Final impact

Muller cursed his bad luck. He was wearing a civilian jacket over his gore-stained Luftwaffe captain’s uniform. In his breast pocket was a British flexipad, and he was heading toward the most valuable spy the Allies had in Nazi Germany. This was not going to end well.

“Resistance,” he coughed as the SS man ran up and grabbed his arms to steady him. He had been very close to toppling over.

“What happened?” the man demanded. Muller recognized him as a Hauptsturmfuhrer. A captain. A definite buffer existed around them now, a circle about twenty meters in diameter into which none of the locals would dare step. They all found some reason to cross to the other side of the street.

“Resistance,” Muller repeated. “Three of them. Back at the Rue la Bruyere. I killed them.”

“I don’t doubt it,” his would-be savior said, supporting most of his weight. “We must get you to an aid station. Quickly, come this way.”

The man began to force Muller back the way he had just come. There was an aid station two blocks down. He attempted to resist, but his helper was too strong.

“No, this way, Herr Kapitдn,” he insisted. “You are in shock. You need to come with me-let me carry you.”

Finally Muller allowed himself to fall over the other’s shoulder, his arm around the man’s neck. He let his body go limp, allowing his full weight to burden the SS officer, who grunted a little with the effort. Muller let himself be carried away from his objective, acting in character, cursing the Resistance, vowing revenge, demanding that that SS hunt down those who were responsible.

“But you said you killed them,” his rescuer grunted.

A wet, wounded chuckle bubbled up out of Muller’s throat. “So I did.”

Then he drove his fighting knife deep into the man’s sternum, twisting and ripping up and out. The screech of pain became confused with the cries of onlookers, who could not believe what they were seeing as Muller suddenly locked up his victim’s head, using the arm he had draped over the shoulders, before slitting his throat from ear to ear. The man’s screams were cut off as Muller severed the windpipe. The body dropped with a sick thud as the head hit the pavement.

Muller’s world tilted then, and threatened to fall out from under him. He let his momentum carry him into the road, where he stopped a velo-taxi, one of the faintly ridiculous three-wheeled, pedal-powered cabs that had taken over the city during the Occupation. The driver attempted to swerve around him, but a shot from Muller’s pistol pulled him up.

A shrill whistle sounded in the distance, and he thought he could hear hobnailed boots hammering toward him. He half lunged, half fell into the passenger’s seat.

“Just get me up the road,” he croaked in his passable French.

“B-but…” The driver tried to stammer out some excuse, but a wave of the pistol set him to his job. They lurched away just as rifle fire cracked past them.

“They will kill me,” the driver protested.

“No, I will kill you if you don’t hurry up. Just to the next corner, and then you can get out. I’ll shoot you in the ass if you like, to prove that you were hijacked.”

“To prove I was what?”

“Just fucking pedal.”

More bullets whistled past, some of them sparking off the cobblestones and shattering shop windows, sending the native Parisians scurrying for cover. More bullets chewed great chunks out of the little wooden passenger’s cabin. Muller painfully forced himself to twist around in the seat.

About two hundred meters back a detachment of German soldiers had outrun a couple of gendarmes and were taking aim.

They weren’t going to make it.

Crack!

The top of the velo-taxi driver’s head flew off in a fantail of blood and gray matter. Immediately they decelerated, and Muller allowed himself to roll out of the cab onto the hard stone roadway. A bullet struck him a glancing blow on the shoulder, knocking him forward. He managed to scramble a few more meters as he hauled out the flexipad.

No signal lock.

Crack!

An enormous iron fist slammed into him, bringing darkness.

He came to, expecting to find himself in a Gestapo cell.

But he was still in Paris, on the street. The pedicab driver’s body was just a few feet away, gushing blood like a ruptured pipeline. A squad of German infantry had surrounded him, their guns leveled at his head.

He blinked slowly and his head swam.

“What have we here. A spy? A Resistance pig playing dress-up. A traitor?”

An officer was speaking, advancing on him. Muller realized he was still holding the precious flexipad in his outstretched hand. He tried to get to his knees, but the Wehrmacht officer, a lieutenant, sailed in and launched a vicious snap kick at his ribs. His inserts protected him from the worst of the pain, but he felt at least three ribs break as he flew over onto his back and rolled another half a meter away, ending facedown in a puddle of mud.

The pad began to beep.

It had locked on to Brasch’s device and initiated a linkup. The file transfer began.

It was complete within half a second.