MATT HELM: The War Years (10 page)

The Frenchman - Jacques was the name he gave us - looked on in boredom.  With his lousy English and our lousy French, he didn't waste much time in conversation.  Late in the afternoon, two of his associates appeared, carrying what was obviously a body, wrapped in a large sheet of burlap - at least it looked like what I used to call burlap.  They nodded at us, accepted a cup of wine from Jacques, and left without a word.  I assumed they had come at least part of the way by car or truck, but the road was far enough away we wouldn't have heard it.  We unwrapped the body and I got my first look at a dead man, outside of a funeral.  We had to look, of course, if for no other reason than to see for ourselves what our General would look like, in a general sort of way, of course - no pun intended.  This body was supposed to bear a resemblance to the General if our plan - well, Mac's, to be precise - was to work.  I could sense Rasmussen and Fedder watching as I looked down at the body - Daryl had seen one before, having made a couple of them that way himself.  He just looked like he was sleeping until we turned him over.

The damage was spectacular.  His face wasn't there any more, having been bashed in with something heavy.  I would have guessed a baseball bat, if they had any such thing over here.  After gulping a couple times, I managed to hold my lunch down, hoping it wasn't too obvious.  After a minute, I turned away and saw Fedder looking at me with a mixture of sympathy and approval, which made me feel a little better.  Nobody said anything as I walked over and took a drink from the canteen.

At first I was surprised at the method of assassination - there'd been no other wounds on the body - but then it hit me, and I had to admire their professionalism.  Jacques - or at least his companions - knew what we were going to do and had carefully obliterated the one thing that could have given the masquerade away, the face.  After all, no matter what the force of the explosion, it wasn't guaranteed to hit any victim in any particular part of the body.  This way was sure.

Shortly before sundown, having dined on standard Army rations, we were in place on the hill, along with the aforementioned body.  Naturally, Daryl and I got that job.  In the Army - or any other organization, for that matter - it's called "RHIP."  If you don't know what that means, just ask any soldier.

Just as the last light was fading, the General's car drove up and four people got out, including the driver, an enlisted man.  The General was easy to spot, and the body was a very good match.  The other two were junior officers, also from the
Luftwaffe
, judging from the uniforms.  The three of them went into the house, leaving the driver to carry their bags and a couple cartons after them.  After three trips, the driver came out and joined the two guards, carrying whatever passed as dinner.  The three of them ate as someone inside turned on some music - a light waltz, if it matters.  We were glad to hear the music as it would cover any sounds we made outside, if all went well.

We settled down for a short wait, wanting them to get comfortable before we moved.  After a whispered conference, we decided upon a plan of attack, which was immediately revised when the driver got up and climbed into the back of the car, presumably to sleep.  That complicated matters a little, but Rasmussen told Daryl and me to take the guards, while he and Fedder took the driver.  We normally might have waited for the ones inside to go to sleep, but we were expecting one or more women in the party, based on Mac's comment.  When the General had arrived without female companionship, Rasmussen had decided to go early while we had fewer people to worry about, just in case the women were due later on.  I remembered his remarks about playing the odds, during the training class.  He was gambling that the women, if there were any women, wouldn't arrive in the middle of our attack, weighing that possibility against the admittedly harder job if we had more people to deal with, even if the extras were women with supposedly non-violent talents.  I'd prefer it if everyone was asleep when I went in the door, but was just as happy not to have to kill a couple of innocent - well, from a combatant standpoint - women.  I don't know if that was part of his decision or not, but I was still new to the business.  For me, that would have been the deciding factor.

As it turned out, it wasn't a factor.  No women were included in the General's plans, for that night, at least.

With the two guards sitting on the steps, there was no way we could get sneak up on them before they raised an alarm.  We had to get them with silenced pistols and hope they didn't scream as they were hit.  For this purpose, Daryl had been issued a .22 Colt Woodsman identical to mine - I'd kept the one I'd admired during my initial training with Vance.  The speed of sound is 1,088 feet per second.  It was discovered a while back that for maximum accuracy an ordinary .22 bullet must not be driven faster than that.  So farm kids shoot rabbits and squirrels with .22 caliber projectiles that scream along at around 1,200 feet per second, but expert small-bore target shooters settle for something like 1,050.  This has another advantage of more importance than championship accuracy to the sinister folk in our line of work.  A silencer can muffle the noise of the powder exploding inside the gun, but it can't do anything about the crack of the bullet, outside the gun, passing through the sound barrier.  Keeping the bullet velocity subsonic is, therefore, essential to silencing a gun effectively.

Daryl and I slowly crawled forward, keeping behind the trees, until we were less than fifty feet from the house, right at the tree line.  We aimed our pistols at the guards, me taking the one on the left - my left, not theirs - since I was to the left of Daryl, and waited until Rasmussen and Fedder had circled around to the side of the building closest to the car.  One of them waved in the light spilling out of the window and Daryl and I shot the guards several times each.  I doubt if even the guards could have heard the faint puffs from the silenced pistols.  For a moment I wondered what had gone wrong as they just sat there; then, as in slow motion, one toppled forward onto the lawn while the other just kind of slumped over against the handrail.

We watched Fedder and Rasmussen come around the corner, each taking one side of the car.  Both doors opened simultaneously and I saw the flash of a knife.  The guard had been lying with his feet toward the door on our side and we could see his legs do a little jig for a second or two and then he was still.

