He’d originally travelled there for some reason he could no longer remember — a story of some kind that had soon been lost and forgotten. Whatever that reason, he’d been on the spot as the Japanese invaded, pushing what little resistance there was before them. He could remember the atrocities clearly in his mind — sometimes he still woke up with the images of the dead and the tortured fading in his dreams. The rest of the time he mostly woke up trying to forget the faces of those he himself had killed in the years since…it was a lot to forget: far too much to do so successfully.
Kransky had spent three years in Manchukuo (known at the time as Manchuria) and hadn’t written a single article since. However during that three years he’d learned a lot that he’d put to use many times during the following years: Richard Kransky had learned how to kill. He’d also learned how to organise and lead armed groups and how to fight guerrilla war against a numerically and technologically superior enemy.
Since then he’d become involved in a number of conflicts around the world; from fighting the Japanese in Manchuria to Spain during the Civil War, against Franco’s Nationalists and the Condor Legion. From Spain he’d then returned to Asia once more, this time facing the Japanese in China as they’d invaded into the south from Manchukuo in 1937. By the time he’d left Asia and returned to Europe just prior to the outbreak of war in Poland, the Japanese High Command in China were offering a bounty equivalent to £1,000 Sterling for Kransky’s head: a veritable fortune for any potential Chinese informant (and indeed, no small amount in the UK either).
Experience in Spain had left the man with as little respect for the methods and interests of Hitler’s Germany as he’d shown for Japan’s colonial aspirations, and Kransky thus found himself operating in France in the middle of 1940. There were already the beginnings of a Resistance Movement, and in Kransky’s opinion the British had displayed amazing foresight in setting up a quite serviceable spy network that hadn’t taken long to locate and tap into.
Of the more dangerous of those talents he’d acquired in the years since his experiences in Manchukuo, by far the most developed and lethal was that of his immense capability as a sniper. To his surprise as much as anyone’s, he’d discovered that his skills as a marksman were excellent to the point of being quite deadly. With a good rifle and a set of optical sights, Kransky could hit a man in the chest at a thousand metres in good conditions. Aided by a large pair of naval binoculars he’d souvenired from the body of an Japanese naval officer, he’d also developed the uncanny ability to determine exactly who was the most important target in any given situation. This hadn’t been particularly difficult with regard to the Japanese military, as their officers continued the outmoded and rather suicidal practice of swaggering about the battlefield and behind the lines sporting pistol and ceremonial sword.
It proved more difficult against enemies that had learned the hard lessons of such behaviour during the Great War. German officers would carry sometimes a machine pistol as would an NCO or, for that matter, many lower ranks in such corps as artillery or tanks, and of late had even started carrying rifles just like anyone else. At ranges of 500 metres or more it was impossible to pick out rank insignia, and Kransky would instead rely on observation of the interaction between groups of men. It usually wouldn’t take him long to pick out the ranking officer in that fashion and deal with them accordingly.
Kransky watched as the vehicles split up some distance from the farmhouse, the tank the armoured car quickly moving away from the trucks and circling to cover the far sides of the house as searchlights mounted atop the nearer trucks blasted the building with brilliant white light, making it impossible for anyone to effect an escape. From his vantage point a hundred metres away, it was clear that the Germans were deadly serious. Kransky had noted the insignia on the tank and trucks as they’d passed in the darkness: the illumination from their slitted headlights had been enough to clearly identify it as a convoy of SS armour and grenadiers.
He was a tall man — close to 187 centimetres when standing fully erect — and the wall he hid behind was barely enough to provide him adequate cover, but he made the best use of it he could as wayward searchlight beams swept past and over him. The farmhouse had been the rendezvous point for channelling him out of France and back to England for debriefing. There was every possibility the British would offer him more ‘work’ on his arrival, and in truth he was thinking of signing up formally if they could place him somewhere his talents might be useful. He wasn’t a man accustomed to working under formal authority, or for liking the concept, but he also recognised the seriousness of what was going on in Europe and that it was going to take more than just localised resistance to defeat the Wehrmacht.
Kransky scratched thoughtfully at his chin as he watched the SS troops pour out of the trucks, his short, scruffy beard as unruly and unmanaged as his dirty mop of blond hair. He scratched somewhere else, just below the rumpled collar of his khaki battledress tunic. With a thin, wry smile he considered it amazing the nearby Germans couldn’t smell him hiding there: he hadn’t had a decent bath for at least a week and his clothes could do with a good wash into the bargain. He’d hoped to accomplish both tasks that night, but it now appeared he’d have to wait a bit longer.
It was unfortunate to say the least that his avenue of escape was now apparently being cut off, but there were alternatives and he was mightily glad he hadn’t been ten minutes earlier or he might well have been captured with them. He’d been unhappy with the location of the safehouse in the first place: it was far too close to a Luftwaffe airfield for comfort and by definition that meant it was far too close to the Wehrmacht in general — a concern that it appeared had now been realised.
Kransky watched for a good twenty minutes as the Schutzstaffeln troopers milled about, stomping their feet against the ground to fight off the chill of night that was settling in. The American didn’t feel it himself — several layers of clothing above and below the waist added to years conditioned to living off the land in harsh circumstances meant it had to be very cold before he’d feel any effects. He could hear occasional shouts from inside the house — almost certainly in German although the words were indistinct at that distance. After a while there were a few screams too — a female voice this time — and added to that rose the unmistakeable wail of a crying baby, making him cringe visibly and scowl in obvious displeasure at his own relative impotence: there was nothing he could do to intervene against so many troops save for getting himself killed.
Deciding that further observation could do no more than increase his feelings of displeasure and uselessness, and that he had another hike of at least thirty kilometres to reach the next safehouse, Kransky turned to sneak off through the bushes and beyond. It was at that moment the first of the shots rang out from within the house, instantly regaining the entirety of his attention. He instinctively hefted the heavy little machine pistol in his hands, as if to reassure himself. He’d picked the weapon up a few weeks before following the battle of Arras, where Matildas of the BEF had given Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division a bloody nose. The German tanker he’d taken it from hadn’t needed it anymore.
It was a remarkable weapon unlike any he’d before seen. No more than thirty centimetres long overall, it nevertheless held the power of a full-sized submachine gun twice its length. A stubby handgrip and guard fitted ahead of its curved, 30-round magazine was no luxury — the weapon’s rate of fire was savagely high, making the grip a necessity for keeping the thing under control when on full automatic. It was certainly a perfect defensive weapon for someone such as himself where operating alone and cutting down on unnecessary size and weight were as vital for long term survival as marksmanship.