MATT HELM: The War Years

by Keith Wease

  "So long, fella," was all he said.

  I never have liked people who call me fella, so I just gave him a nod as I went out. The hell with him. If you want to make buddies, join the infantry. The umbrella opened fine, and I landed in an open field, and I never saw the guy again.

  The mission involved a prison-break operation at St. Alice. My job was to take the commandant out of action with a scoped-up rifle just before they blew the gates. I got the damn commandant, all right, but nobody else showed up. Well, that wasn’t completely unexpected. Mac had warned me of the possibility, when we planned this cockamamie mission in the first place.

  I knew I was in trouble when Mac started the meeting with a bone-chilling question. “Eric,” he asked, “How high is your pain threshold?”

  I paused for a moment, absorbing the implications in the question. “How high does it have to be, Sir?”

  He raised his eyebrows a little. They were jet black, in startling contrast to his prematurely gray hair. “Fair enough,” he replied. “Let’s just say that this mission may require you to endure some unpleasant, but not permanent, damage in order to persuade someone that you are important enough to pass on to his superior for expert interrogation.”

  Mac speaks English, not gobbledygook. He remembers the nice distinction, almost forgotten nowadays, between convince and persuade. Decimate means, literally, to kill one-tenth of. You can't decimate to the last man - there are always nine left. It may be used loosely to mean inflict large losses upon, but it does not and cannot possibly mean to massacre or annihilate. Disinterested does not mean uninterested and presently means in a little while - not at present and the fact that some permissive dictionaries have already adopted the recent bastard usage doesn't make it sound any less affected and pretentious to his ears or mine.

  My mind tends to work like that sometimes. It picks up on the inconsequential while processing the reality on some deeper level. Mac waited patiently. “With all due respect, Sir, damage from ‘expert interrogation’ is usually more than unpleasant and, more often than not, fairly permanent.”

  He gave me a reproving look. “It is not in the plan to allow the ‘expert interrogation’ to take place. You will have a back-up team, comprised of two of our field men, plus an I-Team.”

  The “I-Team” was a rather specialized group of interrogation experts. I was beginning to get the idea. “You want this superior, I gather?”

  “We very much want this superior,” he confirmed. “We know what he is, but have no idea of who or where he is. Over the last year, it has become clear that someone is training agents and infiltrating them into some of our intelligence and operations units, and at least one fairly important group within the French Resistance.”

  “… And I’m the bait.” It wasn’t a question.

  “You’re the bait,” he confirmed. I was a little surprised as Mac often talks around the point. “There are certain elements within the German intelligence community that would dearly love to get their hands on a member of our little group, if for nothing else than to prove to their superiors that we actually exist.”

  Mac looked at me for a moment, taking my silence as assent. He wasn’t much for asking for volunteers. His attitude was that when we volunteered to join the organization, we automatically volunteered for whatever assignment we were given.

  “The man’s name, at least on his papers, is William Price, known as ‘Bill.’ He was born in Indianapolis of an American father and a French mother, graduated from Indiana University with an Engineering degree, and volunteered for the Army in 1942. He was commissioned and served with an intelligence unit for two years. Shortly after D-Day, he was assigned as liaison to a unit in the French Resistance. Two months later his unit was ambushed and only he survived, with minor injuries. He eventually made his way to another unit, where he was gratefully accepted.

  “Here’s what he looks like.” He handed me a rather grainy photo, obviously blown up from an official photo ID. “His vitals are on the back. There’s no question that a Bill Price with the proper background existed. The only question is whether this is the same Bill Price who survived the ambush and is now leaking intelligence to the Germans. I guess it would matter to his parents and friends, but to us it makes no difference.”

  “It’s been confirmed that he is, in fact, a spy? Or is that part of my assignment?”

  “It has been confirmed sufficiently enough that he may be getting suspicious. I was requested to make him a designated target, until an alternative was proposed.” I knew better than to ask whose alternative.

  “There’s a prison camp outside of a town called St. Alice, with only a small contingent of relatively new and mostly ill-trained guards. Price has been briefed that a ‘specialist’ has been assigned to take out the Camp Commandant just before he and his Resistance group blow the front gate. They may actually show up.”

  “May?”

  “As I said, he might be getting suspicious. Rather than take the risk of going through with the prison break, he just might decide to blow it off and take you himself, with or without some help.”

  Chapter 26

  My left ear itched. Once early on, as the British say, I went through a door carelessly and got a leg shot out from under me, even though I'd had a feeling something was wrong. So now I respect any little warning tickle. In my line of work, you get these premonitions a hundred times, and ninety-nine times nothing at all happens; but it only takes once.

  I rolled to the right several times, ending up on my back with my rifle pointing behind my previous position. Nobody was there. Feeling a little foolish, I started to get up when I heard a rustling sound coming from about 20 or 30 yards into the trees, behind the rocks I had chosen for my vantage point to target the Commandant.

