Free The Bloody Road to Death by Sven Hassel

strings.
    The little family presses tighter against the wall as if hoping it will swallow them up. Their faces are pale blots. The crickets sing loudly, almost drowning out the sound of the wild, mad guitar.
    I look uncertainly at Porta and lift my Mpi.
    ‘Not yet,’ he whispers, shaking his head. ‘Not our business yet. This is between the Greeks and the Bulgars. If anything illegal happens, we interfere. We are taking care of things on behalf of the police, who are not with us at this time.’
    I smile tiredly and wish myself anywhere but here.
    The hunters are triumphant inside the hut. Their prey is cornered. The boy pushes his tousled head into his father’s chest.
    ‘Why
did
you go over to those brown devils?’ asks the leader.
    ‘Because they thought it was to their advantage, of course,’ laughs the cigarette-holder man. He takes the carbine slowlyfrom his shoulder, snaps the lock noisily and extracts a clip of bullets from his pocket. He holds it up to the light. The six bullets gleam like gold. ‘Pretty, eh?’ he almost whispers. ‘
German
bullets!’ He removes one from the clip and studies it carefully. ‘Very new too. Made in Bamberg in 1943, and I do believe they have your numbers on them!’
    Olja is weeping silently.
    ‘We have been looking for you for a long time,’ says the leader coldly. ‘It was not until we asked your German friends about you that we got a lead. Now we are here!’
    ‘And you certainly don’t seem overjoyed to see us,’ laughs the cigarette-holder man, pressing the clip into the magazine of his carbine.
    ‘Delco and Olja,’ says the leader, as if he were enjoying the very taste of the words. ‘You have been sentenced to death! You have betrayed your people, and we have come to carry out the sentence passed upon you!’
    ‘We’ve betrayed nobody,’ shouts Delco wildly, putting his arm around his wife. ‘Our country is allied to Germany. ‘Our Army is fighting in the Soviet. I am a Bulgarian policeman.’
    ‘Delco, you understand so
little
! You
were
a policeman, the poor tool of the Royalists. The Bulgarian people does not wish to fight for the King and his Fascist vassals against the great Soviet brotherland.’
    ‘The King
ordered
us to fight the Soviets,’ screams Delco, desperately. The two carbine muzzles move slowly until they are pointing directly at him.
    The cigarette-holder man laughs a laugh without a trace of amusement in it.
    ‘How stupid people are,’ he sighs. ‘They simply
will
not understand.’
    Olja screams plangently, and hides her face in her hands.
    Delco makes a movement to get to his feet, but slumps down again despairingly. He is facing the inevitable. The boy seems to make himself smaller, pressing in between his terrified parents. Wide-eyed he stares at these terrible guests who have appeared so suddenly from the night.
    The stillness of death reigns in the humble room.
    The cigarette-holder man strums dreamily on the guitar.Suddenly he throws it from him. Strings jangle and snap. He laughs noisily.
    Two shots crash out almost together.
    Olja slides down from the bed. Her hands are still pressed to her face. Delco lifts himself half up, then falls sideways across the bed clutching at the pillow. His body jerks and is still.
    Immediately after the shots there is a strange quiet in the room. The two executioners remain sitting stiffly on the table for several minutes.
    A long, piercing bird call comes from the unit.
    Porta answers with the call of a raven. This tells them that we are all right.
    ‘Why didn’t you call them up here?’ I ask in a whisper.
    ‘Njet, the Old Man’d ruin the last act, and I don’t think our good German God would like that,’ Porta laughs ominously.
    ‘Shall we go in?’ I ask.
    ‘No, no. Let them enjoy themselves a little longer.
The pair of shits!
’
    The two executioners are still sitting on the bed watching the little boy. He strokes his father’s hair lovingly.
    ‘Will you shoot me, too? I