Thanks for the reviews/follows/faves as always! This is such a long chapter but I threw caution to the wind and now my hands are swollen. It was worth it.
Chapter Fourteen
The Longest Night
Normandy, France
5-6 June 1944
5 June 1944
"The long sobs of the violins of autumn, wound my heart with a monotonous languor..."
Karolina and the group of Maquis fighters had been waiting an hour for those words to be said, listening to fluctuating static before the opening drums of Radio Londres announced the 'personal messages', the nonsensical strings of code words that announced different meanings to different people. But those lines, taken from a poem, were a signal to all covert groups on the Normandy coastline that the Invasion was imminent, and that they were to spread out along the countryside and attack as many enemy soldiers as possible.
Benoit looked up from where he was crouched by the radio's dial and gave the group an intense stare. "It's time," he said, a smile breaking over his face. "It's happening. It's finally happening." And then everyone was moving, scrambling to pick up their things, jittery and ready to fulfil their duties.
Karolina picked up her new M1 and tightened the belt around her waist as Benoit gave out orders. "Henri, go to the first line of dynamite and set off the reaction. Jeannette, take Pauline and the two of you dismantle the repairs the Germans made to the main power grid. The rest of you, attack your assigned platoons. Karolina?"
She looked up to find the entire group staring at her, taking in her stolen black men's shirt and the pants she had dyed black out of necessity, her weapons belt, the beret firmly pulled down on her head, and she paused as Benoit stuck out a hand. She met the older man's palm with her own and marveled at his grip. She hoped that she would see him again, but the chances were low. He had done so much for her, and he didn't really know her at all.
"Thank you," he said. "For helping France, for helping us." He dropped her hand and picked up his flask from the tabletop. "To the only good German - vive la France!"
"Vive la France," she said with the others, her hands shaking, feeling twitchy as the medicine kicked in. She had taken two pills instead of the one, and she felt as if her heart was going to break her breastbone it was pounding so hard. Benoit kept giving her strange looks, as if he could tell something was a little off, as if he knew. Perhaps he did know - if he did, he certainly wasn't complaining.
They filed out into the night, and Karolina checked her wristwatch as Benoit shut and locked the door to the brewery behind her. 23:00. The drops would begin at midnight. She had an hour to cause as much chaos and disorder as possible. A buzz sounded low and dull in her ears, her head was cloudy, but she saw everything so clearly through the dark, like a cat. The fatigue she had felt earlier was gone and she cracked her neck, ready for the task at hand.
"Good luck," Benoit whispered, and she turned left and headed towards Ravenoville-Plage, listening to the rustle of the grass on the side of the road as the wind whipped past her. Start at the end of Utah Beach, work your way up. She glanced towards the sky, convinced that she already heard the mass drone of airplane engines, or perhaps it was only her head.
Ron hadn't taken his Dramamine.
Instead, he had mimed tossing it back into his mouth and had shoved it in his jacket pocket when no one was watching. He had experience with the stuff back in Boston, when he used to go sailing with some friends from high school, and it made him sick to his stomach. He knew he had made the right decision now, watching the men in his plane clutch their stomachs and loll their heads backwards. Others looked completely out of it, their eyes gone slightly dim and crossed. He needed all his wits about him for this drop.
The man across the aisle from him - Dodd? Aster? Too hard to see in the dark, the grease distorting everyone's face - fiddled with the rosary dangling from his hand, his fingers rolling the beads, his mouth muttering prayers. Most men needed to put faith into a higher being in order to feel confident. His faith was firmly in the corner of the OSS, Karolina Shütze, and a couple hundred pissed-off Frenchmen itching for a fight. He would always bet on the side seeking revenge. He just hoped the French wouldn't shoot him in the dark.
He sat near the open door and watched as the grey clouds formed a wall of mist in the air, his ears trained for the sound of distant explosions. He knew there was no way that the plane would escape the Invasion unscathed, knew that some of the men would be shot in mid-air as they floated downward towards German guns. The best-case scenario would be that at least two-thirds of the men made it to the ground and to the rendezvous point. The worst-case scenario was that the plane would be shot out of the air and go down in a fiery inferno of screams and pain. Pleasant to think about.
Before he had climbed into the plane a few hours ago, he had caught up with Winters and Nixon, and the three of them had gone over the map of Normandy one last time. "We're supposed to land about a kilometer west of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont," Nixon had said, tapping the tiny red dot on the map. "Then, reconvene in Foucarville and get to work destroying those cannon garrisons."
Ron had shifted, hating how the idiotic leg bag weighed him down. "Let's hope those cannons on the coast were successfully taken out," he said, running a finger along the width of Utah beach. "Or we aren't getting to Foucarville."
Foucarville was the place where Karolina had been hiding. He wondered briefly about the other OSS operatives, how they were faring - Medvedeva had started a coup, he knew that for sure. Abruzza had poisoned an entire platoon of Germans and then some in Bayeux, according to Nixon's last intelligence report before they climbed into the plane. He assumed they would meet up with the men at Foucarville as well. What a jolly little reunion that would be.
