The German looked bewildered and called back that he did not understand.
“You tell him, Max,” Dick said. “Then he can’t pretend he doesn’t know what I mean.”
Max called out the order in German, and the soldiers on the wall almost jumped to hear their own language spoken to them so perfectly.
The first soldier, a corporal, picked up the machine pistol and started to aim it into the shack, but did not pull the trigger. As he hesitated, Max commanded him again to fire into the shack or get a burst of fire from the Americans.
The German soldier looked at the gun in his hands, then at the shack and then at the Americans. Suddenly he fell to the ground, hiding behind his dead comrade and pouring a fusilade at the Americans. At the same moment, two more guns were thrust through the shack window and joined the attack. Dick and his men were quick to get behind trees, despite their surprise. Dick heard a cry of pain from one of his men, but did not take time at that moment to look.
He and his men were answering the rapid crossfire of the Germans, when they saw two dark objects lobbed through the air from the woods on the right. Then there was a roar, a blinding flash followed at once by another, a cloud of black smoke—and silence, as the booming sound echoed among the hills.
As the smoke cleared away, Dick saw that the two grenades tossed by Lefty and his men had done a thorough job. The shack was a pile of lumber, and some of it had toppled to the ground below the dam wall. The Germans who had hidden in the shack during the fake surrender were no more—and neither were their companions alive. Dick and his men advanced on the run, arriving at the dam as Bert’s group rushed up from the left. Lefty’s men stayed where they were, waiting for the others to join them.
A quick inspection showed that the enemy detail at the dam had been wiped out. And then they heard the sound of motors. First they looked into the sky, but saw no planes.
“Trucks!” Dick said. “On the road below. Come on!”
Even before they moved, they heard the report of rifles from the woods below them. They needed no further warning to make them duck and scurry off the dam into the trees at the right. Skirting close to the shore, they soon ran into Lefty and his group.