The Nazi who was grappling with Bauman shouted, “Help me! Someone, help-”
Bauman shot him through the mouth, and the man pitched backward into the dust.
In the distance dogs were barking. Dobermans, Michael thought. “You!” Bauman pointed at Lazaris, who stood staring in shock. “Get that rifle! Go on, you fool!”
Lazaris scooped it up. And aimed it at Bauman. Michael pushed the barrel aside. “No,” he said. “He’s on our side.”
“I’ll be damned! What’s going on?”
“Stop that jabbering!” Bauman slid the bloody knife into his belt. He glanced at the luminous hands of his wristwatch. “We’ve got three minutes to reach the gate! Get in the truck, all of you!” Michael heard a shrill whistle blowing somewhere: an alarm signal.
The Dane scrambled into the back, over the corpses. Lazaris did the same, but the German prisoner fell to his knees and began to sob and moan. “Leave him!” Bauman said, and motioned Michael into the truck cab. Bauman got behind the wheel, turned the ignition key, and the engine sputtered and rumbled to life. He drove away from the stone building full of kennels, and toward Falkenhausen’s front gate, dust pluming behind the rear tires. “Those shots will stir up a hornet’s nest. Hang on.” He swerved the truck between two wooden buildings and pressed his foot on the accelerator. Michael saw the chimneys to their left, spouting red sparks as more bodies were charred. And then three soldiers, one of them with a submachine gun, stood in the path of their headlights, waving the truck down. “We’re going through,” Bauman said tersely.
The guards leaped aside, shouting for the truck to halt. More whistles began to shriek. A burst of bullets whacked into the rear of the truck, making the steering wheel shudder in Bauman’s grip. Rifle fire cracked: Lazaris was at work. Searchlights on towers in this section of the huge camp began to come on, their beams sweeping back and forth along the dirt roads and across the buildings. Bauman checked his watch again. “It should start to happen in a few seconds.”
Before Michael could ask what he meant, there was a hollow boom to their right. Another blast followed almost immediately, this time behind them and on the left. A third explosion was so close Michael could see the gout of fire. “Our friends brought mortars to create a diversion,” Bauman said. “They’re firing them from the woods.” Another series of blasts echoed over the camp. Michael heard scattered rifle fire. The guards were firing at shadows, maybe even at each other. He hoped they, in this instance, had true aim.
A searchlight’s glaring white beam found them. Bauman cursed and swerved the truck onto another road to get away from the light, but it stuck close. A high, piercing steam whistle began: the camp’s emergency alarm. “Now Krolle’s in the act,” Bauman said, his knuckles white on the wheel. “Those bastards on the towers have radios. They’re pinpointing our posi-”
A guard stepped into the road ahead of them, planted his feet, and pulled back the bolt on his Schmeisser.
Michael saw the weapon fire in a low, sweeping arc. The two front tires exploded almost in unison, and the truck lurched as the engine and radiator were pierced. The guard, still firing, dove for cover as the truck careened past him in a storm of dust, and the front fender scraped sparks off a stone wall before Bauman could get control again. The windshield was cracked, and filmed with oil. Bauman kept driving, his head out the window and the flattened front tires plowing grooves in the road. About fifty yards farther and the engine made a noise like tin cans in a grinder, then died. “That’s it for the truck!” Bauman was already throwing his door open. The truck halted, right in the middle of the road, and Michael and the German scrambled out. “Come on!” Bauman shouted to Lazaris and the Dane. They clambered out from the corpses, looking corpselike themselves. “The gate’s this way, about a hundred yards!” Bauman motioned ahead and started running. Michael, his naked body shivering with the effort, kept a few strides behind. Lazaris stumbled, fell, got up, and followed on spindly legs. “Wait! Please wait for me!” the Dane shouted as he lagged behind. Michael looked back, just as a searchlight hit the Dane. “Keep going!” Bauman yelled. The next sound was machine-gun fire, and the Dane was silent.
“Bastards! You filthy bastards!” Lazaris stopped in the road and aimed his rifle as the light swung upon him. Bullets marched across the ground in front of him as Lazaris squeezed off shot after shot. Glass exploded, and the light went out.
