Children of the Dusk (41 page)

A bullet spun him around before he reached the generator.
 
The grenade fell from his hand, bounced as though striking a rock, and rolled down the incline that Jews in their work had worn smooth of grass. Misha lay in a heap as the grenade came to rest against one leg of the water tower.

The explosion shook the ground, pelting Erich with rocks and debris. When it was over, he rolled onto his back, trying to spot Solomon but instead seeing the tripod topple.

Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. The bottom of one leg of the tower was missing--jagged where it had been blown off--and the whole thing leaned drunkenly, water fountaining from the holes Solomon had shot in it in his attempt to destroy the generator.
 

Another leg snapped beneath the weight and the structure tipped. Water cascaded as the tower fell onto the generator and the headquarters tent. The generator sizzled--and shorted. There were several sharp pops, then darkness.

No more shots came from the limestone chimney.

Hempel climbed onto the Panzer and entered the turret. There was a growl and a metallic whir, and the tank swung around to face the Jews. Their knot spread out into a line.

Hempel stuck up his head. "I warned you and yours against any insurrection, Rabbi!" he screamed.

In a shower of sparks, the roof of the hut collapsed. The major ducked down again into the Panzer.

Erich looked up, positioning his body. If only Solomon would give covering fire...if he was still alive.

He tensed himself, and felt the dogs tense in response. His years of track and field, their years of training with the Abwehr and then in the specialized program he had set up on the Rathenau estate, it was all culminating here.

Fire spewed from the barrel of the tank's gun. Perhaps a fourth of the Jews were mown down, limbs scattered like tenpins, as the.50 caliber machine gun traced through their line.

The remainder swarmed upon the tank, so close to it now as to render it ineffective. The guards shot them at point-blank range but they kept coming, one or two wrestling the Mausers from the hands of sadistic boys who thought themselves soldiers, and returning the fire.

The shepherds leapt, tearing at throats and testicles. Erich speared his hand into an eye with a satisfaction he would not have dreamed possible; the guard staggered back, falling against Johann, who was wrestling with Max, each ripping savagely at the other. Someone rifle-butted Erich in the back. He went down hard, and glanced up just in time to see the tank swivel toward the melee.
 

He's going to shoot us all, he thought, even if it means killing his own men.

Hempel popped his head out of the turret to look around. Bullets rang against the armor as Fermi and Holten-Pflug knelt and fired, forcing the major back inside. A wave of Jews reached the tank and began, by force of numbers, to overturn it.

The Totenkopfverbände threw down their weapons and ran toward the jungle, closely pursued by dogs, trainers, and Jews. Those still alive in the sentry towers raised their hands in surrender. The tank growled and lurched forward, spitting clods of dirt as the rocking treads grappled for purchase.

Jews and guards screamed as the tank crushed them in Hempel's haste to exit the camp and save himself.

The machine was halfway to the road leading down the hill when it stalled. Erich ran toward it, leaped on and peered inside, expecting to get shot by Hempel's pistol. He had done what he had set out to do. He had saved the Jews. Now there was only one thing left. Rid himself and the world of Hempel.

A mouselemur, the tank's sole occupant, gazed up at him with doleful eyes.

Instinctively, Erich knew that Hempel was headed toward the Storch. He let Taurus' spirit course through him. Immediately he sensed the shortcut the major had taken. He sniffed the air, consciously attempting to cease thinking in human terms. The world was sapped of all pigments, the jungle a hothouse of orchids gone to gray, but the forest was rich with odors. His hearing was likewise acute. The rumble of a centipede across a leaf; the storm of Hempel's breaths a hundred meters down the hill.

As he dashed among the trees and ferns, Erich could still hear sporadic shooting behind him. He moved laterally along the hillside until the desire to stop seized him and he sniffed the air a second time. He could smell them. The Kalanaro, their body heat aromatic strata he could read like a geological map. Those monkey-men were old, it occurred to him for some reason he could not explain but which he had already begun to trust: old as Benyowsky's diary, perhaps old when it was written. Had they been the ones who stood, three thousand strong, as Benyowsky and the King of the North sliced their own chests with the royal
assegai
and sucked each other's blood?

Ampanzanda-be!

Where was the meaning to Benyowsky's life? The writing of the country's first constitution? the attempt to save Ravalona, only to be betrayed by friends and his own idealistic ambition? What joy could have come to the Count in the cool darkness of the crypt?

Perhaps only the grasshoppers and the centipedes held meaning. Perhaps only footfalls through the woods at the first light of dawn. All else, he told himself, must be nothingness, must be chaos. The only real advice worth listening to was the sound of his own heart, where the voices of dogs dwelled.

"Taurus," he said.

And then: "Miriam."

Sensing her presence within the
valavato
and knowing that if he neared it he might lose all control, he continued to descend the hill, slipping effortlessly between lianas and brambles. With his newfound senses had come surety of foot. At the base of the hill a tidal pond loomed like a moat, but he danced across the line of stumps and sprang to a grassy dune. Digging his hands into the sand he scrambled to the top and peered over.

The Storch, two small tabun bombs emplaced beneath the wings, was turning, taxiing hard, prop wash dimpling the water. He set his sights on the white September moon above the western tree line. Only a low spine of beach ridge blocked the pilot's view of him as he sprinted across the sand, heading for the short spit that arced into the sea at the open end of the lagoon.

Ducking his head, he ran in a half-crouch for the end of the spit. The dogskin slapped against him, the foliage cast crenellated shadows across the sand, enabling him to run in relative secrecy. The last twenty meters, though, was fully exposed, an apron of wet beach studded with sharp, dark stones. He hit the area at top stride, so charged with anger and power that he sailed painlessly across the rocks, laughing as Hempel aimed the Mann.
  

