Blood of Vipers

by Michael Wallace

  “There’s a boy named Karl. His family died in the bombing of Dresden. Will you give him to me, too?”

  “Very well. The boy, too.”

  “And what will you do with the men?”

  “These two are prisoners of war of the Soviet Union. This old man is a member of the Nazi party, and likely a war criminal.”

  “I doubt it. But okay, say you keep those three. You’ll give me the rest of them, too? The women and children?”

  Osimov shook his head. “I’m afraid not. These four women and three children, no more. The rest must be fed to the war pigs.”

  13.

  Cal stared at the men on the floor. He couldn’t do it. Maybe, just maybe, he could surrender these men to whatever fate the Soviets intended for their prisoners of war—probably slave labor as revenge for what the Germans had done on the Eastern Front. But the other women and children?

  He never wanted to be responsible for these people in the first place. Hell, he never wanted to take care of Greta and her family, for that matter. Hard enough to keep himself alive. Taking these seven would be a compromise, the best he could manage under the circumstances.

  Cal looked up to see Osimov watching him with a hard expression. “Well?” the man demanded. “What will it be? More pointless deaths?”

  Why doesn’t he force me?

  That was the question. Instead of marching Cal off without his so-called prisoners—and both men knew they weren’t prisoners at all, but under the American pilot’s protection—Osimov demanded his cooperation. Was that simply the Soviet way, that you must break, must not only comply, but negotiate your own capitulation? Must be complicit in the crimes?

  Or perhaps the man wasn’t ruthless enough to do the obvious and disappear Cal along with the rest. And he was somehow worried that news of the abuse of an American pilot would come back to cause him trouble.

  Cal met Greta’s eyes. With her English, she would understand this exchange and know what was at stake, but to his surprise he didn’t see any pleading, only quiet determination. A firm jaw and a slight nod.

  Don’t surrender, that look said. You must try to save them all.

  “No,” Cal said as he turned back to Osimov. “You killed the SS officer. Your choice—I turned him over to Soviet custody. But I did not turn these men over. Or the women, or the children. They are mine and I will bring them back to American lines. All of them.”

  Osimov squatted in front of Cal’s chair and leaned in close. “That is your answer?”

  “That is my answer.”

  “You will regret that.”

  He stepped over prostrate bodies until he straddled the older of the two German soldiers. He pointed his gun down at the man.

  “Don’t do it, Osimov.”

  The Russian didn’t turn. “Then you agree with the plan?”

  “Never.”

  “You condemn them to death.” He drew back the hammer.

  The German shut his eyes. Cal braced himself. Greta let out a low moan.

  But then Osimov straightened and lowered the hammer on the gun. He put it back into his holster and said something to the guards. They dragged the prisoners to their feet and marched them from the room. Osimov followed them out without a backward glance. A few minutes later, more soldiers came to drag away the dead SS officer.

  When they finished, Cal sat alone at the kitchen table, without even guards at the door. He stared at the pool of blood that spread across the scuffed kitchen planks, and waited for the gunshots of the executions, the screaming women as the Frontschweine took their pleasure.

  But it was quiet except for the murmur of Russian voices from the front room and the ever-present thump of artillery in the distance.

  It was then that he began to hope that he had won.

  #

  Cal marched at the front of a column of prisoners. They followed the darkened cobblestone street from the village until it joined the main road. Dead horses and men littered the road, together with overturned and abandoned carts, and the burned-out husks of Soviet and German tanks that squatted like giant black turtles beneath the light of the moon. Shell casings littered the ground by the thousands. A spring breeze brought the occasional whiff of smoke and ash.

  The Russians gave Cal a crust of dark bread, as heavy and tasty as a charred log of wood, but he devoured it, together with a canteen of water, followed by a cup of vodka that he accepted from the bearded soldier who offered it, rather than risk offending these men at such a dangerous time. He asked for coffee or tea, but they had none.

  His feet trudged forward through pure momentum. Exhaustion sapped his strength and his will, and when the Russians let the prisoners sit for a few minutes by the side of the road, he had to force himself to stay awake. He didn’t dare doze off and lose track of his people, and instead counted them one by one, picked out the men, Greta and Helgard, Karl, and all the others, to make sure the Russians didn’t drag them away when he lost attention.

  About two hours after leaving the village, Osimov caught up with the marching refugees from behind the wheel of a black Mercedes—a confiscated German officer’s staff car. He weaved back and forth to avoid the debris that left the road only slightly more passable than a minefield. When he pulled up next to Cal at the front of the column, he slowed the car to a walking pace.

  “Get in. You’ve walked far enough.”

  “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather walk.”

