The Dead Alone (Empires Lost Book 3)

by Charles S. Jackson

  And if I end up dead in the process, what then…? This officer was at the very least carrying some kind of blade, and he was also certain to have a pistol at his belt. There was every likelihood any attempt to intervene, successful or otherwise, would result in him sacrificing his own life in the process. He realised that it was fear for his own life that now left him frozen where he stood, and an ocean of shame washed over him in that moment as that recognition struck home. Already desperate and terrified by the idea of a nuclear device set to obliterate them all in less than twelve hours, Carl Ritter had spent most of that preceding afternoon thinking about his family back in Berlin: a family he was determined to see again, whatever the cost.

  The fact that thoughts of himself and his own survival had stayed his movements as he stood at that doorway filled him with a sense of self-loathing and disgust he’d never before experienced. He released a soft, guttural growl of anger and tried to steel himself for action, willing himself to break free of that selfish paralysis and sally forth, and again he found himself hesitating, unable to move. So fixed was he on what was happening beyond the doorway at that moment that he completely failed to hear the sound of soft footsteps behind him.

  “Going somewhere, Carl…?” Reuters enquired pointedly, his tone and expression hovering somewhere between suspicion and a nervousness of his own.

  “Jesus Christ, Mein Herr…!” Ritter blurted, whirling about upon hearing the Reichsmarschall’s voice and, had it been light enough inside to see clearly, looking about as guilty as one man had any business to be. “I – I heard a sound outside,” he continued, thinking quickly. “One of their officers has come…” he explained in an urgent, hushed tone. “He’s come alone and carrying a knife…”

  “Mein Gott…” Reuters moaned softly, shaking his head in disgust as he too instantly recognised the significance of those words. “Donelson’s hut…?”

  “Where else…?” Ritter replied darkly, his tone suddenly changing into one of shame and guilt as he added: “I – I was afraid…”

  “So was I, Carl, this afternoon,” Reuters admitted with some difficulty, “but perhaps things seem clearer after a few hours’ sleep. I should have told you about the bomb, and I am truly sorry that I didn’t do so sooner.”

  “I – I appreciate the sentiment, Mein Herr,” Ritter answered awkwardly, finding the timing inappropriate considering the urgency of what he’d just witnessed outside, “however perhaps this is not the time…?”

  “Correct as always, my friend,” Reuters acknowledged with a grim smile, laying a brotherly hand on the younger man’s shoulder, “and although those yellow bastards probably wouldn’t think twice about shooting an ally out of hand, perhaps they’ll think twice about causing harm to the Oberbefehlshaber der Wehrmacht...” With gentle, unwavering pressure, he pulled back on Ritter’s shoulder, drawing him away from the doorway and leaving it clear. “Let’s go and test that theory out, shall we…?”

  Eileen’s head still ached occasionally, and the blow she’d received the night before from the pommel of Hasegawa’s sword had left a large, multi-hued purple bruise between her eye and ear and extended up below the hairline at her left temple. Tender to the touch, it had left her restless and barely able to sleep as she tossed and turned on her otherwise quite serviceable single bunk. She was also vaguely aware of a general sense of dizziness on occasion, particularly when standing or sitting up too quickly, and harboured nagging suspicions that perhaps she was suffering from some mild form of concussion.

  In daylight it also was easy to pick out the livid ligature marks around her throat where the cord had been drawn tight, and there was a similarly raw strip of skin across her fingers where she’d managed to get them under the rope during the struggle with her captors the night before. The cut at her throat, where Hasegawa had poised the tip of his katana, was tiny by comparison, yet it twinged sometimes nevertheless and the terror that came with that memory still caused her to shudder faintly whenever it flickered through her mind, which was often.

