He looked a mess.
His uniform was torn and his weapon was gone. There was a gash on his face and another on his neck. Dannecker could see blood running down onto his uniform and staining it black.
Becker staggered and grabbed at the splintered bar. Dannecker went to him, hooked his arm around his waist, and helped him out into the road. Once they were outside Becker paused, gathered himself, then took his weight off his boss and stood up under his own steam.
Dannecker waited to see if Becker was going to fall over. When he saw that he wasn’t, he looked around and took stock.
There were more civilians around now, picking through the detritus as the few fit Germans tended to their colleagues with dressings and canteens of water. An Englishman was collecting some of the weapons that were strewn around.
Dannecker pulled his pistol, having to shake it free from its holster with a hand that felt like it could barely hold on to it.
He worked the slide, but Becker reached across and pushed it away.
“Don’t.”
Dannecker realized he could hear what his staff sergeant was saying.
“What?”
“Don’t. They’ll turn on us.”
Dannecker looked around and realized how outnumbered his troops were. He lowered the gun. “We can’t just let them—” He looked around at the crowds again and wiped his hand across his mouth. “How did you survive?”
“We were on our way up to the first floor. I was at the front. Then the place exploded.” Becker wiped his face clear of a fresh trickle of blood and clamped his hand to the wound on his throat. “The bend on the staircase, it took the force out of the explosion. We were trapped by part of the fallen ceiling until we could shift it.” Becker looked at the palm of his hand and then pressed it to his neck again. “Did anyone else make it out?”
“No.” Dannecker didn’t see the point in mentioning the one-armed corpse lying five feet away.
“We need to get moving, sir.” A corporal, one of those who had been manning the roadblock, appeared next to them.
“How many injured?”
“Fourteen walking, plus two serious. I’ve not been in the pub, but—”
“You don’t need to go in the pub. There is nobody alive in there,” Becker said quietly.
The corporal glanced at the pub and awaited his orders.
“Get the trucks.” Dannecker scanned the buildings on the far side of Scotland Road. Most of the windows had been blown out by the blast. The holes would make perfect sniping platforms for the resistance, or the Bear, or whoever else came along to claim his soul. He turned back to the corporal. “Get everyone on board, including the dead, as quick as you can. We’re moving out.”
The corporal saluted and spun to start gathering men as Dannecker turned back to Becker.
“He nearly got us.”
“It may have been resistance.”
“It was Bauer. He wants us dead. He wants the gold for himself, so he needs us out of the way if he is going to get it out of the city.”
“So what do we do?”
“We find him, we find the gold, we kill him, then we get the gold. Simple as that.”
O’Kane lifted his head, then rolled out of the puddle and onto his side. Debris was still falling around him, fluttering to earth like leaves in autumn, most of it landing silently in the backyards of the tenements to either side of him.
He stood up, then pulled at his wet trousers as he tried to release their grip on his legs. He looked all around him in a slow circle and started to walk cautiously toward the back of what was left of the pub.
The high wall that had bordered its yard was no longer high. In truth, it was pretty much no longer there. The force of the blast had thrown most of it into the alleyway.
Through the dust, and the gap, O’Kane could see into the interior of the building. The first and second floors were exposed to the outside, and the whole pub looked close to collapse.
The torso of a young SS private was lying near a drain in the backyard. A short ribbon of backbone was hanging out like a tongue lapping at the pool of blood that dripped down into the sewer.
The soldier stared at O’Kane with dead eyes. His mouth was open a fraction, and perfect white teeth half showed through the gap.
O’Kane looked past the boy. He could see people moving around inside. It looked like they were making ready to clear the scene.
He looked back at the boy and felt slight panic that they would miss him and that he would be left to rot in a bombed-out backyard in Liverpool.
He shook his head.
What did it matter?
The boy was dead.
He turned away. It was time to go. The only thing he had learned from the journey was that Dannecker was a man on the ropes and prone to making mistakes.
O’Kane started to jog back to where he had come from.
The Bear was winning. O’Kane needed to do something about it, and do it quick.
Tommy the grocer had locked his back gate, so O’Kane had to walk another block before he came across a way to get back out onto Scotland Road. The route he found was a narrow alley, less than two feet wide, barely a slit, threaded between two tall buildings. A blinkered strip of the street lay ahead of him. He could see people walking to and fro, appearing and disappearing behind the walls like frames in a movie.
Ten feet from the end of the alleyway, O’Kane stopped, pulled at his wet trouser leg again, and dusted himself off. He looked up. A kid was watching him, standing silhouetted at the end of the alley. Barely an urchin, with a flat cap pulled down low over hollow cheeks and black eyes. O’Kane stared at him, wondering if he had seen the pistol he was still holding, now tucked behind his leg.
The kid had his hands in the pockets of his short pants, and after a second or two he lifted his chin in greeting.
O’Kane nodded back.
The kid walked away.
