and left him there folded up like a package after Lazaris had removed the soldier’s knife and cut his throat with it. Lazaris’s eyes glittered with blood lust, and he slipped the knife under his parka.
A knife was also being used in Wolftown. Kitty used her hooked, blubber-slicing blade to cut hunks of dried beef into bite-sized pieces. As she put one into her mouth and chewed on it, she heard a wolf howl somewhere in the village.
It was a high, piercing call that echoed over the harbor and ended in a series of quick, staccato barks. She did not like that sound. She picked up a flashlight and, armed with her knife, went out into the misty chill. There was no sound but the waves lapping against the seawall. Kitty stood there for a moment, slowly looking from left to right. The wolf made another noise: a series of harsh yips. Kitty left the house, walking toward the dock. Her boots squished in the dark mud that held her family’s bones. When she reached the dock, she switched on the flashlight, and there she found it.
A dark gray rubber boat, tied up beside her own craft. There were three sets of oars in it.
Kitty’s knife pierced the rubber in a dozen places. The boat gurgled as it crumpled and sank. Then she half ran, half careened on her stumpy legs toward her house again. As she went through the door, she smelled their sausage-and-beer sweat, and she halted in the presence of more dangerous beasts.
One of the black-clad Nazee boys motioned with his rifle and spoke his gibberish. How could a human tongue make such a noise? Kitty wondered. The other two soldiers also held rifles on her, their faces daubed with black camouflage paint. The Nazee boys had known they were here, she realized. They had come prepared for a slaughter.
She would give them one. She grinned, her blue Nordic eyes glittering, and she said, “Welcome!” as she lifted her knife and lunged forward.
Michael, Lazaris, and Chesna had reached the workshop building’s roof. They went along the catwalk and down through the stairwell. “Watch where you point that thing!” Michael whispered to Lazaris as the barrel of the Russian’s weapon wandered. He led them through the jumble of equipment, and in another moment they could see the two soldiers, engrossed in their card game. The prisoners were working on the crates, sawing and hammering, proud of their carpentry skills even under the Nazi thumb.
“Wait,” Michael told Chesna and Lazaris, and then he crept closer to the guards. One of the prisoners dropped a nail, reached down to get it, and at floor level saw a man crawling on his belly. The prisoner gave a soft, stunned gasp, and another glanced over in Michael’s direction.
“Four aces!” the guard with a winning hand crowed as he spread his cards out on the table. “Beat me!”
“As you wish,” Michael said, rising up behind the man and slamming him over the head with the butt of his Schmeisser. The guard moaned and toppled, scattering cards. The second man reached for his rifle, which leaned against the wall, but he froze when the Schmeisser’s business end kissed his throat. “On the floor,” Michael said. “Get on your knees, hands cupped behind your head.”
The soldier complied. Very quickly.
Chesna and Lazaris emerged, and Lazaris prodded the unconscious man’s ribs with the toe of his boot. When the soldier groaned softly, he gave him a kick that made him pass out again.
“Don’t kill me!” the man on his knees begged. “Please! I’m just a nobody!”
“We’ll make you a no-head in a minute!” Lazaris said as he pressed the knife blade to the man’s quivering Adam’s apple.
“He can’t answer questions through a cut throat,” Chesna told the Russian. She put the barrel of her gun against the soldier’s forehead and pulled back the cocking bolt. The soldier’s eyes widened, wet with terror.
“I think we have his attention.” Michael glanced over at the prisoners, who had stopped working and were mesmerized with surprise and bewilderment. “What’s going into those crates?” he asked the guard.
“I don’t know.”
“You lying bastard!” Lazaris put some pressure on the blade, and the man yelped as a trickle of warm blood ran down his throat.
“Bombs! Hundred-pound bombs! That’s all I know!”
“Twenty-four of them? A bomb for each crate?”
“Yes! Yes! Please don’t kill me!”
“They’re being packed up for transport? In the Messerschmitt out on the field?”
The man nodded as his uniform’s collar reddened.
“Transported to where?” Michael persisted.
“I don’t know.” More pressure from the blade. The man gasped. “I swear I don’t know!”
Michael believed him. “What’s inside the bombs?”
“High explosives. What’s inside any bomb?”
“Don’t get cute,” Chesna warned, her voice crisp and deadly. “Just answer the questions.”
“That fool doesn’t know. He’s just a guard.”
They looked to see who’d spoken. It was the frail prisoner who had gray hair and wore wire-rimmed glasses. He came a few steps closer and spoke in what sounded like a heavy Hungarian accent. “It’s a gas of some kind. That’s what’s inside the bombs. I’ve been here for over six months, and I’ve seen what it can do.”
“I have, too,” Michael said. “It burns the flesh.”
The man smiled faintly, a bitter smile. “Burns the flesh,” he repeated. “Oh, it does more than burn the flesh, my friend. It eats the flesh, like a cancer. I know. I’ve had to burn some of the bodies. My wife among them.” He blinked, his eyes heavy-lidded. “But she’s in a better place than this. They torture me every day, by forcing me to live.” He looked at the hammer he held, and then dropped it to the concrete. He wiped his hand on his trouser leg.
“Where are the bombs stored?” Michael asked him.
“That I don’t know. Somewhere deeper in the plant. There’s a white building next to the big chimney. Some of the others say that’s where the gas is made.”
“The others?” Chesna asked. “How many prisoners are there?”
“Eighty-four. No, no. Walt.” He thought about it. “Danelka died two nights ago. Eighty-three. When I first came here, there were over four hundred, but…” He shrugged his thin shoulders, and his eyes found Michael’s. “Have you come to save us?”
Michael didn’t know what to say. He decided the truth was best. “No.”
“Ah.” The prisoner nodded. “Then it’s the gas, is it? You’re here because of that? Well, that’s good. We’re already dead. If that stuff ever gets out of here, I shudder to-”
Something whammed against the corrugated-metal gate.
Michael’s heart kicked, and Lazaris jumped so hard the blade bit deeper into the soldier’s throat. Chesna removed her gun barrel from the man’s forehead, leaving a white circle where it had been pressed, and aimed the weapon toward the gate.
Again, something hit the metal. A rifle butt or billy club, Michael thought. A voice followed: “Hey, Reinhart! Open up!”
The soldier croaked, “He’s calling me.”
“No, he’s not,” the gray-haired prisoner said. “He’s Karlsen. Reinhart is on the floor.”
“Reinhart!” the soldier outside shouted. “Open up, damn you! We know you’ve got the pretty one in there!”
The female prisoner who’d been poked with the rifle, her black hair framing a face as pale as a cameo, picked up a ballpeen hammer. Her knuckles bleached around the handle.
“Come on, be a sport!” It was a different voice. “Why hog her all for yourselves?”
“Tell them to go away,” Chesna ordered. Her eyes were flinty, but her voice held a nervous edge.
“No,” Michael said. “They’ll come in the way we did. On your feet.” Karlsen got up. “To the gate. Move.” He followed the Nazi, and so did Chesna. Michael pressed his gun into the man’s spine. “Tell them to wait a minute.”
“Wait a minute!” Karlsen shouted.
“That’s better!” one of the men outside said. “You bastards thought you were going to sneak one by us, didn’t you?”
The gate was hoisted by a chain-and-pulley device, operated with a flywheel. Michael stepped to one side. “Pull the gate up. Slowly.” Chesna got out of the way, too, and Karlsen started turning the flywheel. The gate began
