The Bear knew he was losing.
He tried to twist his wrist to aim the gun, then pulled the trigger again. The round whistled away with the sound of the shot.
He scrabbled with his heels in the mud, his free arm back across his face in an attempt to block the precision punches that seemed to land every time he left a gap. He lifted his hips in short thrusts, rocking Rossett and then letting him settle again. The heavy lifting of Rossett was energy-sapping work, but it was all the Bear had left to offer.
If he was going to have a chance, he was going to have to get out from under.
He suddenly back-swiped with his right arm, exposing his face. Rossett took the opportunity and went for another punch.
The Bear thrust his hips hard and let the momentum of Rossett’s punch do the work for him.
It worked.
Rossett missed with the punch as the Bear drove up with his hips and bucked like a bronco. Rossett fell forward, his fist hitting the mud ten inches above where the Bear’s head had been.
The Bear was out.
Round two.
Rossett knew he’d made a mistake the second he threw the punch. He’d fallen for the feint, and as the German kicked up under him, it was the best he could to just about manage to keep hold of the Bear’s pistol wrist as he went. He tucked his chin, rolled his shoulder, and kicked with his own legs in an attempt to turn the throw back to his own advantage.
Things didn’t go exactly as he planned.
Halfway through the roll Rossett felt the Bear’s pistol slide through his hand.
He landed in a crouch and rolled again to his left as he went for the Webley in his waistband, eyes on the Bear, who was now right in front of him.
They stared at each other, pistols out, soaked from the rain and the oily mud in which they’d been fighting. The Bear wiped his free hand across his face to clear some blood and rain from his eyes. He smiled at Rossett.
Rossett saw that the German had a tooth missing.
The night hadn’t been a waste of time after all.
The Bear’s pistol was drifting a fraction as he deep-breathed. Rossett watched as it caught the light and glinted in the rain.
There were worse ways to settle it.
“So is this how it ends, Lion?” The Bear took another breath. “A gunfight?”
“No, Captain.” Staff Sergeant Becker answered for Rossett. “It ends with a firing squad.”
Rossett dragged his eyes away from the Bear and saw a squad of eleven Waffen SS soldiers, with Becker standing tall at their center.
Chapter 25
“Get down on your faces.”
“No.” Rossett didn’t bother looking down at the mud. Instead, he put his hands on his hips and tried to catch his breath after the fight.
“Down now!” The corporal who was shouting the command failed to sound as convincing as he’d wanted to.
“I’m with him.” The Bear wiped the blood from his nose and looked over to where they had been ordered to toss their guns. “Besides, I’ve only just got up.”
The corporal jabbed ineffectively at them with his StG 44, then glanced at Becker and the rest of the squad before turning back to Rossett.
“I need to search you,” the corporal tried again.
“If you are going to shoot me”—Rossett was staring at Becker’s big silhouette—“shoot me standing up, because I’m not lying down to die.”
A moment passed, the corporal trapped in no-man’s-land, eyes flicking back and forth between Rossett, the Bear, and Becker. Finally, Becker broke the standoff and lowered his gun. He walked toward Rossett and signaled that the corporal should rejoin his mates in the line of soldiers behind him.
Becker slung his assault rifle over his shoulder by its harness and reached under his rubber poncho for his sidearm.
“I was supposed to wait for the major.” He struggled to open his holster under the heavy waterproof. “But I don’t think that is fair on you.”
“You’re a coward,” Rossett said quietly as he watched Becker finally take out his Walther.
“What I am doesn’t count for anything anymore.” Becker pulled back the slide as another squall of rain blew in across the yard. “So it’s better to just get this over with.”
Becker stopped five feet from Rossett, while to Rossett’s right, the Bear shuffled a few feet backward.
Becker nodded, planted his feet, and lifted the pistol.
“Fire!” Cavanagh shouted, then opened up with his own Thompson at the squad of Germans on the other side of the yard.
The resistance had fanned out a few feet from the end of the tunnel and taken up firing positions behind the various bits of cover that littered that side of the yard.
The rain was making it difficult, but the time they had taken to mark their targets was paying off. At least six of the Germans dropped straight down, while two more lurched and limped away injured. None of the SS returned fire until they found cover, and that gave the resistance a ten-second turkey shoot before they had to start falling back to the tunnel.
Speed: it worked every time.
Becker flinched, so Rossett took his chance. He dropped forward to his knees as the resistance rounds fizzed in, and with a twist of the waist, threw a solid right uppercut into Becker’s groin. Becker grunted, both hands coming down a half second after the pain went up with his testicles. Rossett reacted fast and grabbed at the pistol as it came into reach.
He missed.
Rossett started to rise and went for the gun again as Becker started to fold above him. This time he managed a slap, just enough to deflect the pistol in Becker’s hand, pushing it up and away.
Becker staggered a few paces but managed to grab at Rossett’s coat collar as the Englishman launched himself off the ground. Through the pain, Becker managed to use his hold to twist Rossett around a little and throw him off balance.
