The second German looked at his fallen comrade and then up at the trapdoor, which slammed shut. He flung himself at the ladder and was at the closed hatch in seconds. He paused to draw a shiv from his pocket. Suspecting he was in for the same as his comrade, he thrust the door open with a punch of his arm. He used his legs for power and launched himself into the watchtower, but barely half his body was through when the machine gun opened fire at point-blank range.
Each round unleashed a thunderous retort and a burst of fire from the nozzle of the barrel. The eruptions of flame were enough to burn the man’s face to a crisp, except after the first three bullets there was no face, only bloody meat and jagged shards of white and beige mush, all of it instantly swamped by thick red crude that gushed like an oil strike from the cadaver’s neck. The German’s legs and hips crumpled, and the body fell away.
♦
Leroy kicked the trapdoor shut and ducked down beneath the railing. He panted from the exuberance, from the sheer excitement.
What now?
His shoulder was all right—it did not even hurt that much, not with the taste of fight in him. It had not shattered anything that mattered. In fact, he felt strong and exhilarated. He had been shot, he had just killed a man, two men, and it was horrible and it was magnificent.
Leroy’s mind steadied.
Where did the bullet come from?
I’m facing south, I think it went through one side to the other, so a shooter in the west wing of the compound.
And still firing—but Leroy did not know that, not at first, for he was completely deaf thanks to the burst of machine gun fire next to his one good ear. His head was filled with white noise: a droning high-pitched whinny that blocked out everything.
Leroy did not hear the next two rifle shots, nor did he register the splinters of wood in the air. But he felt the third, the prick of a snake bite followed by an explosion of pain inside his gut. He listed, curling onto the ground, and his blood started tipping out.
Another piece of the wooden paneling splintered off. Leroy understood. They were still trying to kill him. They were killing him.
From prone on the floor, Leroy righted himself and pushed to his knees. Another panel of wood shattered. His face that moments before had spoken of vindication and strength now spoke of bewilderment and fear. He defied the daggers twisting in his gut to again push his torso upright, his back propped against the railings. He looked at his side. He touched the blood, warm and smooth. It seemed not so deep a red as the German’s. His breathing tightened. Leroy did not know what death felt like, but figured it might be something like this.
Another bullet showered wooden splinters. Leroy’s hands reached for the top of the rail. His arms shook as he used all his resolve to haul to his feet, but he remained bent at the hips from pain and the instinct for self-preservation.
With his left hand he gripped the steel ring-hold of the machine gun. With his right he grabbed the trigger handle. He expected the pain, so when it shredded through him in convulsions he did not buckle.
“One, two …” and on “three” Leroy stood upright. Four men were sprinting toward the tower. He yanked hard on the trigger and the machine gun burst into life. He sprayed bullets wildly, strafing left and right, up and down. The sheer volume of bullets meant it did not matter that Leroy could not aim steady. All four Germans were torn to shreds.
Leroy did not stop—would not, could not—for that would mean death. Bullets spewed from the gun in an unbroken stream, now seeking the hidden shooter. His aim veered and wheeled. Lead ripped through buildings. He saw a flash inside a distant barracks.
Has to be the shooter.
His lead tore through rooves until he found the wooden façade of building twelve. Leroy strafed back and forth. Buildings eleven and thirteen were littered with holes in the process, but twelve was obliterated, obliterated, and the man inside, obliterated too.
♦
That man was not Kranz.
Sergeant Mauer and five of his best were now huddled around Kranz, running the colonel through the melee. Things were not going to plan. With bullets flying indiscriminately, Sergeant Mauer made a snap decision and bundled Kranz into building nineteen.
They were not the only ones seeking refuge, for Alder Brahms sheltered in a corner. At the sight of Kranz, he got to his feet. He shook violently.
“You,” Alder said, his arm outstretched, finger pointed at Kranz. “I knew, yesterday, you were planning something. You and the major. You did this!” The accusation carried every ounce of Alder’s formidable moral authority. He advanced on Kranz: “I should have stopped you, you … fool! You murderer!”
