Nazi Gold

Chapter 5 — Shot in the Dark

Sam’s body shook violently from the cold night that refused to be kept at bay by the deficient shelter he had erected between two small thorn trees on the edge of the rivulet where they had stopped for water an hour before. The wind had picked up considerably and the weather was growing more aggressive. All the stars were eclipsed by rolling thick clouds which were rapidly consuming the heavens, entirely covering it from all directions. A brewing storm held no promise for Sam and he knew that it would be better for him if he rode as far as he could in the direction of the main road to Weimar instead of trying to weather what may be coming.

“Come horse,” he said, feeling a measure of pity for the poor animal that was as cold and uncomfortable as he was, inadvertently strolling into Sam’s predicament while simply looking for refuge in the shed a few miles back. “I’m so sorry, boy, but we are looking for trouble staying here,” Sam said as he mounted the horse. It was a catch 22 for both of them. The dark had made it virtually impossible to see where they were going, but what aggravated matters was the concern for holes and sudden slants. This is why Sam could not just spur the horse to speed up their escape from the brunt of the foul weather and he held the animal’s pace steady so that any accident would not cause grave injury to either of them.

Sam shook the leaves out of his shoulder length hair and the black ends stung his eyes from the whipping of the wind. He tried to tie it back, but the elastic snapped and left him with a head of brunette mane sweeping incessantly across his face and eyes, impairing his ability to see properly.

Over the first stretch of terrain things went well enough, but with the stars gone Sam soon realized that he was veering off course. By now he should have reached the main road. A sickening, sinking feeling writhed in his stomach at the realization that he had been fleeing in the wrong direction. Not only was he completely lost, but the angry weather prevailed as far as he travelled. The sudden shock of feeling that first ice cold drop of rain swatting him on the forehead had him crying out in frustration. So upset, Sam let go of the reins to throw his arms up in the air, furious at his spiteful and merciless fate. The horse changed direction under him and Sam had to grab onto its mane.

“You know the way?” he asked the horse over the chaos of the whining gale. “How do you know where I am going?”

But the horse kept walking, now and then dipping under its flabbergasted rider who was clinging to its neck, but one thing became clear — the horse knew the landscape. Like an invisible geomagnetic beckoning, the horse appeared to be guided through the dales and mounds, stepping around uneven rock rises.

“Well, I take it back, God,” Sam told the rumbling sky above. “I can see what you’re doing. Held back the insane killers and their dogs, sent me a horse and then told it where to take me. I guess I was wrong about you… and I almost feel guilty for betting Jimmy McClintock twenty quid that he would not flash the nuns of St Mary’s after the bingo that night on my birthday.”

The thunder growled as the clouds illuminated momentarily as if in answer to him and Sam smiled at the coincidence.

“Ich habe ihn!” someone shouted not a stone’s throw from Sam. From behind and to the right four men emerged from the cover of the trees and brush.

Sam looked up at the sky and wailed, “Oh come on!”

He grasped the mane of the horse tightly and kicked it hard in the loins, shouting “Yah!” like an old time cowboy. The pain of the rider’s sudden urging and the fear in his shouting compelled the horse to bolt forward and take to a stiff gallop, zig-zagging as the bullets flustered it. Sam held on for dear life, his heart throbbing in rapid cadence with the horse’s hooves as it raced onward through the unforgiving storm. Thunder shuddered on the ground under the animal as it equally shook the sky above the snorting beast and its inept rider who were dashing to outrun the bullets and the lightning at their backs.

“Oh, god! Oh god, I’m going to die!” Sam screamed through the storm as the rain pained his face and arms like frigid darts in unlimited amounts cast by unseen assailants. His back ached from the slamming of his tailbone on the hard pounding back of the running horse and his thighs burned from the burden of clutching his thighs tightly against its sides. Sam could not stay on the horse for much longer. The rain wet its hide and loosened Sam’s secure hold on it, flinging the journalist about like a rag doll as the shooters aimed narrower and barely missed Sam. He could almost imagine the feeling of a bullet penetrating the back of his head, a feeling he had imagined several times during his dangerous career, but he was convinced that tonight was going to be special — and not in a favorable way.

