Reign of Hell by Sven Hassel Read Free Book Online Page B

swarming with soldiers coming to our support. Linge clicked his tongue impatiently against his teeth.
    ‘Hogwash,’ he said, sharply. ‘Balls and bloody hogwash. I never heard such a load of flaming nonsense in all my flaming—’
    ‘Look!’ said Gregor. ‘There it is again!’
    The figure passed across the window and disappeared. Gregor turned and ran, and I wouldn’t swear to it, but I rather think Linge followed him. At all events, when I came to my senses I found I was alone. The whole area was silent. Still as the grave, and twice as sinister. Only the pinpoints of light still flickered and winked in von Gernstein’s apartment, and somewhere on the other side of the windows stalked Satan himself in devilish profile . . .
    Twice on my panic-stricken dash across the open courtyard my helmet tumbled off my head and went clattering on to the flagstones, and twice I had to crawl trembling on hands and knees in search of it before I eventually reached the shelter of the guardroom and flung myself, gibbering, through the door. Linge was there, with a face like a bowlful of tripe. He was muttering to himself in a sort of manic frenzy, and he clawed at me as I ran past him.
    ‘Mum’s the word!’ he said. ‘Don’t tell a soul! You haven’t been near the place all night! Remember that: you haven’t been near the place!’
    ‘Oh sure,’ I said, sourly. ‘Next thing I know, you’ll be telling me there wasn’t any Devil—’
    ‘Fuck the Devil! You haven’t been near the place!’
    In a sudden frenzy, Linge kicked out at a tin helmet lying on the floor. It sailed up into the air and flew gracefully out the window, which happened to have been closed at the time. There was a shower of broken glass, a dull thud and a yell of angry pain.
    ‘Someone’s copped it,’ I said.
    Tiny crossed the room and peered out through the broken window, with its one jagged pain of glass sticking up like a broken tooth. He turned with morbid satisfaction towards Linge.
    ‘Lieutenant Dorn,’ he said, simply. ‘He stopped it in the chest.’
    The Lieutenant burst into the guardhouse as if a dozen T34s were snapping at his heels. He stared round, wildly.
    ‘Who threw that helmet? Answer my question!
Who threw that helmet?
’
    Sergeant Linge performed a sideways shuffle round the perimeter of the guardhouse and gave a nervous guilty grin.
    ‘What the devil are you sniggering at?’ barked the Lieutenant. ‘Are you out of your senses? Are you a homicidal maniac? Do you realise you could face the firing squad for assaulting an officer?’
    ‘Sir, I didn’t throw it at you, sir,’ said Linge, with extreme and unctuous earnestness. ‘It slipped out of my fingers, sir. I happened to be standing near the window at the time, and it slipped out of my fingers. It was gone before I could stop it. I put out my hand to catch it, but it went before I had a chance.’
    ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Sergeant, stop babbling like a bloody cretin!’ The Lieutenant took an impatient step forward, and it seemed suddenly to strike him that the guardroom was curiously overcrowded for that time of night. ‘What’s going on here? What are all these men doing in here?’ He looked suspiciously round the circle of anxious faces, and instantly put his finger on the weakest link in the chain: Private Ness, who was universally acknowledged as a certified moron. Dorn strode up to him, snapping his fingers at him as if he were a dog. ‘Come along, man! Out with it! Don’t stand there dribbling!’
    Private Ness gave him a look of vacant despair. Across the far side of the room, behind the Lieutenant’s back, Sergeant Linge was busy informing him in hideous dumb show that his throat would be slit open if he dared say a word. Ness’s lower lip began slowly to fall apart from its moorings.
    ‘Well?’ snapped the Lieutenant. ‘Do you intend to answer my question or do you want to face the firing squad along with Sergeant Linge?’
    Ness sprang quivering