whispers.

  “Fighting about me again?” Cal said.

  “No,” Greta said. “About whether it is safe to go back to my grandmother’s house or whether the Frontschweine are there.”

  “What’s that mean, anyway?”

  “Combat swine. Front troops. Not all of them are Russian army. You understand? Like the man in barn. They get behind the lines. Pillage. Abuse the women. They are everywhere.”

  “Yeah, I saw some of them in the woods, too. Disorganized mob. Why doesn’t someone drive them out?”

  “There are not enough men left. The army is at the front, fighting regular troops.”

  “They had enough men to organize a hunt for a single American pilot. Hunt me with dogs, too.”

  Didn’t do them any good once they stumbled into that ambush. Maybe if they’d been paying attention to the combat swine in the first place they’d still be alive.

  “Believe me, there is nothing we can do.” Greta’s English was improving rapidly, as if it had only been rusty from disuse, and burdened by her terror. “This is the third time we have run from them since January when we crossed the Vistula and the Nazis took my little brother to fight with the Volkssturm. We thought we’d be safe with Oma.”

  “There’s nowhere safe. The war is over, you know.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, it will be. A few days now, maybe weeks.”

  “Maybe for you,” she said. “Not for the people under the Russians. That is why we must reach American lines. You want the same thing, yes?”