But it was Dietzel behind the machine gun who was doing the real damage. Another burst hit the facade. If the Germans had been able to press the advantage with just a couple more men, the battle of the château would have been all but over.
Cole realized that he had to do something — and soon. He had positioned himself at an upstairs window alongside Bauer, but the leaping flames and smoke prevented them from repeating the tactics that had driven off the Germans last time.
“Go see if you can help downstairs,” Cole ordered.
Bauer gave a curt nod and hurried away. In the last few hours, Cole had given up worrying about Bauer’s loyalties. If the German had wanted to get the drop on his captors, Cole decided that he would have done it by now. He was fighting for survival like everybody else in the house.
He looked out the window to where the Kübelwagen crouched like a beast, spitting lead and fire at the château. Another burst made him duck down, but he had gotten a mental picture of his target.
Cole popped up and fired a quick shot at the German behind the machine gun. It was hard to say if he had hit him, but the firing suddenly stopped. When he took a closer look, he saw that there was nobody manning the gun.
He smiled with satisfaction, but not for long. A shot came from beneath the Kübelwagen, striking near his head.
Too close.
But without the machine gun, the Germans had lost the advantage. He heard a shout, and the attack came to an end. This time the Germans were smart enough to use blind spots created by the far ends of the house to screen their movements as they slipped back into the woods.
The sniper under the Kübelwagen must have managed to scurry away while Cole had his own head down, because when he got back on the scope, there was nobody there. On the plus side, the Germans had left the Kübelwagen behind.
Cole heard a sound behind him and turned to see Bauer entering the room.
“They are gone for now,” the German announced.
“For now,” Cole agreed.
They had survived one attack from two different directions and had forced their attackers to retreat, licking their wounds. But they had a few wounds of their own. Rupert had been grazed by a bullet — nothing too serious, but painful all the same. Vaccaro had caught some glass in the face thanks to a bullet going through a window. Cole helped him pick out the glass. Vaccaro had insisted on inspecting the damage in a mirror.
“You think that’s gonna leave a scar? I don’t want it to spoil my good looks.”
“No worries there,” Cole said. It was well known that Vaccaro operated under the illusion that he bore some resemblance to the silent film star Rudolph Valentino. “Besides, you can tell all the girls back home that you got that scar in the war.”
“Better than a medal,” Vaccaro agreed.
The sun was getting lower. Under cover of darkness, it was likely that one side or the other would be back, and the defenders would no longer have the advantage of being able to pick them off as they crossed the open ground between the forest and the château. Once it got dark, things would get ugly.
They would hold out as long as they could, and then fight to the end. Try as he might, Cole couldn’t come up with a better plan.
Cole had always wondered whether he would make it through this war. He just hadn’t expected to be making his last stand in an old château, protecting the life of a German prisoner.
Out the windows, the unseen sun sank lower in the winter sky. The wooded hills seemed to march closer. The daylight faded like sand running through an hourglass. Soon enough, they would be out of time.
Cole would not have pegged Madame Jouret as a military strategist, but she seemed to grasp the situation as well as any of them. This house was like her Fort Sumter and Fort McHenry all rolled into one.
She set down her shotgun and approached Cole with her daughter in tow as an interpreter. She looked at Cole and said something in French, then looked expectantly at her daughter.
Reluctantly, Lena translated. She didn’t seem to like the information that her mother was sharing. “My mother says it will be much worse for us once it gets dark.”
“She ain’t wrong about that.”
Lena translated Cole’s reply; then the two women looked at each other. They both seemed to have agreed already on a course of action, because this time Lena spoke without waiting for her mother. “She also says that there is a way out.”
Cole wasn’t sure what she was saying. The house was surrounded, watched from all sides by Germans and Americans waiting to pounce on them. “A way out?”
“I can show you.”
Lena explained that there had not always been peace in the Ardennes, even before the current war. Great armies passed through, or sometimes local rivalries and conflicts escalated into bloodshed. There were even times when it was convenient to bring people in or out of the house unseen, whether it was a dalliance or a political alliance that was better kept from prying eyes.
