boucher book oct28.pdf - Index of

Pelagic Spark 213
depended absolutely on him, since each man had his duty and his was the prime
one of disposing of the Führer.
The transport motor droned over the clatter of the banquet. Harding made his
decision. The risks were the same whether he attempted to reach concealment or
went on with his plan. He advanced toward the Hitler’s table, serving out the bowls
of stewed shoat as he went.
A colonel raised his eyes from his plate to call for more wine. His eyes met the
white face of a brown-bodied servant. He opened his mouth.
And at that moment a half dozen shouts went up from as many tables. Men
were standing and pointing up. The colonel forgot even that astonishing servant as
he raised his eyes to the sky and saw the dim shapes floating down.
The blue-black parachutes were all but invisible—perceptible only as vague shapes
blotting out the stars, slowly descending with the deadly quiet of doom.
There was a shrill scream of terror, though there were no women in the gathering.
There were barking shots from the officers’ sidearms, answered from above—futilely,
at that distance and under those conditions of fire.
Then the rattle of the machine guns began.
Anton Metzger tore his eyes from what he knew must be Schweinspitzen, dangling
on high while the “Ram’s in the sky,” and looked at the plump face of Hitler
XVI, still aquiver from that terrified scream. Then he saw the unbelievable sight of
a native with a gleaming knife charging at the Führer’s table.
The others at the table were staring and firing aloft. Only Hitler XVI, stirred by
some warning of personal danger, and Metzger saw the servant’s attack. Metzger’s first
thought was the stories of amuck. Then he saw the white face, and understood the truth
even before he heard the half-legendary cry of the Tyrannicides: “Sick the tyrants!”
Hitler XVI had drawn his automatic. He handled it with the awkwardness of a
man little accustomed to firearms, but he could hardly miss the large target charging
at him.
For the first time in his malcontent life, Anton Metzger became a man of action.
The action was simple. It consisted in seizing the Führer’s arm from behind
and twisting it till the automatic fell, then in holding both arms pinioned while the
knife carved into the plump flesh of the Führer’s throat.
The three-way battle had been furious and bloody, but its outcome was never in
doubt. Schweinspitzen’s paratroops were rashly too few to achieve anything. The
Hitler’s men might have put up a successful resistance by themselves even after their
Führer’s death, but the disconcerting presence of two sets of enemies, one in their
own uniforms, umnanned them. The Tyrannicides and the natives had won a total
victory in the triangular confusion.
Now Metzger stood with Lyman Harding and surveyed the carnage. “I owe you
my life,” Harding said. “The soteron garments I’d planned on for protection couldn’t
be used with this servant-disguise scheme, and there was no other way of getting in.
And the world owes you a hell of a lot more than I do.”
“I owe you,” Metzer said in English, “more than I could ever explain.”
“But look. Maybe you can tell me something. What went on with those the
paratroops? They came just at the perfect time for a cover for us and I don’t know