  Osimov glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t worry about them. They’ll be fine.”

  For a moment Cal was tempted, but he was so close, he didn’t want to lose now, simply because he was too tired and couldn’t be bothered to see it through to the end.

  “I’m a trained soldier,” he said. “I can keep up. Besides, if I show up in your car while letting a bunch of women and children walk, I’ll get it good from the Americans.”

  Osimov shrugged, but Cal thought he saw a hint of respect in the other man’s expression. “Suit yourself.”

  The car nudged forward, lights weaving as it continued down the road.

  “Cal?”

  He turned to see Greta by his side, looking up at him. Studying her in the moonlight, he was struck again by her beautiful, heart-shaped face, and the intense, vulnerable expression in her eyes.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said. “We’re almost there. They’ll give you a hot meal, find you all beds.”

  “You will ask about my father, yes?”

  “Of course. I’ll do what I can, you know that.”

  “I will never forget this. How you saved me, how you saved all of us.”

  “It was that nod of yours that did it. I was about to give up, but I saw the look on your face and I knew that if I let those people die I’d never forget it. And if you were strong enough to take that chance, I figured I could be, too.”

  “Thank you.” She cleared her throat and looked down at her hands. “Cal, what will you do when we reach American lines?”

  “They’ll debrief me, then send me back to my unit.”

  “Is that necessary? They say Hitler is dead. Is not the war over?”

  “Not yet, it’s not. And it doesn’t matter. I have to report for duty as soon as possible.”

  “Then I will never see you again?”

  “I don’t know, Greta.”

  They walked in silence for a few minutes, and then, when their guards had moved ahead some distance, she slipped her hand into his. It was cold and small and tentative. He didn’t let go—didn’t want to let go—but he needed to say something right away before it went any further.

  “Greta,” he began.

  “It is all right. It is only a little while yet. Unless it is true what the Russians told me, that you have a girl back home.”

  “There’s no girl. I only told him that so they’d lay off harassing you. But you’re so young. What is it, seventeen, maybe?”

  “Sixteen.” She gripped his hand tighter. “But I am seventeen on the thirty-first o
f May. How old are you?”

  “I turned twenty in March.”

  “There, almost seventeen and barely not nineteen. Not so different, is it?”

  “No, I guess not. Maybe in a year or two it wouldn’t matter at all. I guess it doesn’t matter much now, does it?” He shook his head. “It’s not that.”

  “Then you must hate me because I am German and Germans have done awful things.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Please, then. It will not hurt to hold my hand for a few minutes, will it? Even if you never wish to think of me when this night is over.”

  “No, it doesn’t hurt at all.” He came to a sudden decision. “Greta, can you memorize something for me?”

  “Yes, of course. What is it?”

  “I’m going to give you my family’s address in the United States. When you’re settled again, with a roof over your head, and a way to send mail, I want you to write to me. When I get my letter, and I’ve been discharged, then...well, I don’t know. We’ll see what happens. Will you write to me?”

  She looked up at him with her eyes shining. “Yes, Cal. Yes, I will do that, I promise.”

  “Okay, here goes. My street address is...”

  #

  They marched for what seemed like most of the night. Every fifteen or twenty minutes they would pass another Russian checkpoint, some of them manned by sketchy-looking irregular troops, but Osimov had cleared the way, and the dozen armed guards the man had sent to guard the prisoners took offense at any challenges. Whenever they stopped, Cal looked around him, counting prisoners, making sure he could spot the two German soldiers and the old minister, that they hadn’t been dragged off somewhere and shot.

  Finally, deep into the night, when Cal thought he couldn’t continue five more minutes, a dark black shape blocked the road ahead. As they approached, he saw that it was three tanks in a roadblock, shoulder to shoulder, with their barrels facing east, toward the marching refugees. To either side sat sandbagged bunkers with mounted machine guns, and when they drew within fifty yards, spotlights flared to life. The road turned shades of bright white and gray shadow and Cal flinched from the glare.

  A man stepped forward with his rifle lowered. “Lieutenant Jameson?”

  The man’s raspy, Texas-accented English was the most beautiful sound Cal had ever heard. He let go of Greta’s hand and stepped forward without a backward glance, unwilling to draw attention to the girl.

  He lifted his hands. “I’m Jameson. Stand down, I’m walking over.”

  14.

  Mercifully, they didn’t brief him long. A USAAF major by the name of Wythcliff sat him in a tent and took his statement, which a young corporal wrote down in shorthand. Wythcliff knew about his interference with the British Spitfire, but that was the last news anyone had of his position.

  Cal told everything. Or, rather, almost everything. He left out the old grandmother, poisoned by her own family, and didn’t tell them about Greta putting her hand into his when they marched down the road.

