Kat's Rats

by Michael Beals

  He punched the table hard enough to bounce several unit markers off. “You’re a war tourist fluttering in for some quick fun. We have to live here after the fight’s over! You want to play the trigger-happy cowboy, fine, but I’ll be damned if we’ll be the Indians. If you want our help, then you have to find a way to guarantee us a hostage at the end of the day, rather than a curse on our heads.”

  “No disrespect to your years of combat experience,” Kat pursed her lips, toning down her rage as much as possible as Émile sneered back, “there are no bloody guarantees in war. We’ll do the best…”

  Dore leaned over the map, blocking everyone’s view of the 2-D city. Even Kat shut up at the rare contemplative tone in his voice. “What if we could get him to come to us, with a minimum security detail, at a time and place of our choosing?”

  “Of course! Soooo easy. Why didn’t I think of that?” Kat punched Dore’s bicep as hard as she could. Dore kept poring over the map while she massaged her swelling wrist.

  “Listen to me for once, will ya? Émile…If you have moles in the Headquarters that can get info out, why not in?”

  The rebel leader took a deep breath and twirled a cigarette between his fingers without ever lighting it. “Interesting… what’s the point? Anything going through the comms office would land on the chief of staff’s desk for vetting anyway. He’s not one of our sympathizers.”

  Dore nodded along. “Through the normal channels, sure. But I used to handle security for General Officers. At that rank, they’re more politician than Field Commander. French, British—all the same. The only difference being this doffer takes his real orders from Berlin and not from Vichy.”

  “Meaning…” Émile cocked a dark eyebrow.

  Dore folded his arms in a more self-satisfied grunt than usual. “When the master whistles, the dog doesn’t ask if he’s serious. The beast just gets his arse in gear before he gets a beatin’.” Dore tapped a protractor against another large structure near the city center. One labeled with an underlined swastika on the map overlay.

  “What if someone slipped a note on the General’s desk demanding an immediate, clandestine chat with him at the German embassy, first thing in the morning? Hint that it’s about a possible mutiny in the ranks, so he needs to travel low key and trust no one.”

  Dore traced three possible direct routes from the compound to the German consulate, then slashed a quick X in roughly the center of each… through the narrowest winding side streets. All the ambush sites were situated several comfortable kilometers away from the nearest French garrison.

  “You sneaky Wolfman!” Kat squealed like a schoolgirl and kissed his cheek. “I had no idea you were such a fox too!”

  Dore rapped a knuckle against his thick skull. “Not just for keeping my ears apart, eh?”

  Karsenty pounded Dore’s back and howled. Émile pushed off from the table and paced in front of the window for a moment. “I knew you two were trouble the moment I first met you.”

  He twisted around and shook both their hands at the same time, a broad smile beaming across his sunken face for the first time in years.

  “Which is exactly what I was looking for. Glad to see you don’t disappoint!”

  CHAPTER 7

  Vive la révolution

  “Merde! The slippery bastards zagged after the last control point. Looks like they’re taking the southern route.” Émile slammed the phone down and ran out the empty butcher shop’s front door, whooping across the street. “Karsenty! Plan D. We’ve got less than five minutes to set up.”

  With a quick whistle, a dozen men and women in the park whipped a concealed weapons out from under jackets, skirts or behind trees. They charged towards an empty city bus rounding the corner and squealing to a halt on the abandoned street.

  In a side alley, Dore tossed his machine gun into a raggedy old Chevy and hopped in, the engine finally catching on the fifth try. Kat dived in beside him and clutched her grenade laden necklace. She kept fuming as he peeled away and swerved through the mostly horse-drawn traffic on the main north-south boulevard.

  “Shame, that was the best site.” Dore hit the brakes three blocks to the south and took the corner on two wheels.

  “This will work though. Émile’s crew knows what they’re about.” Kat bounded out of the car before the wheels stopped spinning. Half a dozen armed rebels in the advance party ran up and down the street, shoving the few remaining bystanders out of the line of fire.

