Waging War (40 page)

He turned to Archer. “Devereux!” He called
to him in a way that sounded like lords calling across a grand
dining hall to each other. “Your wife, sir.” He gave my hand to
Archer, who pulled me in to his side. “Come, Ringo. Let us leave
them to the small privacy of these four walls.”

Bas grabbed Ringo around the shoulders, and
the two guys closed the garden door behind them. Neither of us
spoke, and within moments the nighttime insects resumed their
chirping.

Archer pulled me into his arms and just held
me close. His heart beat steadily against my chest, and his warm,
spicy scent filled me with calm peacefulness.

“I forgot this,” he said quietly as he
pulled away. He reached into his pocket and pulled something out. I
couldn’t see it clearly in the darkness until he took my left hand
and slid a ring onto the fourth finger. My heart thumped hard as I
held my hand close and studied the ring. It was a gold signet ring
– a heart with a crown that blazed with flames from the top. It was
so beautiful and so instantly familiar it took my breath away, and
an abiding certainty that I was meant to wear it settled into my
soul.

“It’s my family crest. This was the ring my
father had made for me when I turned thirteen. The heart and the
crown symbolize love and loyalty, and every Devereux gives this
crest to his bride.” His eyes locked onto mine and he touched my
face with gentle fingers. “It unlocks everything I have, and
everything I am – to you, Saira Elian Devereux. I am yours, mind,
heart, body, and soul.” He smiled to release a bit of the tension
in the air. “You’ve always owned me. Now it’s just official.”

I kissed him again, softly. We lingered like
that for what felt like hours and was only moments, letting the
sweetness feed something deeper, something that became laced with
desire.

A breath caught in my chest, and his hands
clutched my hair. I could feel the pounding of his heart as need
for his touch swept through me.

I pulled back and looked at him, and I tried
to fathom that we belonged to each other now. I had been a legal
adult since my last birthday, but now, finally, I began to feel
maybe I could trust myself as an emotional adult too. A sigh of
contentment and peace mingled with the desire for his touch, and I
leaned forward to kiss him again.

And then a scream tore through the darkness,
and the nightmare began.

Tom – Oradour-sur-Glane – June 10, 1944

The scene was a nightmare, like something
out of a low-budget horror film where the monster lurks in the
woods to pick off the heroes as they shrink back in disgust from
the tableau of dead bodies left for them in a burned out ambulance.
This time, I wasn’t the monster.

I hadn’t seen the rest of my squad since I’d
woken – except Karl, always Karl, who guarded me like a loyal pit
bull while I slept. I didn’t know which of us was more hated by the
snipers they’d sent me to France with – Karl for his lap-dog
tendencies, or me for holding the leash. Probably me, because I
held all the leashes, and they felt like they were all big, mean
Schäferhunde with spiky collars who should be allowed to roam the
countryside terrorizing Frenchmen with impunity.

Which was probably what they were doing
now.

Sturmbahnführer Kämpfe was most likely dead
by now. The Maquis had taken him last night, and they couldn’t know
the storm that was preparing to descend on them, especially after
SS Sturmbahnführer Diekmann saw this tableau of horror, set up by
the Maquis for his viewing pleasure. Diekmann had gone mad at the
news of Kämpfe’s kidnapping. They had been friends before the war,
and Diekmann had ordered the countryside searched for him. It was
made clear that finding Kämpfe was the first priority, but finding
Maquis, their weapons, and anyone who helped them in their
terrorist activities was equally vital.

I knew there were Maquis operating in the
area around Oradour-sur-Glane, and I’d followed some to Gaspard’s
farmhouse several nights before. I considered blending in with the
rough group that had set up camp around the farm, until I heard the
Australian woman’s voice and realized I wasn’t quite prepared to
kill her if need be. I’d avoided the area since then, but an
explosion at a railroad bridge two nights ago, and then Kämpfe’s
kidnapping, had made it impossible to stay away. Now a group of SS
had discovered the burned out ambulance just outside the village,
and Karl had dragged me here tonight because he’d heard the SS
talking about reprisals. I wasn’t a fan of the French – those
Maquis were as brutal as the Germans were, and twice as hungry for
it – but I couldn’t stomach reprisals against common farmers.

We had arrived before Diekmann, and Karl
gagged as he opened the back of the ambulance. The driver and
passenger were both from the advance 2
^nd
SS Panzer
Division and had been transporting wounded German soldiers to a
hospital in Limoges. All of them were dead, and the Maquis had
wired the driver and passenger to the steering wheel, which likely
meant they were conscious while the fire consumed them.

Karl and I moved away from the SS soldiers
who stood in a loose formation around the site, and I spoke to him
in low tones. “When Diekmann sees this, he will take his men
straight to the village. If we can round up a couple of Maquis
before he gets there, maybe the farmers won’t become his
target.”

“Yes, sir,” Karl said shakily. He really
wasn’t cut out for this bad guy business. He should have been home
reading books or making bread for his mother. The kid had learned
baking from his grandmother and had been very excited to come to
France to eat real French bread. I didn’t bother to tell him that
the bread we got now was coarse and grainy in comparison to what I
knew French bread could be. He thought it was the food of
heaven.

The regular soldiers left us alone as we
drove away from the site. They knew enough to stay away from the
Wolfsangel armbands, and it suited me to be left alone.
Self-destruction is one thing, but in war, there’s always someone
else to kill, and I had become alarmingly good at it.