Bauman suddenly pulled up short, face-to-face with three guards who’d emerged from between two barracks buildings. “It’s me! Fritz Bauman!” he shouted before they could lift their weapons. Michael hit the ground on his stomach. “The prisoners are rioting in Section E!” Bauman shouted. “They’re tearing the place apart! For God’s sake, get over there!” The soldiers ran on, and disappeared around the corner of another barracks. Then Bauman and Michael continued toward the gate, and as they came out from a cluster of wooden buildings there it was in front of them, across a dangerous area of open ground. The tower searchlights were aimed into the camp, sweeping back and forth. Mortar shells were still exploding in the center of Falkenhausen. “Down!” Bauman told Michael, and they lay on the ground against the wall of one of the wooden buildings as a searchlight crept past. He checked his watch once more. “Damn, it! They’re late! Where the hell are they?”
A figure started to stumble past them. Michael reached out, grasped the man’s ankles, and tripped him into the dust before a searchlight caught him. Lazaris said, “What are you trying to do, you bastard? Break my neck?”
A motorcycle with a sidecar suddenly roared across the open ground, and its driver skidded to a stop in front of a green-painted building near the gate. Almost at once a door opened and out rushed a stocky figure wearing combat boots, a Nazi helmet, and a red silk robe, two pistols in the holster around his thick waist. Major Krolle, awakened from his beauty sleep, wedged himself into the sidecar and motioned for the driver to go. Dust spat from the motorcycle’s rear tire as the driver obeyed, and Michael realized Krolle was going to pass within a few feet of their position. Bauman was already lifting his pistol. Michael said, “No,” and reached for Lazaris’s rifle. He stood up, his mind aflame with the image of hair drifting into a pinewood box, and as the motorcycle got within range he stepped out from the wall’s protection and swung the rifle like a club.
As the rifle connected with the driver’s skull and broke the man’s neck like a stick of kindling, Falkenhausen’s main gate exploded in a blast of flame and a whirlwind of burning timbers.
The concussion knocked Michael to the ground, and passed in a hot wave. The driverless motorcycle veered sharply to the left, spun in a circle, and crashed against a wooden wall before Krolle even knew he was in danger. The motorcycle pitched over on its side, the engine still running, and Krolle flopped out of the sidecar, his helmet knocked off and his ears ringing from the blast.
From the ruins of the gate emerged a camouflage-painted truck with armor shields protecting the tires. As it roared into the camp, the brown canvas covering its cargo bay was whipped back, exposing a.50-caliber machine gun on a swivel mounting. The machine gunner angled his weapon up and shot the nearest searchlight out, then turned its fire on the next one. Three other men in the rear of the truck aimed rifles at the tower guards and began to shoot. “Let’s go!” Bauman yelled, getting to his feet. Michael was on his haunches, watching Krolle struggling to get up; the holster had slipped down and tangled around his legs. Michael said, “Take my friend and get to the truck.” He stood up.
“What? Are you crazy? They’re here for you!”
“Do it.” Michael saw the rifle on the ground, its butt broken off. Krolle was whimpering, trying to pull one of the Lugers from its holster. “Don’t wait for me.” He walked to Major Krolle, grabbed the holster, and flung it away. Krolle gasped, blood running from a gash across his forehead and his eyes dazed. “Go!” Michael shouted to Bauman, and he and the Russian ran toward the truck.
Krolle moaned, finally recognizing the man who stood before him. There was a whistle around Krolle’s thick neck, and he put it to his mouth but he didn’t have wind enough to blow.
Michael heard the clatter of bullets against armor plate. He looked back and saw that Lazaris and Bauman had reached the truck and climbed inside. The machine gunner was still firing at the tower guards, but now slugs were striking the truck as well. More soldiers were coming, alerted by the blast and blaze. A rifle bullet ricocheted off one of the truck’s tire shields, and the machine gunner swiveled his weapon and shot down the soldier who’d fired it. The kitchen was heating up; it was time to get out. The truck was put into reverse, and withdrew through the flame-edged aperture where the gate had been.
At his feet, Krolle was trying to crawl away. “Help me,” he croaked. “Someone…” But he could not be heard over the shouts and the firing of guns and the wailing emergency siren, a sound that must’ve reached Berlin. Michael said, “Major?” and the man looked at him. Krolle’s face distorted into a rictus of sheer horror.
Michael’s mouth was opening, the muscles rippling in his jaws. Making room for the fangs that slid, dripping
