by Thomas Wood
“How many are in here?” he asked with such a murderous aggression that I was jolly fortunate to be on the same side as him. I had seen numerous propaganda films and reports that said that the Germans were the evil ones in this war, but I started to think that it was us that were the wicked ones in this war, shoving pistols down men’s necks, ripping their throats out and ordering assassinations on their officers.
Ray automatically switched from English to German, “Wie viele hier drin?” He asked with what sounded to me like the perfect German accent. I was glad for it, if the others in the room across the corridor suddenly decided to sit in silence, they would have heard speaking voices and to hear an inch perfect German accent would have set them all at ease, instead of hearing the soft tones of an English dialect that they had been trained to detect from a mile away.
He repeated his question, obviously not working out that the poor man wouldn’t be able to answer unless he gave him a reprieve from the choking pistol. Slowly, threateningly, Ray removed the pistol just enough from the man’s throat so that he was able to speak. The man stared down the barrel of the gun, knowing that if he decided to be a hero here, Ray would have no qualms in squeezing the trigger and putting a round through the man’s throat. I couldn’t see Ray’s face and I was glad that I was unable to, as I became utterly convinced that his eyes would be a glowing red colour as he enjoyed every second of this sadistic game that he was playing.
Eventually the man began to whimper an answer, just as the blood from the pistol whip began to trickle from the side of his head and into his mouth.
“Funf oder sechs. Funf oder sechs.” Five or six. That was doable, I could sort that out myself if it came to it. It would be noisy, but I could do it.
Ray had all the information that he needed. Withdrawing the pistol from the man’s mouth fully, he let him sit back up in his chair letting me lock eyes with him for the first time since we had entered the room. He immediately knew that the whole airfield must be under attack, two men clothed in khaki with faces smothered in paint and dirt had stormed in to take out the airfield’s communications, before destroying the rest of the area. His eyes were filled with fear, which was slowly knocked out of him as Ray delivered another perfect blow against the man’s cheekbone, which caused a sickening crack loud enough to be heard in any of the other rooms in the building.
“Search the room for intelligence, I’m going to check the other rooms.”
The room directly opposite the telephone exchange was still rowdy as ever, the wireless being cranked up a few notches to satisfy the desires of the man sitting closely to it, struggling to hear what was being sung over the chatter and general noise of his fellow soldiers. The door was slightly ajar, enough so that I could see into it for a brief snapshot as I walked past, but not enough so that all the occupants of the room would see me saunter past. I daren’t look back as I passed it, in case someone was camped by the door, waiting for intruders.
It wasn’t that room that I was interested in, they would only be the enlisted men or the non-commissioned officers who were tasked with staying on the base for twenty-four hours at a time. It was the room further down the corridor, the one on the left that really had my interest piqued. There was a plaque on the door, a name tag, but it was the only door in the whole building that was pulled firmly into its place in the door frame. That meant it was either locked for security, or that the occupant was trying to sleep. I was convinced that it was the latter, this must have been where Standartenführer Rudolf Schröder was residing for the night. My target.
The noises of the men listening to the wireless and chatting to one another, as well as the smoke that had seeped from the room and into the corridor, began to fade from my mind completely, as I began to allow myself to only think of the target and what other challenges I may face on the other side of the door. I quickly checked my watch, we had less than five minutes to go before the charges kicked off.
Twisting the door handle, I was relieved to find that it was unlocked, and I pushed my shoulder into the door to force it from its frame as quickly as possible.
I leapt through the door and pulled the MP40 up into the aim. The bed was on the far side of the room, similar to where the telephone man had been, but my target was laying stretched out on his bed, suddenly rising as soon as he realised that the figure in his room was not a friendly one, nor was he in some sort of dream. He sat on the end of his bed for a moment, simply staring down the barrel of the gun, apparently resigned to the fact that he must die at that specific moment in time.
Despite the fact that he had been asleep not ten seconds ago, he seemed completely awake, not even the hint of a sleep hangover that I so often experienced every time I rose from my slumber.
I took a quick look around the room. There was an opened case at the foot of his bed, some of his belongings and socks hanging precariously from it, his uniform hanging proudly from a hook next to it. A gramophone was stationed on a table by the door, with accompanying letters and pieces of paper that he had failed to file away before he put his head down earlier on.
He stared at the gun and I was apparently taking too long to do what was expected, as he notched his head upwards to look me straight in the eyes. He was in his mid-forties, the greying, unkempt hair that stuck up in all manner of directions and the tired eyes were more than a subtle indicator of this man’s age. He had numerous creases and wrinkles all over his face, which I presumed he had garnered from years of torment and violence that he had served in the German army.
My eyes were suddenly distracted by the face of a young girl on the stool that served as his bedside cabinet. She was a young, blonde girl, with the deepest blue eyes and the most innocent of features. She must have been around seven or eight, with her mother standing proudly beside her, waving at her father wherever he might be stationed in the world.
