Mila 18 - Leon Uris [259]
Simon tried to rationalize. It was difficult to do that any more. The sewers were deadly and filled with bloated gassed corpses. There was no door open to them beyond the wall. We are finished, anyhow. Why not take my Fighters up and make a final attack? What would happen to the children and the civilians if we went up? What would happen to them?
Either way, doomsday was at hand. Well, Simon, make the choice, he said to himself. Be baked alive in this catacomb or destroy some of the enemy along with us? So hard to think. So hard. I wish Andrei would get back.
The noise above them stopped. For that instant everyone’s heart in the bunker stopped too. They waited ... a moment ... two ... three.
“They’re gone,” Alex whispered ever so softly. “Do you suppose Chris and Andrei got to Wolf?”
Simon didn’t hear Alex. His stomach churned with anger. The instant Andrei returned he would split into two forces. He would take one and Andrei the other, and they would throw every last grenade, fire every last shot in a suicide attack. Goddamn Germans! Dirty bastard animals! Dirty bastard animals!
Deborah Bronski slipped into the cell. They learned to speak and hear the other by barely whispering. “Will I be able to take the children up tonight? They’ve been lying still for two solid days and nights without speaking. They must have some air ... some water ...”
Simon was detached. Alex and Deborah tried to speak to him, but he was in his own fuzzy world of logistics, trying to organize an attack with knives against cannons.
“Simon, don’t do it,” Alex begged. “Don’t do what you’re thinking.”
“At least we’ll die looking at the sky,” Simon said.
Oberführer Alfred Funk’s field headquarters were in the Citadel, a few blocks from the northern gates of the ghetto. His goading obsession for several days had been focused on a blown-up sectional map of the central area filled with markings where sounds had been detected along Mila Street. Trails of underground sounds indicating tunnels, all in the proximity of the middle of the block. He knew it led to the Jews’ main bunker. Two entrances had been located. One in an air-raid shelter on Kupiecka Street, the other in a house on Muranowski Place. But he could not attack yet, for there were certain to be three or four more entrances and the Jews could either escape or hide in the other exits.
A large black grease-pencil mark was drawn around the houses from Mila 16 to Mila 22.
Funk walked to the second-story window and looked at his handiwork. Most of the ghetto had been leveled. Engineers were systematically dynamiting the standing buildings one by one to flush out those Jews who had hidden themselves in sub-floors. It had gone well in the last few days. Since the final action more than twenty thousand Jews had been taken to the Umschlagplatz and another five thousand were known dead. How many were burned or gassed? Impossible to tell, but the total indicated that victory over the invisible army of the Jews was at hand. He could not foolishly declare victory until the Mila Street bunker had been found.
Funk was desperate to find it quickly, for soon the rebellion would be in its second month and that would look very, very bad. Polish Home Army activity had been spurred by the Jewish rebellion, and unrest among the occupied countries could be felt as a direct result. He simply had to finish it off before it went over a month’s duration.
A knock on the door.
“Enter.”
An eager young Waffen SS officer from Trawniki entered, snapped his heels together, unable to contain his joy. “Heil Hitler!” Untersturmführer Manfred Plank crackled.
“Heil Hitler.” Funk grunted.
“Herr Oberführer! We are certain we have located another entrance to the main Jew bunker!”
“Ja?”
“Jawohl!”
Funk showed the man the map. The young officer snapped off his cap and tucked it under his left arm, and his right forefinger shot out and pointed to the location of Nalewki 39. “Here we have discovered a drainage pipe.
It runs in this direction ... so. Along with the tunnel on Muranowski