The cloud wall outside of the airplane cleared, and for the first time he could see the mass of C-47's all around them. He inched to the door and looked down - beneath them, an entire fleet of men were sailing towards France, ready to take back the coastline, hundreds of ships of all sizes stretching in every direction. The moon shone on the sea, illuminating the miniscule waves, and Ron sat back, fighting off the vertigo. Off to the right, a burst of lightning illuminated a cloud bank, and another struck in quick succession. No, not lightning...
"Artillery!" said Dodd/Aster, looking out the doorway, the rosary forgotten in his hand. The men in the airplane shifted upright as the first sounds of explosions began to filter past the noise of the engines, and Ron gripped the butt of his rifle, grimacing at the flashes of light in the sky. This was the part that he had been dreading - he could control what he did on his own, he could mostly control the actions of each man in Dog Company by intimidation, but he couldn't control the airplane, and he couldn't control whether he would be shot on his way down to earth.
Another immersion inside an ocean of clouds and then the airplane broke free, and as soon as it did, flack began to pepper the underside of the wings, bouncing off with pings that made each man flinch and shy away from the sides of the plane. They were still above water - Ron could see the glint of the waves below them, and he held on tight to the ropes lining the benches, staring intently at the jump light near the door.
Red, he willed silently. And then green, soon.
Twelve hundred feet below, Karolina crept up behind a lone German soldier, slapped a hand over his mouth, and slit his throat. He fell to his knees with a shocked whine, and she dragged him backwards into the covering trees. She hated the sensation of cutting a man's throat, it felt like slicing into a thick steak, but it was the most efficient way to take down enemies if one was attempting to be stealthy. Stealthy stealthy stealthy stealthy, chanted her brain, and she shook her head, hard.
She had forgotten how many people she had killed but based on the amount of blood on her hands and splattered over her pants and shirt, she could guess at least ten by her own hand. It was hard to keep track, and the guns were taking out a lot of Germans for her as they exploded into wide-reaching fireballs, immolating the men unfortunate enough to be standing by them. Most of the coastline she had covered was smoking from the bombed artillery, and the other bits were going straight to hell thanks to the Maquis and the Free French that had arrived from Paris as a welcome surprise. It had been an hour since she had left Foucarville, and as she knelt by the freshly dead German in the darkness, she heard the distinctive hum of hundreds of planes and the German guns firing in response, followed by the dull blast of distant explosions.
She was shaking, whether from the adrenaline or the pills or both, she didn't know. She wiped the sweat off her brow and pulled away her hand when she felt the clamminess of her skin. Something wasn't quite right, something was, it was not, not a good idea, one a day, she had never taken two before... She felt dizzy and cursed herself for the self-sabotage, she knew better than to take more than one, but she had done it, nervous about her own abilities, unwilling to put her guard down for the slightest millisecond in the field. She reached for the canteen on her belt and took a swig of water, practiced inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly, trying to reduce her heart rate and steady her vision.
A functioning German gun sounded off down the road and she squinted her eyes in its direction, catching the flash of the tracers as it fired. That would not do, not one bit. She poked her head out of the bushes, looked both ways down the road, and then crawled out, grabbing the strap of her M1 rifle as she focused on walking on the balls of her feet.
Halfway down the road, she heard a fluttering sound from above, and looked up in confusion before recognizing the underside of an open parachute and a man swiftly falling towards her. She ducked into the hedgerow and watched as he landed gracelessly on his ass, swearing the entire time. This has not escaped the notice of the Germans down the road, however, and Karolina heard the whizzing of bullets fired their way as the man flattened himself on the ground and crawled in her direction.
Before she could tell her instincts no, she slid out of the bushes and offered an outstretched arm to the man, who gave her a bewildered look before reaching out and taking her hand, and she dragged him into the hedgerow with her. He started when she crouched down beside him, his hand grabbing for a gun that wasn't there, but she put her finger up to her lips and pressed herself flat to the ground when she heard footsteps.
A pair of German scouts jogged past them, clearly searching for the man they had just seen fall from the sky, and they kicked at his abandoned parachute for a moment before giving up the search and running back to their stations. Karolina turned to look at the paratrooper, who was eyeing her beret and her outfit, and he pressed his helmet to his head.
"Parlay view..." he attempted, and then coughed, his throat raw.
"Welcome to France," she whispered in English. He screwed up his face as he recognized his own native language. "Where were you supposed to land? And what company are you in?"
"I'm with the 82nd," he said. "Where am I?"
"Petite Hameau," she said, grabbing the paper map from the pocket of her pants and tilting it until she could see in the moonlight. The German gun went off again, and she looked towards it with a livid expression as the man flinched. "I must take care of that. Where is your map?"
"Here," he said, reaching around for his pack and pulling out a worn cloth map. He held it to the same patch of moonlight and swore. "I'm a whole fucking fifteen kilometers off my lading point."
