Rossett watched the man walking, then turned back to the truck and found another man in front of him waiting. He was shorter than Rossett, confused, another one with lowered eyes, too scared to look up. Rossett had to lean forward so that he could catch the prisoner’s attention. He was crying. Rossett took a step back. The HDT standing next to the man paused, unsure, then led the prisoner away.
Another prisoner was brought forward.
This one was calm, his suit jacket bunched up around his shoulders because an HDT trooper was holding his arm too tightly. His tie and spectacles were askew. He waited for Rossett to play his part. The man glanced at the HDT, and then back at Rossett, unsure whether he was supposed to speak first.
Rossett filled the silence.
“Did you see anything?”
It was all he could think of to say. It sounded stupid, and embarrassed him a little.
“When?” The man looked confused.
The HDT trooper looked at Becker, who signaled that he should hurry the prisoner away.
The trooper did as he was told.
Rossett turned to look at Becker.
“How am I supposed to interrogate them here? Like this?”
Becker shrugged. “You had your chance in the jail.”
“I need time . . . to prepare . . . I . . .” Rossett looked back up into the truck, and the next prisoner waiting to drop down.
They stared at each other, and it struck him that this prisoner wasn’t scared.
Rossett realized he was scared.
An emotion he’d forgotten all about had just woken up in the pit of his stomach, for the first time in years.
This was wrong. Where he was was wrong. What he was about to witness was wrong.
He was scared.
He didn’t know what to do.
He wanted to stop it, but he wanted no part of it.
He was scared.
The prisoner dropped down off the truck.
“Proud of yourself?” the prisoner said flatly.
Rossett looked at Becker again.
“We don’t have all day,” Becker said in German. “It isn’t fair to make them wait.”
Rossett swallowed and shook his head. “Fair?”
Becker sighed, then waved to the soldiers and the queue of HDT at the back of the truck. “Get them off and line them up. Let’s get this over with.”
It began.
Tumbling death.
Almost silent.
Everyone knew their part and carried it out to perfection.
People jumped down.
Dropping into the arms of their executioners, who were waiting to catch them. Some jogged, some couldn’t, but all of them moved toward the plaza and its guns. Quietly, mostly confused, going toward their end like children answering a bell in a school yard.
Rossett turned away and walked out of the lee of the wind so that he could feel it bite.
He looked at them.
They were lining up in front of the emplacements.
Shivering.
The wind blew, and the only movement was the cracking of skirts and coats against the legs of the doomed.
There was a child.
Rossett hadn’t seen the boy at first. Amid the shuffling confusion, the kid had been lost in the legs and shadows.
“There is a child.” Rossett said it quietly, almost to himself.
He pointed at the kid.
“There is a child.”
This time louder. He looked around, and then back at the boy.
The corporal who had given Rossett the cigarette stood between him and the prisoners, one hand on his hip, the other tapping a pistol lazily against his thigh.
“Hey!” Rossett shouted at the corporal. “There is a kid there!”
The wind whipped at the words and sucked them inland.
Rossett took a few steps toward the corporal, who turned away. Rossett could see the smoke of the corporal’s cigarette. It all seemed so normal, so relaxed.
“There is a kid!”
The camera moved over to Rossett’s left, scanning the huddled prisoners, who were being hectored into a line. The camera panned around, capturing Rossett before drifting back to the prisoners.
Rossett looked at Becker with his finger still pointing at the boy.
“There is a kid in the line! A child! Be careful!”
An SS private was watching Rossett from over by one of the machine guns, and their eyes met.
“He’s only a boy!”
The private stared back, not understanding or not caring.
Rossett felt like he was in a nightmare.
Nobody seemed able to see him.
Nobody seemed able to hear him.
He caught hold of a passing sleeve but it shook itself loose.
He looked at the boy.
The kid was crying. Looking for someone to hold his hand.
The boy looked at Rossett and held out the hand that needed holding.
“It’s okay, it’ll be okay, I’ll get someone.” Rossett tried to soothe the kid from sixty feet away.
The camera moved in between them, blocking the boy and pointing at Rossett again as its operator smiled and gave him a thumbs-up.
Rossett realized he was captured in a crime. Forever on film. Damned by anyone who dared to watch through their fingers in future times.
He was ashamed and felt his heart thudding. He saw Becker, who in turn glanced up to the once-great clock in the tower of the Royal Liver Building above them. It was broken, frozen, its tick and its tock long forgotten.
Rossett started to walk toward Becker, still pointing toward the kid.
“He’s just a kid!” Over the wind this time, shouted with all his strength. “You can’t . . .”
Becker lifted a hand, then pointed.
Rossett followed the direction over his shoulder and saw the corporal behind him.
The corporal nodded, looked at Rossett, and smiled.
