‘I understand. I wish to be there. Can you understand?’
‘Yes.’ Tony clasped his hand. ‘Welcome aboard. We leave in an hour and a half.’
*
‘I am so excited,’ Sandrine confessed as they watched the dawn rising out of the east.
They had walked all night to reach the position allotted to them, and now, forty strong, were crouched in a hollow. In front of them low hills continued to undulate; they could not yet see Uzice. Immediately beneath them a road wound its way through the valleys, but this early in the morning there was no traffic. The men sprawled on the ground, content to rest after their long march, and content too to leave their fates in the hands of their officer, who, however foreign, was one of the very few of them who had actually seen action in this war; the story of how he had broken out of the Ustase camp, and virtually destroyed it in doing so, had been passed from man to man through the Partisan force.
Sandrine squeezed his hand.
‘You know that some of us are going to be killed,’ he reminded her.
‘Is there a better way to die than fighting, shoulder to shoulder?’
‘No, I don’t think there is.’
She kissed him. ‘But we are not going to be killed. We are going to survive, and live forever. With Elena.’
‘Tito might have something to say about that.’
‘Fuck Tito. Actually, that might be rather fun. But let him make his rules. We shall obey them until the War is over, and then . . . Do you know what? I shall take up wearing trousers permanently. I like the feel of them against my legs.’
Tony thought she might do very well. In the strangest way, in her pants and blouse and sidecap she was even more feminine than in a dress, and certainly much more attractive than in one of those shapeless ankle-length Serb gowns.
‘You’d better get some sleep,’ he recommended. ‘It’s going to be a long night.’
He even dozed himself, but awoke regularly, his nerves taut; once he saw a German convoy on the road beneath their position. In real terms, this was a weakness in the German situation. Their army was heavily mechanised, as Tito had said, and while this gave them tremendous power of speed and movement, without their panzers this movement could only be along roads, and thus in clearly calculable directions.
But they still represented the most formidable fighting force the world had yet seen. And they were about to be defied by a relative handful of men, and one woman, armed only with rifles, tommy-guns and hand grenades.
Tony was not aware of fear, except of what he might find in the Gestapo headquarters. He knew they would have the advantage of complete surprise, in that the enemy would not have the slightest suspicion that there was an armed force so close to them, virtually surrounding them. Rather, Tony felt a sense of exhilaration because they would be going into battle aggressively instead of defensively, even if it would be only a raid followed by a precipitate retreat. If they could carry out their several objectives they would nonetheless have scored a victory.
Sandrine woke up. ‘Do you think Bernhard will be there?’ she asked. ‘I hope he is. I want to kill him.’
Tony squeezed her hand.
*
The group became tense as the evening drew in. Weapons were checked again and again, and there was much chaff, not all of it good-natured. At nine o’clock it was still quite bright, certainly too bright for any large body of men to approach the town. The men grew restless. Most were standing up and walking to and fro, looking anxiously at their commanding officer; although nearly all of them wore watches, they knew it was his which mattered. Tony felt just as eager as his men; the hands of his watch barely seemed to be moving. But at last it was five minutes to ten.
‘Prepare to move out,’ he said quietly, and waited for them to form up, going on sound, as it was now quite dark. ‘Move out.’
He had spent some of the day memorising his map as well as the town plan, and struck out confidently across the rolling countryside. This presented no great difficulty, but he needed to bear in mind that they had only an hour and a half to cross five miles, and could not afford to slow down.
At twenty to midnight they descended the last hillside and looked down on the lights of Uzice, only half a mile away. The only glow was that of streetlights and the occasional building. Still there was no suggestion that anyone in the town had the slightest idea of what was about to descend on them. There was little wind, and almost no sound. It was equally impossible to believe that there were 900 men crouching in these hills, with murder and mayhem in their hearts.
Again the hands of his watch seemed to move with interminable slowness. But finally they reached five to midnight.