"Go south to Foucarville," Karolina said, tracing the path with a finger. "It is the rendezvous of the 101st 506th, you will be able to find your way from there."
"Thanks," the man said, giving her another perplexed look. "Who are you?"
"Karolina," she said, patting him on the shoulder before drawing her Welrod and walking back into the road. He said something else, but she was already stalking towards that infernal gun.
She could hear machine guns now, firing off in the fields as the men fought each other on equal grounds, and she used the noise to cover her footsteps as she ran towards the gun, ducking behind trees and bushes and melting into shadows when she saw the dark outline of another person ahead of her on the road, friend or foe, she wasn't sure. With a few more yards, she was able to see the gun itself - it was manned by four soldiers, each looking frantic as they scrambled for more ordinance to shoot down the paratroopers and their airplanes. Karolina checked the number of bullets in her Welrod, aimed at the principal gunner, and fired. He dropped down with a yell, and the three other men turned in her direction, grabbed their pistols, and began to shoot wildly into the dark.
She didn't feel the first bullet go into her arm, but she certainly felt the second one hit her side, and she aimed and fired at one of the men and watched him go down with a groan. The two other men were making their way towards her when one was felled by a shot that was not her own.
She turned and saw the paratrooper from before crouch down and walk towards her quickly, and she fired at the last German soldier but missed entirely, the bullet ricocheting off the metal of the gun's base. The paratrooper leapt up, sighted the man through his scope, and shot him down before he could yell for help.
Karolina looked up at the man, who gave her a shrug before moving forward towards the gun. "I thought you could use some help," he said, and she followed him into the clearing quietly, her hand clutched to her side. The spaces between her fingers were already wet with blood, but she found the strength to drop a live grenade into the barrel of the anti-aircraft gun and scurry away with the help of the paratrooper before it burst into flame.
"I'm Davidson," he said, and they shook hands. "Nice to meet'cha." He stared at her side, where the bullet had ripped through the fabric of her shirt. "Need a hand cleaning that up?"
Don Malarkey began to realize how stupid it was to sign up to jump out of a perfectly good plane.
Winters stood up at the front of the plane as the red light came on, and Don grabbed his carabiner, ready to get the hell out of there even though his instincts were screaming at him to stay on the plane. A burst of flack hit the side of the plane, and he heard one of the men yelp, and then everything went sideways as the pilots titled the aircraft out of the way of oncoming fire.
He fell on the bench and grabbed at the ropes on the wall, watched as Skip scrambled up in front of him - he turned to help Don up, and Malarkey grabbed his hand gratefully. The plane was accelerating, and Winters was looking out of the door with a vacant expression of horror and concern etched on his face. That couldn't be good.
"We get any lower, we ain't gonna need any freaking parachute!" Skip hollered out, and Winters broke his reverie and looked towards them, acknowledging Skip's point.
A shattering of glass sounded from the front of the plane, and in the darkness the red light turned green. The stick of men were moving forward rapidly, everyone eager to get out of the metal deathtrap, and though Malarkey was the twelfth man in the row he soon found himself near the front of the plane. Malarkey was a few feet from the door when he saw a plane on their right burst into flames, and he could swear that over the racket of the engine and the exploding ordinance and the sound of flack hitting metal, he could hear the poor bastards inside screaming as they went down in a fiery arc.
He didn't hesitate, though - as soon as Skip jumped out of the doorway he propelled himself into the air, grabbing onto the risers of his parachute as it deployed, and with a great heft upwards, the silk caught the wind and the leg bag snapped off. He rose back up into the air, fifty pounds lighter, and took in the tracers crossing the sky and the wreckage below him. He tried to steer clear of any trees or ponds, praying he didn't get hit while he was still in the air.
Malarkey didn't think of what losing all of his gear would mean for his personal safety until he hit the ground, landing inside some poor farmer's wheat field and realizing that all he had on him was a pistol and a few grenades. His hands went down to his leg and found the snapped cord where his bag had torn away from him, and he groaned as he unclipped himself from his parachute and ditched the yellow harness. He flattened his body to the ground and stole a glance around the field, not seeing a damn soul. This sure as hell wasn't the drop zone, then. Where was he?
He still had the pack on his back though and thank Christ he had decided to put his map there and not in the leg bag. He drew his pistol and crouched low as he made his way across the field, intent on seeking cover in the trees a few yards away - suddenly, a machine gun began to fire at him from the not-so-safe hedgerow, and he turned and ran in the opposite direction, weaving around stumps and pieces of metal that littered the field, praying that he wouldn't trip.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. He was almost to the edge of the trees that separated his field from the next when he ran straight into someone who was kneeling on the ground, and he went ass over teakettle into a creek. The person swore - in English, thank God - and crawled over to where he lay, and through the haze of burning planes and the flashes of tracers, Malarkey recognized the furious face of Bill Guarnere.
"Flash," Malarkey said weakly, rising up on his elbows out of the stagnant water. Bill shook his head and gave him a hand up, and the two of them hid behind a row of bushes as Malarkey wiped the mud from his uniform.