Two Germans, one on either side, with hands like vises, took Rossett’s arms and propelled him forward. He kicked, his heels caught a curb, and then his knees folded as they rushed him on toward the huddled group who were waiting to die.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the camera panning around again, capturing the struggle as its operator moved so that he was walking backward a few feet in front of Rossett.
Rossett twisted at the waist and managed to shake one hand free. He drove up with his elbow into the face of the soldier on his right, catching him on the tip of his nose and breaking it. His fist was already folded and sweeping across to hit the man on the left when someone else grabbed his free arm, and two more swept his feet up off the ground.
He heard a pistol slide being pulled.
Rossett bucked like a bronco. Arching his back and gritting his teeth, he pulled the men and forced them to stagger from side to side. Finally, they closed in above him. The man holding his left foot slipped and let go. Rossett didn’t hesitate; he flicked his leg and swept with a scissor kick into the face of the man holding his right leg.
Another one down.
Three of them left.
Two more took their place, then another one, then another.
They held him down this time, pushing him onto the ground as they struggled to control him. Rossett spat and snarled like a caged cat. He twisted, grabbing and scratching, fighting for his life, an animal struggle against superior numbers.
There were too many.
Rossett saw Becker through the gaps, circling the crowd of people holding him down. One of the HDT gripped Rossett’s head and pushed it onto the wet cobbles. Rossett sank his teeth into two fingers and tasted blood.
The HDT screamed and let go.
There were more of them.
So many they felt like soil on a coffin lid.
Rossett tried his best, but it wasn’t enough.
He screamed and tried with all his might, but they wouldn’t let go.
He saw Becker again.
Thei
r eyes met.
Rossett wanted to call out, but someone clamped his mouth with a rough hand that smelled of diesel.
Becker was holding a Walther pistol, high, next to his cheek, pointing at the sky. He leaned in, pulling one of the men holding Rossett to one side so that he had a clear shot.
“Hold him still.”
Becker didn’t shout. He was calm, as if he were putting an animal out of its misery.
Rossett was going to die.
He stopped, just a fraction of a second, watching the black eye of the muzzle come toward him through the arms of the troopers, like a snake through long gray grass.
Finally, it was time.
Rossett realized he was relieved.
Blood.
Sticky, wet, hot blood.
Splashing across Rossett and the men holding him down.
He saw brain matter spattered on the uniform of one of them, then felt the pressure holding him down ease a little.
Someone fell across him.
Rossett felt his arms come free as the people holding him realized they suddenly had greater priorities. He twisted, rolling a little and then pushing against the body on top of him until a horizon of light formed that he could see out of.
There was panic on the plaza. People were running, soldiers were lying flat on their stomachs, and four bodies lay around and on top of Rossett.
There was a lot of blood and a little brain, but none of it was Rossett’s. He rolled out from under, then crouched down low as he heard a shot behind him. It had come from the Royal Liver Building. There was another shot. Rossett scanned the black sockets that used to be windows. He counted off at least ten floors with ten windows each.
Another shot.
He started to run in a crouch toward the building. Experience told him that moving away from a sniper across open ground got you shot, especially if the shooter was high up in a building. If you headed toward them and managed to cover the ground quickly, once you were below them, you always had the advantage.
To his left the German machine gun nests opened up on what was left of the British prisoners who hadn’t had the sense to start running themselves.
Bodies were dropping.
Chaos.
Rossett kept moving.
He could see the bee-sting flecks of dust on the building. He knew people were shooting at him from behind.
He kept running. Head low. As fast as he could. Dipping shoulders, weaving like a rugby player, throwing off whoever was behind trying to line up their sights. He was five feet from a hole in the wall when he finally jumped into the black shadows and safety of the other side.
Touchdown.
Becker dived for cover as whoever was sniping at them took out the man next to him. Being six foot four was never an advantage whenever there was a sniper around, especially one as good as the one who was shooting at him at that moment.
Another soldier spun and dropped. Becker scuttled across the cobbles and slid in close to the fresh corpse so quickly it barely had time to bounce. He looked around for Rossett and saw him running toward the bombed-out buildings that flanked the landward side of the plaza. Becker fired two shots at Rossett, and missed as another round came in from the sniper.
Shit.
Dannecker had wanted Rossett dead.
“He can’t contact London if he is dead, so make him dead!”
Becker had been reluctant, but orders were orders. Dannecker wanted Rossett dead, but Becker had been making sure it happened in such a way that if things went wrong, he would come out of it clean. Hence the camera to record the Englishman’s futile attempts to stop a legal execution of some civilians.
It should have been easy.
It would have been easy.
If someone hadn’t decided to start shooting at him.
Becker scanned around at his men, then started shouting at them to catch Rossett. Becker needed a dead body to show his boss; otherwise his boss might decide that Becker’s body would do instead.
Rossett hit hard, landing on a rubble pile and bashing his elbows and knees. He rolled, down into what had once been a basement, but now, due to most of the ceiling above being blown away, was the ground floor. The space was filled with more rubble, and he was spitting dust as he hit the bottom of the pile. It stung his eyes and he blinked as he scrambled deeper into the building, away from the sound of the guns outside, into the darkness.
