About forty feet into the woods there was a responding flash of a match. He then struck the second match and allowed it to bum for a moment or two before he extinguished it. He struck the first one, and the instant it flared, he blew it out. He reached the point where the three men had conferred but minutes ago, feeling no presence, seeing nothing.ġ02 He took out a box of waterproof matches from his pocket and removed two. He rose to his knees and scrambled rapidly west through the dense underbrush, flexing his body and limbs to every bend in the foliage, making sounds compatible to the forest's tones. Or if they were, they were not concentrating on the field. Whatever Alpine troops were in the woods, they were not on the edge of the woods. And that fact revealed to David a very important bit of knowledge. The corpse in the field had not been spotted in the brief illumination. The moon was hidden again, the darkness returned. He remained immobile for several seconds, listening for sounds of alarm. He dove into a cluster of winter fem as the moon suddenly broke through the clouds. Nearer, but not much, to the point where the Nazi had spoken in whispers to his two confederates.
David raced across the grass to the edge of the woods, to the left of his previous entry. The body fell to the ground, the face contorted the only sound was a swallow of air, the start of a scream, blocked by rigid fingers thrust into the dead man's mouth, yanked downward, as the knife had been, shorting out the passage of breath. 'Heil Hitler.' And plunged his short bayonet into the Nazi's stomach, ripping it downward, killing the man instantly. 'What is it, LisbonT Spaulding spoke quietly. David got up from the rock and signaled the German with a short whistle. The night was black, the moon breaking only intermittently through the thick cover of clouds the darkness was nearly total. The German came out of the woods carrying the shovel, smoking a cigarette. He then replaced the instrument in his pocket and waited. He pressed the switch five times in rapid succession. He removed a small flashlight from his field jacket, clamped separated fingers over the glass and aimed it southwest. He made his way rapidly back through the overgrowth to hisġ01 original point of entry.
Only isolated words were distinguishable. Spaulding - making no sound that disturbed the hum of the woods - crawled closer. The men he had signaled were approaching. The German, unfamiliar with the Basque forest, stayed close to the edge of the field. David estimated the distance to be, perhaps, a hundred feet. From deep in the woods came two separate, brief replies.
This one allowed to bum for several seconds, then snuffed out with a short spit of breath. A match was struck, cupped, and extinguished swiftly. He entered the dense foliage and noiselessly closed the distance between them., He could not see the man but he knew he would soon find him. When he had progressed thirty-five to forty feet into the grass, he stood up, crouching, and raced to the border of the woods, judging himself to be about sixty yards away from the German. Then he swiftly, silently threw himself to the ground and began rolling his body over and over again, away from the rock, at a sharp angle from the point where the runner had entered the forest. David waited thirty seconds after the man had disappeared into the forest. If there was such a contact to be made, thought Spaulding. But the Gestapo agent could not resist the gratuitous opportunity to make his own contact. An experienced runner would have objected, no doubt humorously, and say he'd be damned if he'd take a crap in the pitch-black woods. Nothing would graze here, not even goats. They had reached the field during late daylight it was barren, the grass was sour, the slope rocky. He had accepted too readily - without comment - Spaulding's statement about the field and the wind and the suggestion that he relieve himself in the woods. 100 would bring the Alpine troops out of the forest.