The Land Beneath Us (Sunrise at Normandy #3) - Sarah Sundin Page 0,89

murdered their Jewish neighbors, how would they treat Jewish soldiers fighting for the enemy?

No matter what, Clay would protect Ruby. Maybe Clay was meant to die in the hedgerows. Maybe it wasn’t the location of his death that mattered, but the fact of his death.

Whistles sounded in the field to the south, and the wheat rustled.

Clay sprang up and shoved his rifle through the brush.

“Klaus!”

“Friedrich!”

“Hans!”

Why were the Germans shouting roll call? Locating each other? Trying to scare the Rangers?

Clay licked his dry lips and opened his eyes wide to the darkness.

Gunfire broke out in front of him, yellow muzzle flashes, bright tracer fire.

He fired at a muzzle flash, another, another.

Machine-gun fire shredded the hedgerow above him, and he ducked. Branches and leaves pelted his helmet and back.

Up to his feet, another few shots. His ammunition clip pinged out, and Clay rammed another into place.

An explosion behind him shook the ground—a mortar shell in the open field behind his hedgerow.

“Lieutenant!” A Ranger thundered down the lane toward the command post. “The Germans have broken through. We couldn’t hold ’em. There’s guys getting killed everywhere.”

“To the highway!” Taylor yelled.

“Get going, Ruby. I’ll tell the others.” Clay scrambled out of the foxhole and to Holman and Brady’s position. “To the highway! Taylor’s orders.”

Holman cussed out the orders. “I can hold ’em.”

Gunfire rang out to the northwest, behind the lines of the next platoon, the steady burps of a German machine pistol. Was that gun in Nazi or Ranger hands?

“Don’t be a fool. Get moving.” Hunched over, Clay darted back the way he’d come. Good. Ruby had left.

Next to the command post ran a north-to-south lane. To the south, flashes and stuttering gunfire filled the lane. The men in the outpost had to be putting up a fighting retreat.

Clay pointed his rifle that way. But in the darkness he didn’t dare add his own bullets, in case he hit a Ranger.

Instead, he ran north, following other hunched-over Americans, keeping his feet high to avoid roots and rocks and branches.

A scream from close to his former position. “I surrender! Kamerad! Don’t shoot!”

Clay stumbled and caught himself on the hedgerow. That was Bob Holman. Why hadn’t he obeyed the order?

He ran up the lane, pausing to check the fields through gaps in the hedgerows. The gunfire sounded farther and farther away.

Finally his boots thudded on blacktop.

To his left Rangers gathered on the highway, calling off names and companies. Clay called out his.

“Back to the point,” cried a lieutenant Clay didn’t recognize in the dark. “We’ll split up, take different paths.”

Made sense. That way all of them wouldn’t get captured or killed, and maybe some would make it through.

“Hey, Pax.” Ruby sidled up to him. “Where’s Holman? Brady?”

“I heard Holman surrender. Don’t know about Brady. Told them to get out.”

Ruby grunted. “Holman never could listen to no one.”

“Glad you listened.” Clay’s throat suddenly constricted. He and Ruby were the only ones left from their squad. Although he refused to give up on Gene. Not yet.

“Let’s go!” That was Lieutenant Taylor.

Clay and Ruby followed. About a dozen men jogged up the exit road in twos and threes, back the way they’d come in the morning.

Clay kept his rifle ready and his ears tuned. But he only heard Ranger footfalls and his own huffing breath. For some reason, the Germans hadn’t pursued them.

He didn’t take any chances. He checked behind walls, inside trenches, and around shattered tree trunks.

The Rangers turned off the exit road and headed toward the cliff they’d climbed. Clay and Ruby leapfrogged between craters, but only distant gunfire sounded, deep and booming.

At the edge of the cliff, Taylor slipped down into a crater and Clay and Ruby followed.

Headquarters, with a dozen or so Rangers, including Colonel Rudder, thank goodness.

Taylor reported the situation to Rudder, the officers’ voices low and grim.

“Clay? Ruby?”

He spun around at the familiar voice. “G. M.!”

His buddy sat leaning back against the crater wall, his lower right leg swathed in white.

Clay grabbed his outstretched hand and shook it hard. “What happened?”

“Sniper shot me through the calf.” Gene gestured to the dark shape of a bunker close by. “Doc Block patched me up and sent me back out to fight. That’s the aid station.”

The old longing pulled Clay toward the bunker. Maybe the physician could use some help. But if he’d sent Gene out to fight, he’d surely send Clay skedaddling.

“I’ve been guarding HQ.” Gene chuckled. “You should’ve seen Lieutenant Eikner. The radios have been giving us trouble, but remember how the lieutenant brought