LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘You’re bluffing,’ he blurted out at last, suddenly convinced that it was the only explanation. ‘Apart from which, you’d never get away with it.’

      Leveski stepped forward again. ‘I can assure you that Captain Zhann is conducting himself according to my specific orders,’ he muttered chillingly. ‘And what would there be to “get away with”, as you put it? A simple mistake, in the confusion of a postwar city. A tragic accident. The authorities would have no choice but to accept that verdict.’

      Piggy’s fingers tightened around the firing mechanism of the Vickers. He moved the twin barrels a fraction of an inch from side to side – mainly to show Leveski that he had control.

      ‘Aren’t you and your captain forgetting something, Major?’ he pointed out. ‘If it comes to a shoot-out, it’ll be far from one-sided. I can virtually cut your vehicles in half with one of these babies.’

      The Russian gave one of his chilling smiles. ‘What I believe the Americans call a Mexican stand-off,’ he observed. ‘However, we would still appear to have the advantage. As you see, I have four covered lorries. Only one of them contains armed troops. Your problem, Corporal, would be in knowing which one to fire on first. You must surely appreciate that you wouldn’t get time for a second guess.’

      It was becoming like a game of poker, Piggy thought. But what made the stakes so high? It made no sense at all. Unless, of course, the Russian was bluffing. No stranger to a deck of cards, Piggy decided to call Leveski’s hand.

      ‘You must understand that my men and I cannot be expected to surrender our weapons,’ he said in a flat, businesslike tone. ‘And I cannot believe that you would push this insanity to its logical conclusion.’

      As if understanding his corporal’s reticence to surrender without a fight, Trooper Wellerby spoke up.

      ‘We ain’t got a choice, have we, Corp? What’s a piece of rubbish like Mencken to us, anyway? If the Russkies want him that bad, you can bet your sweet fucking life they ain’t planning to take him to no birthday party.’

      Piggy could not repress a thin smile. In attempting to make light of the situation, Wellerby had hit the nail on the head. He was right: what were the lives of three brave troopers measured against the Butcher of Buchenwald? If only a tenth of the stories about him were true, he deserved not an ounce of human consideration. Whether Mencken died from a British noose or a Russian bullet, it made no difference at all. On the other hand, Piggy knew that he had no moral right to condemn his men to almost certain death. He returned his attention to Leveski.

      ‘All right, Major,’ he said, ‘in the interests of avoiding conflict, I will allow you to take the prisoner. But I must point out that I regard this as an act of hijacking and I will be reporting it to higher authorities as soon as we reach Brandenburg.’

      Leveski allowed the faintest trace of satisfaction to cross his face. ‘Your objections are noted, Corporal.’ He began to walk towards the second jeep. Releasing the hastily made noose, he gestured for Mencken to alight and led the German towards the waiting Russian convoy.

      Even now, the Nazi was arrogant. He still felt justified. He had just been obeying orders, he had done no wrong. He glared at Leveski defiantly. ‘I suppose you Russian dogs intend to shoot me. Then do it, and get it over with. I would not expect the luxury of a trial from Bolshevik lackeys.’

      Leveski ignored the insults, switching on his chilling smile. ‘Shoot you, Herr Doktor?’ he murmured in a low voice. ‘Oh no. On the contrary, we are going to treat you like a VIP. You are going to Russia to join some of your colleagues. You will soon be working for us, Doctor – doing what you appear to enjoy doing most.’

      He took Mencken by the arm, escorting him towards the nearest truck and bundling him up into the cab. Jumping in behind him, Leveski barked instructions to the driver, who fired the vehicle up into life and prepared to move off with a crunch of gears.

      As the truck started to move, Leveski stuck his head out of the open window, nodding towards Captain Zhann. ‘You have your orders, Captain,’ he said in a low voice. ‘We cannot afford any survivors to tell the tale.’

      Zhann nodded curtly in acknowledgement, but his face was as grim as his heart was heavy. He was a good soldier, a professional soldier. And the job of the soldier was to kill the enemy, not murder what amounted to an ally. But an order was an order, and much as he detested the increasing power and influence of the KGB in military matters, to defy a command was to place his own life on the line.

      He glanced at Piggy. It was a mistake which was to cost him his life. For in that fleeting look, Piggy saw something beyond the expression of respect for a fellow soldier. He saw regret, and he saw pity. Even as Zhann’s hand twitched at his side in a prearranged signal, Piggy’s highly tuned senses were already primed. That very special instinct was alerted, and his body tensed to respond.

      Ninety-nine soldiers out of 100 would have missed the faint, muted click of a dozen PPSh sub-machine-guns being cocked simultaneously. Piggy did not. More importantly, he pinpointed the exact source of the sound immediately: third lorry, fifteen degrees to his right.

      ‘Shake out,’ he screamed at the top of his voice. Even as he yelled, the Vickers in his hands was pumping out its devastating 500 rounds a minute – a lethal cocktail of tracer, armour-piercing shells, incendiary and ball. Beside him, Wellerby had already dived over the side of the jeep, retrieved the Thompson and rolled back under the vehicle, from where he began raking the legs of the Russian soldiers who had been standing in line.

      Piggy swung the spitting machine-gun along the side of the third lorry from the cab to the tailgate, concentrating his fire at the level where the side panel met the canvas cover. The fabric of the canopy shredded away like mist evaporating in the sunshine, whole sections of it bursting into flame and drifting into the air on its own convection currents. The side panel disintegrated into splinters of wood and metal, finally revealing the inside of the truck like the stage of some monstrous puppet theatre on which life-sized marionettes jerked and twitched in an obscene dance of death.

      Caught on the hop, the rest of the Russian troops had reacted with commendable speed. Leaving their unfortunate colleagues who had caught Wellerby’s raking ground-level burst from under the jeep writhing on the ground with shattered legs and kneecaps, those who could still move threw themselves down and rolled for what cover they could find.

      The second set of Vickers never had a chance to open up. Pat O’Neill took a chest full of rib-splintering 7.62mm slugs which lifted him out of the jeep and threw him several feet behind it. He was dead before he hit the ground. Seconds later, Mad Dog caught it in the gut and slid lifelessly down in his seat, his head bowed forward like a man in prayer. Beyond the arc of the sub-machine-guns, two surviving Russian soldiers had rolled into a position from which they had a clear line of fire to the underside of the lead jeep. Andy Wellerby did not stand a chance as a deadly cone of fire from the two guns converged on his trapped and prone form.

      Piggy had only the satisfaction of seeing Colonel Zhann’s upper torso dissolve into a massive bloody stump before the Russian fire came up over the side of the jeep and caught him in the thighs and groin. He fell sideways, landing half in and half out of the jeep as the clatter of gunfire finally ceased.

      Pain swamped his senses, but his eyes were still open and his brain could still register what they saw. Just before the blackness came down, Piggy saw the lorry containing Leveski and Mencken dwindling into the distance.

      ‘We owe you one, you bastards,’ he grunted from between clenched teeth just before he collapsed into unconsciousness.

      Miraculously, Piggy survived. But he was to hobble for the rest of his life on a pair of crutches and one tin leg. Just one year after leaving the military hospital, he joined the Operations Planning and Intelligence Unit at Stirling Lines – ironically enough, nicknamed ‘The Kremlin’ – and had a distinguished career until his retirement in 1986. Throughout his service years, his colleagues would come to know him for one particular conviction, which became almost a catch-phrase.

      ‘Never

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