"Thunder, ya stupid idiot mick," Guarnere said, his eyes flickering between the machine gunner and Malarkey's face. "Ya alright?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," he said, patting Guarnere on the shoulder. "How about you?"
"Lost my fucking leg bag in the drop, but I got my M1," he said, readjusting his grip on the rifle. "Where the fuck are we?"
"No clue, but I have a map," Malarkey said, feeling around for the back of his pack. "You didn't see any recognizable landmarks, did you?"
"No, I saw fucking Krauts shooting at me and a bunch of trees," Bill griped, helping him get the map from his pack and squinting into the field. "Shit, you got a raincoat?"
"No," Malarkey said, and Bill cursed again. "I can try to use moonlight."
They were still bickering under their breath when the sound of someone walking through the underbrush came from the right, and the two of them whirled around, guns pointed towards the shadow of a person across the creek.
"Flash," Bill whispered, raising his rifle to his eye. Malarkey steadied the hand around his pistol, his heart beating double-time.
"Flash?" said the voice. A woman's voice, actually, and Malarkey's ears recognized the pitch and tone. The shadow shifted, and then it gave a derisive snort, as if it couldn't believe the choice of the code word. "Oh, Thunder. Yes. Thunder." The person leapt across the creek and steadied themselves on a tree trunk with a sound of pain before coming closer, and there was Karolina, smiling her little smile, her face smeared with blood.
"You have gotta be fucking kidding me," Bill said, lowering his rifle and grabbing her by the arm, but she winced, and he let go immediately. "Kid, I can't believe it's you! What're you doing out here?"
She crouched down beside them, looking them over with a glazed-over expression, and Malarkey took in the beret on her head and the blood splatter on her neck - it didn't escape him that she was favoring her left side, either, and when he went to inspect the ripped side of her shirt, she caught his hand.
"Do not touch," she said, her voice sounding more foreign than it ever had in England. "I am fine. I fixed it up."
"You fixed what, exactly?" said Guarnere, turning her towards him. "Shit, are you hit?"
"I am, but I can bear it," she said, patting him on the shoulder. "Both of you are far away from your drop zone."
"Yeah, we figured," Malarkey said, and she smiled, though she looked exhausted. Exhausted, but jittery - her hand twitched incessantly on the butt of her M1 and her eyes kept jumping around, taking in everything. "You fighting with the French?"
She reached up and touched her beret. "Is it obvious?" she said, and Bill snorted, but stopped when the machine gun started up again. Karolina rose up, her eyes trained on the enemy gun. "Head to Foucarville - there is a railroad in the direction where I came, follow it south. I sent Toye and Wynn towards it ten minutes before. Catch up to them."
Malarkey and Bill watched in disbelief as she moved aside a branch with one arm and leveled her rifle at the machine gunners, breathing in deeply before firing off a shot with no warning. Across the field, a man screamed, and multiple voices broke out in panicked yells. Karolina looked down at the two men, her right eye twitching. "Go," she said, and Malarkey pulled Bill up from where he sat and they splashed across the water as the spy fired two more shots behind them.
"How the hell could she see that far away in the dark?" he asked, turning to look back at the woman holding her own against an unknown number of Krauts. Malarkey didn't answer him, just kept moving forward until the bottom of his boots touched the steel ties of the railroad, exactly where Karolina said it would be. He paused, wondered if they should go back for her, but Bill was already halfway down the tracks, and Malarkey jogged to catch up with him.
After she had sent Malarkey and Guarnere down the right path and taken out the machine gun in the field, Karolina felt her side constrict, and she wobbled towards the machine gun nest. She grabbed ahold of the gun's turret as she went down to her knees, holding onto her side and wincing at the stabbing pain. Davidson had sprinkled some sulfa powder on her wound and given her a bandage before they had gone their separate ways, and it had helped for a little while, but now there was only pain. She pressed her hand to the outside of the bandage and her fingers came away wet with blood. That was not good at all.
She unscrewed the lid of her canteen and leaned against the gun, watching the blood ooze out of the bullet wound in the dead German's neck across from her. She had crashed hard from her overdose, the result of too many little blue pills, and was depleted of all energy. She had no clue how much damage she had inflicted upon the coastline Germans, but things were starting to grow quiet again, the hum of airplanes further away than before. The majority of men had dropped, then, but not all - she had watched one C-47 crash to the ground and set fire to a field, and she had to dash to escape the reach of the flames aided by gasoline.
She checked her watch. It was only one in the morning, the sixth of June. She had been fighting for two hours, but it felt as if she had been outside for a lifetime. A breeze shifted her shaggy, sweaty hair away from her neck, and she sighed deeply. She could sit for a moment, but not forever. She still had so much work to do, had to find her way to Foucarville and find Easy Company, had to get the bullet out of her side before it became infected.
Against her own wishes, her body seized the opportunity to relax, and she passed out inside the enemy's machine gun nest.