‘Check your weapons,’ Tony said.
He was surrounded by clicks, and Sandrine gave a last squeeze of his arm.
‘Thirty seconds!’
The night was split apart by a huge outburst of firing to their right. Asztalos was attacking the outpost.
Tony stood up. ‘Let’s go. At the double, but keep it steady.’
They trotted down the hill, and reached the road. They crossed this and approached the houses from the appointed side. Before they gained them they heard more gunfire from in front of them, and the wail of a siren. Dogs began barking, and people began shouting and screaming. Heads poked out of windows as they ran up their chosen alley.
‘Get inside,’ Tony shouted at them. ‘Take cover!’
They reached a main street, and were confronted by a policeman riding a bicycle. He dismounted. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘What are you doing?’
‘We are Partisans,’ Tony told him. ‘Take cover.’
The policeman gaped at them, and reached for the pistol on his belt. One of the squad cut him down with a single shot, then they were all leaping over him and the fallen bicycle and running along the street.
Now the firing was all around them, and general. The alarm was still wailing, and various whistles were being blown. Shutters banged as people began taking shelter.
They heard the deeper thuds of grenades, and a moment later crossed the head of the street at the far end of which was the German barracks and headquarters. There was a considerable battle going on down there, men shouting, grenades exploding, rifles and tommy-guns firing; as far as Tony could judge, Tito had not yet broken through the gates. But that was not his immediate concern. He pointed, and his men followed him down a side street; they emerged in front of the Gestapo headquarters.
As he had been warned, there were four guards outside the building. Their presence helped him to identify it; as it was after dark, there was no flag. The sentries were obviously very agitated by what they could hear happening to every side, but were maintaining their position with commendable discipline. Now they stared through the darkness at the approaching people, able to make out that there was a considerable number but not that they were armed.
One stepped forward. ‘Halt there!’ he shouted. ‘Or we will fire into you.’
In reply, and without waiting for the command, the Partisans opened fire. The soldiers were scattered across the ground; only one or two managed to fire their own weapons, and the shots went wild.
Tony led the rush across the small square and up the steps of the building, aware that Sandrine and Svetovar were immediately behind him. Someone opened the front door to look out, saw the armed people charging at him, and hastily closed the door again. Tony fired a burst from his tommy-gun into the panelling before any bolts could be shut, and then hurled the door open, jumping over the dying man inside.
He had turned on the hall light, and Tony looked down a corridor with several doors opening off it; on the right-hand wall there was a staircase going up. This had a landing, and on the landing there now appeared a woman, still pulling her dressing gown over her nightgown. She was in her thirties, Tony estimated, and wore her blonde hair in two plaits.
‘Shit!’ he muttered, but before he could make up his mind what to do there was a burst from the tommy
-gun beside him. The front of the woman’s nightdress exploded into red, and she came tumbling down the stairs, arms and legs flailing.
He looked at Svetovar.
‘No prisoners,’ Svetovar reminded him.
A shot rang out, and one of the men behind him gave a gasp and fell to his knees. The man who had fired the shot appeared briefly on the landing and then disappeared again, followed by a hail of bullets.
Tony pulled himself together. ‘Sergeant Pilnic,’ he snapped, ‘take half your men and clear out the top. Use grenades.’
‘Sir!’ Pilnic waved his hand and his men followed him up the stairs.
‘Clear each room down here,’ Tony told the rest of his people, himself kicking in the first door. This room was empty, but there were two men and a woman in the next, behind a locked door. This was knocked in, and the people inside backed against the wall, hands held high.
‘Hold your fire!’ Tony shouted.
The three of them gasped in relief.
‘You!’ He pointed at the woman. Like the men, she wore what he presumed was a uniform: white skirt and black blouse, with black tie, stockings and low-heeled shoes. She was a small, neat woman with dark hair, and she actually looked less afraid than her two companions. ‘You have prisoners here.’
