By the Blood of Heroes (25 page)

It was a decision he would come to regret.

Along the way, Freeman convinced Mae to stop off and have a drink with him. One drink led to two, two to three, and before they knew it they were both a bit drunk. From what Burke would hear later, Freeman began to mouth off to a group of local factory workers, who in turn didn’t care for the slick rich-boy attitude he was throwing in their faces. More than a little drunk themselves, the foursome decided to teach Freeman and his girlfriend a lesson. They waited until Jack and Mae left the bar and then intercepted them in the dark parking lot. While two of them beat Jack with their fists and stomped him with their work boots, the others put a scare into Mae, groping her with their hands and intimidating her with their size. By all indications they didn’t intend her any real physical harm, but Mae didn’t know that, and she reacted as if her life depended on it.

Breaking away from the two of them, she raced through the darkness between several parked cars and out onto the street, possibly hoping to wave down an oncoming car.

The driver of the truck that hit her claimed later not to have seen her until it was too late.

Mae’s body had been tossed aside like so much discarded waste. In the wake of the accident, the assailants scattered, leaving Jack unconscious and Mae bleeding to death in the street.

Burke’s eyes were dry as he remembered that night, the pain and misery he’d felt burned away by all the anger he’d harbored since. He’d spent the rest of that terrible evening at his mother’s side, only learning of the death of his fiancée when Jack called from the county jail, having been picked up by the police in the wake of the accident.

How you feel about Jack, good or bad, doesn’t matter,
he reminded himself for what was probably the tenth time since taking the mission. His half brother’s status as a POW put the country in danger, and the Intelligence Division’s fears couldn’t be allowed to come to fruition. It was as simple as that.

One way or another, he would see to it that Jack’s presence in that camp was no longer a threat to the president or to the country itself.

One way or another . . .

Chapter Thirty-one

THE FARMHOUSE

C
ompton woke him shortly after sunrise the next morning with a hand on his arm.

“Got a truck coming down the road, sir,” the doc said when he saw that he had the captain’s attention.

“Wake the others,” Burke told him, as he grabbed his Tommy gun and headed for the kitchen.

Sergeant Moore was standing near one of the windows, looking out through a small gap in the curtains, when Burke slipped into the room.

“What have we got?” Burke whispered, as he took up position at the other window.

“Two-ton lorry. One man in the cab. Back of the truck is covered with a tarp.”

As Burke looked out the window he was just in time to watch the driver in question bring the truck to a stop facing the front of the house. Burke couldn’t see the driver’s face clearly through the windshield, but something about the man’s posture gave him the sense that he was looking at something above their heads.

It took Burke a moment to figure it out.

Smoke.

They’d let the fire die down earlier that morning, but there must still be a thin trail of smoke coming out of the chimney, and it had apparently caught the driver’s eye.

After another moment’s hesitation, the driver opened the door and climbed down from the lorry’s cab.

He was dressed simply in a dark shirt, trousers, and black boots. He wore a thick workman’s coat, the kind that fell below the waist, and had a plaid cap on his head over his curly hair.

He took a few steps forward and shouted something toward the house in French.

“Bonjour! Quelq’un personne est ici?”

“What’s he saying?” Charlie whispered.

Burke shook his head. He’d picked up a fair bit of French over the years, but the man’s accent was too thick for him to understand.

Outside, the newcomer paused, then yelled again.

“Quelq’un personne est ici?”

To Burke it sounded like the same phrase as before, but he couldn’t be certain.

Moving a few steps away from the window allowed Burke to see the rest of the house as he checked the position of his men, nodding in approval at what he saw. Jones and Manning were watching the back, while Williams and Compton had each taken one of the side windows, checking to be certain that no one tried to flank them through the trees. That left only Professor Graves. Since he’d admitted that he wasn’t all that great a shot, Burke decided to hold him back in case of emergency, which was why he was now crouched beside the bed, keeping his head down but watching the others to see if he was needed.

Satisfied, Burke stepped back over to the window. The Frenchman hadn’t moved; he still stood facing the house, an uncertain expression on his face.

“Time to meet the locals,” Burke said beneath his breath, then opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. He had the strap of the Tommy gun over his right shoulder and was holding on to the grip with his right hand. This allowed him to keep the weapon ready without having to hold it out in front of him, something that was sure to be seen as aggressive. He pulled the door shut behind him with his free hand.

No surprise showed on the Frenchman’s face at Burke’s appearance, though he did glance behind him at his truck.

Burke did the same, but didn’t see anything, and so dismissed it as simple nervousness on the other man’s part.
Perhaps he was making sure we aren’t sneaking up behind him
.

After glancing around and double-checking they were still alone, Burke descended the steps and slowly made his way across the yard toward the Frenchman.

As he drew closer, the other man spoke up in halting English and asked, “Capitan Burke?”

The sound of his own name caused some of Burke’s tension to dissipate. There was only one person this far behind enemy lines who would know who he was and that was their contact from the local partisan group. Apparently Pierre, if that was even his real name, hadn’t given up on them, after all, despite their late arrival.

Let’s hope he doesn’t want his wine back.

“That’s right, I’m Burke,” he replied, pointing to himself with his mechanical hand as he said his name so there wouldn’t be any mistake.

Pierre glanced behind him again. This time, when he turned back, his hand dipped suddenly into the pocket of the jacket he was wearing.

Alarm bells went off in Burke’s head.

He threw himself to the side just as the gun secreted inside the pocket of the Frenchman’s coat went off, the bullet whizzing past Burke’s head with only inches to spare.

Burke’s finger tightened on the trigger of his own weapon even as he was falling. The Tommy gun roared and a stream of bullets stitched their way across Pierre’s chest, causing him to jerk and shake with their impact.

