Blood of Vipers (11 page)

When they finished, Cal sat alone at the
kitchen table,
without even guards at the door. He stared at the pool of blood
that spread
across the scuffed kitchen planks, and waited for the gunshots
of the
executions, the screaming women as the
Frontschweine
took their
pleasure.

But it was quiet except for the murmur of
Russian voices
from the front room and the ever-present thump of artillery in
the distance.

It was then that he began to hope that he had
won.

#

Cal marched at the front of a column of
prisoners. They
followed the darkened cobblestone street from the village until
it joined the
main road. Dead horses and men littered the road, together with
overturned and
abandoned carts, and the burned-out husks of Soviet and German
tanks that
squatted like giant black turtles beneath the light of the moon.
Shell casings
littered the ground by the thousands. A spring breeze brought
the occasional
whiff of smoke and ash.

The Russians gave Cal a crust of dark bread,
as heavy and
tasty as a charred log of wood, but he devoured it, together
with a canteen of
water, followed by a cup of vodka that he accepted from the
bearded soldier who
offered it, rather than risk offending these men at such a
dangerous time. He
asked for coffee or tea, but they had none.

His feet trudged forward through pure
momentum. Exhaustion
sapped his strength and his will, and when the Russians let the
prisoners sit
for a few minutes by the side of the road, he had to force
himself to stay
awake. He didn’t dare doze off and lose track of his people, and
instead
counted them one by one, picked out the men, Greta and Helgard,
Karl, and all
the others, to make sure the Russians didn’t drag them away when
he lost
attention.

About two hours after leaving the village,
Osimov caught up
with the marching refugees from behind the wheel of a black
Mercedes—a
confiscated German officer’s staff car. He weaved back and forth
to avoid the
debris that left the road only slightly more passable than a
minefield. When he
pulled up next to Cal at the front of the column, he slowed the
car to a
walking pace.

“Get in. You’ve walked far enough.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather
walk.”

Osimov glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t
worry about them.
They’ll be fine.”

For a moment Cal was tempted, but he was so
close, he didn’t
want to lose now, simply because he was too tired and couldn’t
be bothered to
see it through to the end.

“I’m a trained soldier,” he said. “I can keep
up. Besides,
if I show up in your car while letting a bunch of women and
children walk, I’ll
get it good from the Americans.”

Osimov shrugged, but Cal thought he saw a
hint of respect in
the other man’s expression. “Suit yourself.”

The car nudged forward, lights weaving as it
continued down
the road.

“Cal?”

He turned to see Greta by his side, looking
up at him.
Studying her in the moonlight, he was struck again by her
beautiful,
heart-shaped face, and the intense, vulnerable expression in her
eyes.

“It’ll be okay,” he said. “We’re almost
there. They’ll give
you a hot meal, find you all beds.”

“You will ask about my father, yes?”

“Of course. I’ll do what I can, you know
that.”

“I will never forget this. How you saved me,
how you saved
all of us.”

“It was that nod of yours that did it. I was
about to give
up, but I saw the look on your face and I knew that if I let
those people die
I’d never forget it. And if you were strong enough to take that
chance, I
figured I could be, too.”

“Thank you.” She cleared her throat and
looked down at her
hands. “Cal, what will you do when we reach American lines?”

“They’ll debrief me, then send me back to my
unit.”

“Is that necessary? They say Hitler is dead.
Is not the war
over?”

“Not yet, it’s not. And it doesn’t matter. I
have to report
for duty as soon as possible.”

“Then I will never see you again?”

“I don’t know, Greta.”

They walked in silence for a few minutes, and
then, when
their guards had moved ahead some distance, she slipped her hand
into his. It
was cold and small and tentative. He didn’t let go—didn’t
want
to let
go—but he needed to say something right away before it went any
further.

“Greta,” he began.

“It is all right. It is only a little while
yet. Unless it
is true what the Russians told me, that you have a girl back
home.”