  With Mac’s warning on my mind, I had arrived at the prison camp hours before the scheduled break, just in case someone was being cute. I’m pretty good in the woods, if I do say so myself, so I had carefully scouted the area and had come to the conclusion that I was alone. I picked a spot between some rocks that gave me a good view into the camp, but shielded me from behind by a couple of boulders and the tree line that started just a few feet behind me. I had several cold hours of boredom ahead of me, but that was pretty much a given for a dedicated hunter. As I was now hunting a different prey, some of whom shot back, I considered a few uncomfortable hours to be a reasonable trade-off for ensuring I didn’t get shot in the back.

  Apparently, someone had arrived after I had and, rather than try to hunt me down, simply waited for my shots to give away my position. It was kind of rough on the Commandant, but it’s the choice I would have made….

  Unless this Bill Price was stupid – and the evidence argued strongly against that – he wouldn’t try to take me by himself in the middle of a fairly large wooded area. Even two people would have a good chance of missing me altogether. That meant he had at least two others with him, maybe more. I listened carefully and heard the same sound coming from a little to the right of the previous direction. He was circling around my position. Pulling myself up into a crouching position, I headed just to the left of the direction of the rustling sound, intending to get behind him. When they're hunting you, particularly if there are more of them than there are of you, it so seldom occurs to them that you might have the temerity to turn around and come hunting them.

  I had to get myself captured by Price, but that didn’t mean I had to just sit there, waiting for someone to come up and get the drop on me – or hit me over the head with something. With all the literature on the subject, people had a tendency to overestimate the durability of the human scalp. Not to mention that several good men and women have died, probably amazed and incredulous, at the hands of inexperienced and frightened jerks who'd cut loose when no reasonable person would have dreamed of pulling a trigger. I figured the world could afford to do without one or two of the jerks who picked up guns and went hunting a Helm. Getting mad at a man who has a gun, or lots of men who h
ave lots of guns, is not only stupid, it is dangerous. I have a very primitive reaction. Any time anybody comes after me with a gun, or points a gun at me and tells me to do something he has no right to tell me to do, I find my mind filled with one simple thought: "How do I kill this sonofabitch?"

  He really wasn’t very good in the woods. Once I got within 50 feet of him, I could him track by the racket he was making. He didn’t know where to walk and apparently just assumed that small branches would bend out of his way rather than breaking with a sharp cracking sound. After a few minutes, he got tired of circling and made a right-angle turn toward my original position. Either he thought I might be stupid enough to stay in place or he had some wild notion that he could track me from there. I cut across the diagonal to intercept him at the tree line beside my sniper nest. With the noise he was making, he probably couldn’t have heard me coming if I broke into a sprint, but I walked carefully anyway, although a little faster than he was moving.

  A few minutes later, squatting behind some brush behind a tree, I saw him coming through the trees. It wasn’t Price. He was in uniform and carrying some kind of machine pistol. He stopped for a moment and looked around at the rocks, perhaps hoping to find me still lying down watching the prison yard. He slowly walked past my position, still looking for me. Suspecting nothing from the rear, he was taken completely by surprise when, as he passed in front of my tree, I put down my rifle, rose up and threw the lock on him from behind. He was little over six feet tall, outweighed me by a good 30 pounds, so he was too big for me to mess with. I gave it maximum effort instantly, therefore, and felt certain important items break in certain important places. I held him like that until there were no more kicks or quivers or spasmodic tremors left in him, and even a little longer. Too many good men have died - well, they thought they were good - because they were too sensitive, spelled queasy, to make absolutely certain. There was little noise, just the scuffle of feet, some heavy breathing - mostly mine, since my grip hadn't let him have much air - and a small scraping sound as I dragged him out of sight.

  I should have paid more attention to that left ear. As I straightened up, I felt something hard jab into my spine. With a bit of admiration, I realized what he had done. He’d sent his city-bred companion into the woods after me, hoping I’d take the bait, while he’d waited for me to show myself. Not knowing where I’d end up, he had to have followed me, which spoke well for his woodsman skills. Of course, with all the noise his partner had been making, he probably could have stayed five feet behind me and I wouldn’t have heard him.

  I stood absolutely still, waiting for his next move. Sticking a gun barrel into a professional’s back is not the brightest idea in the world. There are a couple of basic moves that can result in the gunman’s immediate disability, not to say death. With the gun barrel pressed hard against one’s back, a quick turn will move the gun away from the body, leaving the gunman off balance and exposed to instant mayhem. Since the idea was to get captured, I restrained my natural impulse. Even so, he must have seen my involuntary muscle-tightening in preparation for the automatic move I had had drummed into my head back in training, as he moved back a step, relieving the pressure on my spine.

  “Careful, Eric,” he said. “It is Eric, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, and you’re Price.”

  He gave a short laugh. “Bill Price at your service. The man you were sent to kill.”