Two of Mauer’s men motioned to restrain the advancing man, but Kranz was quicker. Light on his feet, almost skipping, he met Alder in what looked to be an embrace, like they were meeting each other’s bodies and entwining arms to begin a slow waltz. The blade slid up under Alder’s jaw, the severed artery releasing Alder’s life in a short few seconds. Kranz held the body upright as he whispered in the dying man’s ear.
“Yes, Alder, I did this. I did this, because men like you could not.”
Kranz released Alder and his body fell to the floor, yet Alder’s eyes stayed with Kranz. The accusation was ferocious even as he died.
Outside, Major Hirsch rallied his men. The guard in the machine gun tower had not been killed. Hirsch gave the order to attack.
Had the French guards any sort of organization or training, they would have retreated to a position of strength to consolidate. They had the guns. But most of them scattered, in doing so becoming lambs to the slaughter. Hirsch’s men, armed with shivs, clubs and fists, sought out the guards. Rifles crackled and prisoners fell, but the superior numbers surged.
It began with one guard overwhelmed by numbers—beaten, clubbed, killed and his gun captured. That became two, then three, then four. With only a handful of Hirsch’s men dead or wounded, the Germans captured nine guns in just a few minutes.
Four of the guards saved themselves by forming into a group and backing against building twenty-two as they fired. There was no longevity in their position, so together they made a sprint for it, pushing through a crowd of confused civilian prisoners, with Hirsch’s men in pursuit. The administration block was in sight when one of the guards fell, shot through the leg. His comrades did not stop. He was taken by the mob.
The other guards ran for their lives. One of them discarded his rifle and lunged at a door, both hands wrenching at the handle. It did not budge.
“Open! Open! Let us in!”
The other two guards turned and fired into the crowd, but the Germans surged. Then the door flung open and a volley of fire issued from inside, just enough to hold the Germans off and to let the three guards join four of their comrades who had entered the rear of the administration building. They were seven.
Throughout the compound there were two more guards at the gates, and four more in the watchtowers, firing wildly. After a consolidated volley from the prisoners, four in the watchtowers became three as the guard in the south-east corner took a bullet to the chest. The rest of the guards were already dead and dying, all of it the work of Hirsch’s men. The remaining population of Vitrimont—the better part of five hundred German prisoners—did not know where to run. Not Colonel Gehrig’s soldiers, not the civilians.
Many retreated toward the exercise yard, clear of the buildings. There they sought open ground, away from the fighting, away from the flames, which had spread to engulf buildings five and seven. Colonel Gehrig stood among the masses.
“What is happening? Someone tell me what is going on!”
He made his demands to the fouled air, for he had no juniors—no one at all who was listening or waiting for orders. Gehrig grabbed a young German officer by the jacket.
“What are they doing? What are they doing?”
“I don’t know, sir. Breaking out … I don’t know.”
“No. This is not right! No!”
He
discarded the officer.
“Stop! Stop!” he screamed to the gray wind.
Like a man suffering shell-shock, Gehrig walked toward the buildings and the flames and the German shooters armed with French rifles.
“Stop this! Stop this! Put your guns down!” he screamed, then a bullet from old man Yves passed through Gehrig’s head and exploded his face. Gehrig fell down dead.
A wave of men charged for the watchtower housing the machine gun and were immediately cut down. Major Hirsch watched the massacre from behind building nineteen. It was just like all the other massacres he had seen, swift and easy and pointless.
They had to take out the machine gun, but the men with rifles were firing on the watchtowers to the north-east and south-west. They were being conservative, not giving away their positions to the enemy in the stronghold. It was short-sighted. If they did not stop that machine gun, their positions would not matter. The entire plan would fail.
Major Hirsch gave orders to Lieutenant Trommler: “Tell all shooters to focus on the machine gun. Go!”