“There’s no girl. I only told him that so
they’d lay off
harassing you. But you’re so young. What is it, seventeen,
maybe?”

“Sixteen.” She gripped his hand tighter. “But
I am seventeen
on the thirty-first of May. How old are you?”

“I turned twenty in March.”

“There, almost seventeen and barely not
nineteen. Not so
different, is it?”

“No, I guess not. Maybe in a year or two it
wouldn’t matter
at all. I guess it doesn’t matter much now, does it?” He shook
his head. “It’s
not that.”

“Then you must hate me because I am German
and Germans have
done awful things.”

“No, of course not.”

“Please, then. It will not hurt to hold my
hand for a few
minutes, will it? Even if you never wish to think of me when
this night is
over.”

“No, it doesn’t hurt at all.” He came to a
sudden decision.
“Greta, can you memorize something for me?”

“Yes, of course. What is it?”

“I’m going to give you my family’s address in
the United
States. When you’re settled again, with a roof over your head,
and a way to send
mail, I want you to write to me. When I get my letter, and I’ve
been
discharged, then...well, I don’t know. We’ll see what happens.
Will you write
to me?”

She looked up at him with her eyes shining.
“Yes, Cal. Yes,
I will do that, I promise.”

“Okay, here goes. My street address is...”

#

They marched for what seemed like most of the
night. Every
fifteen or twenty minutes they would pass another Russian
checkpoint, some of
them manned by sketchy-looking irregular troops, but Osimov had
cleared the way,
and the dozen armed guards the man had sent to guard the
prisoners took offense
at any challenges. Whenever they stopped, Cal looked around him,
counting
prisoners, making sure he could spot the two German soldiers and
the old
minister, that they hadn’t been dragged off somewhere and shot.

Finally, deep into the night, when Cal
thought he couldn’t
continue five more minutes, a dark black shape blocked the road
ahead. As they
approached, he saw that it was three tanks in a roadblock,
shoulder to shoulder,
with their barrels facing east, toward the marching refugees. To
either side
sat sandbagged bunkers with mounted machine guns, and when they
drew within
fifty yards, spotlights flared to life. The road turned shades
of bright white
and gray shadow and Cal flinched from the glare.

A man stepped forward with his rifle lowered.
“Lieutenant
Jameson?”

The man’s raspy, Texas-accented English was
the most
beautiful sound Cal had ever heard. He let go of Greta’s hand
and stepped
forward without a backward glance, unwilling to draw attention
to the girl.

He lifted his hands. “I’m Jameson. Stand
down, I’m walking
over.”

Mercifully, they didn’t brief him long. A
USAAF major by the
name of Wythcliff sat him in a tent and took his statement,
which a young corporal
wrote down in shorthand. Wythcliff knew about his interference
with the British
Spitfire, but that was the last news anyone had of his position.

Cal told everything. Or, rather, almost
everything. He left
out the old grandmother, poisoned by her own family, and didn’t
tell them about
Greta putting her hand into his when they marched down the road.

Wythcliff did very little talking, and only
interrupted to
ask for clarifying details. When Cal finished, he rose from his
seat.

“That’s enough for now, Lieutenant. More in
the morning
before we ship you out to your unit. Corporal Horne will show
you to your
quarters. Sleep well, it sounds like you could use it.”

Cal returned a salute. “May I ask a question,
sir?”

“Go ahead.”

“How many prisoners did you take from the
Russians?”

“No prisoners, so far as I know. Just a sorry
bunch of women
and children.”

“What about the Wehrmacht soldiers?” he
asked.

“No soldiers, Lieutenant.”

“But I saw them on the road. Not five minutes
before I
reached our lines. There were two men, and an old minister.”

“I heard your story, Jameson, and I’m telling
you, there are
no men. Your friend is waiting outside. Ask him.”

