Upsetting the Balance

As he trotted over to do what he could for the wounded, Anielewicz wondered whether the Nazis’ aim with their rocket had been that bad or that good. If they’d intended to drop it in the middle of the prison camp, they couldn’t have done a better job. But why would they want to do that, when so many of the men held here were Germans? But if they intended to hit anyplace else-the town of Piotrkow, say-then they might as well have been playing blind man’s bluff.

He bent over a man who wouldn’t live long. The fellow stared up at him. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” he said in a choking voice. Blood poured from his nose and mouth.

Mordechai knew what last rites were, but not how to give them. It didn’t matter; the Pole died before he could do anything. Anielewicz looked around for someone he actually had some hope of helping.

WHAM!Off to the north, toward Piotrkow, another explosion came out of nowhere. Distance made it faint and attenuated. If the Germans had aimed the last rocket and this one at the same place, their aiming left a lot to be desired. Kilometers separated the two impacts.

WHAM!Yet another explosion, this one a lot closer. Anielewicz staggered, went to one knee. A chunk of sheet metal crashed to the ground a couple of meters from where he had stood. Had it landed on top of him… He tried not to think about things like that.

Men started running toward the northern edge of the camp. Looking around, Anielewicz saw why: the flying bomb had landed almost directly on top of a Lizard guard tower and had blown a great hole in the razor wire that confined the prisoners. Moreover, fragments from it had played havoc with the towers to either side. One was on fire, the other knocked off its legs.

Anielewicz started running, too. He’d never have a better chance to escape. The Lizards opened fire from more distant guard towers, but they hadn’t figured on losing three at once. Some men went down. More scrambled into the crater the rocket had made and out the other side to freedom.

As with the first flying bomb that had fallen in the camp, this one left part of its carcass behind by the crater. Some of the metal skin had peeled off, including the pieces that had almost mashed him. He’d been an engineering student before the war, and peered curiously at tanks-fuel tanks? — wrapped in glass wool, and at as much clockwork and piping as he’d ever seen all in one place. He wished he could take a longer, closer look, but getting away was more important.

Bullets rattled off the flying bomb, then went elsewhere in search of more prey. Mordechai ran. The bullets came back, kicking up dirt around his feet. He rolled on the ground and thrashed wildly, in the hope of convincing the Lizard gunner he’d been hit. When the bullets stopped playing around him again, he got up and ran some more.

“Sneaky bastard!” someone shouted from behind him in German. His head whipped around. He might have known Friedrich would get out while the getting was good.

Ahead, the fleeing men fanned out broadly, some making for the brush a few hundred meters away, others pelting up the road toward Piotrkow, still others heading east or west across the fields toward farmhouses where they might find shelter.

Friedrich slogged up even with him. “Damned if I don’t think we’re going to get away with this,” he bawled.

“Kayn aynhoreh,”Mordechai exclaimed.

“What’s that mean?” the big German asked.

“Something like, don’t tempt fate by saying anything too good.” Friedrich grunted and nodded. Most of the bullets were behind them now. The Lizards seemed to have given up on the prisoners who’d escaped fastest, and were concentrating on keeping any more men from getting out through the hole the flying bomb had blown in the wire.

Friedrich swerved to put some of the brush between him and the prison camp. Panting, he slowed to a fast walk. So did Anielewicz. “Well, Shmuel, you damned Jew, it’s just the two of us now,” Friedrich said.

“So it is, you stinking Nazi,” Mordechai answered. They grinned at each other, but cautiously. Each of them sounded as if he were making a joke, but Anielewicz knew he’d meant what he said, and had a pretty good notion Friedrich had been kidding on the square, too.

“What do we do now?” Friedrich asked. “Besides keep moving, I mean.”

“That comes first,” Anielewicz said. “We ought to try to get far enough away so they can’t track us with dogs, or whatever they use. Afterwards… maybe we can hook on with a local guerrilla band and keep on making life interesting for the Lizards. Or maybe not. This part of Poland is pretty muchJudenfrei, thanks to you Nazi bastards.”

Now Anielewicz didn’t sound like a man who was joking. Friedrich said, “Yeah, well, I can tell you stories about that, too.”

“I’ll bet you can,” Mordechai said. “Save ’em, or we’ll be trying to kill each other, and that would just make the Lizards laugh. Besides, the Poles around here may not like Jews-”