The Dog Who Could Fly (3 page)

He turned to leave, content that this was a safe enough place to hole up in while he tried to deal with Pierre’s injuries. They were in dire need of shelter, for there would be no real movement possible until nightfall. The wide expanse of snow that lay between their position and the safety of the French lines was completely devoid of
cover, and if they tried to cross it in daylight, he and Pierre would be done for.

As he reentered the living room Robert paused for a moment, tuning his ears to the sounds of the house above him, from what had to be the bedrooms. It was then that he froze. Faintly, almost imperceptibly, he’d caught the most unexpected and worrying of noises. For an instant he told himself that his ears had to be playing tricks on him, but as he strained to hear he caught the noise again.

From behind him came the distinct and eerie suggestion of snuffling. It was such an unexpected noise to have detected here, in this ghost house deep in no-man’s-land, that it sent shivers up his spine. It sounded almost as if someone—some being—was back there in the kitchen and gently snoring. He turned soundlessly, and with his pistol thrust before him he retraced his steps, tracking the ghostly noise.

As far as he could tell it seemed to be coming from beneath an upturned chair set to one side of the kitchen stove, beside a pile of rubble. Robert cocked the pistol and fixed the sound with the cold steel of the barrel. Keeping his finger tight on the trigger, he took a step toward the chair. As he neared it the snuffling stopped completely, almost as if someone had woken up and was holding his or her breath so as not to be discovered.

“Get your hands up!” Robert growled. “Now! Or else! Show yourself ! Come out from hiding!”

There wasn’t the faintest suggestion of an answer or any response. As he swept the corner of the room with his weapon Robert detected the barest hint of a yawn, followed by the recommencement of the snuffling sound. There was no doubt about it: behind that upturned chair was a living presence, one that was failing to respond to his challenge.

Robert felt a rush of fear mixed with adrenaline, similar to what he had experienced as their stricken aircraft plummeted toward the snowbound earth. He didn’t know enough German to cry out a challenge
in the language of the enemy, but who else could have ignored his warnings issued in a rudimentary but workable French?

“Wake up, you bastard!” Robert snarled. “Get up and show yourself !”

Still there was no response, other than a momentary pause in the sleepy, snuffly intakes of breath. There was no other choice: he inched closer to the upturned chair, his finger bone-white on the trigger. He reached the back of it, but still he couldn’t see anyone.
Confound the bloody enemy, where is he?

Robert leaned forward and peered around the chair, sighting down the barrel of his gun. There before him lay the culprit. The instant Robert laid eyes on it, the sleeping figure seemed to wake. One moment there was a tiny ball of gray-brown fluff curled up beneath the chair, the next it had stumbled to its feet unsteadily and was peering up at him anxiously, growling out a throaty little challenge.

At the very sight of it, all of Robert’s pumped-up aggression and killer instincts evaporated. He felt like a fool. He’d just spent a good few minutes stalking and yelling out dire threats at a tiny little puppy dog. Ignoring the bravest and most defiant of growls, he reached forward with his one free hand. For a moment the puppy tried to edge away, before its big, ungainly paws tripped over its own tail and it half fell back into the dust.

Before it could entangle itself still further, Robert whisked it up by the scruff of its neck—in exactly the same way its mother would have carried it in her jaws. As the puppy looked at him askance he clutched it to his chest, holstered his gun, and started to rub it fiercely around the back of the head. He worked his fingers deep into the thick folds of skin until he reached the special spot just behind the ears. In effect, he was giving the little guy a deep head massage, and within moments the puppy’s fierce resistance had dissolved into surrender . . . and then sheer delight.

“So who left you here all alone and hungry?” Robert whispered as he held the puppy close. “And you bereft of any friends . . .”

In answer, a pair of big brown eyes gazed up at him and a little bare finger of a tail twitched happily to and fro.

A couple of minutes of such magical treatment and the puppy was totally smitten. It nestled closer to Robert’s chest, its nose wrinkling contentedly and its eyes scrunched closed in delight. Robert had no idea where its mother might be, let alone its erstwhile human owners, but he sensed it had given up all thoughts of resistance—which was fortunate, for the last thing he and Pierre needed was a puppy causing a ruckus, with an enemy patrol likely to put in an appearance at any moment.

