“Heil Hitler,” returned the Arab.
“I am glad you are here. We need the firepower. I want your people on the left line, and I think it best you move the panzerwagens to the right of the road so your field of fire—”
“We are not here to fight a battle. The woman, Herr Major. You know that is why I am here, and I have my orders.”
“I have a military responsibility first. Intelligence matters can wait until after we have repulsed the Reds and allowed the maximum number of German staffers to escape via the passage code-named Ginger. Then we’ll blow Ginger. Then and only then will I release the woman.”
“That is not your option. You are not making decisions here, RHSA is, through me. Rank is immaterial. I knew I’d run into business with you, Von Drehle. You think yourself superior.”
“No, I think I have a battle to fight.”
“Where’s the woman? That’s what I need to know.”
“Oh, the woman,” said Von Drehle. “That’s right, SS is making war exclusively on women and generals these days.”
“I am not going to banter with you. Von Drehle, I grow impatient and have obligations to superiors. Have your men—”
“She’s dead,” said Von Drehle.
Salid looked at him, eyes wide open. His jaw may have trembled. Something between rage and panic flashed through him, draining the color from his face. “You were explicitly ordered—”
“Yes, well, she tried to escape, and rather than run after her, one of my men shot her. All German military units are under orders to execute bandits and have been for three years. It was a snap shot, very well placed. I could not blame him. So it goes in battle zones.”
“I demand to see the body.”
“We let bandits lay where they fall. Care to come into the woods with me, Herr Captain? Although we may run into Red guerrillas.”
“You are lying. She is a witch, her beauty is legendary, she cast a spell, you now protect her. You are weak and soft. I demand that you get her. Get her or there will be terrible consequences for you. We represent the armed righteousness of the Reich, you are mutineers.”
He leveled the Luger at Karl. “Do not test me, Von Drehle. I will shoot you and my men will wipe out your detachment. You are traitors, as is well known.”
“You’re getting a bit melodramatic, aren’t you, old man? I have had many weapons pointed at me, so I do not find it frightening. As for death, I accepted mine years ago. If it comes today, it comes today. Put the pistol down and get your goddamned vehicles out of here. You can use the ride to Uzhgorod as a chance to think up invective against me for Muntz and prepare the arrest documents. Meanwhile, we’ll stay up here and fight to the last man. I’ll see you in Valhalla. Oh, wait, I’ll wave to you from Valhalla as you’re on your way to some kind of Arab hell, where the women don’t wear veils.”
“Infidel! Infidel!” screamed the Arab as his face went red and his eyes hid behind slits. Spit flew from his mouth. “You insult God. You will be consumed in fire, I swear it.”
“Almost certainly,” said Karl, “but not before I watch you burn.”
“You swine,” said Salid.
And then he was fire itself.
Wili Bober hit the SS man with a compressed-nitrogen-powered spurt of blazing Flammol-19 from the Flammenwerfer. The flame took everything. His hair burned, his face burned, his eyeballs burned. His eyelids burned, his nose, tongue, palate, and esophagus burned. His chest and heart and lungs burned. His bones burned. His loins burned, his muscles burned, his legs burned, his feet burned.
Even his boots burned.
The incandescence of his immolation filled the space, and the overhanging arches of the trees captured it, turning full green where the dullness of the day had kept them a kind of lusterless gray.
The flaming apparition took two or three ghastly, lurching steps, screaming something unintelligible, before it toppled to the ground.
A moment of silent horror followed, and then Ackov pivoted his MG-42 to the right to cut Wili in half, but he was a second slow, as Karl had drawn his Browning and shot him expertly from thirty meters under the rim of his helmet but over his shoulder, through his left ear.
Almost at once the 21 Para weapons opened up. A front of pure firepower blew in heavily. The supersonic bullets pelted off the camouflaged armor, the sound of high-velocity steel striking static steel like some kind of lead sleet against a tin roof. Some expert athlete tight-spiraled an egg grenade perfectly into the second Sd. Kfz, and it detonated, taking the fight totally out of that cargo of Police Battalion soldiers, a piece of it severing the spine of the MG-42 gunner, who went down with a finger on the trigger, so that his gun ate a full belt, though the rounds went straight up to descend, presumably, somewhere in Czechoslovakia.