In the low light of the dining room the four men sat around the table. Among them it was silent for a change, because they all knew, without speaking a word of it, that something was coming. Herr Mueller had trained his sons as best he could to shoot well and accurate since their boyhood but their level of expertise had only been tested by rabbit battues and the odd hunt for venison every now and then. They were hardly prepared for a run-in with professional hit men, deadly hunters who had years of training and solid body counts under their belts. It worried the old German engineer, but he dared not show any cracks in his tough foundations.
“Eat up, brothers,” the youngest cheered in his usual forward manner, “tonight we dine in hell.”
The young men who usually enjoyed a good movie line as much as the next gamer or graphic novel fan, did not respond this time. Normally there would be a resounding answer coming, but they just exchanged glances tonight.
“What?” he said with fork and knife pointed up in gesture, unperturbed by the lurking danger outside.
“Not funny. Not tonight,” his older brother said plainly and tore a chunk of pork from the bone. The youngest knew what the general consensus was, he just did not care.
“Listen, we can take them. This is our ground. They are intruders. Vati, why don’t you call the neighboring farmers to help us? Or the police?” he asked. His voice was the only one in the room amongst the clink of glass and the scraping of silver on porcelain.
“They don’t believe that we are in danger,” Herr Mueller explained quietly to his son. “These hunters, these merciless bastards who can attack one wounded man like a pack of wolves without honor — full of cowardice…they…” he hesitated, “…they don’t exist unless you see them with your own eyes.”
His sons stopped chewing at the sinister picture he painted of the men lying in wait outside on their very land, passed looks among them, and resumed their feasting. The mouthy young man looked at his father and answered boldly, “But they are not ghosts, Vati. They are ordinary mortal humans, not ghosts!” Herr Muller slammed on the table and silenced his son’s exclamations. With a warning leer he moved his face closer to his son’s and whispered loudly, “That is not what I meant. Don’t be an idiot, insinuating I believe superstitious nonsense, my boy. I meant that these men are here in secret and have shown themselves to no-one, because they are not supposed to be here. Our neighbors do not believe that there is a threat, because these men ‘don’t exist’, do you understand? And since they are right outside…” his voice became more furious behind the shiver of his full beard and lips crumbed with food, “…I suggest you keep your fucking voice down!”
Herr Mueller’s son recoiled at the urgency of his father’s raging imploring, but their eyes stayed locked with one another’s and he could see the fear peeking out from deep within the old man’s flaring blue gaze. That was enough to shut him up. If his fearless father held this shard of apprehension inside, then it was official — they were in deep shit without a shovel.
Feeling the fool, he looked at both of his brothers, their eyes glinting with a similar apprehension while they ate silently.
As expected a clanking sound came from further away outside their home yard fence. It resembled the sound of a gong without the resonance, a blunt iron clang. Herr Mueller straightened himself, listening. He knew what made that sound. The perimeter around his home was cleverly fenced by thin wiring to which he had fixed iron lids from old oil containers in his father’s shed. They were very hard to perceive, especially in darkness, because the engineer employed some cunning in his camouflage techniques and colored them with shades of the encompassing grassland to blend them into the terrain.
Now one of those had been triggered.
It gave him a good idea of how far the radius of their stalkers reached and how far the closest creeper was to the house. But what Herr Mueller did not count on was the cunning of his opponent, the Captain who led the deadly team. He was himself an old acquaintance of trickery and construction and he skillfully devised a plan reminiscent of the oldest trick in warfare — misdirection.
The men in the house eyed one another, knowing exactly which one to do what. Briskly they deployed, each shooting off into different parts of the house. Loading their rifles in solitude each, they waited. There was not a sound outside their windows, apart from the whisper of the tree tops and the occasional hooting of an owl. Inside the house it became as dead silent as it was in the dead of night when they slept, with only the antique Gustav Becker mantle clock persistently ticking away each second of anticipation. Had it not been for the situation they may have found the calm atmosphere quite soothing.
Suddenly there was a knock at the front door. Herr Mueller and his sons frowned, shifting uncomfortably at the odd development. It was a civilized, gentle knock, not too loud, but clear. Then a woman’s voice from the other side of the door. “Hello? Is anyone home? I need some help please.”
One of Herr Mueller’s sons crept from the dark corridor to join him at the fireplace where he was crouching behind an armchair. The old man could see his other sons peeking from the spare room opposite the living room, their perplexed faces only slightly illuminated by the orange light of the dining room lamp and the fire in the hearth. He motioned for them to remain quiet. Women were far from weak and innocent in Herr Mueller’s opinion, something he learned quickly during the war. They were often the best assassins because of the assumptions held about them, or spies, as spies they employed that innate guile they possessed over the misogynistic opinions men had about them.
The knock was louder and more urgent the second time round, yet her voice maintained its soft and helpless tone.
“Please, anyone! I cannot get back to my car. My tire blew out and I…I am stranded here because…’cause…” she whispered against the door, “…there are men patrolling or something and they won’t let me get back to my car.”
The Mueller sons exchanged glances again and then stared at their father for a decision, but he looked as dumbstruck as they were. He simply shook his head and shrugged, mouthing ‘what shall we do?’ But his sons shook their heads in the mute atmosphere of the house. They did not know if they could trust the woman. Like their father they had no illusions about stereotypes and knew that she could be one of them.
“What is she is not one of them, Vati?” the youngest son asked, hardly making a sound as he spoke.
“That is the predicament we find ourselves in,” Herr Mueller answered. “How can we turn away a lady in trouble? It is not how we do things.”
“Unless she is a lady with a gun,” the other brother commented nonchalantly while he looked at the drawn curtains. He contemplated stealing a look at the caller to see if she was genuine and his father nodded in agreement, gesturing for him to go ahead.
“Be careful,” Herr Mueller whispered.
The woman knocked again, her beats more solemn and lost now. Her sobs provoked their sympathy, but their lives were at stake if they opened that front door. On the other side of the door they could hear her sitting down on the step, crying softly so that the men in the field would not discover her. Obviously she thought nobody was home and knew that she was trapped on the porch of an empty house in a barren wilderness where bad men barricaded her way with no help in sight.
At the window Mueller’s eldest carefully pulled aside the far side of the curtain, barely perceptible with his skill. She was as timid as she sounded — her blond hair was unkempt in the cold wind, but she looked by no means less groomed. Guessing her at about thirty years of age, he saw that she was wearing new jeans and leather boots with a leather jacket and scarf, clutching her bag under her arm. She looked around frenziedly, wondering what was in the pitch dark just outside the reach of the farm house porch lights. The only other light was the bright pole mounted trooper Mueller kept above the lock-up shed where he parked his vehicles. On the step the woman tried her cell phone, but it kept beeping to announce the lack of signal there while she had no idea she was being watched.