down the street at head height. He felt a bullet whistle past his ear with a low hum, and the rattle of a dozen more as they hit the cobbles on the ground around him.
The remaining men of the Wehrmacht platoon scrambled for cover on either side of the vehicle and began to return fire, while the SS men in the truck unslung their weapons and let off a volley from within.
A single bullet thudded into Schenkelmann’s back and pushed him over on to his face, where he curled into a foetal position as the gunfight progressed, bullets whizzing in both directions, inches above him.
Hauser managed to make his way back to the truck and opened the cabin door. He waited for a second’s lull to shriek an order to Bosch and his men. ‘You must hold this position at all costs, the truck must get away!’ Hauser’s thin, reedy voice reached Bosch, who reissued the order in a much louder parade-ground voice.
Hauser turned to the driver and screamed as he climbed in. ‘Drive, for God’s sake!’
Bosch heard the truck’s engine stutter to life and it immediately lurched forward as the tyres spun on the cobbles. From his precarious position behind a small sapling he watched the truck rumble down the street and turn a corner before calling out to his men.
‘Right, fuck that idiot’s order. We’ll hold for another minute, no more.’
His voice attracted a burst of gunfire and splinters of wood exploded from the sapling’s trunk. He cursed Hauser for dropping the gun he had handed him in the street like a startled old woman. The gunfire died off for a moment. He could hear one of the Americans shouting orders to his men. Bosch had enough street-fighting experience to know that they were trying for a flanking position. The American officer was sending some of his men into the furniture warehouse to find a way up to the windows that overlooked him and his men.
That’s what he’d do if the situation were reversed.
‘Shit,’ he muttered. He looked around and saw two of his men looking to him for instructions. Silently Bosch pointed at a window overlooking them and held up a fist, which he pulled down in a short tugging action and drew a finger across his mouth.
Grenades — through that window — on my command.
Both men nodded and each pulled out a stick grenade, they unscrewed the caps and made ready to tug on the fuse string. The gunfire had stopped. The Americans down the street were waiting for their colleagues to get into position before pressing home the attack.
Bosch studied the windows intently and soon caught a glimpse of the top of a helmet bobbing inside the building. They were making their way along the first floor to the window that looked down on to his position behind the splintered tree trunk. He nodded to his men and both threw their grenades up. One dropped through the window effortlessly whilst the other clattered uselessly against the window frame and dropped back down onto the stones below. He counted to seven before the first grenade went off inside the warehouse, producing a shower of dust from out of the windows and knocking a frame down on to the street. The other grenade exploded on the cobbles, shattering the few windows left intact on the ground floor of the furniture warehouse.
Bosch waited for the cloud of dust to clear. The grenades seemed to have done the trick, it looked like they had stunned, wounded or killed the men up there. Otherwise he’d have expected a retaliatory volley raining down on them by now.
He looked for the Jewish scientist; he was lying in the road, but still moving. A pool of blood had grown around his torso and a small river trickled across the street, meandering through the cracks between the stones.
He’s lost too much blood to survive the wound.
If he’d had his gun on him he could have made sure of that with a shot or two to the head. Bosch knew enough that the Americans couldn’t be allowed to capture the Jew alive. Hauser had made that quite clear.
Smoke was coming up from the lab below and billowing out through the arched door, thicker than it had been a minute ago, the fire must have caught and already be spreading.
He looked up the street.
The truck must be far enough away by now.
He nodded, assuring himself that they had done enough.
He signalled to his two men across the street that the fight was over, that they should put down their guns. He looked around for the others. It was time to get a quick tally on what had happened to his twelve men. Now that the truck, and the hard cover it afforded them, was gone, they had hastily spread out, seeking safe positions along the street. There were three sheltering in one of the warehouse’s doorways further back and another two taking turns to fire short bursts from an archway closer to the Americans. He saw the bodies of five of his men lying in the cobbled street, those that had been caught off guard by the opening exchange. He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly. His men instinctively turned towards him.
‘That’s it, weapons down,’ he bellowed.
The German soldiers tentatively lowered their weapons but none of them moved from their covered positions. Bosch realised he’d have to go first. He loosened the strap of his helmet and then slid it off, he held it one hand by the rim and slowly, very slowly, he eased it out into the open.
Several shots splintered the slender tree trunk still further and it creaked alarmingly as if preparing to topple over. He heard an American call out a ceasefire and the gunfire stopped.
He eased himself out from behind what was left of the tree with both hands raised fully above his head. He called out the only English phrase he knew, one that he and most of his men had taken time to learn in recent months.
‘Geneva convention… Surrendering!’ he announced loudly and clearly. He walked cautiously into the middle of the cobbled street, beckoning with one raised hand for his men to do likewise. One by one the seven remaining men of his platoon emerged and joined him.
The American soldiers remained in their positions, guns aimed, ready at a moment’s notice to resume firing. One of them, Bosch recognised the stripes of a sergeant, pointed towards the Germans and shouted. ‘Levy! Round ’em up and shake ’em down!’
From one of the warehouse doorways a young man emerged, and he trotted at the double towards them, his kit rattling like so many pots and pans in a bag. As Levy passed the Jew’s body, the prone form moved and they heard a faint moaning.
‘Sir! We got a live one here!’
Amongst the Americans the call for a medic rippled down the street, and moments later a medic appeared through one of the arches and slid to a halt beside Schenkelmann. Levy continued towards the Germans with his rifle raised at them, while the medic began his work.
Bosch watched the medic; he was fumbling with a compress applied to the wound to slow down the blood loss.
The Jew mustn’t fall into enemy hands alive.
Hauser had muttered this a countless number of times to him over the last few days, every time he’d heard the sound of artillery, or been spooked by the crack of gunfire.
The young American soldier now stood only feet away from them. ‘Okay, you shitheads, get down on the road!’ he shouted at them, pointing to the ground.
Bosch and his men stared defiantly at the young man; their eyes drawn to the Star of David pinned prominently on his uniform. Levy jerked his rifle to the ground repeatedly and jabbed one of the prisoners in the ribs to make the point.
‘Yeah, that’s right, you Nazi shit-holes, I’m Jewish. Now get the fuck down!’ he yelled angrily.
Bosch looked anxiously towards Schenkelmann. The medic treating him seemed satisfied that the compress was working and was now applying a bandage to hold it in place. Bosch nodded to his men, and they began to kneel obediently, albeit slowly. Another futile gesture of angry defiance.
The Jew can’t fall into their hands alive.
He gritted his teeth and gave one of his men a hard push to the side. The man fell awkwardly to the ground. The young American swung his rifle towards the prone man and Bosch reached for it, yanking hard at the barrel and freeing the gun easily from his hands. He grabbed the waist of the rifle with his other hand and shoved the weapon backwards, the butt smashing into the young man’s face with a sickening thud.
Levy dropped to the ground unconscious as Bosch spun the rifle round, aiming it squarely at Schenkelmann.
He had only a fleeting half-second, as he racked the weapon, to register the look of surprise and alarm on the