The plane whipped toward him as the first shot zinged past his ear.

He splashed out into the lagoon. Hempel waved his right arm as he attempted another shot and jerked the craft to the left, revving as he headed into the bay. The floats sluiced across wavelets, spray rooster-tailing behind.

Erich threw himself into a surface dive.

He caught the right float's tail fin. Its force whipped his body out straight. As water pelted over him and the plane picked up speed, he grabbed the strut. The left float lifted off the water and the right, lower due to his weight, followed suit. He saw the major jerk the controls to the left, trying to compensate as the aircraft pitched to the right. The machine yawed crazily and slowly corrected.

Hempel's feet were directly above him, soles against the wraparound window. He looked down, eyes angry.

Erich bared his teeth and grinned up at him.

The major, swearing inaudibly, reached across to the passenger seat and picked up his gun. As he maneuvered in his chair to get a clear shot down through the glass, Erich took a firm grip on the sponson and heaved himself left, caught the strut that ran to the left wing, and pulled himself up toward the passenger hatch. He heard the gun fire--twice, like someone cracking walnuts--but he was beyond fear, beyond caring. Physical action subordinated thought.

He shouted, smashing at the hatch with his fist.

The window splintered into a spiderweb of shattered glass. He wrenched at the door handle so hard that the door slammed open and caught the airflow. The momentum knocked him against the fuselage.

Another shot rang out. "You should have shot me long ago, when you had the chance," Erich shouted, as the plane dipped to one side and the pistol flew from Hempel's hand.

Laughing, Erich placed the arch of his foot into the V of the strut joint and swung up to look the pilot in the eyes.

Hempel threw the plane into a turn. Greenery displaced the blue of the sea as they banked back toward Mangabéy. Erich clutched the top of the hatch frame and, raising and tucking his legs as though he were about to pole vault, hurled himself inside and lashed out with both feet, catching the major squarely on the jaw.

Hempel lurched backwards against the pilot's window. His head thudded twice against the pane and the Storch veered sharply left, bringing Erich fully inside the cockpit. He landed crossways over the seats, legs in Hempel's lap, and snapped his left knee up against the major's chin. Hempel sighed, and slumped in the seat.

The plane nose-dived.

As the ground slanted closer, Hempel came-to with a groan. He squinted through the window beneath his feet, paled--and pulled back on the wheel. The plane began a roller-coaster climb.

Hempel reached for the loop of black wire that ran along the top of the front window and out to the bombs.

Erich seized him by the shoulders, twisting and wrenching as he dug his nails into the man's flesh.

Hempel pawed at the air, trying to grab the wire loop, but Erich shoved him back, hard, into the pilot's seat, driving his full force into him. Without thinking, he leaned forward and sank his teeth deep into the man's neck.

The major gurgled and slammed his fists against the back of Erich's head. "Bastard! You bas...!"

The sound ceased. The resistance stopped.

Erich felt the plane bank--too far. The blue of the bay was framed in the passenger window and the moon showed silver on the bottom front of the nose.

So be it! he thought. Damn them all!

Hempel hit him again but it was like a friend chucking another on the shoulder in greeting. His arms slid down Erich's back and sagged to his sides. His mouth was open and he was staring blankly.

When Erich pulled the Iron Cross from his pocket and put it around Hempel's neck, the major did not resist.

Erich patted the medal once against the man's chest, and smiled. With one hand, he took hold of Hempel's neck, and twisted. The major's eyes protruded. A blood bubble formed on his lips, popped, and meandered down his chin. He slumped in the seat. Erich spat out Hempel's blood and flesh, and laughed again, a cackle that seemed to emanate from outside himself.

The plane had begun to spiral, but Erich made no attempt to gain the controls; control, he realized, was the last thing he wanted.

He lay with the crown of his skull against the window as the plane dipped. The only thing that mattered to him now was the redolent green of the Antabalana River region below. He thought he could hear the voices of thousands of Jews as they unloaded from ships, their cries in his honor like the adulation of tribesmen, hurrahs spilling like tumbling jungle waters into the bay.

He could see the moon, a silver wafer on a velvet sky. Perhaps, he thought, the Bushmen were right and that really was where the soul went. Leni had told him that one parched night as they sat on the edge of an African desert.

He laughed again and the moon spun, melting into madness.

C
haos reigned in the encampment. In the melee, which he had started, Sol admitted to himself freely, it was hard if not impossible to tell who was winning and who was losing. The compound was no longer guarded against incursion from within or attack from without. The generator had been rendered useless by the collapsing water tower, the fences were for the most part shredded, and the searchlights were no longer operable.

Which meant that Sol no longer had even the vaguest idea of which targets he was hitting.

Having acknowledged all of that, he ceased firing and climbed down from behind the breastworks. His intent was to go down the south side of the limestone chimney, sprint through the clearing that Miriam called the grotto, and emerge well past the camp and the carnage.

From there, a reasonably short and not all that unpleasant run up the next hill would take him to the crypt.

A surge of pleasure reminded him that for the first time in his adult life he would be running to and not from--not away, not between sewer walls, not along the well-laid-out hell of the Sachsenhausen shoe-testing course that he'd had to endure for weeks on end.

Seeing the boy fall near the water tank and not get up had changed that plan. Misha lay somewhere down there, among the shots and the screams and the growling of both men and dogs.

Keeping as close as possible to the limestone chimney, Sol descended the front of the chimney rather than its rear, and climbed down into the camp. Once he was inside the compound, he found that most of the fighting was concentrated in the area near the main gate. He moved between the tents with comparative ease, as long as he kept his head down when he ran to avoid the natural traps of the tent lines. With the exception of tripping once, over a dead guard, he reached the boy without mishap.