She hesitated, and Svetovar stepped up to her and jammed his tommy-gun into her stomach. ‘Speak, or die.’
The woman gasped. Now she glanced left and right at her companions, and licked her lips. ‘Yes, there are prisoners here,’ she said in Serbo-Croat.
‘Where?’ Tony asked.
Another quick glance at her companions, but Svetovar was again driving his gun muzzle into her stomach, and her face twisted with pain. ‘Downstairs.’
‘Right,’ Tony said. ‘Show us.’
Svetovar grasped her shoulder and thrust her into the hall. Firing continued all around them; upstairs was a mass of explosions, and Tony could now smell smoke. The Partisans had broken into the room next door, and two dead bodies lay on the floor. When Tony saw them he remembered the two living bodies he had just left behind.
‘Dispose of those men,’ Tony snapped over his shoulder.
‘No,’ the woman gasped. ‘Please!’
‘Shut up,’ Svetovar told her, and thrust her at the stairs leading down. She stumbled on to them, but it was dark, and she tripped and landed on her hands and knees at the bottom. Following her down, Tony swept his hand over the wall and found the light switch; the upstairs lights were still on. Now the naked bulb glowed, and he looked past the woman. They were in a small lobby, off which opened three doors.
She raised her head to point, then buried it in her arms again. Tony kicked the door she had indicated, sent it swinging in, and followed it, tommy-gun thrust forward. There were three men in the room. They were naked, and were suspended from hooks in the ceiling by ropes round their wrists. Their bodies were a mass of red weals. But they were alive, their eyes opening and their muscles twitching as they tried to understand what was going on around them.
‘Take them down,’ Tony commanded. ‘Get them out of here.’ He turned back to the woman. ‘There was a woman,’ he snapped. ‘Tell me where she is.’
The woman raised her head again, and encountered the muzzle of Sandrine’s tommy-gun. She gasped again at the pain. ‘Upstairs,’ she said.
‘Where upstairs?’
She drew a deep breath. ‘In the commandant’s bed.’
‘Shit!’ he said. From both the noise and the smell there could be no doubt that the upper floors of the building were well alight.
‘She goes there?’ Sandrine asked.
‘He makes her,’ the woman panted. ‘He makes her every night.’
‘Bitch,’ Sandrine said, and shot her through the head.
Blood flew, but Tony was already pushing past her and through his men to run back up the stairs, where he saw the rest of his men. Sergeant Pilnic was holding Elena in his arms. She was naked, but did not appear to be seriously harmed.
*
‘Elena!’ Sandrine shrieked, running forward to throw both arms round her friend and the sergeant, tommy-gun and all.
‘Sandrine!’ Elena kissed her and looked past her at Tony. ‘I knew you would come.’
Tony replaced Sandrine to embrace her and remove her from the sergeant’s grasp. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Now that you are here.’
‘Elena!’ It was Svetovar’s turn to embrace his sister. ‘What did they do to you?’
‘This is not the time,’ Elena said.
‘Sir,’ Pilnic said to Tony, ‘we must get out. This house is burning.’
The heat was intense, and smoke was starting to drift down the staircase; they could hear the crashes of collapsing timbers.
Tony looked at the cellar staircase, where the three other prisoners were being brought up; they could barely stand. ‘Find something for these people to wear,’ he said.
‘Here,’ called one of the Partisans.
Just inside the front door, and swept aside by the initial rush, there was a stand, on which there were several caps and greatcoats. The coats were handed out, and wrapped around Elena and the three other prisoners.
‘A weapon,’ Elena said. ‘I must have a weapon.’
One of the Partisans gave her a pistol he had taken from a dead German.
Tony opened the front door and stepped outside. They had not been inside the Gestapo headquarters for more than fifteen minutes, but the sounds of conflict had deepened, with heavy firing coming from the barracks on their right. Some people were now on the streets, either unable to suppress their curiosity or determined to get into the fight.