Winters knew Guarnere was angry with him - the man hadn't stopped yammering on about how he was a good-for-nothing Quaker, along with some other choice insults, since he had chewed out Guarnere for taking out the German wagon before he gave the signal to do so. He caught Lipton's apologetic glance before the man turned to look back at the hot-headed Philadelphian with a warning look, which didn't stop Guarnere from complaining but cut down the volume of his voice.
"Bill's brother was killed in Monte Casino," Malarkey said to his right. "That's why he's so...grouchy. He found of right before the jump."
They sloshed through the marsh and up a small rise, finding themselves on the edge of a pond swarming with mosquitoes. So far, Normandy had been nothing but mud, water, and bugs. Dick slapped one off of his neck and glanced behind him to make sure Toye and Guarnere were keeping up. "How many brothers does he have?"
"To hear him talk about it, at least ten," Lipton said with a solemn smile. "He's got three other brothers in the fight, too. He's not his mother's only."
"That's good, then," Dick said. He was his mother's only, unfortunately, and he was sure that she would never forgive him if he didn't come back home. He hoped she would never get a letter in the mail from some captain expressing his regrets. He looked over at Malarkey, who seemed pale but otherwise fine. "Stroke of luck, hooking up with Guarnere and Toye, huh?"
Malarkey looked at him, and then his mouth popped open as his eyes went wide. "Shit, sir, I forgot to tell you," he said. "I mean, sorry, I didn't mean to swear, but you're not gonna believe it, how we all got together."
"It was damn lucky, sir," Toye said, ditching Guarnere to join the conversation. "I ran into Agent Shütze right after I landed. It was like she was waiting for me or something. She told me to go to the railroad, and I met up with Guarnere and Malarkey, who had also seen her. She was pointing people in the right direction."
"Seriously?" said Lipton. "How could she have gotten to all of you around the same time?"
"She looked pretty beat up," said Malarkey. "I don't know how she was even walking, she had gotten pinged in the arm and in the side. And then she attacked a machine gun nest by herself. That's when we left to go meet up with Toye and Popeye."
Dick looked at them all, an eyebrow raised. "Is she alright?"
"She didn't look alright," said Guarnere, and Dick turned in surprise. "She was covered in blood - not her own blood, I'm guessing. And wearing a fruity little beret. Fighting with the French and all, she said. But her eyes looked crazy."
Dick nodded and lead them past a dead cow. "Nixon told me she was guerilla fighting with the Maquis groups in the area," he said. "Did she say she would find us?"
"No, sir, but she seemed like she was pretty busy," Malarkey said.
Hall, the stray soldier from Able, walked closer to listen in. "Who is Karolina? Is that a broad?"
"Shut the hell up and mind your own business, Cowboy," spat Guarnere.
Karolina woke up with a jolt, the sound of sonic booms shaking her off of the gun and onto the sticky, blood-soaked dirt. She winced as she landed on her wounded arm and looked up to see the sky alight with the rays of dawn. She shook her sleeve up her arm and checked her watch - it was half-past six in the morning, and the naval landings had just begun.
"Oh, fick micht," she groaned, rising up from the ground to see three dead Germans around her. She was covered in dust and dirt and the blood on her shirt and pants had hardened until the fabric was as stiff as a board; her head was pounding, no doubt the after-effect of the overdose, and all the blood in her body rushed to her head. She rose her eyes over the webbing of the machine gun nest and peeked out over the neighboring fields. Everything was still, as if the fighting had moved past her while she had been asleep. She stood up and stifled another groan as she twisted accidentally - she placed a hand to her side, and it felt hot to the touch. That was very, very bad.
She climbed out of the nest slowly, rolling her M1 onto the grass before her, and laid there for a minute as she willed the blood to settle in her veins. She stared up at the sky. A gorgeous dawn was breaking, one with streaks of gold reaching across the orange glow near the horizon.
After she had regained her equilibrium, she pushed herself up on her knees and grabbed her rifle. Somewhere, far off in the distance, a long-range artillery gun was firing rhythmically. She rose to her feet and ambled towards the road, grabbing her map out of the pocket of her pants, and then sighed when she saw that it, too, had gotten bloody during the fight.
She had told everyone to go to Foucarville, but they had probably taken out the cannon garrisons by that point. She also knew that the original objective was to land near Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, and so some of them might have gone there, as well. She slapped the map against her thigh, frustrated - she had two options, south or east, and she had no clue which one to take.
The gun in the distance fired off again, and she took out the little pocket compass she had kept with her since her days in the Abwehr. The gun was to the east, and she heard shouts that sounded distinctly American in that direction. She heaved a great sigh, adjusted her grip on her rifle, and began to walk down the road in that direction, hoping she had made the right choice.
Ron walked down the same road from Sainte-Marie-du-Mont towards a pack of captured Germans, entirely livid and frustrated with everyone around him. No one had any information, ninety percent of his company was missing, and everyone but him had seen a crazed German spy dashing through the night, slaughtering Krauts left and right.
