Her eyes took on a vacant expression; the words came by themselves. She became an instrument for the sake of the pain and suffering that poured out; she had been a whore for the SS, not because she was afraid to die, but because they paid her off with her life and food, some of which she gave to the children in the camp.
Through her eyes, he was drawn into the hell that was Auschwitz. Watching children torn from their mothers' arms and herded together to pass under a horizontal rod; those tall enough to touch it would live, for a while longer at least. Those too small were sent to the gas chambers immediately. Through the tears, he saw the young ones trying to stretch their necks, standing on tiptoe; anything to make them a little taller. The children knew somehow that something terrible awaited those who failed to touch that horrible high marker. The cries and screams, the stench of the ovens burning the waste that had once been people, while in the background the prison band played overtures from Schubert and Paganini. The tears running down her face, dropping on the table, made pools of sorrow for all mankind.
He saw it all, the dark clouds that hung constantly over the camp. The ashes from the ovens that fell, even into what little food they had. But it was the faces of the children that tore at his mind. The children, always it is the children; the innocents stand out the most. They danced for the amusement of the SS officers and sang sweet songs of the fields and valleys. Then they were gassed. The Panzer Soldier cried. From within, his life source, came a groan that transcended anything he had ever felt. Great choking sobs tore at him as the children spoke to him from Deborah's tears; the Old One cried.
The creaking of the door hinges swung him around; the SS Hauptsturmführer stepped inside shaking his shoulders loose from the snow. His two henchmen followed. The officer stepped forward to where Deborah sat, his face full of anticipation; he grabbed her by the hair.
"Well, Jew bitch, it's time to go. Your three friends didn't take long to tell us all they knew. They're down the road a little ways waiting for your arrival." He laughed, enjoying himself. "They won't go anywhere for a while, though, so we have time to entertain you a bit first. You know the fat one? Well, he's at least four inches taller now than before. I suppose the extra weight made his neck stretch further than the others."
Not looking, he asked the Panzerman, "Did you enjoy yourself, comrade?"
He barely had time to notice the tanker's movement before the steel body of the Schmeisser crushed into his face, spreading his grin into a bloody smile as the bone crunched under the blow and the jawbone splintered.
The two SS men froze for a second, then the taller of the two started to swing his weapon up to fire, only to feel cold-burning pain as Langer's bayonet sunk into his stomach. He gave one weak whimper for his mother and fell. The other raised his above his head wanting to surrender.
But Langer was beyond any act of mercy. The pleading was cut off as scarred strong hands went around his throat and raised him from the floor, shaking him like a dog.
Tears ran in rivers as Langer shook until the SS man was no more than a crooked-necked broken doll waiting to be picked up and thrown away.
The Haupsturmführer gurgled through his broken face as he tried to raise himself up from the floor on to his hands and knees. Turning, Langer gave him one solid kick under the chin, snapping the man's head back until the vertebrae crushed in on each other.
The force of the kick flipped him over on his back. The grinning Deathshead insignia on his collar tab leered happily at another victim. Langer stood there empty-handed, stoop-shouldered and drained.
The touch of a gentle hand on his shoulder brought him back to his senses. Deborah stood watching, her face torn with sorrow. "We have to go now," she spoke as she would have to a child. "We have to go before anyone else comes."
Nodding weakly, he picked up the weapons from the floor and took the officer's pistol and stuck it into his own belt. He gave her one of the MP-40s and slung another over his shoulder. He knew they would need them before long. He had another war to fight now.
Deborah led him by the hand out of the hut into the snow, leaving the SS men to be found later. Their feet crunched on the frozen surface layer and then sunk down to ankle deep. They moved into the darkness of the woods; their tracks would soon be covered by the gently falling large clean flakes. As they walked, Langer ripped the patches from his uniform and threw them along with his paybook and orders into the snow. Last to go was the Knight's Cross from around his neck. He let it fall from limp fingers and sink into the softness, the silver edges gleaming until it too was covered.
By the end of January the German forces had withdrawn to the western banks of the Oder River. Pursued not only by the Russians but also by a man and a woman who made their prey the Einsatzgrüppen of the SS. Like wolves they hunted the straggling units of the Totenkopf or SD.
From Langer, Deborah learned more than she would have dreamed of about the fine art of killing. How to place a mine or strangle a man larger than yourself with a fine piece of wire. Time and again they had eliminated parties of SS herding their helpless prisoners back to the loading pens for shipment to the concentration camps.
Langer grew wolflike in appearance, face lean and hard with no trace of pity for the butchers he relentlessly hunted and killed.
In this battle, mercy was a commodity they had not earned. Though many asked for it, no one received it. The bayonet and garrote snuffed out the life of the hunted silently, or the single crack of a well-placed shot, taking out the leader of a party escorting prisoners. Langer and Deborah lived off the land, taking whatever they could scavenge or steel. This was their crusade, their "Jihad," Holy War, and with the dedication of a religious zealot they spared none, not even themselves. They pushed on.
The SS in charge of the final-solution program began to get nervous about venturing too far from the safety of their headquarters. Several high-ranking officers had gone on inspection trips to make sure the Führer's orders were being obeyed, never to return, or if they were found, to be silent testimony that someone was carefully and selectively eliminating them as they did the Jews. The feeling was definitely unpleasant.
The memory of how many times they had struck vanished from their minds. There was no limit, no thought of doing just so much and no more. They continued to live in burned-out buildings or holes in the ground, trying to keep up with the retreating Germans and ahead of the Russians, who would suffer the same fate as the SS if they happened to get too close. As for Deborah and Langer, there was little difference in them, but their chosen prey were those in the black uniforms and swastika armbands. At night they would hold each other for warmth, and what comfort they had came from each other. They loved in a special kind of way that made them twins or extensions of each other. There was tenderness for Deborah in the arms of the scar-faced man, a gentleness she would not have believed when she first saw him. She knew that he had suffered great pain in his life that made him different in a thousand small ways from the men she had known. He was timeless in his patience with her, taking hours to explain a small detail that could mean her survival. About his own survival, he really didn't seem to be very interested, as long as he could accomplish what he set out to do. Each mission, each ambush, was a thing unto itself, which might end everything for them. Every act itself was a complete statement.