Lieutenant Trommler ran in one direction, Major Hirsch in the other. Hirsch passed open ground, then dove behind building two where three of his soldiers were firing on the north-east tower.
“Fire on the machine-gun tower. Now!”
Hirsch ran to a group of unarmed soldiers, sheltering from bullets. His presence commanded their attention.
“If these men are hit, take their place. Fire on the machine gun until he is dead!”
The soldiers opened fire, then from behind buildings fifteen and sixteen more rifles joined the volley.
♦
Leroy was not sure how many different positions were firing on him.
His vision was going and so too his ability to aim, so he wildly strafed hot dark lead left and right, building after building, man after man, innocent or otherwise. Return fire hit the watchtower roof and the railing, but not Leroy. He had lost so much blood he was giddy. A rush of wellbeing and apparent clarity swept his mind. He felt invincible. He would slay the Germans and survive; he was euphoric with the knowledge. He kept hold of the trigger with all his remaining strength—feeble now.
Leroy’s knees finally buckled. His body slumped to the ground, but his hands remained tight around the grip of the machine gun, dragging a trail of lead through the watchtower roof. Leroy’s grasp slipped away and the gun fell silent. He sprawled, blood pooling on the wooden boards. Every gun in German hands fired on his position.
Bullet after bullet smashed through the wooden boards. Bullet after bullet thudded into the body of Leroy. It did not matter. He was dead.
Beneath the tower, trails of blood drained from a dozen spots. At first the ground repelled the liquid, or perhaps it was the liquid that repelled from the ground, the blood pooling on top of the dust, holding its shape, a shimmering red cushion, flat and silky—before the sheer weight of all that liquid forced into the earth and became black mud.
The mud was Leroy’s blood. All of it. And now there was nothing stopping Hirsch and his men.
♦
“Charge the gates! Charge the gates!”
Thirty bodies stampeded, headed straight through the throng of men standing idle in confusion and terror. Hirsch’s soldiers piled into one enormous human battering ram. Major Hirsch, Sergeant Mauer and six of their best brought up the rear, their bodies ensuring no stray bullet could reach Colonel Kranz.
Men dropped as the two remaining guards on the perimeter gate kept firing, then their rifles fell silent. Both had decided it was futile, the fight lost, and so they scurried down their respective ladders and disappeared into the forest.
Hirsch’s men crashed into the gates. The momentum of the mob was far greater than the strength of mere steel. The chain and lock snapped and men spewed out, including a thin gentleman in a neatly pressed suit that carried an uncharacteristic dark stain on the sleeve.
Colonel Kranz was free.
12
They had not yet reached the foothills, but already the tips of a mountain range could be seen poking above the horizon. Michel had spent countless hours in those mountains, and in others even more formidable. Countless hours amid rock and altitude, where mindfulness was as much a means of survival as the ability to traverse a pass, climb a bluff or build a quick shelter in a blizzard.
Michel glanced down at the Englishman in the sidecar. He knew that if one let a man like Henry free in the mountains, the sort of man who just throbbed and reacted and did not think ahead, he was likely to disappear, never to be seen again—at least, not until a desiccated pile of bones was found at the bottom of a ravine twenty years later, or a frozen mummy stuck to the side of an ice cliff was one day seen smiling stupidly in the sunshine.
It happened often enough, and Michel figured it was all about understanding, or lack thereof. It was not that caricatured Daniel Boone sort of understanding, the sort of thing where a man is all reflexes and in your bones knowing. If you wanted to prosper in the high country, in any place truly hostile to the presence of humans, you needed understanding of both environment and self.
It was about knowing who you were, how you fitted into the place, how the place changed you, influenced you, made you strong or weak. That essential need for self-knowledge had been forever instilled in him by a man named Percy Rabinaud; it was the very stuff that tended to make even the dumbest, foulest, nastiest mountain folk into philosophers of a kind.