It was, however, obvious that Tito and the main body were having a harder time of it than they had expected.
‘Sergeant Pilnic,’ Tony said, ‘take six men and the captives and get out of town. Make for the rendezvous. You go with them, Sandrine.’
‘No,’ Sandrine said. ‘I came here to kill Germans.’
‘You’ve already done that.’
‘Not enough. I am staying with you.’
Tony looked above her at Elena.
‘I am staying too,’ Elena said. ‘I have not killed anyone yet.’
‘The commandant . . .’
‘The sergeant shot him.’
Tony looked at Pilnic, who waggled his eyebrows.
‘Very well, Sergeant, take four men and those three and get out of town. The rest of you—’
A shot rang out, followed by a fusillade. Three men fell. The others thrust their way back inside the burning building, coughing in the smoke.
‘What the shit . . .?’ Elena gasped.
‘You in there!’ a voice shouted.
‘Bernhard!’ Sandrine breathed.
‘We have this street blocked,’ Bernhard shouted. ‘You cannot escape. Throw down your weapons and come out.’
‘Where did he come from?’ Svetovar asked.
‘The important thing is that he is here,’ Tony said. He tried to think. The German force could only have broken out of the barracks, which meant that things were really not going well. But what sort of a force was it? He still commanded nearly forty men . . . and two women.
And they could not stay where they were. Everyone was now coughing, including himself.
‘We must charge those men,’ he said.
‘But . . . if they have machine-guns . . .’ Pilnic said.
‘If they had a machine-gun, Sergeant, they would be using it. Our business is to get through them before they can bring one up. Everyone ready?’
The men looked anxious, but determined enough. The two women merely looked determined.
‘Right. As you come out, move out of the line of fire, but keep shooting.’
‘Those civilians . . .’ someone said.
‘If they have any sense, they’ll get out of sight as soon as the shooting starts. If they don’t, they’ll have to take their chances. Now remember, get out of the direct line of fire, but ke
ep shooting and keep advancing as fast as you can. There can’t be more than a dozen of them. Once we are through, rally on my whistle.’ He turned to the women. ‘Can you manage in bare feet?’ he asked Elena.
‘I can manage.’
‘Then both of you stay behind me.’
‘You in there!’ Bernhard shouted again. ‘I will give you ten seconds to surrender, then I will open fire.’
Tony drew a deep breath. ‘Let’s go.’
He threw the front door open and ran down the steps, immediately moving to his left, as he did so firing at the cluster of figures he could see occupying the centre of the street about a hundred yards away; he could only pray that they were Germans and not innocent bystanders.
They were Germans, and they immediately returned fire. But they were scattering themselves, as they had obviously not realised just how large a force had been inside the headquarters. Several fell, but then Tony knew some of his own people had been hit as well. He went down himself, but felt no immediate pain, and thought he must have slipped on the cobbles.
Elena held his arm and helped him back up. Sandrine had also fallen, but from the stream of ‘shits’ Tony reckoned she was not badly hurt either. Now she shouted, ‘Bernhard! Where are you, you bastard?’
They reached the German position, stumbling over dead and dying bodies. There was still firing all around them, and Tony went down again. This time he had felt the impact, and knew he had been hit. And suddenly Bernhard was standing above him, uniform as resplendent as ever.
‘You,’ he said. ‘I might have known it would be you.’ His gaze moved to Sandrine, who was being helped up by Elena. ‘And you. What a jolly reunion. You are under arrest.’
Tony tried to assess the situation. Bernhard had several men at his back, and his own people seemed to have dissipated to either side, into the flickering light and dark of the flames which were now all around them. And he was hit; he could feel the blood dribbling down his leg, and now the pain had started. But to surrender . . . His hand, still holding his pistol, twitched.
‘Move, and I will kill you,’ Bernhard said, and waved his men forward.
‘Bastard!’ Sandrine yelled at him.
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