The Forest of Vanishing Stars(93)
“There it is,” Rosalia whispered almost reverently.
“There it is,” Chaim echoed, but his tone was different, filled with trepidation.
“All right,” Zus said as the group began to whisper among themselves. “We must get in position. We don’t know how early they come through. Rosalia, you go a hundred meters east with Leonid. Remember, we will only stop a cargo vehicle, and only one that is alone, or it will be too dangerous. You two will fire the first shots to disable the vehicle. Aim at their wheels; the best we can hope for is that they spin out of control, disorienting the soldiers for a few seconds. After that, we lose the element of surprise. Joel, you and Maks head down there, across from Rosalia. If another transport truck comes up behind it, you’ll need to disable them quickly so the tables don’t turn on us. The rest of us will split up, here, there, and there.” He gestured to two spots on the other side of the road. “We will have to be ready the moment Rosalia and Leonid begin shooting, because it will be only seconds before they return fire. Anything else, Yona?”
She shook her head slowly. The assuredness of his plan reminded her how little she knew about his past; he spoke like someone who had led military missions before.
“Once upon a time, I trained to be in the army,” he said softly, reading her mind as the group began to disperse to their assigned locations. “I’ll tell you all about it one day.” The words were an unspoken promise that they’d both survive.
Yona wound up beside Zus and Chaim, in the shadow of a giant oak that reached over the road. Across the way, Benjamin and Michal hid behind trees several meters apart, each accompanied by his wife. As clouds drifted across the moon, Yona could see only the white of their eyes in the darkness until the sun began to rise, pinking the sky to the east.
It could have been hours before the first transport came through, but instead, just as the sun crept above the horizon, they heard the low rumble of a vehicle in the distance. Up the road, Rosalia stood and waved everyone down. Yona’s heart thudded against her rib cage; what had seemed like a good idea moments before now seemed like a recipe for disaster.
Time seemed to stand still as the noise got louder and louder. A shadow appeared from around the bend, and a few seconds later, a large truck rumbled into view. It was a German Opel Blitz, a cargo truck with a dozen soldiers seated in the open rear. With that many men back there, it couldn’t be carrying many provisions, and Yona assumed Rosalia would notice the same thing and hold her fire. But then, in a flash, Rosalia rose from the bushes, her gun leveled, and fired once, calmly, accurately, into the Blitz’s front left tire.
There was a giant bang as the truck swerved sideways, lurching into the bushes beside the road and slamming headlong into a tree. Zus cursed, and as some of the soldiers were thrown from the truck and others scrambled down, their guns drawn against an invisible enemy, there was no choice but to open fire, even though this was the wrong truck, a truck that couldn’t possibly provide ample food for the winter, a truck whose only real bounty was men.
Yona ran forward with the others, all of them firing at the Germans. Some of the soldiers had reached for their weapons; others simply stood there, stunned. One soldier lay in the middle of the road, still and bloodied, apparently knocked unconscious after falling from the vehicle. The driver of the truck clambered down from the cab, his cap askew as he searched the forest wildly. A bullet sliced through his neck before his feet hit the ground, and he slumped face-first into the earth.
Most of the soldiers fell, one by one, dropping to the ground in clouds of their own blood, but impossibly, two remained standing long enough to fire back. Their bullets ricocheted off the trees, whizzing like crazed bumblebees as they shot haphazardly at a threat they couldn’t see, panic rendering them careless. But it was too late for them; a bullet found the head of one of them, and a spray of machine-gun fire from one of the brothers shredded the chest of the other, and then, with all the Germans finally lying dead, the forest fell silent.
Yona slowly lowered her weapon, her legs quaking beneath her as the full reality of what they’d done began to sink in. They had murdered these soldiers for no good reason; there was no assurance they were carrying anything of value aside from their weapons and the clothes on their backs.
“That was for our parents,” Maks Rozenberg said, kicking one of the Germans. His brother Joel spat in the dead man’s face.
“Come, quickly,” Zus said, shouldering his gun and grabbing Yona’s hand. “Come, all of you. We must take what we can and disappear before another truck arrives.”
It was too sloppy, all of it, and Yona felt sick. Rosalia had acted without considering the consequences, her hatred temporarily squeezing her common sense aside. Yona scanned the road, looking for her as the others gathered themselves. Her heart skipped as she realized the fiery-haired woman wasn’t there. “Rosalia?” she called out.
The others stopped what they were doing and turned, looking for her, too. It was Yona who saw her first, facedown on the ground, her beautiful red hair splayed around her like a lion’s mane. “Rosalia!” Yona cried, rushing to her side and dropping to her knees. She put a hand on Rosalia’s back; the other woman was still breathing in shallow gasps. Yona knew even before she gently rolled her over that Rosalia was dying.
Her face no longer looked like stone; as she tried in vain to drink the air, there was a softness to her that Yona had never seen before. Zus came to kneel beside Yona, and then Chaim was there, too, all three of them looking down helplessly as Rosalia opened her eyes, struggling to focus on them. Yona could hear one of the Rozenberg brothers exclaiming over something he’d found in the truck, one of the wives urging them to hurry. But their voices sounded very far away. There was a gaping hole in Rosalia’s chest, and Yona could see blood bubbling out each time she took a breath.