The house now secured, it was time to get Pierre. The question was, what to do with his newfound friend? Robert could hardly deposit him behind the chair again, for knowing puppies as he did, this one would likely start whining just as soon as he had disappeared. It was crucial that he keep the little ball of fur happy and quiet, at least for now. He unzipped the front of his leather bomber jacket, slipped the puppy inside, and zipped it closed again.

Little did Robert know that this was the start of a lifelong friendship—one that would see him and the death-defying puppy take to the skies over war-torn Europe as they waged fierce battle against the enemy.

Two

R
obert made his way back into the living room, only to discover that the wounded Pierre, despairing of a helping hand, had made his own way toward the house and was now clinging grimly to the doorway. His pale face betrayed the strain he had endured as he hauled himself across the icy earth, the blood from his injured leg forming a trail of spots and smears in the snow behind him.

He looked reproachfully at Robert. “You were so long I thought you had run into trouble.”

Robert reached inside his jacket and presented the puppy. “Here’s the trouble. I almost mistook him for the enemy and shot him!”

Pierre eyed the puppy suspiciously. “Looks like a German shepherd.” He had stressed the word
German
. “But the house is deserted, yes? We’re safe here?”

Robert nodded. “As safe as we’ll ever be marooned in no-man’s-land and with a burning aircraft nearby. We need to get a look at that leg of yours and get on the move.”

Robert set the puppy down on the floor. Throwing an arm around Pierre’s shoulder, he helped him across the living room to where they should be hidden from any passing patrols. He eased the wounded
Frenchman to the floor. Dreading what he might find, he slit Pierre’s pants with the pocketknife that he carried. Luckily, the wound was nowhere near as bad as he had feared. The bullet had passed clean through the calf muscle without so much as breaking a sliver of bone. In short it was a nasty flesh wound, but if he could stop the bleeding Pierre would live. Robert bathed the wound in a handkerchief dipped in some melted snow before binding it tight with a bandage.

Pierre leaned back against the wall, exhausted. “
Mon Dieu
, but it is good to be alive.”

He had uttered not a single word of complaint as Robert had treated him, and there was no doubting the toughness or courage of the Frenchman.

Robert forced a smile. “Let’s hope we stay that way. We’re not out of this one yet. In fact, we’ve got one hell of a long way still to go . . .”

While Pierre had been captain in the air, Robert had far more battle experience on the ground, and he sensed it was up to him to take command now and come up with a plan to save both their skins. He spread out a map on the table and frowned: there was no easy way out of here, that was for sure. As he studied the details of their surroundings, he felt a warm wetness nuzzling into his hand. Almost without thinking he reached down and lifted the puppy by his belly and sat him on his lap.

With Robert busying himself over the map, Pierre fished around in his pants pocket and pulled out a bar of flying-ration chocolate. His hands shaking visibly, he fed a fistful into his mouth, then broke off a sliver to offer to the puppy.

“Poor devil,” Pierre muttered. “Even though he is a
German
shepherd he was living in a
French
house, so perhaps we should show some solidarity . . . He looks half starved.”

Pierre held the morsel closer to the puppy’s mouth. He was expecting a grateful lick, but all he got for his trouble was a baring of needle-sharp fangs and as menacing a growl as a four-week-old
puppy could muster in the face of a mean-looking predator many times his size.

Pierre tossed down the chocolate in disgust. “
Mon Dieu!
That’s not a dog. That’s a bloody wolf in disguise!”

Robert smiled inwardly. It was as if the tiny ball of fluff had expressed his own feelings toward the Frenchman, whose impulsive, some might argue reckless flying had landed them in their present, desperate predicament.

Robert pored over every minute detail of the map, picturing the terrain in his mind’s eye and scrutinizing it for whatever hazards it might present. Even as he balked at the prospect of the perilous journey that lay ahead, he felt heartened by the way the little dog flattened his ears but made no attempt to resist his caresses.

“So, my friend, what is the plan?” Pierre ventured.

The Frenchman sounded about as finished as he looked. Robert knew full well that having the injured pilot with him limited his escape options considerably, but come what may, he was determined that the two of them would make it out of there.