I had looked at the picture for far too long, as I felt the gun wrench upwards and a solid fist smashed my nose from its position, sending blood instantly flying from it like a volcanic eruption. I staggered backwards as I released my grip on the gun, surrendering it completely to his control. He took too long himself to bring it around and into a position where he could pull the trigger and I delivered one of my finest right-hand hooks to just under his jaw, sending teeth flying from the lower quadrant of his mouth. He fell backwards onto his bed and I pulled my pistol from my trousers and stormed my way over to him, where I was clubbed suddenly by the back end of the MP40, stars instantly bursting in my eyes as I did so.
Ray suddenly appeared in the doorway, pistol up and ready to fire at the German before I stepped into his way.
“No,” I hissed violently, my lips suddenly swelling up nicely and my nose beginning to throb unbearably, “he’s mine.”
I brought the pistol up into the firing position and began to take up an adequate amount of pressure on the trigger, which suddenly fell away quicker than a mortar round to the floor. I waited for half a second more, which he took as an opportunity to repeat what he had just said.
“Alfie Lewis?”
I stopped thinking as soon as he said my name, nothing went through it apart from putting a bullet through this man’s skull.
“Alfie. I know that you were set up. Your partner was given up to us. You were set up. Stop.”
I took a step back from him and my hand quivered as I struggled to pull the trigger. How had he known my name? How had he known what had happened? The conspiracy in my mind deepened to new depths as my mind whirred about what was going on. Had this all been a set up? Had it been an elaborate plot to get me killed? Everything suddenly felt too easy on this assignment. Switching the generator off had been like flicking a switch to an interior light. The door to his room had been unlocked and had practically invited me in. It all seemed like a set up in that moment.
“How does he know your name?” Ray practically shouted, completely disregarding the fact that we were still in a very precarious environment.
“I…I don’t know…” I said, not taking my eyes off the German for a second.
“You’re lying, how do you know him?!”
“I don’t know him I swear! I was sent here to kill him! He’s my target!”
“Take me with you, Alfie. I have information. Vital information. Your government would want to know. Take me and I’ll tell you.”
My mind whizzed for a moment, trying to take in everything that I could and attempting to make some sort of decision in what was one of the most messed up situations ever known to man. I debated with my own thoughts for what felt like an eternity, trying to weigh up how this man had known who I was and what he might possibly have to trade with the British government.
Could this all be a test? Could this, as my first assignment with MI9, be a way of trying to see if I would still dispatch of a target, even though he was trying to get inside my head? No, I told myself, it was an incredibly high-cost test, with Jacques, Julien and an entire bomber crew giving up their lives for this operation already. It had to be a live op, he had to be a legitimate target.
Nothing made sense to me, and I was surprised at the way I was looking at the German compassionately, not wanting to take him with me but at the same time, not wanting to put a bullet in his brain either.
“Tell me what you know now, or you won’t see your little girl again,” I managed to utter, despite myself.
“No. You take me with you and then I’ll talk.” The conviction with which he spoke, especially when faced with the fact that he might never see his daughter again, somehow managed to convince me that he had genuine intelligence to share with me. How else, I asked myself, would he have known who I was? How else would he have known that Cécile had been compromised?
“Okay, I’ll take you. But you’re going to need to get dressed. I’m not taking you like that.”
“No way are you taking him! I won’t let you. What’s this about being sent here to kill him? That wasn’t our objective.” Ray shouted in my face, as he brought his pistol up with a renewed vigour, changing his aim from the German and pointing square in between my eyes.
“Just who exactly are you?”
20
“I’m not letting you leave with him! He’s a Kraut!”
“Ray, you’ve got to let us go, it’s my job!”
“No…you were here to kill him. You drop him and then we’ll leave. After that you can tell me who you really are.”
My head pounded in unison with my nose, the blood that had started dripping from it was now a sticky mess all over my top lip, I must have been quite the sight.
“If you ain’t going to kill him, I’ll do it myself,” he said, swinging the pistol round and up into the face of the Standartenführer. At first, I didn’t think he was going to do it, neither did he. But he began to squeeze the trigger and I could see that the pad of his finger was getting incredibly close to the point where a round would be ejected and my target, turned confidante, would be subjected to an explosion of pain, as the bullet burrowed its way through his skull, leaving brain matter scattered all over the ceiling.
In such a confined space, the ear ripping bang was almost unbearable, to the point where I thought I would never hear another noise ever again. I panted, and I found that my eyes were shut as I forced the sick back down my throat and pulled myself together.
“You better be telling the truth,” I said, not looking at the Standartenführer for a moment, but focusing instead on Ray’s body. I had shot in near point-blank range, but the small nine-millimetre round that had been ejected from my pistol had not had the motivation to carry on and pass through the other side of his neck, it was still lodged inside him somewhere. He floundered around on the floor, completely unaware that we were even in the room with him, it was just himself and the hole in the side of his neck that he was desperately trying to plug with one of his fingers.
“I am. You can trust me, pass me his weapon.” I didn’t really have too much of a choice right now, there was a number of enemy soldiers all gagging to get their teeth into some action and some maniac had started shooting inside the building they were in. I grabbed the MP40 from the floor, stepping over Ray’s jerking body as he lost pint after pint of blood, and peered around the door.
No one was coming just yet, but I figured it wouldn’t be too long before someone came obligingly to the officer’s room to check on his welfare.