By friend, Wythcliff meant Colonel Osimov.
The man stood
with a pair of American majors, smoking Camels while leaning
against a Jeep,
chatting about the Brooklyn Dodgers. Osimov excused himself when
Cal approached
with a frown.

“Thought you’d never get out,” Osimov said.
“If I don’t
report soon, I’ll be facing my own interrogation. Only it won’t
be so pretty as
yours.”

“You gave me your word.”

“I told you they would be fine. I didn’t say
I’d hand them
over to the Americans. And I meant it. Unless they have some
hidden secret,
they won’t be tried as war criminals.”

“And you won’t ship them off to work camps?”

“Listen up, Jameson. This is a war, not a
sandlot baseball
game. Do you really think they’ll let me hand over German POWs
because some
punk from America struts around Soviet headquarters, demanding
his rights?”

“Treachery, Osimov. That’s what this is.”

“That’s what you think of me, is it?” He
ground his
cigarette butt beneath his boot and turned to go. Two MPs
materialized from the
darkness, ready to take him back. “When you see Simpson and
Clyde, tell them
hello for me, would you?”

“You knew?”

“Your German girl told me right away that you
were alone,
always had been. And when I crossed the American checkpoint, the
first thing
someone told me, after ‘hey, you speak English!’ was, ‘you
better not have
touched that Mustang pilot, buddy, or you’re gonna get it.’ But
it only
confirmed what I already knew.”

“If you knew, why didn’t you...?”

“Why didn’t I? Or why
did
I?”

Cal thought about the executed SS officer,
about the threats
at gunpoint, the promise that the Russian would murder the
German men and let
the women be raped by his hardened frontline troops.

Osimov studied his face. “The answer to both
questions is
because I’m not done. I’ve got to go back there, and a man has a
reputation to
uphold.”

“If that’s how you feel, you should defect.
Why would you
want
to go back? Your guy isn’t much better than Hitler.”

“And yours is?”

“Yeah, a hell of a lot better. We didn’t
start this war, you
know. The Japs attacked us.”

“That’s what you think, is it?” Osimov shook
his head. “Give
it some thought, and then you’ll understand.” He looked at the
MPs. “All right,
I’m ready.”

And with that, he disappeared into the
darkness with his two
American minders, on his way back to Soviet-held territory.

Cal stared after him for a long moment. He
heard Greta’s voice
in his head, translating Karl’s frightened German into English.

The water was on fire. It was burning. The
adults went
crazy when they saw it. When the burning water came down, the
adults threw open
the doors to get away. They jumped out into the fire.

No, he decided at last, it wasn’t the same
thing. Cal wasn’t
the naïve kid who enlisted in ’43—even before the horrors of the
last two days,
he’d seen too much—but there was a difference between the Nazi
death camps or
Soviet
Frontschweine,
and the behavior of British and
Americans. A big
difference.

Anyway, he was too tired to think about it
anymore. Later,
there would be time.

Cal found one of the majors who had been
smoking with Osimov
and asked him directions to the tent designated for his use. He
followed the
man’s instructions and a few minutes later found himself in a
one-man pup tent
made of green canvas, with a cot and two wool blankets for his
use. He
struggled out of his boots and flopped onto the cot.

The thump of heavy artillery sounded far to
the north, but
Cal barely had time to register the sound before he closed his
eyes and was
gone.

-end-

Michael Wallace has trekked across the Sahara
on a camel,
ridden an elephant through a tiger preserve in Southeast Asia,
eaten fried
guinea pig, and been licked on the head by a skunk. In a
previous stage of life
he programmed nuclear war simulations, smuggled refugees out of
a war zone, and
milked cobras for their venom. He speaks Spanish and French and
grew up in a
religious community in the desert. His novels include the
historical thriller,
The Red Rooster
,
and the
bestselling series of thrillers set in a polygamist cult,
The
Righteous
. He welcomes email from readers at
[email protected]. Visit
Wallace's web page
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