  Wythcliff did very little talking, and only interrupted to ask for clarifying details. When Cal finished, he rose from his seat.

  “That’s enough for now, Lieutenant. More in the morning before we ship you out to your unit. Corporal Horne will show you to your quarters. Sleep well, it sounds like you could use it.”

  Cal returned a salute. “May I ask a question, sir?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “How many prisoners did you take from the Russians?”

  “No prisoners, so far as I know. Just a sorry bunch of women and children.”

  “What about the Wehrmacht soldiers?” he asked.

  “No soldiers, Lieutenant.”

  “But I saw them on the road. Not five minutes before I reached our lines. There were two men, and an old minister.”

  “I heard your story, Jameson, and I’m telling you, there are no men. Your friend is waiting outside. Ask him.”

  By friend, Wythcliff meant Colonel Osimov. The man stood with a pair of American majors, smoking Camels while leaning against a Jeep, chatting about the Brooklyn Dodgers. Osimov excused himself when Cal approached with a frown.

  “Thought you’d never get out,” Osimov said. “If I don’t report soon, I’ll be facing my own interrogation. Only it won’t be so pretty as yours.”

  “You gave me your word.”

  “I told you they would be fine. I didn’t say I’d hand them over to the Americans. And I meant it. Unless they have some hidden secret, they won’t be tried as war criminals.”

  “And you won’t ship them off to work camps?”

  “Listen up, Jameson. This is a war, not a sandlot baseball game. Do you really think they’ll let me hand over German POWs because some punk from America struts around Soviet headquarters, demanding his rights?”

  “Treachery, Osimov. That’s what this is.”

  “That’s what you think of me, is it?” He ground his cigarette butt beneath his boot and turned to go. Two MPs materialized from the darkness, ready to take him back. “When you see Simpson and Clyde, tell them hello for me, would you?”

  “You knew?”

  “Your German girl told me right away that you were alone, always had been. And when I crossed the American checkpoint, the first thing someone told me, after ‘hey, you speak English!’ was, ‘you better not have touched that Mustang pilot, buddy, or you’re gonna get it.’ But it only confirmed what I already knew.”

  “If you knew, why didn’t you...?”

  “Why didn’t I? Or why did I?”

  Cal thought about the executed SS officer, about the threats at gunpoint, the promise that the Russian would murder the German men and let the women be raped by his hardened frontline troops.

  Osimov studied his face. “The answer to both questions is because I’m not done. I’ve got to go back there, and a man has a reputation to uphold.”

  “If that’s how you feel, you should defect. Why would you want to go back? Your guy isn’t much better than Hitler.”

  “And yours is?”

  “Yeah, a hell of a lot better. We didn’t start this war, you know. The Japs attacked us.”

  “That’s what you think, is it?” Osimov shook his head. “Give it some thought, and then you’ll understand.” He looked at the MPs. “All right, I’m ready.”

  And with that, he disappeared into the darkness with his two American minders, on his way back to Soviet-held territory.

  Cal stared after him for a long moment. He heard Greta’s voice in his head, translating Karl’s frightened German into English.

  The water was on fire. It was burning. The adults went crazy when they saw it. When the burning water came down, the adults threw open the doors to get away. They jumped out into the fire.

  No, he decided at last, it wasn’t the same thing. Cal wasn’t the naïve kid who enlisted in ’43—even before the horrors of the last two days, he’d seen too much—but there was a difference between the Nazi death camps or Soviet Frontschweine, and the behavior of British and Americans. A big difference.

  Anyway, he was too tired to think about it anymore. Later, there would be time.

  Cal found one of the majors who had been smoking with Osimov and asked him directions to the tent designated for his use. He followed the man’s instructions and a few minutes later found himself in a one-man pup tent made of green canvas, with a cot and two wool blankets for his use. He struggled out of his boots and flopped onto the cot.

  The thump of heavy artillery sounded far to the north, but Cal barely had time to register the sound before he closed his eyes and was gone.

  -end-

  About the Author

  Michael Wallace has trekked across the Sahara on a camel, ridden an elephant through a tiger preserve in Southeast Asia, eaten fried guinea pig, and been licked on the head by a skunk. In a previous stage of life he programmed nuclear war simulations, smuggled refugees out of a war zone, and milked cobras for their venom. He speaks Spanish and
French and grew up in a religious community in the desert. His novels include the historical thriller, The Red Rooster, and the bestselling series of thrillers set in a polygamist cult, The Righteous. He welcomes email from readers at m.wallace23@yahoo.com. Visit Wallace's web page to sign up for his new releases list. This mailing list is not used for any other purpose.

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