Nearly half of the men from Easy and Dog had run into Karolina Shütze in the darkness - according to those men, she appeared out of the woods as if she were a specter, covered head to toe in blood and killing rogue Germans in the heat of the moment - and she had pointed them in the right direction, making sure they would hook up with their companies, before disappearing back into the countryside on a killing spree.
He had not had the good fortune to run into her - in fact, he hadn't seen anyone, friend or foe, since he had landed until he had arrived in Sainte-Marie-du-Mont and realized that everyone was talking about her. Well, talking about her and the fact that she had been shot twice but was still forging ahead.
Guarnere in particular ground down on his nerves. "She was bleedin' like hell, I tell ya what," said the man in his Philly accent as he chain-smoked. Ron turned to give him a glare that the man seemed to miss, but Liebgott saw it, and he shifted on his feet as Ron walked towards them. Liebgott slapped Guarnere as a warning to stop jabbering, but the loud-mouthed Italian wouldn't be deterred.
"Then she turned around and just started firing on this group of machine gunners," said Guarnere, squinting his eye and mimicking pulling a trigger. "Didn't hesitate or nothing."
"Where did this happen?"
Guarnere looked up at Ron in surprise but rose up from where he had been sitting. "Sir," he said in greeting. "She said we landed around a town called Petite Hameau."
Ron wanted to ask why they didn't give her any medical help, why they had let her go, why they had followed her orders, but he knew they wouldn't have answers. They had been startled and discombobulated, and she wouldn't have let any of them help her, anyway. He rubbed his jaw and stared off down the road, where guns were going off more frequently with every minute. "Have you seen any other operatives?"
"Yeah," said Liebgott. "The Russian gal is in there with Lieutenant Compton, arguing about something." Ron nodded at the two men and marched towards the repurposed barn where officers were reconvening with their companies, attempting to sort out the rosters of men accounted for and men lost. He caught sight of Winters and Compton standing near the wall, heads together in calculation.
Winters turned when Ron approached him. "Hello, Lieutenant Speirs," he said, and Ron shook the man's hand. Out of everyone from Easy, he was genuinely glad to see that Winters had made it. "How many men of Dog Company got assembled?"
"A handful, maybe twenty," he replied, eyeing Buck Compton, who looked less than thrilled. "Where's Medvedeva?"
"The Russian broad?" Buck replied. "She's over there, sitting on a haystack."
"She's got a nasty cut to the leg," Winters said. "Bayonet, apparently. Buck tried to help her, but she jumped up and head butted him."
Compton reached up and touched his busted lip. "Hurt like a bitch, too."
"Are you the only officer that made it?" Winters asked, and Ron nodded, but his eyes went to Buck's front pocket, where the man had fished out a pack of cigarettes and flung them across the room.
"So far," Ron replied. "Still waiting for orders. You got some cigarettes?"
Buck looked at the man suspiciously before handing over a fresh pack, and Ron snatched them from his hand and walked off before the other lieutenant could ask for them back. "Hey, keep the pack!" Buck called, but Ron ignored him and went towards the other end of the room where Medvedeva sat, bleeding onto a stack of hay while some poor medic dealt with her wound and her attitude.
Katya's blonde hair was matted to her head with a thick layer of blood and grime, and the grease on her face had melted down in streaks. She looked up from her lap as Ron approached and gave him one of her creepy smiles. "Ah, it's the Dog man."
"Lieutenant," he corrected, and she shrugged. He held out the pack. "Cigarette?"
"Yes," she said, and he handed her one, and before he could offer she had lit it with her own lighter. She flinched as the medic hit a nerve, and she glared down at him. "Ladno, eto bol'no!"
"Where are your friends?" he asked. She exhaled and sighed, looking annoyed as if everyone had been asking her the same question.
"Liesel is dead, I saw her head fly off her body," she said, her voice flat. "Claude, he's dead, according to Free French. I saw the Italian in Bayeux, beheading a man with a sword." She stopped and inhaled, looking at him with glittering eyes. "But you want to know about Shütze. I will tell you, I know nothing about her."
"You haven't seen her at all?" he asked. Medvedeva shook her head and looked out the door at the early morning light.
"She will come," she said. "Patience."
Ron sighed and walked out of the barn, all out of the little patience he had, but was stopped by Major Strayer's runner, who put a hand on his arm. It only took one glare for the man to remove his hand and take a step back.
"Lieutenant Speirs," he said, out of breath. "Major Strayer wants you to take care of a group of German prisoners. They're down the road a-ways." Ron looked at him blankly, and the man adjusted his helmet. "We've been ordered to take no prisoners, you understand?"
He thought of Karolina, bleeding in a field somewhere, laying in the dirt. "I understand," he said quietly, and he turned and marched down the muddy road, eyeing the spot where ten captured Krauts sat next to a felled tree, passing Malarkey on his way there. He fiddled with the cigarettes in his pocket, and he locked eyes with one miserable looking Kraut who sat looking towards the road.