Karl drove carefully. I hadn’t learned how
to yet, and didn’t think it was a skill set the walking dead
needed. The village seemed eerily silent as we drove past shuttered
shops. When we arrived at the town square, we suddenly understood
why.

We were too late. People were milling about,
looking frantic and terrified, while a group of SS rounded them up
with machine guns and shouts in German. I spotted one of the
snipers from my unit – the short, weasely one called Oskar – and a
couple of others whose names I hadn’t bothered to learn. They had
managed to join up with a half-dozen SS thugs led by one of
Diekmann’s right-hand men.

“What are they doing?” Karl whispered to
me.

“Inviting them to tea.” I didn’t hide the
anger in my voice, and Karl flinched. They had emptied the houses
to search for weapons, and the square was full of farmers and
shopkeepers. If there were any Maquis among them, it was purely
accidental.

Karl parked the truck behind a barn just
outside the town square as a transport truck came barreling into
the village from the other side. SS soldiers poured off the sides,
and I knew it was futile to hope any of the villagers could stay
hidden in cellars and attics. With this many men, the SS could do a
proper house-to-house search and find nearly everyone.

Diekmann was already likely insane, but with
his friend Kämpfe dead, and the tortured men in the ambulance, I
didn’t think he’d be anything less than savage.

A scream came from somewhere up the hill
behind me, and I turned to find Oskar, the weasely sniper, pushing
a young Frenchwoman toward the church. Two others walked in front
of her, and one of them was holding a baby. I sprinted up the hill
behind him, my pistol already out in my hand.

“Oskar! What the hell are you doing?” I
shouted at him in German. Karl came charging up behind me, carrying
his rifle with both hands. If he tripped, he’d probably shoot
someone.

“Major Braun believes Sturmbahnführer Kämpfe
was brought here by the kidnappers, and we volunteered to come with
them.” Oskar’s sneer diminished very slightly as he spoke to me.
Despite the rest of my unit’s hatred of me, they’d heard what I was
capable of doing to armed men.

“Where are you taking the women?”

“Braun said the women and children would be
safe in the church.” The sneer was back, and it didn’t bode well
for the women in his care.

“Karl, go with him. Shoot him if he tries to
harm the women,” I said, glaring at Oskar.

“What if he shoots me first?” Karl
whispered. I ground my teeth against the thought of being anyone’s
protector, but I smiled at Oskar anyway. “If anything happens to
any man, woman, or child in that church, I will tear out your
tongue and feed it to you. Are we clear?”

Oskar swallowed visibly and the sneer
disappeared. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now, where’s Johann? We have a
mission, and this isn’t it.”

Another visible swallow. “The partisans got
him, sir. We heard about their plan to blow up the bridge, and set
up to take them out. I got most of them, but then the bridge
exploded and they got Johann before I could kill the rest.”

Everything about his body language said he
was lying, but on the other hand, Johann was the worst bully in the
Werwolf pack, and I wasn’t sorry he was dead. “Did you strip the
body of identification?”

He shook his head. “No sir. There was no
time.”

I shot him a hard you-screwed-up look, then
gestured to Karl. “See the women safely to the church, and then
both of you meet me back at the truck. If they found Johann’s body,
our presence here is compromised and my mission is done. I’ll leave
that to you to explain to Diekmann and to Paris.” Despite my harsh
tone, I didn’t care that our cover was blown. I was only there to
get transportation to England, and if my unit had to leave France
right now, so much the better.

Oskar looked at me through narrowed eyes,
and I could see the calculations going on in his head. He knew I
was right and it galled him, so he turned and shoved the girl ahead
of him again with a growl. “Move!”

My finger twitched on the trigger of my
pistol, but I closed my eyes and took a breath. He wasn’t worth
losing the English job over, and Diekmann would use any excuse he
could to take me off of it.

I strode back down to the village square.
The crowd of French villagers had gotten bigger as more and more
groups of SS brought them stumbling in. An older man wearing a
luxurious mustache was irate at having been dragged from his bed
and demanded to speak to the commander. I shook my head sadly. The
man wasn’t likely long for this world with that attitude.

Just then, Diekmann arrived, looking
grim-faced and narrow-eyed. He knew I didn’t like him, and he
didn’t like an English traitor in their midst. It was the type of
mutual admiration society that usually ends in bloodshed, so I
stayed out of his sight whenever possible. The man with the
mustache must have recognized power when he saw it, because he
marched right over to Diekmann and began a tirade that would have
made Hitler himself wince.

I turned away from Diekmann, which was much
like turning away from a rattlesnake, and saw two SS guards come
into the square shoving a mother and her young son in front of
them, while a third held his rifle pointed at a young man who was
with them. The young man seemed to be walking along peacefully, but
his eyes were locked on the little boy’s, and I could see he was
trying to keep the boy calm. I might have been that little boy
once, but the soldiers had been my father, and the young man had
been my cousin, Adam. I was just turning away from the scene when
the little boy stumbled. The young man darted out to steady him,
which earned him a shove from the rifle butt for his kindness. He
brushed the hair back from his face and smiled at the boy to show
him he wasn’t hurt, and suddenly my blood turned to ice water.

Ringo.

Nightmare