  She’d kept mostly to herself that first day at Tan Tui. There were no other allied officers housed there as yet, and the few ORs there were kept separate in another area of the barrack. That left the Germans as her only company, and there seemed no benefit in making contact with them for a number of reasons, not the least being the danger of exposing Ritter for the spy he really was. The guards had been instructed to keep them safe and separate from anyone else in any case, and the fact that there’d been very few Australian or Dutch prisoners brought in during that day was something she found quite strange and worrying.

  It had already been clear by the time they’d been driven back through Laha that preceding night, that Japanese victory at the airfield had been complete, and they’d seen plenty of prisoners at the time, either under guard or being marched about the area on clean-up details: the lack of new arrivals at Tan Tui during the following day left Eileen thinking darkly about what Lloyd and Langdale had told her about the wholesale massacre of prisoners that had followed the Realtime surrender at Laha. Fears for both men’s safety now played heavily on her mind.

  It had taken several hours for her to finally drift off into a fitful, restless sleep that evening, and she was therefore a little slower in waking again as the sound of footsteps and creaking floorboards in the hall outside her room began to impinge on her consciousness. By the time she was fully awake, staring with blurry eyes at the open window beside her bed and wondering if perhaps it had all been a dream, the sounds of movement that reached her ears were now quite clearly within her room itself, and the cold wave of fear that rolled through her turned her blood to ice.

  Instantly rolling over in bed, she sat up and hunched back against the corner in which it was placed, knees drawn up defensively against her body as her sleep-filled eyes struggled to clear and she sought out the danger she knew was close to hand. The fear she’d felt upon hearing noises behind her was nothing compared to the terror that filled her now as she took in the sight of Oshiro Takeshi, standing in the doorway just a few feet away and staring at her in the darkness with an intensity that bordered on mania.

  “Listen, fella…” she began slowly, trying to placate and struggling to keep the fear out of her tone. “If you’re lookin’ for an interrogation, I’m happy to talk to anyone in the morning…”

  “You… dishonour… me…!” Oshiro hissed with venom in slow, careful English.

  Oh, sweet Jesus…! Eileen thought desperately, seeing the short-bladed tanto sword for the first time, clenched in his right hand and held rigidly at his side. She knew enough of wartime Japanese military culture to understand how important honour was, and how dangerous it could be for anyone perceived to have publically tarnished an officer’s reputation.

  “Look,” she tried again, almost managing a convincing smile, “I’m nae sure what I’ve done, but I’m really sorry about whatever that is, and if you wanna talk about it, I’m happy to – ”

  “I do not seek your pity…!” He snarled in return, taking a threatening step forward, and his tone and body language made it quite clear there’d be no talking her way out of this one. “Your insult must be avenged!”

  “You wanna think about that, fella…?” She shot back, hardening her tone now that it was clear the soft approach was unlikely to work. “That major of yours – Hasegawa, I think the bloody Germans called him – made it clear I’m s’posed to be taken back to Japan in one piece! Think about how much dishonour it would bring down on you if Tokyo lost such an important prisoner by your hand?”

  That thought gave Oshiro a moment’s pause. Up until that point, he’d been operating completely on impulse and instinct, thoughts never moving beyond an overwhelming desire for revenge and the opportunity to wipe away the shame he’d felt over his defeat at the hands of a woman. Yet the mention of Hasegawa’s name stopped him in his tracks. Kempetai were universally feared by Japanese civilians and the rest of the military alike, and anyone caught disobeying the e
xpress orders of one of their officers was guaranteed to face punishments more horrible – and possibly permanent – than they could possibly imagine.

  Perhaps it was her 21st Century upbringing; her generally strong and self-reliant nature; or perhaps it was simply that she’d never experienced the realities of wartime combat before at such a close and personal level, prior to the operations she’d been involved with in North Africa three months earlier. Whatever the reason, it never occurred to Eileen for a moment, scared and nervous as she undoubtedly was, that the line of argument she’d just thrown up in the interest of her own self-preservation might’ve possibly turned her would-be killer’s thoughts to acts of revenge far darker and more brutal than simply taking her life.

