‘Give us a break, Sarge, you know what it’s like; we aren’t all fucking heroes.’
‘Put your hands behind your back.’ To emphasize the instruction, Hyde jabbed his rifle forward, making sharp contact with the base of the man’s spine.
With strips of cloth his hands were tied tight, and as an added measure were fastened to his belt. Hyde jerked hard on them to make certain the bonds were secure. ‘There’s no breaks for you, chum, but I’d like to give your neck one at the end of a rope.’
Knowing that he was not about to be shot out of hand, the deserter gained confidence. ‘No chance of that, Sarge; only the Reds top their own.’
‘Who were the other two?’
‘Just a couple of Turks I fell in with. The ambush was their idea. Honest, Sarge, they were the bosses. I told… I thought you were commies.’
‘Clever of you then, if they were running the show, to wrangle the safest position for yourself, wasn’t it?’ Turning away in disgust, Burke went over to where the second victim of their return fire had fallen.
The frantic initial thrashing had slowed, but he went forward cautiously and was parting some bushes when a single shot rang out. Burke ducked, hesitated, then stepped behind the undergrowth.
An ugly splashing, gurgling noise was audible. He knew what it signified and relaxed his guard. Unable to withstand the agony of the stomach wound from which his punctured intestines protruded, the Turk had finally managed to get the barrel-tip of his AK into his mouth and pull the trigger.
In the fading light Burke couldn’t see it, but he knew the pulsing blood would be coming from a massive wound in the back of the ambusher’s skull. Turning back toward the others, Burke made a cutting motion with his finger across his throat.
‘Let’s get him out of here.’ Hyde pushed their captive back toward the truck, and as he started, he heard a shuffling noise coming from the near-impenetrable pine forest to their rear.
‘Hold fire.’ His shout came just in time.
With Andrea and Burke he watched as the file of young girls hobbled into view. That was the fastest they could move with their ankles fettered, wrists tied and nooses of thick rope joining each to the one behind.
Their prisoner whined excuse and apology without being asked.
‘They’d have died if we hadn’t rounded them up. It was the Turks’ idea; we were going to take them somewhere safe. We haven’t touched them…’
‘Just a humanitarian act, is that it?’ Not waiting for an answer, Hyde reversed his rifle and crashed it into the back of the renegade’s legs, sending him sprawling. ‘You bloody scum.’
FOURTEEN
‘No, no. It was the other two. I just went along with them.’ Curling himself into a foetal position as protection, from further blows, the deserter pleaded and begged.
‘How long would they have lasted on their own? Oh shit, we haven’t hurt them. I told you, we haven’t touched them.’ Getting no response he began to panic. ‘Well, the Turks did, not the girls. I wouldn’t let them touch the girls. There was this boy, he wasn’t right in the head, they took him off one night. They came back without him. Fuck it, you know what those animals are like.’
He paused, uncurled to look up at the three rifle barrels directed at him. ‘We thought you were commies. One of those stupid Turks had bogged our transport, right over the tracks. All we wanted was your wheels, we’d have let you go…’
Burke could sense the man’s fear. They made eye contact and the deserter must have seen his thoughts, because he immediately switched to Andrea, but he found no comfort, no hope there.
He hadn’t realized one of his captors was a woman. He directed his appeal at her.
‘We were taking them somewhere safe, that’s all. You’ve got to believe me.’
‘I do not believe you.’ Her finger eased back against the trigger.
‘No, no, no. Ask the girls; they’ll tell you. We haven’t touched them. Go on, ask them, ask them.’
‘You hear these things, but you don’t believe them.’ It took an effort for Burke to resist the temptation to empty his weapon into their cringing prisoner. ‘There was a rumour last year that a few of the bandit gangs had started a slavery business, supplying girls for the Russians and houses in the bigger camps, but you never want to believe things like that.’ His attempts to keep his temper in check faltered and then failed. He brought his heel down hard on the man’s thigh.
‘No, come on, lads, queen’s reg’s.’ He squirmed, fighting off the blow. ‘I got to have a proper court-martial and all that…’ He gagged as another kick took him in the chest.
‘That’s enough.’ Hyde grabbed the man and hauled him to his feet. ‘You’ll get your court-martial, but I’ve half a mind to hand you over to them.’
It was not as much a threat as it should have been. Huddled together, the girls looked too frightened and bewildered to be thinking of revenge.
‘I suppose you just happened across a group who were all in their teens and early twenties, did you?’ Hyde found he was breathing heavily, not out of exhaustion but through forcing down his natural instinct to unleash another blow.
‘Look, I told you, it was the Turks who did all the dirty work.’ He searched their faces, almost indistinct in the gloom. ‘I just told them the kids didn’t fetch decent money and the old ones would never make it…’ It was too late to retract and he knew it, but tried out of sheer terror, and in that he made the mistake of appealing to Andrea.
‘You tell them what it’s like…’ He froze, the rest of the sentence stillborn. There was a knife in her hand.
Hampered by his bonds his recoil was too slow and he took the slashing attack across the face. The razor like blade opened his cheek from below the left eye to the centre of his chin, splitting both lips. The flesh peeled aside, exposing white bone and muscle tissue before being hidden by a gush of dark blood.
‘That’s enough.’ Only Hyde’s intervention prevented a second a more deadly lunge. Clamping down on Andrea’s wrist, the struggle brought their faces close together.
The proximity of the sergeant’s horror-mask of a face had no effect on Andrea. ‘Let me finish him.’
‘We’re taking him back. If his time’s up, then he’ll buy it when the Reds catch up with us. You’re not going to play judge, jury and executioner like you have before. Get those girls to the truck and try not to frighten them any more than they are already.’
Bewildered and bedraggled, the captives let themselves be led by Burke while Andrea sawed at each of their halters in turn. Even when released from that restraint, they kept their place in line like horses long used to being tethered and not knowing how to behave with a free rein.
‘I sure am glad you’re back. I were thinking I was gonna bleed to death.’ Ripper lowered himself down onto the seat and slit the blood-stained material to expose the bullet hole in his leg. ‘For the first time ever, I wish Sampson was with us.’
Burke examined the neat entry wound and made Ripper turn on his side while he looked for an exit hole. ‘It’s still in there. You got lucky – no breaks, no arteries cut. I’m afraid you’ll live.’ As he applied a dressing he looked into the back of the cab.
The Dutchman had been hit twice in the head, through the left eye and the centre of the forehead. His blood saturated the bench seat.
Taking the body by its feet, Hyde hauled it out of the cab and it flopped on top of the body of its compatriot. ‘Get the girls up on the back. Throw those pallets off to make room.’
Realization of the change in their situation was dawning among the young women, and when Burke came to help the last few climb up, several tried to throw their arms around him to demonstrate their relief and gratitude. He was embarrassed by the emotive display and pushed them from him, but not hard, muttering, ‘Bitte sehr, bitte sehr, don’t mention it, don’t mention it.’