I want you to be the best killers, Karolina had said, so many months ago when everyone felt safe and confident in England and the war had seemed a thousand years away. He swung his Thompson around as he climbed up the embankment and offered the Krauts the fresh pack of cigarettes. He would be the best killer, and he'd start now.
Just as the day couldn't get any stranger, Karolina spied a mud-covered Ella Abruzza walking cheerfully down the road in front of her, holding a pistol in one hand and the other hand resting on the handle of a sword that had been stuck through her belt. It was such an odd sight that Karolina rubbed her eyes to make sure that she was seeing clearly and was not hallucinating due to blood loss, dehydration, hunger, and drained energy. But sure enough, there was Ella, whistling a jaunty tune as if she were on a pleasant morning stroll and not knee deep in bloody mud.
"Ella?" she called, and the girl froze before turning so fast that she lost balance, her face stretched into a huge smile that showed her gums, and she ran back up the road towards Karolina with a crazed look of relief in her eye.
Karolina braced herself for the impact, but Ella slowed to a stop at the last moment, looking at her carefully. "First, I have been looking for you everywhere," the girl said, panting. "You are hard to find. Second, where are you hurt?"
She lifted her shirt and showed Ella the red-stained bandage wrapped around her stomach. "Once here, and once in my left arm," she said. She reached out a hand towards Ella, and the girl took it and slung Karolina's arm over her shoulder. "Help me?"
"Certo," Ella said, pausing to enfold Karolina in a gentle hug. Karolina was so tired that she allowed the girl to wrap her arms around her. "I am glad you are alive. I missed you in Bayeux. It has been a hundred years."
"It has been a month," Karolina said dryly, but Ella squeezed her a little harder. "Okay, I missed you as well."
Ella leaned back and smiled brightly, and Karolina noticed the ugly gash on the top of her head that had wept blood down the side of her face into her hair. "I knew you had made a friend," she said. "I am glad it was me."
The women hobbled down the road together, Ella keeping Karolina's arm around her shoulder despite the fact that Karolina had protested multiple times, insisting that she could walk on her own. They passed the smoking ruins of farm houses, weeping French women sitting outside bombed barns, paratroopers strung through the trees like Christmas ornaments, charred bodies of unfortunate airmen, and dozens of dead Germans twisted into pained positions. They looked at the sights and sounds of a world brought back into war and hurriedly told each other what they had done since they had left England.
"I found a widow," Ella said. The breeze blew a cloud of smoke towards them, and Karolina coughed. "She was very sweet; her husband had been a French officer and he was killed in '41. She gave me shelter and helped me plan the plot."
"The plot to do what?" Karolina asked, and Ella wiped the sweat from her eyes before shrugging, a little too casual in the movement. "What plot?"
"I poisoned them all," Ella said. "It was easy, they left their food exposed in the bar they used for a dining hall. I sprinkled it into their coffee. Fifty of them were gone, like that." She snapped her fingers for emphasis. "But then I had to hide, and the widow was shot because she let me into her house. I regret that."
Karolina watched the girl's bottom lip twitch, and she squeezed her shoulder. "It is war, those things happen to good people," she said. "She died for her country."
Ella shrugged, breathing shallowly, and Karolina tried to distract her with her own tale, telling her about Benoit and the Maquis and how she killed the men from the roof of the brewery, about the little mice that ate her bread and their small pink ears, about her beret and her new pistol that sounded like a cork coming out of the neck of a bottle of wine, and soon Ella was smiling at her again, her eyes watery but her voice steady.
"Look," Ella said, pointing down the very muddy road they were sloshing through. "There they are." Even from yards away, she could see the arm patches of the screaming eagle on the sides of the men's shirts, and she sighed, looking forward to sitting down. They were halfway there when they caught sight of a pile of dead horses on an embankment next to the road; Ella gagged, and before Karolina could stop her, she threw up in the gutter.
"Agent Shütze?" called out a calm voice, and Karolina turned to see the nice medic from Aldbourne - Roe, his name is Roe - walking towards her with wide eyes. "Jesus, are you hit?"
"Yes," she said, dragging Ella away from the gutter and the dead horses, making her way towards Roe. A dilapidated barn came into view, and her knees felt weak at the idea of laying down in a soft pile of hay. "I need you to extract two bullets from me. And Ella needs a nap, I believe."
Even as Ron climbed out of the trench at Brecourt Manor and ran towards the fourth and final German gun on his own, he thought that climbing out of the trench and sprinting towards an entrenched Kraut position was pretty stupid. But he couldn't let Easy Company see all the action, not without him. He urged the five Dog Company men behind him to take out the straggling Krauts as he dashed into the gun nest and waved at Winters, giving the all-clear.
And later that afternoon, as he ambled back into Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, lurking behind Winters as he gave his report on the assault to Strayer, he thought he was pretty stupid for scanning the crowd of soldiers for one woman, until he heard enraged screams in German coming from the makeshift aid building to his right.
"Ow, mein Gott, könnte man ein wenig sanfter sein... I am being still!"
