Orphan's Triumph

SIXTY-TWO

“CRAP! CRAP, CRAP, CRAP.”

I swayed there on the ledge. I had no more dynamite, five more bullets, and no plan. The rational thing to do was escape before the scouts noticed. And leave Aud Planck’s shopkeepers hung out to dry.

I ran to the narrow ledge span, smoke still curling from its crevasses, up between my boots. I jumped up and down on the ledge but it remained as immovable as, well, granite.

“Goddamit!” I reversed my rifle in my hands and jammed the stock into a smoking crevasse, as if I could pry the mountain apart.

A bullet struck between my feet, and I looked up. A scout charged toward me along the ledge, screaming and firing. The sniper’s scope on my rifle probably earned me no love. Behind him four more scouts single-filed toward me.

I had wedged my rifle immovably in the crevasse, but I still had Ord’s pistol, albeit bundled beneath layers of clothing. I needed to buy time.

I released the rifle and raised my hands.

The scout slowed and shuffled toward me, rifle trained on me from the hip.

He stopped fifteen feet away, panting steam. He didn’t look like a Nazi. He looked like a thousand other soldiers I had known, a kid who needed nothing in this world but a shave and a three-day pass.

It would never work, and this kid didn’t deserve it, but I was out of options. I lowered one hand slowly toward my jacket lapel, toward the pistol, while I sighed and cast my eyes to the sky. I said, “Crap,” as my plan became irrelevant.