Chapter One Thousand Five Hundred Forty-Five
26th February 1963
East of Ortrand, Saxony
Once the shooting started, Kiki found herself yelling orders at Anton as he called for help and even as rifle bullets were flying past, they were told that even with assets in the area it would be some time before help arrived. Looking at the team, she knew that the attackers wouldn’t be content in shooting at the trees where they were sheltering in for long and whoever they were, they would figure out that the best tactic would be to just rush them eventually. There were only six of them and five rifles. None of them had figured that they needed more than a single magazine. This was a search and rescue mission, not a war. The only exception to that was Kiki having a couple extra magazines for her pistol, when she had put the belt on around her coat those had been included because she had not thought about it. The thought raced through her mind that something would need to be done and no one else there to do it for her.
“Valentin, Mitsi” Kiki said, getting their attention, “I need you to protect Anton. Rolf and Ingo come with me, if you can see any of them start shooting when I give you a signal.”
With that Kiki was on her feet running while trying to keep as low as possible through the trees at a right angle to the direction that the rifle fire was coming from. The shooting continued. Turning in that direction Kiki slowed as she moved towards what she hoped was the flank of their attackers. Rolf and Ingo, originally trained as paratroopers, were spaced out the proscribed distance. Moving through the underbrush in a crouch, Kiki heard more shooting and saw a couple of them. They had old bolt-action rifles left over from the Second World War after a minute they paused to reload. She couldn’t help but notice that they were laughing and joking. This was just a game to them and that filled Kiki with anger. Pulling her whistle out from under her coat she closed her lips on it even as she took careful aim with her pistol. Blowing a long tweet with the whistle, she fired two shots both center mass on the two shooters she could see. Then she was running forward, taking two additional shooters by surprise. The sharper sound of Rolf and Ingo’s rifles filled the air as they took shots at the shooters who found the tables had been turned on them.
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It had been going so well, until it wasn’t. The team that they had lured into this isolated stretch of forest resembled the one that they had been told to watch out for according to their contact in Grünewald who had seen them get off a helicopter that had landed near there. A few hours later, they came walking through the forest occasionally calling out the name of the nonexistent sightseer who had been reported missing. All that was left was waiting for her to reveal herself. For some reason Mithras thought that she needed to be eliminated and they had spent months coming up with this plan, even arranging for a dozen Mosin-Nagant rifles to be delivered to them. The problem with it, as they discovered, came in the from of heavy winter clothes that obscured details.
As Alexis had watched, one figure was shorter than the rest was walking towards the back of the group and the shape of the body under the coat was doubtlessly feminine. Alexis took aim and only to see the figure vanish at the same instant he fired. The others opened fire as the group that they watched went to ground. The others shot at where the group had been for a minute and Alexis figured that this was probably ineffective. So much for the revolution, he thought sourly to himself.
Alexis was about to yell at the others to cut it out when he heard someone blow a whistle and shooting that sounded different came from his right and in front of them. Turning he saw three figures attacking his group and the others in his group started running from them.
“Get back here!” Alexis yelled at them, “We still outnumber them.” Then he saw one of the others go down, shot through the head. For a few seconds Alexis froze with indecision as he watched the others run. They had left him no choice but to follow. Alexis had taken no more than a few steps when he felt like if his leg had been hit by a piece of lumber and it collapsed underneath him…
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As the sound of approaching helicopters filled the air, Kiki was disgusted by the situation that she found herself in. She found herself having to treat wounds that she had very likely inflicted.
“Swine” Kiki hissed at the man, little more than a boy really, who had been shot through the thigh and Kiki was trying to keep him from bleeding out before additional help arrived. “I never hurt anyone before today, and you caused this.”
For some reason the man was filled with rage when she said that. “You are lying you Hohenzollern whore” He yelled sitting up, “I was there when you shot Andreas and…” He was cut off when Ingo ground the heel of his boot into the leg with the hole through it. Kiki saw that his face was pale with pain and he was desperately trying not to scream.
“Stop it Ingo” Kiki said calmly, “If he goes into shock he could die and that would be bad.”
“Yes, Ma’am” Ingo said as he stopped, then he crouched down until his face was only a few millimeters from the man’s. “This is what happens when you fuck with the Green Devils.”
The man seemed to wilt when he heard that.
“I’m not one of the Green Devils” Kiki said correcting Ingo.
“That’s crap” Ingo said, “That counterattack was the sort of thing that the great Katze herself would have done.”
Kiki noticed that none of the others disagreed with him.