He had stopped short in the courtyard, stared at the entrance to the building as men were brought in and out in quick succession, and he pushed his way towards the door without really thinking of what he would do, what he would say when he walked in there and saw her for the first time in a month. She would certainly look at him strangely - they were never friends, could never be friends now - but if he could just see her, that would be enough.
The inside of the building was dim - what few windows there were had been blown out by blasts, and broken glass littered the floor. He weaved past the triage station, stepped over stretchers of men lying on the ground, and saw the back of Doc Roe's head in a far corner. He sped up and was greeted with the sight of Karolina Shütze being held down by Ella as Roe attempted to pry something from the side of her stomach. It was then that he noticed that Karolina had her shirt entirely unbuttoned, and he looked away quickly from her dirty white brassiere. Oh, Christ. He turned to flee, but it was too late - Ella had caught his eye, and her expression transformed from a weary, hard-battled look to a full-blown smirk of understanding. He focused his glare on her, daring her to say anything, and she cocked an eyebrow, daring him right back.
"I need you to stop wiggling," Roe said, frustrated. He was juggling a sopping handful of bloody bandages in one hand and a pair of medical tongs in the other and looked as if he was going to kill Karolina himself if the wound didn't. "I'm not gonna be able to get it out if you keep carrying on like this."
"It hurts, es tut mir Leid," she said, knocking her head back and exhaling loudly. "I am sorry. Can I have some -"
"No, you cannot have morphine," Roe said, getting back to work. "You ain't had anything to eat in two days and you're close to hemorrhagic shock, so no. You know that."
Karolina let out a groan of despair and knocked her head back against the table. "Fick mich," she said, looking up at Ella and then turning to look directly at Ron once she caught the direction of her friend's gaze. "Oh, hello."
He snapped out of it and met her gaze, saw how her eyes wavered in and out of consciousness, and he stepped forward and put his hands down on her boots. She tilted her head forward and looked at him as if he had betrayed her deeply, and Ron nodded at Roe. "Do it, I'll hold her down."
"You bast -" she began, but she slapped a hand over her mouth as Roe dug into her side in earnest and fished around for the bullet. Her legs thrashed of their own accord, but Ron held them down, putting his whole-body weight on them to keep her still. Ella reached over to a pan of water and rung out a dirty rag, cleaning her friend's face of the sweat and blood and dirt that had settled in the creases of her skin.
"Got it," Roe said, his arm immobile as he grasped the bullet within her. "Sir, hand me that pan."
Ron grabbed the tin pan with his spare hand and scooted it to Roe, and the medic slowly extracted the tongs as Karolina whimpered, but he held the offending bullet fragment up for her to see as she let her hand slide away from her mouth. "Maybe if you had been a bit more responsible, you wouldn't have to suffer so much."
"I cannot do surgery on myself," she whispered, her hands inching down to her wound. Roe slapped them away as he sprinkled sulfa powder on the bloody gash, and Karolina glanced up at Ron with cross, dazed expression.
"Nice to see you again, too," she said, and he felt himself smiling, even though he didn't want to. Karolina scoffed as she let her head roll back, and she took the rag from Ella's hand and wiped her neck, muttering quietly to herself in German. Whatever she said, Ella laughed in response and squeezed her arm.
"Thank you for helping," Roe said to Ron, truly grateful. "Did you need anything looked at?"
"No," Ron said. "I heard the screams and had to come see what was going on." He eased up off of Karolina's boots and looked away as she buttoned up her destroyed shirt. "We're moving out in a few hours."
"Good to know," said Roe, picking up the pan and the offending bullet. "I've got rounds to make." He pointed at Ella. "She doesn't get off this table until she eats."
Ella saluted him, and Roe walked away shaking his head, done with the women of the OSS for the day. Ella gave Ron an accepting nod before reaching behind her and grabbing a box of K-rations. "Here, maybe you can make her eat?"
Ron took it, but Karolina shook her head, eyeing the box warily. "I am not hungry," she said, her accent thick, and she looked up at Ron inquiringly. "But do you have a cigarette?"
He grabbed the spare pack from his jacket pocket and shook one out, and she grabbed it with a shaky hand, almost dropping it onto the ground. He plucked it out of her hand and held it up to her lips, and she rolled her eyes before she bit down on the filter. "Was?" she asked.
"I thought you didn't smoke," he said.
"I do now," she said darkly, arching an eyebrow. "Got a light?"
He crouched down and grabbed his lighter out of his pocket, flicked the wheel until the flame sparked and lit the end of the cigarette. She inhaled deeply, wincing at the new sensation, and then coughed up a lungful of smoke as Ella laughed above her, patting her head.
Ron took one last look at her before he forced himself to turn around and walk through the building and out of the door. Of course, once he stepped out into the courtyard, he realized Nixon had been leaning against the outer wall, watching the scene inside with a shit-eating grin.
"Shut up," Ron said, and he walked into the night, trying hard to ignore the sound of Nixon's delighted chuckles echoing behind him.