  The sputtering bus with the main force belched oily smoke as it raced past. Émile hung out the open door, dropping onto the pavement in a sprint. “In here!”

  While most of the raiders spilled out and stormed into the surrounding apartments, he and Karsenty charged into the only shop still open. The pot-bellied General store owner hefted a shotgun out from under the counter and racked a round.

  “Ready, sir.”

  Émile nodded and snatched the ringing phone. Ten seconds later, he slammed it down as Karsenty stuck his head out the door and traded thumbs-up with someone up and down the block. He growled as Dore bumped shoulders with him to peer farther up the empty street.

  “Not a pretty setup, but it looks like everyone’s in place. Thank God we’re only dealing with a small security element.”

  Émile coughed from behind him, his whisper barely audible over his clenched jaws.

  “Sorry. There were a couple of details the scouts reported that I didn’t have time to mention…”

  A pair of machine gun-wielding Kübelwagens raced around the east corner, one hundred meters to their left, and parked on either side of the block’s first intersection. One of the gunners leveled his MG42 at the only vehicle waiting on the side street—the long bus that was supposed to block the enemy’s retreat. Another pair of hunters roared past the shop front and secured the far west intersection, training their weapons at the single idling dump truck ready to block the main street.

  “Where’s the simple police escort? Those are all German soldiers!” Dore kept his liberated MG42 behind his back, jangling the ammo belt like prayer beads.

  Kat licked her lips and studied the peculiar splotchy green and black camouflage uniforms on the escorts. “Fallschirmjäger, to be exact. Battle-hardened paratroopers. Looks like amateur hour is over.”

  “Mon Dieu… Abort! We’re outgunned and outnumbered.” Karsenty spun around and pushed Émile towards the phone while Kat beamed.

  “Good, then they’ll never see it coming. Time for Plan E.”

  Dore cut his eyes over his shoulder. “That’s cute. Are we still calling your fantasies' plans? I think we’re on Z by now.”

  Kat looped the belt of grenades over her chest. She reached into another satchel at her feet and ripped out two homemade bombs nestled inside of tin cans. She snagged the shop owner peeping over her shoulder by the collar and shoved a spare Zippo in his hands.

  “Keep ‘em coming, just like we rehearsed. If there’s a single gap in coverage, we’re all dead.” She lit a wick on the first two saltpeter and charcoal concoctions as Dore and Karsenty dropped to their knees.

  Émile blinked as their prey zoomed through the first intersection. A black muzzle jutted out of every window in all three hatchbacks. With the main convoy halfway through the block, the two wagons guarding the rear intersection left their posts and leapfrogged to the next open intersection.

  “Now!”

  Right before both wagons raced past the storefront in perfect formation, Dore flamed out a long belt of 7.92mm lead straight through the glass façade. He pounded the Devil’s Piano for three eternal seconds, shredding the escorts at point-blank range with 60 rounds of instant death.

  Karsenty hammered the
rear car in the main convoy at the same with a long rip from his MG42, while the lead vehicle t-boned a spinning tub car full of perforated paratroopers.

  “Stop! Not yet!” He shifted aim and sprayed the sky as a redheaded banshee leaped through the falling glass and blocked his fire. Kat chucked both homemade smoke bombs at the front and rear of the convoy before any of the mobile coffins had even crashed to a halt. The clerk inside the shop lit and tossed more green bombs on the street as if paid per smoke cloud.

  A tornado of rifle fire enveloped the two surviving Kübelwagens at the western intersection. With the German’s brief moment of warning though, the rebels didn’t hit a single one of the paratroopers in the first volley.

  There was never a second volley as the calm soldiers dismounted and fanned out, raking every window along both sides of the street with their automatic rifles. At least none fired blindly through the dark green cloud washing over the street away at ground level though.

