Highlander - Donna Lettow [55]
MacLeod couldn’t hear the man’s words, but he could read them in the revulsion on Miriam’s face. His hand tightening on his rifle, he hurried from the wooden causeway and sprinted across the next two rooftops, clearing the low brick wall separating them like a champion hurdler. After another short ladder and another sprint, he’d pulled ahead of the police by half a block. He hoped to cut them off before they could reach the prison. All the while he was alert for Avram’s signal.
MacLeod knew more was at stake than just Miriam’s life if he allowed them to take her into Gesiowska. Under interrogation, especially if these pigs turned her over to the Gestapo when they were finished with her, Miriam could compromise the entire operation—not only the ZOB fighters in the Ghetto, but the thousands of Jews in hiding on the Aryan side of Warsaw and the handful of sympathetic Poles, Miriam’s contacts, who protected them. Miriam was strong, he knew, but he’d seen firsthand what the Gestapo was capable of. And he didn’t want to imagine what they might do to a woman. Almost subconsciously, he checked the sight on his rifle. One way or another, MacLeod knew Miriam would never enter Gesiowska Prison.
With a leap he cleared the narrow on passageway that separated Gesia 122 and Gesia 120, then shouldered on the door to Gesia 118 and started down the stairs, taking them three and four at a time. The building was abandoned and his steps echoed as he pounded down the stairwell. Avram had once described to him the Ghetto before the cattle cars, how the Germans had forced nearly half a million people behind the Wall, crammed ten and fifteen to a room, but the Ghetto MacLeod knew was practically a ghost town.
He kicked open the door of a first-floor apartment whose windows fronted the prison. He passed through the kitchen, where a pot of rotted food stood on the stove. As he moved into the living area, he could see the dust-covered dining table still carefully set for dinner, patiently waiting for the family whose meal was so violently interrupted to return. He opened the front window, looked out cautiously. Miriam and her guards were approaching, less than a hundred yards away. MacLeod readied his rifle. “Any time now would be fine, Avram,” he muttered.
Out in the street, as the prison came into view, Miriam realized her time was running out. Rescue was not coming. Any escape she made, whether by foot or by death, she would have to make on her own. Her arms still awkwardly bound behind her neck, she swung back hard, catching the greasy Polish officer in the throat with her elbow, hoping that in his surprise he’d loosen his hold on her. Instead, he threw her to the ground.
“Bitch!” he screamed.
As she lay in the street, he drove the steel toe of his jack-booted foot brutally into her stomach, dragging her across the sharp cobblestones. She cried out in pain and struggled to move away as he drew his foot back and rammed it home again.
Signal or no signal, MacLeod would not stand by and watch Miriam beaten to death. He was out the window and into the street before the third steel-toed blow found its mark.
One of the guards saw him coming at them and shouted out an alarm. “Uwaga! Watch out!” He fired off a shot at MacLeod that missed wildly. Before the guard could shoot again, MacLeod fired at him on the run, hitting him in the shoulder. The guard dropped his rifle and fell to the ground in agony, cradling his useless gun arm. At the sound of gunfire, the Polish officer and his second guard turned toward MacLeod, leveling their weapons at him.
“Now would be the time!” MacLeod called out to Avram, not really expecting him to hear.
The two Poles fired simultaneously. MacLeod hit the ground and rolled, dodging the volley. If nothing else, at least he’d drawn their attention away from Miriam.
Rolling to his feet again, he fired off another shot. It barely missed the officer and whizzed dangerously close to Miriam, who had struggled to her knees and was attempting to stand behind him. “Vart doh!” MacLeod called to her,