Rossett was surprised the big man hadn’t gone down from the punch to the balls, and as he was dragged to the side, he managed to kick at the inside of Becker’s knee, attempting to stretch the joint and make it give way.
It didn’t.
Rossett saw the pistol coming back around toward him.
The black and silver world with its gunfire and shadows faded away, and time seemed to slow down.
Rossett needed the gun.
His whole being depended on diverting it.
He reached for the pistol, missed again, but just managed to hook his thumb onto Becker’s wrist. He tried to get a solid grip with his wet fingers, but the arm was moving too fast. It felt like it was coated in oil and Rossett felt the tendons straining in his wrist and thumb as they tried to gain purchase. The gun was coming closer, relentless, like a train on a track. Rossett struggled to hold on. Becker shifted his grip a few inches, trying to push Rossett down onto the ground. Rossett took the opportunity to grab at the gun with his other hand, and finally managed to deflect its aim as his left knee splashed down into the mud.
Becker wrapped Rossett’s coat tight around his fist, jerked him back, and dragged him nearer like a rag doll.
Rossett was flagging. It was all he could do to hold on. Becker’s strength felt inhuman. The German had a curious calm as he ground Rossett down. The fight with the Bear had almost wiped him out. Rossett was running out of options. He couldn’t gouge, he couldn’t butt, he couldn’t punch, he couldn’t bite, but most of all, he couldn’t lose.
Becker shook him again, trying to free his hand and the pistol, to finally put a stop to the fight. Rossett nearly went fully down as his foot slipped in the mud. He sucked in air, searching for a way, trying to stay calm, trying to focus on what he could do and not what he couldn’t. He dug his right heel into the mud, like an anchor in a tug of war. It slipped an inch or two; he grunted, then dug it in again.
This was it.
The last throw.
Rossett twisted, pulling Becker toward him instead of pushing him away. The German almost toppled and his jackboots splashed
and slipped as he shifted his footing and tried to regain control. Rossett shifted his weight, lifted his right foot, and then kicked with his heel at right angles to Becker’s knee.
This time it worked.
Becker fell like an old tree in a forest, sideways into the mud. He took Rossett with him, but by twisting and turning, Rossett managed to land on top of Becker, one hand still on the pistol, his forearm pushing as hard as he could manage into Becker’s throat.
Rossett was as good as finished. His breath was coming in gasps, his legs and arms ruined from the contest of two fights in short succession. Despite his ruined leg, it didn’t take long for Becker to work his way out from underneath, and in a second or two, he was on top.
Rossett’s hand scratched and slapped at Becker’s face as the German clamped down on his throat and stared impassively down at him, sweat and rain dripping off him in fat tears.
Rossett managed a weak left hook, then a right, which ended up flailing and falling short.
Becker rocked forward and squeezed Rossett’s throat tighter, all the while staring down at him with dead eyes.
Rossett tried to claw his face, but the German turned it so that Rossett’s hand missed its target and had to settle for a pathetic slap on Becker’s barrel chest.
“No,” Becker said quietly, and shifted forward another inch so that he could lever on a little more weight.
Rossett scratched at Becker’s arm and reached up for his face again.
Becker gripped tighter still.
Rossett fought the panic that came with suffocation. He could feel the cold rain falling on his face. The panic seemed to subside a little. The sound of the gunfire was fading.
Rossett was fading.
He tried to twist and apply pressure to Becker’s elbow, but the German’s arm was like a girder as it locked out, and Rossett felt pathetic for being so weak.
Rossett wanted to cry.
This was it: all the years of pain, all the years of fighting for redemption, and he’d failed.
He finally let go of Becker’s pistol and managed a weak punch into the side of the German’s head.
The shooting sounded a million miles away now.
He noticed a bead of blood trickling down from Becker’s nose, saw it fall toward his own face.
Rossett fell with it.
Darkness called. The ember of fight in Rossett made him flap a last loose fist. It dropped back onto his own chest harder than it had landed on Becker.
The ember flickered, then grew dim.
Becker watched Rossett slipping away with no sense of satisfaction.
He bore the Englishman no ill will.
He just had to die.
He lifted his head. The gunfight was raging all around them. Their moment felt intimate, bordering on peaceful in the chaos. He looked back down at Rossett.
The Englishman looked almost serene in the dirt as the rain splashed onto his face. Becker squeezed a little tighter, eking out the final few drops of life.
The Webley boomed just behind Becker’s left ear and blew the top of his head off.
Despite leading one of the largest bands of resistance outside of London, Iris wasn’t very good with guns.
Flickering hands and twisted nerves played havoc with her aim.
She normally used an old, battered MP40 on operations, one her father had captured off a tank crew he had killed in the invasion.
She treasured it, but she could barely hit a barn door with it.
Cavanagh had slammed home a magazine and carried the gun for her, the same as he always did. He had pulled back the bolt and handed it over just before the shooting started, same as he always did.
Iris had emptied it in the first thirty seconds of the firefight, same as she always did.
The gun had been hanging loose around her neck as she picked her way across the dead ground, toward where she could see Becker choking Rossett. Her teeth had been gritted tighter than usual as the gap had closed between them.
