Free Blood of Vipers by Michael Wallace

He
     unlocked the bolt, and the gun burst to life with an
     ear-splitting jackhammer
     within the enclosed cellar. The young man jittered as he fell,
     and screams
     filled the air. After killing his own lieutenant, Little Hitler
     whirled around
     with the gun lowered for the attack.
    Perhaps he meant to kill Cal, or maybe Cal
     plus the two
     deserters. Or maybe he would mow down every man, woman, and
     child in the cellar
     in one final atrocity, to punish them all for being
     insufficiently devoted to
     the defense of the Fatherland.
    But Cal had already launched himself forward.
     Before Little
     Hitler could bring the gun to bear, Cal slammed into him, and
     the two men fell
     to the ground with the American on top. Cal pinned the officer’s
     neck with his
     elbow and wrestled the gun free with the other hand.
    The German recovered and got his leg up
     between them to
     force Cal away. The gun flew to one side. The men rolled on the
     ground, and
     Little Hitler tried to hook Cal in the eye with his thumb. He
     groped for
     something with his other hand, and Cal thought it might be a
     knife. He grabbed
     at the hand to keep it from its goal.
    The German soldier who had refused the order
     to kill Cal
     loomed over the top of them now, shouting. He held the officer’s
     discarded
     sidearm in one hand and pointed it down at the man’s head.
     Little Hitler went
     limp.
    Cal climbed free. His chest heaved with
     exhaustion. He stood
     and looked down at the SS officer, who didn’t move, but glared
     up at them both
     with poisonous hatred. The soldier’s hand was steady on the gun.
    “Move him to the corner,” Cal said. “We’ll
     tie him up, let
     the Russians deal with him. As for the dead guy—” He stopped,
     looked at the
     blankly staring German soldier with the gun. “And you don’t
     understand a word
     of it, do you? Greta?”
    She stood frozen with Cal’s .45 pointed down
     at Little
     Hitler with the barrel trembling. Cal pushed the barrel gently
     toward the
     ground, and then took her wrist. The gun dropped into his other
     hand.
    “He shot him,” she said. “Murdered that boy.”
    “You remember that,” Cal said. “When the time
     comes to
     answer for his crimes, you tell them what you saw.”
    “But—”
    “I’m not settling it now, if that’s what
     you’re getting at.”
    “No.”
    “Listen to me,” Cal said. “You’ve got to pull
     it together.
     We might not have much time, and there are guns lying around and
     German soldiers.
     I want Little Hitler on one side of the room, and the other
     soldiers on the
     other. And we need to cover the dead man. Can you translate for
     me?” He turned
     her face toward him. “Greta?”
    She swallowed, blinked, and then slowly
     nodded. “Yes. I will
     translate. What is it you want me to say?”
    He repeated it, and this time she took it in
     and translated
     his orders, voice shaking.
    They bound Little Hitler’s wrists with a
     woman’s headscarf,
     his ankles with the dead soldier’s belt, and then dragged him
     into the corner.
     He muttered something to one of the soldiers, but Cal waved his
     pistol in the
     man’s face and screamed at him to shut up.
    No sooner had they finished covering the dead
     lieutenant,
     when two elderly women arrived with hands in the air. A few
     minutes later, a
     younger woman, with blood splattered across her face like paint
     flicked from a
     paintbrush against a canvas. She had the vacant stare of the
     shell-shocked. A
     man of around seventy appeared a half hour later. He held an
     enormous Bible
     tucked under one arm and a silver cross as large as a man’s
     forearm in the
     other hand. As soon as they closed the bulkhead doors behind
     him, a young boy
     called out from above, begging for his Mutti , and they
     brought him down,
     too. Miraculously, one of the women below was his
     mother, and she cried
     in relief and joy as she swept him into her embrace.
    Cal picked up the story