  Kat skipped through the shower of masonry, ricochets and the occasional wailing rebel sniper body raining down onto the narrow street. A Rolls Royce engine grinding back east whined through the haze to her right, just as a black bumper materialized in front of her face.

  “Mind if I hitch a ride?” Both the driver and passenger stuck a machine pistol against the front windshield as she clung to the thin hood. Kat grinned back and tapped a frag grenade against the glass.

  One without any safety pin or spoon attached.

  She flicked the grenade in the empty driver’s seat as all three men inside dived out, then rolled off the hood herself. Slicing her elbow open on some random debris, Kat struggled to tug out another grenade as the last moving vehicle around exploded.

  “General!” The continuous firing from the surviving paratrooper squad died down a tad, replaced by a steady drumbeat of jackboots bounding her way.

  “He’s over here!” Someone shouted in Deutsche just a few feet away. So low to the ground, Kat managed to get a few more inches of visibility, enough to spot a gray-haired older man crawling away.

  “She’s over there!” Kat double-rolled over her gushing elbow as a line of sub-machine-gun fire chewed up the pavement where her face lay a millisecond ago.

  “Dore, Karsenty—Cut the grass, now!”

  Kat low crawled over to the fleeing General, snatching his boot as both machine gunners locked their barrels at knee height… then laid down textbook grazing fire. “Stay down, Juin.”

  “Who are…” With each gun blazing at 1,200 rounds a minute, Dore and Karsenty jackhammered the street outside in a 90-degree arc, starting on opposite ends. Those few troops quick enough to avoid amputation dived to the ground, only to take a face-full of rounds as they perched up to return fire. The lead tsunami crested in twenty seconds. While the gunners dropped their white-hot guns and raced out in the killing field, Kat finally rose and dusted herself off.

  “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, General.”

  She flipped out a 9mm and double-tapped his former driver and bodyguard, both flopping around and grasping at the bloody stumps beginning at their kneecaps.

  “Would you care to join me for lunch?”

  Juin sat up and tossed steady hands over his knees. He cocked his head and matched the redhead’s sneer. “You’re a Brit? That’s a relief. I thought the SS was on to me.”

  Kat squinted, shuffling from side to side under the older man’s playful laugh. Émile emerged from the thinning green smog, shouting above his men finishing off the wounded Germans. “Get this son of a bitch out of here.”

  While four rebels tossed a sack over the General’s head and hustled him away, Karsenty yanked out a field dressing and reached for Kat’s elbow. She tore off running without a word back towards the General store.

  “Strange girl. On the plus side, it looks like we bagged them all before they got a radio call out.” Dore grumbled while stripping the nearest dead man of weapons.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Well, the fact that we’re not surrounded by a thousand reinforcements says it all.” Karsenty blew a whistle and shouted. “Okay, police up the gear and wounded. Let’s move, people! Extract in 60 seconds.”

  Kat came rushing out of the shop and tossed a bunch of garbage bags at the men. “No, we’ve got a little time. Let’s clean everything up. Torch the cars. Take the bodies. Wash away the blood. With five minutes of tidying up, they’ll drive themselves crazy trying to figure out what happened.”

  Karsenty froze and scanned the carnage around him. “You slick minx. All right, you heard the gal. Let’s get moving!”

  Dore threw up his hands. “Why bother with games?”

  “Because it’s the only game worth playing.” Karsenty dumped a severed arm in a bag and grinned. “Don’t you remember your Sun Tzu? War’s all a game of mindfucking the enemy into submission. Fear is the ultimate weapon. Or to put it another way, if you kill twenty men, then you’re just a pain in the ass.”

  The Lieutenant gave a boyish grin as the grim redhead cranked up a generator and flipped on a pressure washer. He hollered over the roaring water and clatter of shell casings bouncing into the nearest storm drain.

  “But if you can make twenty men vanish without a trace, then you’re a legit boogie man.”

