No matter. At this point, there was no way that he would allow any of them to live, even after he killed Bauer. He owed Gettinger that much.
Moving through the woods, they reached a place where the ground rose sharply. The tracks went right up the hillside, although even Messner’s untrained eye could see that their quarry had struggled, slipping and sliding on the snowy, frozen slope.
“I do not like the looks of this hill, Herr Hauptmann,” Dietzel said. “I won’t have my hands free to use my rifle if I need to.”
“You worry too much,” Messner said. “They are like scared rabbits, yet you expect them to turn and fight?”
The Hauptmann slung his MP 40 so that it hung across his back, keeping it out of the snow and forest debris. Dietzel had no choice but to sling his rifle in the same way, allowing him to pull himself up the slope using exposed tree roots and knobs of rock jutting from the snowy ground. Even so, he still slid down in places, making an awful racket as branches cracked and stones tumbled. If their quarry hadn’t known they were coming, they did now.
Halfway up, Dietzel proved to be right when a couple of rifle shots shattered the stillness of the winter air. The rifle shots had come from above. Both men buried their faces in the snow and dirt.
“They are shooting at nothing,” Dietzel announced after several tense minutes. “Those shots did not come anywhere near us.”
And yet the shots did just what they had been intended to do, which was to slow them down and make the pursuers move more cautiously.
Finally, they reached the crest of the slope. The tracks continued into the forest.
Messner was panting from the effort of climbing the hill. But he wasn’t about to slow down or give up. “Come on,” he managed to gasp.
Cole weighed their options and came up with a plan. He and Bauer would hang back to deal with the Germans. Vaccaro would go with Lieutenant Rupert and the girl, because at this point, the lieutenant needed to be helped along and Lena didn’t have the physical strength to do it alone. To make matters worse, the ankle that she had twisted on the road still bothered her. Plus, if they ran into any trouble, they would need Vaccaro’s rifle. He was the only one among those three in any condition to fight.
The trio would keep moving, sweeping around in a wide circle to reach the road again, hopefully skirting their pursuers in the process.
“I’m not gonna argue, but I don’t like it,” Vaccaro said, once he heard the plan. To his credit, he made no mention of simply turning Bauer over to the Germans and being done with the whole mission. They had come too far for that.
“Let’s finish this,” Cole said. Then he took Vaccaro aside and added, “Listen here, city boy. If Herr Barnstormer and I don’t make it, find that road and keep going until you reach our lines and get the lieutenant some help. Don’t let that girl go back alone, neither, no matter how much she’s worried about her mother.”
“You’ll make it.”
“Sure we will,” Cole said. “I’m just saying it as a count ten and see plan.”
“I think you mean
“What I mean is, I’ll see you when I see you. Now let’s get a move on.”
Cole gave a nod to Bauer, and the two men let the others head out, then they moved in another direction altogether.
“What do you have in mind?” Bauer asked. He touched the handle of the revolver jutting from his coat pocket. “I will need to be close to have any chance with this pistol.”
“If this Jaeger of yours is any good at all, he’ll see that those are German boot prints in the snow, and he’ll follow our trail instead of the others.”
“Ah, but then what?” Once again Bauer flashed him that amused smile. Cole was glad to see that the German didn’t seem to have the least bit of fear.
“Then this,” Cole said. They had reached a clear space in the forest. He intended for this to be where his own trail diverged from Bauer’s, but first he needed to set a trap, using Bauer as bait.
Growing up in the mountains, Cole had learned to be a master trapper. He had often learned the hard way, once nearly drowning in a frozen mountain stream when he’d gotten caught in one of his own traps. He hadn’t made that mistake again. From time to time he had put his trapping skills to use against the enemy. The question was, How much smarter was a German officer than a fox or a raccoon? He was about to find out.
They walked to a likely-looking tree with a fallen log nearby. The tree had created a small clearing when it had fallen. Cole nodded when he saw it, a plan forming in his mind.
“Give me your coat,” he said.
Bauer hesitated, but then a look crossed his face as it seemed to sink in what Cole planned to do. He shed his officer’s coat and handed it to Cole.