Tourists and city people did not understand. They thought mountain folk were strange, probably in-bred. If being charitable, they might settle on their being adversely affected by the lack of air at altitude. They did not understand that the considered and quieted mind is a tool, as important to survival as the axe or fur coat. But then, many a tourist ventures out with neither axe nor fur coat. They are the first to disappear.
Michel added a burst of speed to the bike as it climbed a little rise. His attention was caught by movement. He glanced to the north and saw smoke rising over the trees. More smoke than a campfire. Michel wondered if it was a farmer or forester burning off, but then he thought he saw the reflection of a roof amid the trees.
He slowed the bike till they were just crawling, then came to a complete stop. As the engine idled at a rough chug, Michel strained his neck to get the right angle through the canopy.
“Henry, do you see that roof?”
“What?” Henry swiveled his head and raised his body by pushing up with his arms. “No. Where? I can’t see a roof. You sure?”
“S’il te plait. Shiny thing. Reflecting the sun. Use your eyes!”
Henry stood upright in the seat, wobbling on his perch, trying to peer through the trees.
“Oh, yes, I see it now.”
“Do you know what it belongs to?”
Henry looked at Michel then back at the barely visible panels of tin in the distance. “Well, it’s obviously a house. Probably some farmer.”
“See how it is small and high?”
“Oh … I think you’re right. Could be a pigeon coop.”
“A pigeon coop?” Michel eyed Henry with disdain.
“Well, I don’t know … Could be for bird watching, I suppose,” said Henry and he sat back down.
“Truly, Henry, what is wrong with you?”
Henry made to say something, but Michel cut him off.
“It is not a pigeon coop or fucking bird tower. It’s a watchtower. It must be Vitrimont prison camp. And it’s on fire.”
“Could be. Could be it’s under control.”
“It is not.”
“Let’s just keep going. I’m hungry.”
“You just ate.”
“Yeah, but—”
“More to the point, Henry, there is a fucking P.O.W. camp on fire!”
“They’ll be all right.”
Michel looked at Henry like he was the queerest man he had ever seen.
“I just don’t feel like it, Michel. I’m bloomin’ hungover! And I’m tired. Can’t we just relax
or something?”
“They might need our help. If it was your P.O.W. camp on fire—”
“If it was my camp I’d let all the prisoners out and say righto chaps, the war’s over, we don’t need this stupid camp anymore! And then I’d go home and have afternoon tea!”
“They might not need any help, but we should at least see.”
“Nup. I’m getting out. I’ll bloomin’ hitch back.”
Henry motioned to get out of the sidecar, but Michel’s big boot planted in his lap, pinning him.
“We go.”
“Oi! Move your clown-foot or … I’ll rip it off!”
“Where’s your spirit of adventure, Henry?”
“I left it in the pub in Commercy. I’ll just pop back and grab it.”
“Huh! We go.”
“You go!”
“It may be fun, Henry.”
“Fun? There isn’t even a road! Get your sodding boot off me or I’ll rip it off,” said Henry, chopping at Michel’s leg with his hand.
Michel looked down with disdain.
“I tell you, I’ll bight the bloody thing!” said Henry.
“Go on.”
Just as Henry readied to sink his teeth in, the sound of a hollow, cavernous explosion reached their ears. The two men exchanged glances.
Michel threw his leg back on the foot-peg, kicked the bike into gear and yanked hard on the throttle. The bike lurched into the gutter, almost bucking Henry out as they jolted up the other side. Henry held on for dear life.
13
More speed. That was Michel’s resolve with each machine gun burst that echoed through the trees. He had the motorbike in second gear, engine screaming, clutch and accelerator working in unison as he fish-tailed through undergrowth and bucked over ruts and smashed through branches and detritus.
Henry’s body bounced like a doll with no vertebrate. The entirety of his upper body was a turn behind the direction of the bike, so as his head thrashed this way his body twisted that way and his arms spindled like pasta flung at a wall.
Michel And Henry Go To War (The French Bastard Book 1) Page 8