O’Kane breathed, engaged the safety on the Browning, and slipped it into the waistband at the back of his trousers. He walked to the end of the alley, checked the street, and then stood on tiptoe so that he could look over the heads of the people on the pavement, back toward the pub.
He could see the canvas backs of two of the SS trucks. Either they had been abandoned or they were still being loaded. He thought about asking for a lift, then decided it would be best if Dannecker didn’t know he was there.
Assuming Dannecker was still alive.
O’Kane knew how quickly those who weren’t directly affected by a bomb could get back to their lives again. People were all the same, and Scotland Road was proving that already. It was almost as if the explosion had never happened. The world had got over the shock and was already going back to normal.
All except the kid in the yard who had been cut in half.
He wasn’t going back to normal.
He wasn’t going anywhere.
O’Kane glanced back toward the pub and started walking in the other direction back to town. It was time to figure out what he should do next. Things were moving too quickly; the situation was burning through his hands like he was sliding down a rope fast.
He needed to put the brake on, and put it on fast.
It was four minutes before he realized he was being followed.
He hadn’t seen anyone directly, but he knew it all the same.
O’Kane had been around long enough to know every trick in the book when it came to spotting a tail. Looking in shop windows, stopping to light a cigarette and turning your head against the wind, crossing the road, crossing back again, speeding up, slowing down.
He knew them all.
He just didn’t see the point in them.
He just reached up under the back of his coat, grabbed the butt of the Browning, stopped walking, and turned around.
The Bear.
Even though O’Kane had never met him, he knew who it was the second their eyes met. With fifteen feet between them, the Bear had his hands in his overcoat po
ckets, feet planted.
Ready.
They were frozen in a river of time that flowed around them. Vehicles drove past, people crossed their lines of sight, car horns sounded, crates crashed, shop bells rang, and newspaper vendors called.
But Bauer and O’Kane stood still and stared.
“Who are you?” the Bear called to him across the gap.
“Michael O’Kane.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to make you rich.”
“I have more money than you could ever count.”
“You don’t have money, Captain Bauer, you have gold.”
“Gold is worth money.”
“Gold is worth nothing if you can’t spend it.”
“And you can help me with that.”
“I can help you with a lot of things.”
The Bear smiled. “And what do you want?”
“I want the gold, and in return I will give you your money and your safety.”
The Bear nodded. “Always the gold.”
“Always the gold.” O’Kane shrugged.
“Where are you from?”
“What does it matter?”
“I killed an American a few days ago. Was he your friend?”
“I don’t have any friends.”
“We have something in common then.”
“Maybe we could be friends?” O’Kane tightened his grip on the Browning behind his back.
An old lady stopped in between them for a moment as she thumbed through some small change in her hand. Neither of them seemed to see her, but they both stood waiting for her to move. It took ten seconds for her to realize she was interrupting their conversation. She looked first at Bauer, then at O’Kane. Then she scurried away as if shocked by the electricity that was passing between them.
The Bear smiled.
“You aren’t going to give me money for that gold, Mr. O’Kane. We both know it. The minute the last crate is taken off the lorry, you will try to kill me.”
“Captain Bauer, I can assure you, I am a man of my word. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be able to operate in the manner that I do. If I say I will do something for you, I will do it, so the offer I gave to the resistance stands for you. That gold buys a passage out and a tenth of its value in U.S. dollars. You will be a very rich man if you accept.”
“And in America? What would they say to a man like me stepping off a ship in New York?”
“They’d say, ‘Can I carry your bag, sir?’” O’Kane smiled. “Money in America has a habit of making people look the other way. You’ll find that over there, rich people don’t break the law, they buy it. If you give me the chance, I’ll prove it to you.”
Dannecker was riding in the front of the truck next to the still-disheveled Becker. The cab stunk of diesel and exhaust fumes, mixed with the grit everyone inside it was covered with. Every now and then Becker nudged Dannecker when he lowered the field dressing he was holding to his throat and checked it for fresh blood.
The driver crunched a gear and the truck lurched. Becker caught Dannecker on the shoulder again with his elbow.
“Stop playing with it.” Dannecker was staring out the window, but turned to nod his head toward the dressing. “Leave it on.”
“I want to see if it is still bleeding.”
“It won’t stop if you keep moving it.”
“It hurts.”
“Don’t be such a—” Dannecker broke off. He leaned forward, squinted, then pointed out through the windscreen. “There.”
“Sir?” The driver looked across.
“Stop the truck.” Dannecker reached across Becker and grabbed the driver’s arm. “Stop now!”
The driver stamped the brakes and Dannecker and Becker slammed into the windscreen.
Becker landed half on top of his boss, and it took him a moment to pull himself off. As soon as he moved, Dannecker grabbed the door handle and jumped out of the cab.
He dropped down onto the tram line, checked nothing was coming, and called up to Becker.
“Get the men.”
“Sir?”
“Over there! It’s Bauer and O’Kane!”