Up to that point, it had been a perfect operation.  The next step had depended upon whether or not there was a warning from outside.  Since there hadn't been, the plan called for Daryl and I, who were the closest in size to the guards - they were a Mutt and Jeff team like us - to go in the front door, dressed in their clothes, and Rasmussen to go in the back, while Fedder stood guard until when we came out, or went in after us if we didn't.

While we dragged the guards away from the house and put on their clothes and helmets, disregarding the little bit of blood on them, Rasmussen kept guard.  Once we were ready, he whispered, "Count to twenty and then go in," and headed for the back of the house.  We walked to the front door, counting, and on twenty, opened the door and walked in.

The idea was, of course, to make them hesitate when they first saw us, giving us time to take care of the two lieutenants while Rasmussen subdued the General.  It should have worked, and might have, if anybody had been in the room.  The music was still playing and there were wine glasses on the coffee table, but the room was empty.  We looked around quickly.  The kitchen was in the back, which was where Rasmussen had come in and it was empty as well.  That only left the two bedrooms, one on each side of the living room, both with the doors closed.  Rasmussen nodded us toward the one on the right and he headed for the other one.

They were in the one he'd assigned to us.  Daryl went in first, being the shorter, so I could shoot over him if necessary.  I slammed the door open while he dove inside, rolling quickly to his feet and turning the wrong way.  I came in standing - their attention should have  been on him, according to our training - and looked the right way.  I had the pistol pointed in front of me and turned my head quickly to the right when I found nothing in that direction.  The bed was on that side of the room and was occupied…

I might have used the excuse that I was young and naive.  Maybe so, but I hope I never get that old and jaded.  It shocked me, which is no excuse - after all I had a job to do and had been trained to do that job.  Both men were naked, one lying on his stomach, while the other crouched over his legs, doing something obscene with a pistol.

The one with the pistol saw me at the same time I saw him and swung it toward me while I stood there frozen like a gaping idiot, with my own pistol out of position.  By the time I could move it was too late.  I was dead.  I could see his finger tightening on the trigger just as someone yelled my name and something hit me in the side, knocking me out of the way.  I heard two shots, so close together they almost sounded as one, and I saw a small hole appear in the forehead of the man with the gun.  By now I was fully awake and dove toward the other one.  We had been told to leave as few bullet holes as possible on the inside - the outside didn't matter - and I was finally following orders.

I hit him and broke his neck.  I'll have to admit that it surprised me almost as much as it did him.  I'd known from training that it could be done that way, but I hadn't had any really good reason to think I could do it.  I'd been ready to throw myself on top of him and pin him down and finish him off, one way or another, before he could recover from the first blow.  It wasn't necessary.  There were some ugly, convulsive jerks and twitches as the final, fading signals filtered through the damaged circuits; then he lay limp and still.

By then Rasmussen had come in and we both headed toward the bathroom.  The General was no problem.  He was crouched in the shower, crying in terror, as naked as his two friends.  I went back to see about Daryl, who we'd left standing in the room.  He was sitting on the bottom of the bed, holding his left shoulder.  With a little grunting, we managed to get the German's jacket off him, baring his shoulder.  He had a deep furrow in the fleshy part of his upper arm, just below the shoulder blade.  While Rasmussen went to get Fedder and a first aid kit, I took Daryl into the bathroom and cleaned the wound out, holding a towel on it until Fedder came in and bandaged it.

I looked at Daryl and held out my hand.  "Thanks, amigo," I said.

He took it, smiled and replied, "Nada."

Chapter 11

Fedder blew the house on schedule and we got away clean.  Jacques and his friends got us all to the coast without incident and the Navy got us back to England, where the General was turned over to British Intelligence.  I didn't think they would have any trouble getting him to talk, not after seeing him in the bathroom.  I carefully suppressed the thought that the perverted bastard deserved it.

For the most part, we were ignored by the M-5 or M-6 guys - whatever the hell they called themselves - and were happy to see Abraham waiting to pick us up, not that I was looking forward to reporting to Mac for debriefing.  It had been an amateur performance on my part, even though the others told me to forget it.

Mac surprised me.  After listening to Rasmussen's report - which included my momentary lapse - he turned to me in front of the others and said, "The job got done, and very well, Eric.  No one expects you to be a machine.  You've learned a very valuable lesson and, under the circumstances, a relatively cheap one.  It seems you recovered nicely and completed the job just the way you should have."

That made me feel a lot better until he turned to Daryl.  "Daryl, on the other hand, seems to be suffering from tender, brotherly feelings for his fellow man.  From what I understand, you had a nice clear shot at your target and, instead of taking that shot, decided to push Eric out of the way so you could then shoot while moving, getting shot yourself in the process.  If you'd taken that first shot, possibly neither of you would have been shot.  On the other hand, it was quite possible that you might have missed when you finally did shoot, and both you and Eric could have been killed.  Do you need a refresher course in Rule One, Daryl?"

He had discipline.  He flushed slightly, but managed to say, "No, sir," with a steady voice.

"Very well.  Perhaps more than one lesson was learned this time.  Daryl, report to the infirmary to have that wound looked at by a doctor.  The rest of you can report back to base.  Congratulations to all of you on an exceptional job."  His glance obviously included Daryl and me.  That's my kind of boss.  Chew you out when you need it, and then forget it.

Outside the building, I burst out laughing at the incongruity of it, joined by Rasmussen and Fedder.  "What's so damned funny," Daryl demanded, still smarting.

"I froze, forcing you to save my life, and got you shot in the process," I gasped, " and you ... you ..."  I paused for a breath.  "You get reamed out for it!"