Silver Stars (Front Lines 2)
Fighting terror and pain and weakness, she rises as stiff as a very old woman.
The cell door opens.
Hans is there with a smoking Luger pistol in his hand. A second guard stands behind him, swaying drunkenly.
Rainy searches her mind for some brave final phrase and can only summon up Nathan Hale’s words. Through broken teeth and swollen lips Rainy tries to say that she only regrets having but one life to give for her country, but her tongue is thick and her throat is constricted and whatever comes out it is no great, inspirational speech.
Hans steps in quickly. He places the Luger’s barrel against her forehead. His blue eyes stare hard into her one open, brown eye.
He tightens his finger on the trigger, right there, inches from her face. Then he twists the gun sideways and fires.
BANG!
It’s a hammer blow against her head, and she falls straight back, hitting the stony floor like a sack of meal. Hans steps over her, straddles her, so she is looking up at his towering figure as he takes careful aim for the second shot.
BANG!
The bullet hits the stone beside her ear, sending stone chips into the side of her face.
Hans looks down at her.
She stares up at him.
“This bitch is dead,” Hans says in German. Then, his lumpish face twisted into a nasty grin, he whispers, “Xavier Cugat. Funny.” And he turns and walks away.
Hours pass. Rainy lies absolutely still on the floor. The cold threatens to make her shiver, but she can’t show any sign of life lest some passing German see that she still lives.
She listens intently. More gunshots. Then trucks. She hears them through the window, which means they are pulling into the courtyard. There comes the tramping of feet. Snatches of conversation in German that is all urgency and bravado.
After an eternity, the trucks drive away.
She continues to lie still, slipping in and out of reality, losing all track of time. When she is lucid she listens, but all of the familiar sounds are gone now. She hears a bird. She hears distant explosions. A rat scrabbles curiously in through the open door, and in earlier times she would have leapt at it, wrung its neck, and eaten it raw. She’s eaten rat before this, and beetles and moths too. But she’s too weak to try to catch this rat.
Hours pass. And her voluntary stillness becomes involuntary: she doubts she can possibly stand. She knows she cannot escape even if she can stand. She is too weak, and the weakness this time feels fatal. Rainy is sure she will never move again.
Is that why Hans did not kill her? Was he leaving her to a longer, more painful death by starvation? Or is it that he appreciates the way she’d managed to make a fool of Hans’s superior? Had her life been spared because a Gestapo thug liked to rhumba?
Time loses all meaning. There is no longer any line between nightmare and reality, between disconnected subconscious fantasy and awareness. So when Rainy hears strange voices, she is not excited. They cannot be real. The phrase “fugging slaughterhouse,” in an indignant Bronx accent, can only be a dream.
“This one’s a woman,” a different voice says. “Fugging Nazi animals. It stinks like a goddamn latrine in here.”
“I guess these Eye-ties are sorry now th
at they joined up with Hitler.”
From deep within the lurching madness of her shattered mind, Rainy says, “Fug Hitler.”
It’s a mumble, barely a sound, but a voice says, “Hey! This one’s alive!”
There is a rush of activity. She sees boots—GI boots—coming and going, and then a face comes swimming into view. A young woman with her helmet tipped back.
“Hey there, honey, I don’t speak Eye-tie, but you just lie still there till we get a medico.”
Rainy’s eyes focus and from far away comes a tingle of recognition. But it fades as she spies the canteen on the young soldier’s hip.
“Water,” Rainy begs.
“Hey, that’s English. You mean this, right?” the GI asks, pointing to her canteen. She unbuckles it, screws off the top, and dribbles a thin stream into Rainy’s mouth.