Hell's Gate(68)
Wolff ignored the inner voice and dove past the corporal’s feet. As he did so, there came a rush of air from the place where his head had been only a split second before.
Simultaneously, the pleasant vibration running through his body transitioned into an earsplitting shriek of anger, fear, and frustration.
The colonel rose to his feet—others were at his side now, relieved and familiar faces. The obsequious Sergeant Vogt was even trying to dust him off but the officer waved the man away and turned back toward the cave.
The screeching sounds were coming from a dense tangle of hair-thin mesh—a mist net, the Japanese had called it. The Asians had used these nets to capture birds for the soup pot but now theirs had ensnared something far more dangerous, and far more important.
As if to remind Wolff of that first point, the bat’s head came into full view as it struggled to free itself from the hopeless tangle. It flashed a snub-nosed muzzle full of teeth, which quickly began to slice through the woven web. Up close, the creature appeared smaller than the four he’d seen feeding on Sergeant Schr?dinger, but right now the size of the specimen was the very least of his concerns.
The colonel nodded to two men standing on either side of the cave entrance and their response was synchronous. Each pulled back the netting just far enough to allow the lighting of the fast-burning demolition fuses they had set previously. Twin flames raced each other ten meters into the antechamber and there was a whoosh of expanding air as a wall of flame all but sealed the entrance to the plateau from the outside world.
The Germans watched carefully, training their automatic weapons at the smoky wall and whatever might have survived behind it. But nothing came through the flames. Except for the high-pitched clicks produced by the writhing nightmare in the mist net, the only sound was the crackle of burning brush.
Wolff pointed at the struggling draculae. “Get this animal into a bag before it harms itself.”
A minute later, two privates clad in heavy leather gloves stepped forward and approached the net, cautiously.
“I’ll attract his attention,” a private named Auerbach told his partner. “You sneak around from behind with the bag.”
Private Horst, an ashen-faced eighteen-year-old, nodded but seemed far too nervous with his assigned task.
Auerbach nodded to the other man, then started waving his hands around. “Hey, ugly boy!” he called. With a sense of relief he saw the bat’s head turn toward his diversion, but any relief evaporated immediately as the creature’s black marble eyes locked on to his own.
As planned, Private Horst moved in behind the bat, which was no longer screeching and struggling. Silently, the teenager held open a large canvas bag and took a step closer to the tangled net.
Private Auerbach had intended to continue drawing the animal’s attention but now he stood paralyzed by the creature’s stare—by its probe. Without thinking, he tried to whistle but found that his mouth had gone dry. As Auerbach blew a soundless puff of air, he never saw his partner, rushing forward and throwing the open mouth of the bag over the lower half of the entangled animal.
“Hah,” Horst cried in triumph, fumbling to pull the bag upward over the animal’s flailing wings.
The commotion pulled Auerbach away from the draculae’s stare just in time to glimpse the creature’s head rotating nearly 180 degrees. That quickly, jaws sunk into Private Horst’s left glove. Horst’s eyes registered shock, and he pulled back reflexively. “Shiest!”
The bat let out something like a growl and bit down harder.
“Let go of me!” the private screamed, pulling backward but unable to free his hand from the glove. Now the bat’s neck was stretching through a tight opening in the tangled net—and still, the beast would not let go, even as the nylon mesh tightened around its throat.
“Shoot it! Shoot it!” someone yelled, and Corporal Kessler moved closer, pistol drawn, angling for a clear shot.
“Stand back, Corporal,” Colonel Wolff said, pushing the barrel of the corporal’s gun aside and moving quickly into position.
Kessler felt a surge of relief. At least I won’t be the one killing the colonel’s prized specimen.
A single shot immediately followed, and Kessler jerked backward as a shard of flying bone bit into his cheek. Private Horst slumped to the ground, his now-empty glove still hanging from the creature’s mouth. The exit wound in the private’s skull had been aimed precisely, to assure that no speed-slung scraps of skull struck the bat.
Wolff pulled back on the Luger’s hinged toggle lock then released it, extracting the spent shell and setting another cartridge into the firing chamber. He turned to Sergeant Vogt. “Please assist Private Auerbach with the specimen, Sergeant. Then assemble the men. We are leaving.”
The mother heard the screams of the child through the blinding wall of heat and light blocking the cave exit. There was nothing she could do for him now, just as there was nothing she could do for the lead male who lay crumpled and burning in the antechamber.
The child’s calls had become muffled and difficult to distinguish and the mother turned away from the painful glare and scrabbled back into the relatively smoke-free corridor. The others were coming. She could smell their confusion and their anger. She waited for her roost-mates to arrive, waited until their bodies covered the walls and ceiling of the stone passageway, a rippling mass of energized fur and flashing teeth. They bristled and seethed and hissed, but she waited for them to go silent.