Vern was already doing the smart thing and running back toward the trees. Brock couldn’t blame him. He struggled to his knees. All three had gotten a little beat up in the attack.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Brock shouted.
At the front of the house, the Germans were having more success.
Out on the front lawn, the machine gunner on the Kübelwagen was still firing short bursts, forcing the defenders to keep their heads down.
Cole had guessed correctly that the explosion had been caused not by a hand grenade, but by a Molotov cocktail that the Germans had crafted out of an empty schnapps bottle that they filled with gasoline siphoned from the Kübelwagen. A burning rag served as the wick.
It had been Messner who had thrown the bomb, waiting to get as close to a window as possible, although he had nearly lost his nerve at the thought of the bomb going off early and covering him with flaming gasoline. He had managed to smash the Molotov cocktail against the window and fill the front hall with flames and roiling, thick smoke. Only the fact that the interior walls were also stone had prevented the fire from spreading throughout the entire house.
A second Molotov cocktail soon followed, this one thrown by Gettinger, exploding against the front door and wreathing it in flame. The fire licked at the wood, threatening to engulf it, blackening the stone facade, sending clouds of acrid black smoke skyward. The occupants of the château had managed to keep a low profile by lighting fires only at night, but the smoke was now visible far and wide.
Messner fired shots into the smoke and flame, hoping to hit someone inside. Inadvertently, the flaming bombs had provided cover for the defenders. Near the burning front door, Gettinger also fired shots furiously.
But it was Dietzel behind the machine gun who was doing the real damage. Another burst hit the facade. If the Germans had been able to press the advantage with just a couple more men, the battle of the château would have been all but over.
Cole realized that he had to do something — and soon. He had positioned himself at an upstairs window alongside Bauer, but the leaping flames and smoke prevented them from repeating the tactics that had driven off the Germans last time.
“Go see if you can help downstairs,” Cole ordered.
Bauer gave a curt nod and hurried away. In the last few hours, Cole had given up worrying about Bauer’s loyalties. If the German had wanted to get the drop on his captors, Cole decided that he would have done it by now. He was fighting for survival like everybody else in the house.
He looked out the window to where the Kübelwagen crouched like a beast, spitting lead and fire at the château. Another burst made him duck down, but he had gotten a mental picture of his target.
One, two, three—
Cole popped up and fired a quick shot at the German behind the machine gun. It was hard to say if he had hit him, but the firing suddenly stopped. When he took a closer look, he saw that there was nobody manning the gun.
He smiled with satisfaction, but not for long. A shot came from beneath the Kübelwagen, striking near his head.
Too close.
But without the machine gun, the Germans had lost the advantage. He heard a shout, and the attack came to an end. This time the Germans were smart enough to use blind spots created by the far ends of the house to screen their movements as they slipped back into the woods.
The sniper under the Kübelwagen must have managed to scurry away while Cole had his own head down, because when he got back on the scope, there was nobody there. On the plus side, the Germans had left the Kübelwagen behind.
Cole heard a sound behind him and turned to see Bauer entering the room.
“They are gone for now,” the German announced.
“For now,” Cole agreed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
They had survived one attack from two different directions and had forced their attackers to retreat, licking their wounds. But they had a few wounds of their own. Rupert had been grazed by a bullet — nothing too serious, but painful all the same. Vaccaro had caught some glass in the face thanks to a bullet going through a window. Cole helped him pick out the glass. Vaccaro had insisted on inspecting the damage in a mirror.
“You think that’s gonna leave a scar? I don’t want it to spoil my good looks.”
“No worries there,” Cole said. It was well known that Vaccaro operated under the illusion that he bore some resemblance to the silent film star Rudolph Valentino. “Besides, you can tell all the girls back home that you got that scar in the war.”
“Better than a medal,” Vaccaro agreed.
The sun was getting lower. Under cover of darkness, it was likely that one side or the other would be back, and the defenders would no longer have the advantage of being able to pick them off as they crossed the open ground between the forest and the château. Once it got dark, things would get ugly.
They would hold out as long as they could, and then fight to the end. Try as he might, Cole couldn’t come up with a better plan.
Cole had always wondered whether he would make it through this war. He just hadn’t expected to be making his last stand in an old château, protecting the life of a German prisoner.
Out the windows, the unseen sun sank lower in the winter sky. The wooded hills seemed to march closer. The daylight faded like sand running through an hourglass. Soon enough, they would be out of time.
Cole would not have pegged Madame Jouret as a military strategist, but she seemed to grasp the situation as well as any of them. This house was like her Fort Sumter and Fort McHenry all rolled into one.
She set down her shotgun and approached Cole with her daughter in tow as an interpreter. She looked at Cole and said something in French, then looked expectantly at her daughter.
Reluctantly, Lena translated. She didn’t seem to like the information that her mother was sharing. “My mother says it will be much worse for us once it gets dark.”
“She ain’t wrong about that.”
Lena translated Cole’s reply; then the two women looked at each other. They both seemed to have agreed already on a course of action, because this time Lena spoke without waiting for her mother. “She also says that there is a way out.”
Cole wasn’t sure what she was saying. The house was surrounded, watched from all sides by Germans and Americans waiting to pounce on them. “A way out?”
“I can show you.”
Lena explained that there had not always been peace in the Ardennes, even before the current war. Great armies passed through, or sometimes local rivalries and conflicts escalated into bloodshed. There were even times when it was convenient to bring people in or out of the house unseen, whether it was a dalliance or a political alliance that was better kept from prying eyes.
They descended into the cellar. There were no electric lights down here, and nary a window, so that they had to rely on candles and flashlights. The dancing light revealed thick stone walls dripping with moisture, massive floor beams, some with the bark of ancient trees still clinging to them or hanging down in crumbling strips, and a dirt floor. The air smelled of dirt and damp, not to mention decaying wood. It was not an inviting place. Madame Jouret stopped in front of an ancient wooden cupboard that was dripping with cobwebs. With surprising ease, the cupboard was pushed out of the way to reveal a thick wooden door.
And beyond the door, a tunnel.
The dark tunnel was not inviting, to say the least.
Dirty spiderwebs ringed the entrance, and Cole noted a fat, pale spider that must have lived its whole life in darkness retreating into a crevice. Beyond the bit of light from their candles and flashlights, the tunnel looked black and pitiless as the muzzle of a cannon. The still air wafting from the tunnel depths smelled even more musty and earthy than the old cellar.