Robert Adams - A Man Called Milo Morai

“Nonetheless, Milo,” Stiles went on mildly, “put these in a safe place for me, please. Open them if you hear of my death. Otherwise, I’ll pick them up within a few weeks or send for you to bring them to me.”

He threw down the last of the schnapps and stood up. “Now I must be going, Milo. Remember your promise, my dear old friend. God bless you.”

Out at the big automobile, Sergeant Webber opened the rear door and stood beside it at attention. After tossing the now lighter and less bulky briefcase in, General Stiles turned back and took Milo’s hand in both of his own and opened his mouth to speak, and that was precisely when the first shot was fired.

Stiles gasped, grimaced, then his legs flexed, and he would have fallen save for Milo’s grip on his hand. The second shot was fired, and Milo felt something tear through the left shoulder of his Ike jacket. Almost at the same time, there was a third shot that struck the muddy boot-cover of the automobile and caromed off, whining.

Webber had stood for a bare moment in shock, then he had sunk to his knees beside the door. As he slid forward on his face, Milo saw the red-welling hole drilled into the back of his neck, just at the base of the skull.

Forcibly pulling his hand free from the powerful grasp of his friend, Milo reached for his pistol, slapped his hip and cursed; his pistol belt still hung on a hook beside his desk.

“Berniel” he roared, “Get me a fucking weapon of some kind out here, and some grenades, too. Snipers. Snipers in the big front upstairs window of that house two doors up on the other side of the street. At least two of the Kraut fuckers. And get Nicely to see to the general —he’s been hit.”

Stiles lay quietly, his face whiter than pale and his breathing ragged. Milo could see no wound on the front, so he gently eased the man partially over. Then he could see it, and it looked far from good—a rapidly growing blotch of blood at just about the center of the left shoulder blade. With a retching, tearing sound, Stiles coughed up a thick spray of red blood, then, with the blood still dribbling from his mouth and nose and down his chin, he spoke, hoarsely.

“Milo … for the love of God, prop me up … can’t breathe!”

Milo saw the long barrel of a Mauser K98 poke out of the window opening once again, and he ducked down, shielding Jethro as much as he could with his own body. But the shot was obviously aimed elsewhere, at another target. Milo heard it hit something more solid than flesh and bone, though it did elicit a vile curse from someone who sounded like Master Sergeant Chamberlin.

Sure enough, as he looked up at a nearby scuffling sound, it was to see the hulking Chamberlin belly-crawling toward him, a Thompson cradled in his thick arms.

When the noncom had come close enough, Milo grabbed the submachine gun from him. “Give me the magazine pouch, too. I’ll keep the fuckers down. You hightail it back and get some more men, good ones, too, not any of these fucking johnny-come-latelies. See if you can run down an M7 launcher or at least some hand grenades.”

The rifle barrel had withdrawn into the darkened room behind the window, but still Milo took no chances. Using the boot of the Mercedes for both cover and a shooting rest, he sprayed half a magazine of big .45 caliber slugs across the window, parallel to the sill. From the first-floor window came a flash and the booming sound of a pistol and the simultaneous smack of the bullet into the far side of the tire beside which Milo crouched. With a drawn-out hissing the tire began to flatten. But he didn’t flinch, he just lowered the muzzle of the smoking Thompson and put the other half of the magazine across the width of the lower window; his reward was a high-pitched scream.

As Milo leaned back against the shot-out tire, ejecting the spent magazine and replacing it with a fresh one from Chamberlin’s pouch, Jethro, now sitting propped against the side of the auto, extended a hand to grip his arm … very weakly.

He opened his mouth, then closed it long enough to feebly spit out a mouthful of blood. In a voice so faint that at times Milo could not hear it at all, he said, “… long, long road, for me. Martine and you … the last few years of it much happier … more real happiness than I ever deserved.

“… see things now, Milo, You, you …like us but not really us … ageless, timeless, immortal. You and … people like you … rule an empire … different world, then. You will keep … promise, see you keep … ing it. Then fight a … nother war … many other wars. Savior of a race … little children. New world … talk to … cats, horses, other animals.

“Be good . . , Martine, Milo, buddy … know you will… .”

Then the rifle was firing again and Chamberlin shouted, “Keep that Kraut bastard down, Milo, he just got Jackson in the leg. Medic!”

Again taking his position behind the boot of the Mercedes, Milo feathered the trigger, firing bursts of three or four shots each at the window. By the time the magazine was empty, Master Sergeant Chamberlin and four other men were crouching behind the bulk of the automobile— three, with Garands, one with a BAR, the sergeant bearing another Thompson and a bag of grenades.

“Foun’ two M7s, Milo, but not one fuckin’ grenade cartridge in the whole fuckin’ pl’toon. Would you b’lieve it? Shit!”

Before Milo could speak, First Sergeant Bernie Cohen came crawling out from the company CP, a carbine slung across his back and a bazooka in his arms, with a rocket for it in each hand.

Milo set aside the Thompson and grabbed the rocket launcher, but Chamberlin protested, “Jesus Christ Almighty, Milo, you’ll blow that whole rickety place down, even if you don’t burn it down. A fuckin’ bazooka?”

Ignoring the admonition, Milo said, “Bernie, the minute the first one’s clear, load the second one. There’s snipers both up and down, looks like. Even if we do blow the whole house in, they’ve got it coming for hanging out white sheets, then firing on us the way they are. Okay, I’m set. Load!”

Three bodies were dug out of the tumbled wreck that once had been a house. Milo felt sick at first when he saw them, saw the faces; the eldest could not have been any more than thirteen or fourteen. But one of them—the one with a big-bore bullet hole between his neck and shoulder with the scapula brown away on that side—was still gripping in his dead hand a Mauser HCs pistol with three shots gone from its magazine. Seeing this helped him to recover quickly. In addition to the smaller pistol, they found a P38 9mm pistol, a K98 rifle and an Erma MP38/40 with a burst cartridge case in the chamber. There were in addition to the firearms two SS daggers, about two dozen more rounds for the rifle, another magazine for each of the pistols and one for the Maschinenpistole .

“Just a bunch of fuckin’ little kids.” Chamberlin shook his head in clear consternation. “Hell, the way they were shootin’, I thought we was up against SS or Wehrmacht, anyhow. Where did three little boys get aholt of stuff like that, you reckon?”

“Fuckin’-A right they was good shots,” exclaimed First Sergeant Bernie Cohen. “I’ll lay you dollars to doughnuts these three here was Hitler Youths and been learning to shoot and fight since they was five, six years old. As for the guns and all, you can bet on it that them fuckers was hid by a coupla blackshirts what all of a fuckin’ sudden come to think they didn’t want to be in no POW eamp and that they’s ackshu’ly been innocent civilians at heart all along. And you can bet its a whole lotta fuckin’ Krauts just like them in thishere town and from one end of Germany to the other end, right now.”