“Get dressed,” I said to him, keeping my eye on the noisy room from earlier on, “quickly. Don’t mess me about.”
He began shuffling about, pulling his uniform on as I kept watch over the doorway, nervously awaiting the impending arrival of soldiers to check out what all the noise was.
A head appeared around the doorway, peering out cautiously into the corridor, before making his way over to the telephone exchange room. The inevitable shout as he found his friend knocked unconscious, with great bruises glaring from the sides of his cheeks was crackled and scared, bolting back to the room to presumably pick up his weapon and carry on the search.
Just as he retreated back into the room, chairs scraping over the floor as they all rose to do the same, an ear-splitting bang filled the night sky, lighting up the inside of the building more than the lights could ever do.
The bang was followed by another and another, each pause in between filled with a roar as the fireball grew in strength before resorting to a smouldering wreckage.
The bodies inside the room stopped. A near perfect silence descended on the airfield once again, this time one of utter disbelief, before they began scrambling around, even more urgently than previously, before rushing out of the building altogether, completely forgetting about the man out cold in the room across the way.
I counted four bodies leaving the building, each one of them pulling on their helmet or readying their weapon as they prepared for the action they’d thought would never come.
“Friends of yours?” said the Standartenführer as he began buckling up his tunic and fiddling with his belt.
“They were,” I said lethargically, as I began thinking of what I would tell them had happened to Ray if they happened to ask. Then again, I thought as I stood there, it was unlikely that I would ever be able to talk to them again, especially as I would now have a German in tow and expect them not to shoot him.
He began fumbling around with the suitcase, folding up the photograph of his wife and daughter that had been on his bedside.
“No, none of that. We don’t have time.”
“I have papers, intelligence. Your people will need to see them.”
“Okay, but nothing else. We need to leave before this all dies down.”
I knew the others would be preparing their grenades and readying their weapons for an almighty firefight, while simultaneously preparing to exfiltrate and make for the wooded area about five miles south, that we had earmarked as our rendezvous point. From there, together, we would make it to Louis’ place and begin our life as evaders in enemy territory.
But that plan was all out of the window now. I would be taking this man, first to the woods where I had buried some of my kit, before trying to get out of this country with him by my side. Not an easy task by anyone’s standards.
They all had orders to leave with or without me, as soon as those charges had kicked off, it had become every man for himself. They wouldn’t be waiting at the wall for me and I hoped that they wouldn’t be waiting at the wall for Ray either, otherwise they really were going to be putting their lives in danger.
“Right. Come on, let’s go,” I said forcefully, pushing myself from the room and over Ray’s corpse. I pulled the MP40 up into a better firing position as I left the room, walking confidently over the loud wooden flooring as I made for the door, checking each room with a swift flick of the head and weapon, in case someone was standing in the doorway ready to blast my guts out. There was no one, just the communications man who was still stretched out on his desk, blood pouring from a wound at the top of his head, some from h
is nose, the rest dribbling from his mouth. The poor bloke was going to have one almighty headache when he woke up in the morning.
Explosions and cracks began thumping their way to my ears even more intensely as I pulled the front door open, men running in every direction with no real knowledge of what was going on. I couldn’t even tell whose side they were on.
Our plan had worked tremendously. All six of the fighters that were sitting on their dispersal points were smouldering nicely, their wings looking like they had simply been snapped off and dropped to the ground. The petrol tanker was aflame, billowing jet-black smoke high into the air, but also smothering everyone at ground level at the same time.
The hangars had gone up wonderfully, not destroyed completely, but whatever was stored inside would soon be wanting to burn down the building too if it wasn’t quickly brought under control.
Explosions from grenades still rang out every now and then, but there was a distinct lack of any small arms fire. I wondered for a second whether they had already got out, exfiltrated before the charges had even gone off, and effectively left me on my own in an enemy stronghold.
But then I realised why they hadn’t started firing yet, the Germans weren’t firing at them. We had managed to fool them into believing that it was an air raid. Quite how a silent aircraft with no engines had managed to sneak up on them, drop a plethora of bombs with pinpoint accuracy, before disappearing off into the night sky had happened was unexplainable, but it hadn’t stopped them from flicking their searchlights on and to begin sounding their siren.
As the wails began to shriek through the night air, the searchlights began to focus everyone’s attention to the inky blackness that was above them, wispy clouds intermixed with the dirty black pillar that began flying towards the sky. Men sprinted for their posts at the anti-aircraft guns, ready to blast anything that moved out of the sky, even if it was just a gull.
Then, a crack. Just one, quite solitary but an unmistakeable crack of a well-aimed rifle shot. As if acting as a starting pistol to the world’s deadliest race, every man that I could see out in the open began charging towards the control tower, apparently where the shot had rung out from, at which point the whole night sky seemed to erupt with brilliant flashes of whites and oranges, as rifles and machine guns exploded into action. Tracer rounds zipped through the air violently, in all directions, and I felt bad for underestimating the ability of the soldiers I was with. Somehow, they had managed to get their hands on a German machine gun and were putting up an almighty fight as the airfield erupted around them.