  Mac had been right about Price’s suspicions. That was why he had cancelled his group’s participation in the prison break. Since I was scheduled to meet up with his group for their help with my escape route after the assignment was completed, he couldn’t take the risk of going through with it. Thinking his cover was blown anyway, he had apparently decided to do exactly what Mac had hoped – take me alive to salvage something from his efforts. At least, it appeared that was what he had in mind as, if he had intended to kill me, he could have done so at any time in the last few minutes. His assumption that I had a secondary mission to kill him hadn’t really been considered by Mac – or me – but from my perspective, it seemed an idea worth encouraging.

  “Yeah, I was kind of hoping that was you making all the racket.”

  “Fortunately for me, I’m pretty good in the woods. Helmut – that’s the name of the soldier laying there – wasn’t very good at all, which was why I sent him after you first. Nice job, by the way.” He sounded genuinely sincere. Then he raised his voice a little. “Hans! Josef! Hier!” Well, I’d thought there were at least three of them. Apparently, there were four … or had been.

  “Put your hands behind your head, Eric, and turn around slowly. Do you have any other weapons, other than that rifle over there?” He was watching my eyes as he asked. I could play that game, too.

  “Just a small folding knife in my pocket, not much good for anything but paring my fingernails,” I replied, with no hesitation. After Mac’s training, I could lie with the best of them. Taped between my shoulders, it was an interesting little rig - a flat little sheath holding a flat little knife with a kind of pear-shaped symmetrical blade and a couple of thin pieces of fiber-board riveted on to form a crude handle. The point and edges were honed, but not very sharp because you don't make throwing knives of highly tempered steel unless you want them to shatter on impact. It wouldn't be much of a weapon - a quick man could duck it and a heavy coat would stop it - but it would be right there when someone pointed a gun at you and ordered you to raise your hands or, even better, clasp them at the back of your neck. Slide a hand down inside the neckline of your shirt or blouse and you were armed again. And there can be situations when even as little as five inches of not very sharp steel flickering through the air can make all the difference in the world.

  I forced my mind away from the knife. I’ve found that, sometimes, if you think too much about something, someone else starts thinking about it too. I know, that sounds about as silly as my left ear itching for a warning, but you live your life your way and I’ll live mine my way. Anyway, I was here to get captured by the guy, not toss a knife into his throat….

  The rustling sounds behind Price told me Hans and Josef were on their way. Price’s grimace told me he heard them as well. “What can you do with these people brought up in the city? It’s a wonder they even found us. Are you a hunter, Eric? You move like one.”

  “I’ve done some hunting in my time, although I’m used to animals that are a little harder to track than your friend Helmut over there.”

  He laughed. “No hard feelings, Eric. I’d have done the same, although, I must admit, not quite as efficiently.” He looked at me sharply. “But then, I didn’t have the specialized training you did.”

  He was guessing, trying to put the pieces together. The problem he had was trying to convince his superiors that Americans could be as ruthless and cold-blooded as the “Master Race.”

  When I didn’t reply, he had Josef search me. Josef was quite thorough and managed to find the knife in my pocket, overlooking the one taped to my back, and not even checking my boots to see if I had a small pistol or a knife tucked down the top of one or both of them. Price looked at me at raised his eyebrows in an expression that said, “What can you do?” and told Josef to check my boots.

  Price jerked his head to the side. “Let’s get going. Sooner or later those kids in the prison are going to get the idea that nothing else is going to happen and come out looking for the sniper who shot their Commandant. Eric, you keep at least 15 feet behind me.”

  We headed off through the woods with Price leading the way and Hans and Josef following me off to the side and a little behind so if they had to shoot me, nobody else would be in the line of fire. They weren’t much in the woods but, otherwise, appeared to be fairly professional. Eventually we came to a black sedan. Opening the trunk, Price produced a length of rope and proceeded to tie my hands together in front of me. He had me get in the back with Josef, and Hans took the passenger seat in front of me. About an hour later, we parked in front of a small
cabin. Leaving the two soldiers to stand guard, Price motioned me into the cabin, followed me in and shut the door behind us.

  It was small, with a kitchen off to one side and a bedroom off to the other. I could see a small portable propane stove just inside the kitchen, and a wood-burning heater against the long wall of the living room. Apparently, in anticipation of capturing me alive, the stove had been on and it was comfortable in the cabin. Price removed his coat, threw it on the short couch and indicated that I should do the same.

  “Ok, Eric, it’s time we talked. Who do you work for?”

  I looked at him and laughed. “For whom do you want me to work?”

  Chapter 27

  He flushed and backhanded me across the face. Getting no answer to his question, he took another swing at me. The forehand wasn't as bad as the backhand since I didn't get the knuckles or the stones of the rings he was wearing, but I made it look spectacular, flinching away from the blow and letting myself lose my balance and go down. They always enjoy knocking you down; and when they're beating on you, you want to keep them happy. If you make them sad, they may actually hurt you.