  “How the hell should I know where some Gestapo Officer is? I just work here.” General Juin crossed his short legs and sipped at his tea. With a short rope securing his wrists to his ankles, he had to haunch over to get the cup to his lips.

  “My so-called bodyguard was assigned by the SS. Perhaps you should have picked his brain, before you picked it off the street.” His gray eyes glinted at Kat. “Not that I’m complaining. He was a brute, like the rest of those German barbarians. Anyway, I’ll make inquiries in the morning about the Oberführer. That’s the best I can offer. So, if we’re done here…”

  “Oh, we’re far from done, mon général. What did you mean about the Germans being on to you?” Kat tossed a chair in front of him and plopped down in his face.

  Juin flicked his eyes around the bank’s office and all the sneering rebels. “Do you think this place is that much of a secret? We discovered your Headquarters months ago, but I kept it under wraps. Wanted to see what you all could do.”

  “Right… now I’m confused. So are you a NAZI collaborator or a true French loyalist?”

  Juin shrugged. “Yes.”

  “Why are you French always so complicated?” Kat moaned and banged her chin on her hands.

  “The Republic has been wedged between the back-stabbing English and the ruthless Germans for too long. You stick to your principles, and we’ll stick to pragmatic survivalism.” Juin crossed his legs and harrumphed. “Which is why many Vichy Officers and I welcome the US as an X factor, believe it or not. I’m a realist and pretty sure the Americans will give Algeria back eventually. It’s just the presence of shady British spies organizing things that makes us, shall we say, cautious.”

  “Enough of this daft cunt’s doublespeak. Let’s start breaking things until we jar this wannabe NAZI’s memory.” Dore hefted a sledgehammer and waved it over the General’s foot.

  The Frenchman turned up his lip. “Oh, grow up. Don’t you have a few brain cells wedged under all those muscles?”

  “You think I won’t do it? I won’t kill you at least. Just make you wish you were dead.”

  Juin tugged out his pipe and tamped down some Tabak. “I wasn’t born yesterday, young man. I respect your passion, I do, but you’re out of options. If you kill me, then the Gestapo takes over colonial security and will begin reprisals. If you torture me, then maybe I change my mind about surrendering to the Americans and order my men to fight to t
he death. If you release me, you can only trust my word of honor. It’s quite a pickle, as you English say.”

  Kat glanced over at Émile, who glared back with tight lips.

  “Hmm. Indeed. You know…” Kat popped out a blade from nowhere and flicked his Kepi cap off with the point, tracing a lazy circle across his sweating scalp. “Sometimes, the only way to solve these complicated problems is to start removing elements from the equation. I bet we could make it look like a Vichy mutiny. Get your army to tear themselves apart hunting for the traitors. What do you say, Émile?”

  The rebel leader still didn’t speak a word. He shrugged and spun around.

  Right as a scuffle broke out in the hallway. The office door smashed inward, both disarmed rebel guards crashing through the door and kneeling on the ground. Four grim East Europeans stomped in with their weapons high. Émile tilted his chin up and crossed his arms.

  “Not now, Rigor.”

  A wiry older man stalked forward. He lowered his weapon and gunned down every person in the room with his piercing steel gaze. A slight Polish accent gilded his English.

  “I see you’ve been quite busy. Not even enough time to return my calls. I thought we were allies, Émile. Why would you stab me in the back? Turn this man lose immediately. We’ve been negotiating for months to get him to surrender his Command. There’s no time to work on his replacement.”

  Émile quaked in undisguised rage. “You wasted your time. He’s a butcher and an opportunist. We’ll hold on to him and make sure he delivers.”

  Juin harrumphed and tried to stand. Two rebels slammed him back in the chair. “Look, the troops won’t listen to me if they think they have a half-way decent chance of fending off the Allies. Even if you don’t count all the closeted fascists in the ranks, there’s no love lost with the Brits.”