  In that few seconds that followed however, as conflicting expressions appeared and departed across Oshiro’s face in the darkness of that starlit room, the one terrible, probable alternative seemed to arrive in both their minds at around the same time.

  “Oh, no…!” She growled, the words a warning rather than any exclamation of fear as she swung her legs out and began to rise quickly from her bed, desperate to be on her feet and ready to deal with whatever was about to happen. “Fella, you need to –!”

  She was never given a chance to finish her sentence. Without warning, Oshiro launched himself forward, swinging the green-painted lantern in his left hand by its handle and crashing it hard against the right side of Eileen’s head, the poor timing of the strike probably the only thing that saved her from a fractured skull as she raised an arm in reflex. Even so, a wave of dizziness and nausea again swept through her, causing her to lose balance and stagger backward.

  She cried out in shock and pain as the lantern smacked into her forearm, wrenched itself out of Oshiro’s grip with its momentum and bounced heavily off the back wall, clattering to the floor. She collapsed back onto the bed, and he was on top of her in an instant, slapping aside the hands she raised in her own defence and straddling her waist. He crushed his free hand over her mouth to stifle the screams of terror and rage that followed, leaning down and using the weight of his upper body to hold her in check and avoid the blows of her lashing knees and feet as she struggled desperately against him, all the while fighting to clear the fuzziness from her own thoughts.

  The tanto was suddenly at her throat, the blade pressed against her skin in almost exactly the same position where Hasegawa had drawn blood the night before, the shock of it finally focussing her mind completely. The sharp coldness of it froze her instantly, eyes wide and wild, and disgust filled her mind as she suddenly realised she could feel his erection, pressed against her through the material of his uniform as he lay astride her with his face now so close to hers. She clasped her hands tightly about his wrist, struggling to hold the blade away from her bare flesh as he pressed down on her with all his weight and strength.

  “Make sound and I will kill you!” He hissed sharply, keeping the blade pressed hard against her throat as he removed his other hand from her mouth and pushed it down between their bodies, fumbling with the clasp of her belt and then forcing it down inside the waistband of her combat fatigues.

  “No… please…!” She croaked, barely able to move her lips for fear of cutting her own throat as she felt a trickle of blood course warmly down the side of her neck. “Please… don’t…!

  Eileen Donelson had spent her entire life not letting the fact that she was a woman get in the way of her career or her personal life. She’d faced and overcome the constant, unwavering discrimination and sexist attitudes of her male navy peers throughout her working life, and she’d never allowed herself to become a victim or to allow fear or prejudice to control her mind.

  For the first time in her life however, in those few, desperate moments as a captive of a brutal enemy and completely alone in an era still so completely dominated by men and by the ‘certainty’ of male superiority, she now, for the first time, truly experienced the same helpless terror that many women of her own time – victims of sexual assault and domestic violence – had been forced to deal with on a daily basis. There was no recourse to the law any more… no foreseeable hope of justice or compassion. The creature attacking her now would feel no compunction over raping her right there on that bed, and it was only a desire for his own self-preservation rather than any care for her existence as a human being that might yet prevent him from murdering her afterward.

  “You bow down to me…!” Oshiro raved, lifting his upper body slightly as his free hand dragged at her pants, and she released a low, guttural howl of revulsion and rage as he forced them down over her hips. “I show you who is stronger!”

  “On the contrary…” an unexpected voice called sharply from the doorway in English. “Let us show you…!”

  Even as Oshiro reared back in surprised anger, swinging the tanto around with his turning body, a pair of strong hands gripped him at collar and belt and dragged him forcibly off Donelson’s still-writhing body, freeing up her legs enough for her to land a solid kick into his midriff as he went. He was thrown across the small room in an instant, winded and landing in a clattering heap near the doorway as Ritter towered over him, fists balled and ready for action. The tanto was knocked from his grasp as he fell, skittering away across the floor to land well out of reach.

