Highlander - Donna Lettow [84]
He reached an apartment that fronted Mila Street. The door had already been forced open and hung crookedly from one hinge. As quietly as possible, he widened the opening enough for him to slip into the empty room. He dropped to the floor again so he couldn’t be seen from the street through the shattered windows and made his way across the room to those windows, ignoring the painful broken glass in his path.
At the window he chanced a look out the bottom corner. The street was full of soldiers. He looked again, noting the positions of the sharpshooters scattered among the infantry. He could see only one mortar, its crew in no rush to reload, target, and fire—their quarry wasn’t going anywhere. Coming down the road he could see a tank and, in front of it, a German staff car.
The car pulled up near the building, and a German officer jumped out, hurrying to open the back door for his superior. As the man emerged, MacLeod recognized the uniform—that of an SS general. He knew the wearer could be none other than Jürgen Stroop himself, the Nazi butcher charged with the task of completely eradicating the Ghetto.
Stroop’s aide handed him a bullhorn. “Übergeben!” The general’s words commanded the Jews to come out voluntarily, to surrender, but all around him his troops were readying their weapons. Even the mortar crew moved with renewed urgency. There would be no surrender. Only execution.
MacLeod’s hand tightened on his rifle and he raised it to just below the level of the window. He knew he would have only one shot. One chance. But if he could take out Stroop, maybe he’d buy the Ghetto a little more life. It might be only another hour or two. But at this point, every additional second of life was a precious gift.
“Raus, Juden!” the general announced. MacLeod spun to his knees in front of the window, aimed and squeezed off his shot—
—just as the general’s aide passed in front of him, taking the bullet in the head. His brains splattered across the general’s impeccable uniform and the gleaming staff car behind him, but Stroop himself still lived.
Shit. But MacLeod had no time to dwell on his failure, as the air filled with answering bullets. He scrambled from the room and ran for the back hallway. Behind him, the apartment blew apart as a mortar shell ripped into it. The wall beside him as he ran buckled, and the ceiling started to collapse in pieces all around him.
He dived down the stairs to the basement headfirst, hitting the steps two-thirds of the way down, tucking and rolling to the basement floor. He scrambled to his feet, across the basement, and reached the camouflaged door to the bunker just as Yossel opened it and pulled him in, locking the door behind him.
MacLeod sagged against the door for a second or two, catching his breath. Then with a wry smile he pointed out to Yossel, “Well, at least I’ve still got my head.” He hurried down the stairs and returned to the conference room.
He gave Anielewicz and the commanders a full report. What he’d seen. What he’d done. And what he’d left undone. No one blamed him—at least he’d tried. Still, he blamed himself.
Anielewicz seemed withdrawn, as if his brain was working overtime, trying to out think the German general, trying to figure out what the Nazi plan could be.
“Stroop’s here,” Anielewicz repeated to himself. He turned to his commanders, grim. “He knows. He knows who’s down here. He’s come for us.”
“But who would have told them?” Mira asked.
MacLeod ventured, “I’d lay odds it’s one of Issachar’s rats.”
Avram pulled his pistol and started toward the door. “Where is that son of a bitch?”
“Tzaddik! Wait!” Anielewicz commanded. “It’s no use fighting among ourselves. No use fighting the Germans’ battle for them.” Avram was about to protest when suddenly there was screaming from the other end of the