Rossett didn’t stop. He knew it wouldn’t take long for the Germans to sort themselves out. It appeared that most of the men on the plaza had never been under any sort of sustained fire. They’d panicked, and like sheep sticking together for safety, they’d been caught in the open and mostly stayed there, blasting away at shadows and rumors.
Rossett’s mouth was dry from the plaster and brick dust. He spat again, then started moving. He could hear shouting behind him. Germans, on the hunt for him now, creeping through the building, not knowing where he was and probably not wanting to be the one to find him.
The rattle of distant machine gun fire stopped, but Rossett didn’t. He finally made it to the front of the building, the farthest side from the plaza. He climbed up a fallen steel girder, heading for street level and light.
He was trapped. The front of the building was almost as damaged as the back. The only difference was that here there were wooden boards nailed where windows had once been. Thin shafts of light leaked through holes in the timber, tiny spotlights that made it easier for him to see the state of what was all around him.
Someone had attempted some sort of cleanup. The rubble was piled in a more uniform manner, and here and there a marble floor and remnants of carpet could be seen in the quarter light. Dust drifted in the beams as Rossett moved through the high-ceilinged lobby searching for a way out.
They were coming after him. The sound of their shouts and boots was louder.
Rossett tested some of the boards across the windows. Solid. He wondered if the Germans had installed them to stop people from making their way through to the killing field that was the plaza behind the building?
He moved on through a dark doorway that led to a high atrium. He guessed it had once been the main entrance hall. A set of dusty brass and broken glass revolving doors was at one end, but the outside of them was also covered in wood, blocking the way out.
Rossett started off across the atrium. The sound of German voices now seemed to be on his right, as well as behind, getting closer. They were outflanking him, moving quickly.
He speeded up, jumping across the occasional hole in the floor and past the rubble piles that gave him cover to check over his shoulder.
He heard the Germans entering the atrium just as he was leaving it.
They opened fire.
Plaster and dust kicked up around Rossett as he ran. He dived headlong into a long corridor that ran along the right-hand side of the front of the building, scrambled to his feet, then sprinted down the corridor. Along one wall were frosted glass doors that backed onto the atrium.
They exploded around him as he ran. Someone was tracing a line of bullets inches behind his sprinting shadow on the glass. The noise, dust, and flying glass chased him until he barged through the swinging double doors at the end of the corridor.
He felt like a fox barely ahead of the hounds, heading deeper into the gloom of the warren he was trapped in. He ran along another corridor, then through some adjoining offices, all the while trying to catch his breath.
There was an explosion behind him.
They were using grenades to clear rooms.
Another explosion.
Gunfire.
Some shouting, then more shooting.
He was opening a gap as the SS took their time. They’d lost sight of him and seemed worried that they would pass him by, or maybe that he would ambush them if they moved too quickly. They had the luxury of a trapped quarry to hunt, and they were going to enjoy it.
Rossett turned a corner, jogged along another corridor, then skidded to a ha
lt and ran back to look into one of the offices.
A wide shaft of light. One of the window boards had been removed. Rossett ran toward it. He slammed into the wall next to the chest-high open window, paused for a quarter second, then bobbed his head so that he could look out. There were some tall warehouses. He ducked back to check the corridor.
There was another explosion, and this time Rossett felt the percussion through his feet. Some plaster dropped down from the ceiling above him and settled on his shoulders. They were getting closer. He looked back through the window toward the warehouses. He couldn’t see any people, but some of the tall timber doors were pulled open, and a few handcarts and horse-drawn carts looked like they had been abandoned outside them.
There was a raised steel train line between him and the warehouses. Liverpool’s famous Overhead Railway. Parts of the track had been cut and twisted by explosions during the city’s siege and hung down like vines in a jungle. They offered Rossett a little cover on the open ground between where he was and the warehouses.
It was enough; he had no choice. Rossett grabbed the window frame and pulled himself up.
Another explosion behind him, this one close enough to ruffle his clothes as he climbed up and through. He slithered out, catching on the frame and the remnants of broken glass in the bottom of it. He saw the board that had once been in the window some eight feet below him. Six-inch nails were sticking up out of it. He slipped the last few inches through the gap and felt his coat catch and rip as he went.
The Germans entered the room behind him and started shooting.
Rossett dropped and missed the nails more by luck than design. He was too far from cover to start running, so he rolled and looked up to the window to see if he would be able to grab any weapon that was likely to point through it.
He wouldn’t.
He leaned back against the wall, looking left and right for something to hide behind.
There was nothing.
He looked up.
A German looked down, disappeared, and then reappeared, this time clumsily trying to angle an StG 44 through the gap and down toward Rossett.
A shot rang out.
An Army of One: A John Rossett Novel Page 15