Dannecker pointed across the street again and started running. He pulled out his Mauser, then realized there was no point. He couldn’t shoot either of them. Just the same as he couldn’t let one of them kill the other.
He could see from their stances that they were seconds away from drawing on each other. He shouted again and fired a shot in the air. “No!”
It was his shot that did it.
The soldiers piling out of the back of the wagon heard it and started shooting. The shop window next to O’Kane and the Bear exploded as people darted for cover from the rapid rat-a-tat and splintering timber, glass, and brickwork.
O’Kane didn’t know where it was coming from at first. His reflexes threw him to the ground, gun in hand.
He sprawled, Browning out in front, face flat on the concrete as rounds skittered and danced around him. He saw a few civilians drop, some hit, some hiding, as he looked around for a target to shoot at.
And then he saw them. The SS, blasting away like amateurs.
Fucking Germans.
Dannecker spun to see who was shooting.
He saw Becker and started screaming. “What are you doing?” He stumbled as his feet failed to keep up with his sudden change of direction. “Don’t shoot at them, you idiot!”
Becker lowered his weapon a few inches and waved for the troops at the back of the wagon to cease fire.
He looked back at Dannecker and shrugged.
Dannecker turned, dropped to one knee, and raised his pistol.
The Bear was gone.
O’Kane was lying in the gutter, his head down, covered by one ineffectual hand as his pistol remained outstretched, pointing at nobody in particular.
A few of the troops from the back of the second wagon opened up at the shop with their assault rifles when they saw O’Kane and his pistol. The heavy fire sent shards flying as they unloaded wildly, their nerves shredded after the explosion.
Dannecker started to wave his hands and scream at them.
“Stop fucking shooting! Hold your fire! Hold your fire!”
The firing stopped, and an awkward, angular silence settled on the street.
Dannecker started running.
It had taken less than six minutes to get to within walking distance of the pub after the explosion. As soon as they had got near, Rossett had dismissed the driver and jogged the rest of the way on foot, doing his best to blend in with the crowd that was gathering around him.
They had been still clearing up. Through the drifting smoke he had seen Dannecker and Becker rallying their men in the confusion. Rossett had watched them for a moment, and then he had started to search for the Bear.
He knew the Bear would want to watch the explosion.
Whether it was for the enjoyment of death or a cold calculation of the forces left standing against him, Rossett knew the Bear was near.
He also knew that the Bear was good. He was a man who left little to chance. He was a man who planned and prepared, as any good soldier should.
Rossett just had to figure out the details.
He got as close as he could and saw that pretty much every window for fifty yards in either direction was blown through. The blast had been channeled by the tall, tightly packed buildings, and the shock wave had had nowhere to go.
The Bear would have known that the windows would blow in, so he wouldn’t have been in front of the blast for fear of getting cut by flying glass.
He would either be behind it or to the side.
Rossett crossed the road and looked at the shops on the same side as the bomb site. More glass was smashed, and curtains fluttered through broken windows like flirtatious eyelashes.
Even though they were closer to the blast than those opposite, the buildings had taken less of its force. They were a better option, but Rossett doubted they provided a good enough view of th
e aftermath. The field of vision was too narrow, unless you risked standing right at what was left of a window. That would make you a potential target, and potential targets would have stood out a mile to the men who were covering the rescue operation with their StG 44s.
Rossett had spun on the spot. The Bear wasn’t in front, to the side, or behind the blast. Rossett was confused. The Bear had to be there, somewhere. Faces swam, voices drowned out thought. Rossett had focused on the windows and doorways, the turned backs, the hands over mouths. He saw them all, but he didn’t see the Bear.
And then he’d heard an engine firing up, off to his right.
An old Bedford box van belched some smoke and pulled away. It had been parked about fifty yards up the road, just far enough to blend in with the crowd that was gathering to watch the fallout after the bomb.
The Bear.
Rossett cursed himself for sending the driver back to the safe house. The van was moving away, slowly, almost too slowly. If he’d been able to run, Rossett reckoned he would have been able to catch it. But he couldn’t run, not with so many German guns around.
He started to walk, skirting the back of the crowd, watching the van, and wondering why it was going so slowly until it stopped. Rossett kept walking, hand on his Webley in his pocket, his pulse and his feet quickening as he drew nearer.
Thirty yards.
The Bear got out, checked the street, then jogged across it through the thin line of traffic that was building up due to the blockage up ahead.
Rossett followed the Bear across the road at a safe distance.
The engine of the van was still running and the door was still open. Rossett was aware that the Bear might be heading back to it at any moment and prepared himself for the confrontation.
The Bear was walking slowly, taking his time, one hand in his pocket.
Stalking.
The Bear stopped, and the man in front of him turned.
O’Kane.
Rossett stepped into the lee of the buildings to get out of a potential line of fire.
He waited, keeping the Webley in his pocket and leaning in close to a doorway, watching from a position of safety. If the Bear lived and made for the van, Rossett would take him as he crossed the road.
An Army of One: A John Rossett Novel Page 25