Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

Étienne freezes. The untersturmführer with the mangled ear stops. Marie’s eyes go wide. And from outside on the street comes the shrill sound of a furious Frenchwoman shouting, “Liar! Bastard!”

It all looks like a domestic row of some sort and the Germans are grinning again in anticipation. Until the woman bursts in through the door, still yelling curses at Étienne, and then turns to the Germans and says, “Il est maquis, lui, ce bâtard!”

He’s maquis, the bastard.

There is a frozen moment when the entire scene is an oil painting. Two Germans are seated. One German is turning back toward them. Étienne is blushing, already embarrassed and now appalled. Marie stares at her brother, her expression torn between rage and fear.

Rainy does the math:

Three Germans.

Truck down the street.

A long way still to go.

And then: no choice.

She pulls the Walther from her back, points it at the two seated Germans, BANG! shoots the one on the left, then BANG! the one on the right. Mangled ear is caught off-guard, but after a split second’s hesitation, rushes at Rainy. She fires.

Jammed!

Marie pushes the German and he stumbles, but in the wrong direction: toward the stacked submachine guns.

Rainy is up, knocking the table over. She slams the Walther down on the German’s head, hitting him on the crown of his head, stunning but not killing him. He staggers to one knee. The cutlery and glasses and bottles have all fallen to the floor. She dives for a broken water glass, cutting her own palm, seizing the glass by its base and plunging a pointed shard into the German’s neck.

But his collar board turns the glass shard aside, and now, drunk or not, the German’s training kicks in. He twists and drives a fist into Rainy’s belly, doubling her over. The glass drops from her hand.

The German is bigger, stronger, and more experienced at hand-to-hand combat. Rainy knows she will lose if she doesn’t end this quickly. But how? With what?

But then a knife appears, one of the fallen steak knives. Rainy dives. The German dives atop her, hands scrabbling to grab hers. Rainy stabs the knife at his side, but the blade is too weak to penetrate his uniform and the tip breaks off. He shifts his grip, wrapping big hands around her neck. She stabs the broken blade into his neck, not a fatal cut, but enough to cause him to rear back, roaring curses.

Rainy kicks wildly, rolls away, uses a table to pull herself up, grabs a chair, and slams it against him, like something out of a western barroom brawl. It does not break, rather it bounces away, having done no real damage.

Rainy grabs a wine bottle from the German’s table and smashes it against his shoulder, meaning to go for his head. He kicks, hitting her shin. She swings again and this time catches the German on the bridge of his nose. Blood gushes, filling his mouth and spilling out.

He is stunned but still dangerous. Rainy takes her time with the next blow, bringing the bottle hard against his temple. He drops to his knees, and Rainy pushes him onto his back, straddles him, fights past his flailing hands, finds the handle of the knife, and begins sawing the short blade back and forth across his throat. Like she’s trying to slice a tough roast.

The last of the cheap blade snaps off, and she tosses the hilt across the room.

The German is bleeding profusely from several wounds, but he is not dead. He crawls across the floor now, trying to reach his Schmeisser, but his way is blocked by one of his companions, lying on his side and trying to get at the hole Rainy’s bullet left in his chest.

Rainy smashes the bottle against the back of Mangled Ear’s head, and this time it breaks, leaving the mouth of the bottle intact, and with a single long, pointed shard of heavy green glass.

Rainy straddles the German from behind, awkward in her bulky black dress, and stabs the shard into his jugular, then twists it back and forth, cutting deeper and deeper as warm blood flows over her hand.

She feels the way his muscles no longer seem to be acting under conscious control. Still she saws and digs and twists until she is sure, absolutely sure, that he is dead.

She stands back and tosses the bloody bottle aside.

The French couple, the patron, Marie, Étienne, and Étienne’s prostitute, Marianne, all stare at her.

Rainy retrieves her Walther, works the slide to eject the jammed round, and in French says, “Messieurs, dames, I am going to tell you what happened here. These Germans got drunk and picked a fight with a truck driver who is heading west, toward Cognac. There was a fight, the truck driver had two friends, and they killed the Germans. Is that clear?”

No one answers.

“Is that clear?” Rainy demands. The patron and the French couple all nod yes. Étienne’s friend is backing toward the door, looking very much as if she might scream.

Rainy aims the Walther and BANG! shoots her in the heart. Étienne lets loose a whinny of protest.