Ahead of him he could faintly discern two floating lights in mid-air, but from the turbulence of his mad ride it was almost impossible to tell for certain. His vision was marred by the piercing rain that joined his wet hair in and over his eyes. His body shaking profusely and his eyes could not focus on the lights ahead. They merely looked like wiry glowing veins that went in and out of Sam’s peripherals. Sam Cleave was a man of instinct. That was what made investigative journalism his forte. His instinct was, unfortunately for him, dead-on this time. Moments after he saw the lights for the first time he heard an ominous whistling grow louder behind him.

A shattering pain shot through his right shoulder and the bullet ripped his flesh and damaged his clavicle. Sam screamed, more from shock than pain. The cold wind and the freezing rain had numbed his skin and the adrenaline of riding for his life added to his body’s survival reflex, but not feeling the pain did not trivialize the injury. Sam ducked his head down behind the horse’s neck and held on for dear life, but the blood he was losing threatened a black out. More shots clapped, but now he was aware that some of them came from ahead. Sam was disheartened at the fact that he was not outrunning them after all, but only rode the horse right into the approaching onslaught. They had ambushed him.

Now I’m fucked, he thought as his head started spinning. His shoulder and chest burned like fire and acid. The wounded quarry cringed as the snapped bone’s ragged ends wriggled inside the bruised tissue and they saw him flop around loosely on top of the rogue horse. With every gallop the limp body of their target slid gradually down the left side of his horse and they watched his arms flailing in the flash of the lightning. By the next flash of the rumbling clouds the horse was without rider and the two men chasing Sam on horseback halted their own horses to investigate. He could not have been far, having fallen seconds before.

What they did not count on was the approaching lights that came with the hail of shots fired from ahead.

“Get off my land! Schweine!” a man’s voice shouted through the pouring rain, and another gunshot flowered in orange sparks in the pitch dark. The two lights became four, then six, and the men who pursued Sam had no choice but to abandon their search. All they could do was hope that he was dead, that the shot was fatal, because they had no way of telling where they had hit him. They knew better than to continue their hunt onto the neighboring land and be discovered. They were trespassers, not only on the owner’s smallholding, but in Germany itself. What they were doing there could never be exposed; therefore they had to remain faceless. They had to be no more than phantoms here. No-one was even supposed to know that they were here, but the problem was that Sam Cleave had in his possession the camera that harbored their likeness and the small tape that captured their execution of civilians from Denmark, Czech Republic and Germany.

They retreated to the nearby hill where their captain was waiting with the dog handlers. He had been watching the whole thing through his binoculars from higher ground, under cover of an overhanging cliff face which averted the worst of the wetness and wind.

“That’s just great,” one of the two men said as they reached the makeshift base in the excavated rock. “Mueller has him now.”

“It does not matter,” the captain replied, “because the journalist is either dead or badly injured. The camera could have fallen by the wayside and Mueller would not care to look for anything in the vicinity when he collects the man in this weather.”

“So I suppose we are staying here for the night?” the other rider sighed.

“Yes!” the captain seethed, infuriated not only by the inconvenience of having to use his precious time to chase after an escaped captive, but also at the insolence of a spoiled mercenary. “We are staying here overnight. As soon as those lights return to Mueller’s house we are going back there to search for the camera. If we do not find it, Mueller and his family will come to an unfortunate end in a house fire tonight!” He lunged at the whining soldier, “And in the meantime we are staying in this cold dark cave and we are not going to make any noise or make a fire, do you understand? This is not a paid vacation; it is a mission, princess!”

“Yes, sir,” the man replied almost inaudibly with all his colleagues’ eyes on him in quiet reprimand. When the captain got pissed, they’d all be in for the high jump and they knew it. They did not need the captain to get his temper challenged in these circumstances. Since the archaeologist party found their hiding place everything just went downhill. According to the plans they were supposed to be long gone by now — the treasures catalogued, the area combed for any other ruins that might contain any relics pertaining to their scavenger hunt and a quiet and smooth retreat back across the border.

They watched from their vantage point as the beams of hunting lights bobbed up and over the bumps of the countless of small hunting paths between the border fence and Mueller’s large farm house, enclosed by tall trees and thick brush. As soon as Mueller’s party disappeared under cover of the trees in the yard, the mercenaries grouped and stole down to the open patch of land where the journalist fell from his horse.

For a long while the six scouts and shooters scanned the long growing weeds in the downpour that just would not subside. Cursing and coughing, sniffling and speculating, they crawled in the clearing, looking for the camera but they found nothing at all. He must have had it on him, tied to him, the assumed, and that meant nothing good for Mueller or Sam Cleave.