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itself. Their eyes were bloodshot and their
     faces slack with
     exhaustion.
    “Sit over there,” he said. “Don’t move.
     Greta, tell them.”
    She did, and they obeyed. “What are you going
     to do with
     them?”
    “Do? I don’t want to do anything with them.
     Think about it.
     What’s going to happen when the Russians come? They’ll only kill
     those men.”
    “You cannot let them do it.”
    “How am I going to stop them? I’m still
     working it over how
     I’m going to save the rest of you. I can’t—”
    He stopped as one of the men spoke.
    “He wants to know,” Greta said, “why you put
     up a banner
     telling people to come here to surrender to the Americans, why
     you said you
     will take prisoners.”
    “That’s not what it says—tell him! It says I
     have prisoners
     already. I sure as hell don’t want any more.”
    “But what are they supposed to do?”
    “I don’t care. Tell them to go out and
     surrender to the
     Russians.”
    “They will be killed.”
    “People are dying every second. Do you think
     we can stop
     that?”
    “Cal, they are only boys. Look at them.”
    He glanced at the two young men,
     battle-weary, frightened.
     Thin and hungry, clothes tattered, faces dirty and stubbled. A
     bandaged hand on
     one man, a smear of blood on the other’s forehead. A frustrated
     cry rose up
     from Cal’s gut, but he forced it down.
    “They’re soldiers,” he said in a low voice,
     in case one of
     them understood English. “And I haven’t slept in two days.
     Minute I close my
     eyes, what’s to keep them from slitting my throat?”
    “They wouldn’t—”
    “I know, they want to surrender, and all of
     the rest of it.
     But how do I know ?”
    “I will help you,” she said. “If you start to
     fall asleep,
     and one of them moves, I will shoot him. Give me your gun.”
    He let the skepticism show in his voice.
     “Really? You’d do
     that?”
    “I know how to shoot.”
    “That’s not what I mean.”
    “Please do not send them out there to die.
     Please.”
    He let out a long, weary sigh. “Fine, but
     they’re it. Any
     more soldiers and we send them away. Got it?”
    Greta bit on her lower lip, but then she
     nodded. “Okay.”
    “I want them in the corner, hands on their
     heads. Tell them
     if they make one problem for me I’ll tell the Soviets they
     executed two unarmed
     Russian prisoners.”
    She must have heard he was serious, because
     she hardened her
     voice when she repeated his words to the soldiers, finishing
     with “ Macht
     schnell! ” when they didn’t move quickly enough.
    Satisfied they wouldn’t be any trouble, Cal
     grabbed his
     pistol, made a point of handing it over to Greta, and then
     climbed to his feet
     to shut the bulkhead doors. When he got up the stairs, two more
     refugees
     materialized, this time a girl of about twelve and her younger
     brother.
    “Yeah, why not? The more the merrier!” He
     pointed at them
     and gestured to the basement. “Down! Now! Macht schnell! ”
    The problem was that damn sheet and its
     surrender message.
     Any German who stumbled across the wrecked farmhouse was going
     to take one look
     at his crudely sketched American flag and think he was their
     savior. Wouldn’t
     take much searching to find the bulkhead door. Before the
     Russians bothered to
     show up, he might have a hundred refugees on his hands, and then
     what?
    “Watch those soldiers,” he told Greta. “I’m
     going out to
     take down that stupid sign. Don’t put the gun down for an
     instant.”
    As he clomped the last few stairs and came
     into the open
     air, he looked skyward to scan for aircraft. Nothing overhead.
     The shelling and
     mortar fire continued unabated from the direction of the road,
     but it seemed to
     have moved west, deeper into Germany in the direction of the
     American lines.
     Whatever was left of the pocket of resistance must have shrunk
     to a few miles by
     now. With any luck, it would be