“It’s over one hundred kilometers to the nearest airfield at Nancy,” Robert explained, “but first we’ve got to get out of this damned valley. As we crossed the Rhine I noticed a wood over on the west side where our boys are.”

“Yes, but the Boche have their machine guns on the ridge overlooking the entire valley.”

Robert hardly needed reminding. They were smack in the middle of a two-mile gap between the Maginot and Siegfried lines. The holes blasted in the farmhouse bore witness to the ferocity of the fighting between the two opposing sides here. There was no safe place in this entire expanse of terrain, not even in the spot where they had sought temporary shelter.

“How’s the leg?” Robert asked.

“Aching like hell.”

“The wood’s about a mile away, practically due west. Do you think you can make it?”

Pierre raised his head defiantly. “When do we start?”

Robert considered the question. A light breeze had lifted the mist from the valley, leaving little more than vapor trails across the snow. If they tried to make a move they’d be seen, shot or captured. The only option was to wait until darkness, giving them the cover they needed to move unseen by the German gunners. Robert told Pierre they’d set out at last light, three hours from now. He watched anxiously as the wounded Frenchman limped to a nearby chair, settled himself into it, and closed his eyes. In an instant he was sleeping like a baby.

How different the two of them were, Robert reflected as he drew the puppy closer to him. Both were twenty-six years old and fighting for the same cause, but there the similarity pretty much ended. Pierre was short, stocky, and swarthy—a muscular little powerhouse of a man. His French Air Force comrades seemed to love his wild, carefree humor, while his dark eyes and delight in the pleasures of life had thrilled many a woman.

Robert, on the other hand, was a rangy six-footer whose air of driven intensity had settled upon him the day he had been forced into exile by the enemy. His iron will had spurred him to escape from the Nazis, transforming him into a war machine with a single purpose: to hit back hard and hammer those who had overrun his native Czechoslovakia and despoiled his country. He burned to be in action, taking the fight to the enemy, and that meant getting out of here intact and alive.

Something instinctive drew his attention back to the puppy, and his mood softened. The animal was standing in his lap now, unsteady on his little legs, but studying Robert warily. The tiny dog glanced briefly at the sleeping Pierre and seemed to shudder visibly before turning his gaze back to Robert. He sensed that the four-week-old animal had made up his mind about the two strangers who had broken
into his home—about who was his potential protector and who might do him harm.

Robert spoke softly and fondled the sleek black head. It was so tiny he could enclose it in the palm of his hand. A quiver of pleasure ran through the puppy’s taut little body and he rewarded Robert with a nuzzle. The little dog would have bitten the hand that fed him if it belonged to Pierre, but Robert seemed to have earned his trust completely.

German shepherds were hugely popular in Robert’s native Czechoslovakia, and he knew the breed well. Running his fingers along the brown back, he brushed away a thin layer of plaster dust to reveal a narrow black streak that ran the length of the dog’s spine. Robert recognized this thin black line as signifying a thoroughbred, an aristocrat of the breed. No wonder the puppy had shown such pluck when he first laid eyes on these two intruders.

The puppy’s body was so emaciated that the ears and legs seemed almost comically large, yet Robert detected a dignity in the animal that was striking. He had barely the strength to stand, yet he had guarded the miserable heap of straw and rags that had been his bed with the courage of a lion. The pitifully neglected puppy of today would surely grow up to be the most spirited and dependable of dogs if ever he survived the war.

As Robert worked his fingers deeper into the animal’s coat, his mind drifted to a memory from childhood. He was ten years old and enchanted by everything the wild countryside of his homeland had to offer him and his gang of friends. One day they had penetrated deeper than normal into the remote mountains and woodlands. They’d come across a cave where, huddled together at the back, they had found three small wolf cubs.

Terrified by the thought that the mother might return, Robert and his friends had run from the scene as fast as their legs would carry them, fearing they would be savaged at any moment. Through such experiences Robert had learned to fear, love, and respect nature,
and he had developed a close affinity with animals of all kinds. The physical resemblance between those wolf cubs and this German shepherd puppy was remarkable, doubtless explaining why the little pup had conjured up fond memories of far more innocent times.