Despite the bullets buzzing about her like bees around honey, she’d not given up, and kept going, just like she always did.
Rossett’s Webley had caught her eye as she struggled with the magazine release of the MP40. The old pistol had glinted in the mud, calling to her like it was desperate to help its master.
She’d picked it up, pulled back the heavy hammer with two thumbs, put its jittery barrel as close to Becker’s head as she could get, and pulled the trigger.
Becker was dead.
Now it was time to drop down into the mud to see if Rossett was as well.
Rossett could feel the weight on his chest as he came around. He could smell coal and diesel in the mud, and for a moment, such was the weight pressing down on him, he thought he was trapped in it, sinking into it, going under instead of coming back up.
He could hear the gunfire, and through it, the sound of someone calling his name.
Iris.
He wasn’t dead.
He grabbed at the air with a sudden jolt, then tried desperately to get out from under whatever was pinning him down.
Becker.
Brains on the outside. Rossett arched his back as he tried to pull away, and a wave of panicked memory came back as he tried to speak through the pain in his throat.
Becker shifted like a drunk.
Rossett was confused. He thought the German was dead, and yet here he was, all brains on the outside, twitching and trying to turn. Rossett pushed at Becker’s shoulder and eased himself out from under. The German rolled and then flopped into the mud with his eyes washed with blood, staring up at the sky. Rossett stared, wiped his face, coughed, and then realized that Iris had been pulling at the dead man’s arm trying to move him.
“We need to go!” she was shouting. Rossett knew that, but the words didn’t seem to quite make sense. “John.” She leaned in close. “We n-need to go.”
Rossett retched, lifted his hand to his mouth, and saw that he had put it in something that had leaked out of Becker’s skull.
Iris was shouting, pointing toward the tunnels. Rossett stared at her hand instead of the tunnel, then slipped in the mud as she dragged at his arm and tried to get him off his knees and to his feet.
He fell back down. Head next to Becker’s, watching the German, waiting for him to move. He didn’t, so Rossett rolled, and tried again to stand up.
“J-John, can you hear m-me?” Iris touched a hand to his face.
It was warm, gentle, human.
Rossett blinked.
He was alive. He realized he was snatching and gasping at breaths. He held a hand to his throat and felt the pain of the bruising.
Becker had tried to choke him.
He remembered.
Rossett held out a hand to Iris.
I can hear you, I’m with you again, give me a moment.
They didn’t have a moment.
She tried to drag him through the mud, half falling over herself, until finally he was unsteadily on his own two feet.
“We need—” she began, then broke off when Rossett started moving under his own steam.
The sound of the gunfire slammed into his senses as he watched his shoes splash through the mud. His head was moving faster than his feet, and he slowly stumbled into a face-first fall. He lay still, soaked, cold, exhausted, hands open under his shoulders as if he were stuck at the bottom of a push-up.
The mud slipped and slid through his fingers and leached through his trousers.
He was going again.
He felt a kick, hard in his legs, so hard it pulled him back. He rolled onto his side and looked at Iris.
“Get up!”
Rossett held out his hand.
Iris slapped his Webley into it. The gun felt heavy, like some unseen force was trying to slam it through Rossett’s palm down into the mud.
The rain was flecking the Webley, and as it ran across the gunmetal, it pooled in his palm and washed the mud away. He looked up at Iris. She was already heading back to t
he tunnels, slip-sliding lopsided in the mud, as fast as she could manage.
A bullet zinged off a pile of bricks next to Rossett and caused him to dip his head.
He wasn’t dead, and if he wanted to stay that way he had to get moving. He climbed to his feet, slowly. Awkwardly, a wobble, and then he finally managed to straighten up.
Another round cut the air.
It sounded like tearing paper as it passed by and made him flinch.
His head ached, his throat ached, and his muscles ached in that familiar way they did every time he had a fight.
He was alive.
He looked back at Becker, thumbed the hammer on his Webley, and followed Iris.
Dannecker could hear the gunfire from a quarter of a mile away. He leaned forward in the cab of the truck so he could see out of the rain-skidded windscreen.
It sounded like war.
He heard the dull percussion of a grenade and gestured at the driver to speed up. The driver leaned forward a little over the wide steering wheel but made no effort to increase the pressure on the accelerator. He wasn’t an idiot, and somewhere deep inside, Dannecker thanked him for it.
Dannecker checked the magazine of his machine gun, breathed out through his nose, and tried to guess what was happening at the goods yard.
The first message he had received was that Bauer and Rossett were at the yard. Not long after that, Becker had radioed to say he had arrived and was taking control of the situation. Since then, every radio message that had come from the scene had been garbled and panicked.
Panicked.
Dannecker knew the feeling.
He checked his magazine again, then gripped the door handle as the truck lurched around the final corner and stuttered to a halt next to the vehicles that were already there.
He jumped down from the cab as the troops disembarked from the back. Dannecker urged them toward the open gates with a wave of his hand. He could see two squads already in place, crouching outside the yard.
An Army of One: A John Rossett Novel Page 33