Glass broke somewhere behind him, and the sound of Charlie’s Tommy gun reached his ears as Burke hit the ground. He landed on his shoulder and let his momentum carry him forward into a short roll, coming up on one knee with his weapon pointed ahead of him. Gunfire was flying in both directions, and all it took was one look to understand why.

The tarp on the back of the lorry had been thrown off, allowing half a dozen German soldiers, all of them human as far as Burke could tell, to clamber out, take cover behind the vehicle, and begin firing at the house. Burke’s men were firing back at them, the sharp crack of their rifles punctuated by the roar of the Tommy gun in Charlie’s hands. Burke added his own firepower to the mix, felt the machine gun jerk in his hands, and watched with satisfaction as the enemy soldier he’d been targeting fell off the truck with blood pouring from a wound in the center of his chest.

As several of the enemy soldiers shifted their attention toward his position, Burke decided it might be prudent to find some cover. There was no way he’d make it back to the house; there was too much distance to cover and he’d be exposed all the way to the front steps, even with the help of covering fire from his men.

If you can’t go backward . . .

Surging to his feet, he kept a steady volume of fire directed at the truck as he rushed forward. Every step seemed to take forever and his feet felt like cement blocks as he fought his way across the half-dozen yards that separated him from the protection of the stone wall at the front of the yard. Bullets filled the air around him, whipping past like a swarm of angry bees, and he felt one clip the side of his ammo belt just as he threw himself down behind the fence.

Somewhere in those last few seconds the drum on his Tommy gun ran dry, so he hit the switch to drop the empty one on the ground, grabbed another one off his belt, and moved to slap it into place.

Movement caught his eye and he looked up to find a German soldier leering at him over the top of the wall, the barrel of his Mauser pointed right in Burke’s face.

Time slowed.

Burke’s left hand smacked into the bottom of the drum magazine, knocking it into place, even as he began to bring the barrel up toward his foe. His mind was screaming
Too late! Too late! Too late!
even as he tried to bring his weapon to bear, praying the other man had a misfire or some other failure . . . anything to let him live.

Someone was apparently listening to him.

A small red hole appeared in the center of the man’s forehead and he toppled backward out of sight.

There wasn’t time to thank whoever had taken the shot. Another enemy soldier suddenly ran through the gate, searching for a target, but he turned left instead of right and Burke was able to cut him down with a burst from his Tommy gun.

Even as that man fell, another took his place, firing point-blank at Burke as he did the same, and then there were two dead Germans in front of him and God knew how many more in the truck.

Letting go of his Tommy gun for a second, Burke snatched one of the two grenades he carried off his belt. He hooked the index finger of his mechanical hand through the ring hanging off the grenade and pulled out the arming pin. He counted to three and then lobbed the grenade over the stone wall in the direction of the truck. As soon as he let go, he shoved himself against the stone wall, trying to make himself as small a target as possible for when the shrapnel began to fly.

There was a shattering roar and a sudden blast of heat as the grenade found its target and exploded. Pieces of wood and metal and human flesh began to rain out of the sky, including an arm that struck Burke on the shoulder and nearly made him scream. Burke held his position, and when a German soldier rushed through the gate, his body on fire, Burke calmly put a bullet in him.

A few gunshots followed, and then silence fell over the battleground.

For a moment Burke stayed where he was, Tommy gun in hand and ready to fire. When he felt enough time had passed, he slowly stood up and looked around.

The lorry was a blazing ruin. Flames several feet high consumed it and what was left of the men who’d been trapped inside when the grenade had gone off. The bodies of several other German soldiers lay in the area around the truck, all of them dead.

Burke heard the door to the house open behind him and he turned to see Sergeant Moore and Private Jones standing there, guns at the ready, their heads turning to either side as they searched for targets.

“We’re clear,” he told them.

Burke stepped over to the Frenchman and was surprised to discover that he was still alive. He was about to call for the doctor when he noticed the blood bubbling up from two wounds in the middle of the man’s chest, and Burke knew there wasn’t anything they could do for him. He was literally drowning in his own blood and probably wouldn’t last more than a few more minutes. The best they could do was to make him comfortable until he passed.

To that end Burke took the man’s hand and held it, letting him know he wasn’t alone. The Frenchman gripped his hand with surprising strength and pulled him closer as he tried to tell him something.

Burke didn’t understand.

The Frenchman tried again.

“Pardonnez-moi,”
he said, as he coughed up a thick mass of blood.

Forgive me.

Burke glanced away, trying to order his thoughts, to find it in his heart to honestly forgive the man, and at that moment the Frenchman’s grip suddenly when slack. When Burke looked back, the man was dead.

The man’s attempt to beg for forgiveness didn’t sit right with Burke until he ripped open the man’s shirt and found the red welts that showed where they had burned him with a hot poker.

After that, it wasn’t too hard to figure out what must have happened. The Boche must have stumbled on the partisan safe house, discovered that Pierre was waiting for someone, and had then tortured him to get information. Maybe they’d seized his family, threatened them as well. In any case, Pierre had cracked, and once he’d done so they’d used him as bait in an attempt to lure the Americans out into the open.

What was done was done. Nothing to do about it now.

“Your orders, sir?” Sergeant Moore asked, from where he was patiently standing off to one side. Burke hadn’t even heard him approach.

He shook his head to clear it of the extraneous thoughts and focused on the task at hand. The truck fire was still burning, and great, greasy plumes of black smoke were wandering skyward. If the locals weren’t wondering what was going on, they certainly would be soon. It was time to leave.

“Let’s grab what we can from the bodies—maps, ammunition, even local currency if they have any—and then get out of here. I want to be back on the trail in fifteen minutes.”

“Yes, sir!”

As Sergeant Moore hurried back toward the house, Burke took another look at the devastation around him.

Guess our days of running without discovery are over.