  Reuters stood at his left shoulder, both men glaring down at the lieutenant with disgust and hatred in their eyes, and as Oshiro struggled awkwardly to his feet, drawing a pistol from the holster at his belt, the Reichsmarschall took a step or two forward and placed himself between both of them.

  “You gaijin pigs!” Oshiro spat venomously, continuing in English. “I shoot all of you…!”

  “You think so…?” Reuters snarled in return. “You think Hasegawa or Itō will thank you for killing the highest-ranking officer in Germany? You forget we are supposed to be allies? Harm me and there will be war… a greater and more terrible war than you could ever imagine in your darkest nightmares! How do you suppose your High Command – your own Emperor – will ‘reward’ you for that? Think very carefully before you do something you’ll have years to regret!”

  “I kill you all…!” Oshiro hissed, teetering on a knife-edge of insanity as the fury born out of his humiliation and shame struggled to wrest control from the last vestiges of his reason.

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort…!” Reuters sneered, his derision drawing exactly the response he’d expected as Oshiro took another angry step forward, waving the gun in his face.

  With surprising speed for a man of his age, the Reichsmarschall instantly slapped the pistol to one side with the back of his left hand, took one matching step forward of his own and jammed the palm of his right hand into Oshiro’s face with all the strength he could muster. There was a sodden, moist cracking sound as the man’s nose broke under the impact and blood spurted onto his face. He cried out in shock and pain, staggering back against the wall as the gun fell from his hand and clattered to the floor.

  “You can tell your CO about this…” Reuters suggested smugly as he scooped up the fallen sidearm and tossed it casually through the open window “…but, of course that would also mean admitting you were beaten by a woman and a couple of – what did you call us? – gaijin…? Just imagine the humiliation that would cause!” He shrugged matter-of-factly as Oshiro lay against that same wall, glaring at him with hatred burning in his eyes. “Or… alternately… you can get out of here and none of us will speak of it again! Your choice, of course…” he added in a surprisingly reasonable tone “…but I’d have a very good think about it before you decide…”

  “I… will… kill… you all…!” Oshiro wheezed, his rage so overpowering now he could barely speak clearly as he wiped self-consciously at the blood pouring from his ruined nose.

  “Yes, you do keep saying that,” Reuters observed coldly, “but not tonight, I think… Off you go, then…”

  Taking it as a cue to act, Ritter turned his body enough to step deftly past his CO and again grabbed the li
eutenant by his collar again, this time using a free hand to fend off some ineffectual blows as he hauled him away from the wall and all but threw him into the hallway outside.

  Seething with shame and embarrassment, the pilot released a long, wordless howl of anger and frustration as he made a hasty retreat out through the nearest exit, pausing only long enough to collect his discarded pistol from the ground outside. In his desperate desire to be far away from the humiliation he’d just experienced, Oshiro stuffed the weapon back into its holster without making any effort to even dust it off, giving it no further thought whatsoever as he staggered away into the night.

  “There’s a good fellow…” Reuters called after him, loading his words with as patronising a tone as he could manage.

  “You are all right, captain…?” Ritter asked carefully, taking a single, tentative step toward Donelson.

  She’d risen from the bed during the short altercation and had retreated to the far corner of the room, backed as hard up against the wall as possible while she fussed almost hysterically over pulling up her pants and otherwise adjusting and securing her clothing in general. By the time Oshiro had been ejected from the room, she’d slumped down to the floor, huddled in against that same corner with her back to the others. Both men could see that she was shaking badly.

  “I…” she began, voice trailing off almost immediately. “I…” Several heavy sobs wracked her body at that moment, reducing her to silence again for a moment or two before she was finally able to add: “Leave me… please...”

  “I’m not sure that would be wise right now, captain,” Reuters pointed out, and Ritter was surprised by the softness of the man’s tone considering his hatred of her as an enemy.