Revised 10/08/10

BOMB IN A BIRDCAGE
Chapter Two

"And our bodies are earth. And our thoughts are clay.
And we sleep and eat with death." – All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

Never count your chicks before they hatch.

It was an old saying, one that Ava had never been particularly fond of that so aptly applied to her current situation. The phrase that had chased her through her childhood now haunted her in behind the lines. Everything had been running smoothly, everything had been fine despite the uneasy feeling churning in the pit of her stomach. She'd met with her contact, an old friend (if the word applied) Nina Peyroux on time and without problems. Everything had been perfect and Ava, regardless of her experience and in spite of what she had seen, grew complacent.

While it had been almost a week since the duo had split from the group of Maquis, it had only been a two days since Ava had separated from Zus to follow out her orders. Even with her venomous dislike for London superiors, she felt compelled to follow them. Zus hadn't questioned it, just as he hadn't questioned their movements after leaving the Maquis. He trusted her. When she had left their safe house, he didn't say a word, only nodded and went back to cleaning his rifle. Traveling alone had Ava feeling anxious, which wasn't something she'd admit aloud but she missed Zus who, up until then, had been her shadow for months.

Getting comfortable fucks everything up.

Before her, staining the beautifully crafted teak flooring of the dining room was the body of a Gestapo Major Alfred Mann. A power hungry man with an enormous Napoleon complex, he was an overweight alcoholic slob that made lives miserable. With an squared, off centered mustache – just like his Führer, Ava noted bitterly – and a double chin that hid his squared German features.

The shrill crack of her pistol – a relic of the Great War - cut through the air, the bullet at the base of his neck. The Major didn't even have time to panic; his body slumped sideways slowly and tumbled to the floor with a heavy thump. The recognizable gray, gooey brain matter splattered across the table top and Nina, who had been sitting across and in mid conversation had tumbled from her own chair.

Nina was screaming. Her face was as white as a sheet, her eyes wide like saucers and glossy as she gazed at the twitching corpse. She had moved back as the ever growing pool of blood crept closer to her, pressing herself deeper into the wall. It was as if she believed that by some miracle she'd disappear through it.

Giving the woman a look of disgust, Ava quickly moved around the corpse to stand firmly in his blood. It wasn't as if she hadn't seen her fair share of bloodshed in the last few months, it didn't bother her anymore. What did bother her however was the old wound in her shoulder, the splintered bone and lodged bullet. It pulsed with its own steady ache as she forced her arm to stay steady as she held her gun at the ready.

"Why'd you do it Nina? Talk."

"Ava. Ava listen to me, I didn't do anything." Nina stressed in a shaky voice as she scrambled to defend herself. "I would never – I'd never tell them about you, never –"

Ava squeezed off the trigger; the loud crack of the pistol mixing with Nina's choked back howling sobs. On the floor, she hugged her shattered knee cap, blood flowing freely. If Ava had her way, Nina wouldn't be walking anytime soon.

Dropping to her knees Ava took the heat barrel of her gun and pushed it into Nina's wound. She didn't even mind the choked back sobs that filled the air, she just wanted answers.

"I'm sorry; did I break your concentration? Hey," She gouged the gun deeper while her free hand gave a light slap to Nina's face. "Listen to me when I'm talking to you."

If Nina hadn't been white at the sight of the dead Major, she had no color now, her tear streaked face constricted in pain.

"Now," Ava said. "What'd you do?"

"You have to understand, they got me early on. The Major – they found out this was a stop for the pilots. Lls sont la Gestapo, Tu sais ce qu'ils peuvent faire!" (They're the Gestapo, you know what they can do)

As a result from lack of answers, the barrel was pushed deeper into the wound. Pain flashed Nina's vision white as she struggled to find her words.

"I just gave them the few that trickled through. Je n'etais pas, Je n'allais pas leur donner eux vous!" (I wasn't, I wasn't going to give them you!)

"You weren't supposed to be here, you weren't the agent I was to meet!" She stressed. "The nine of you would have clinched my safety for the rest of war, nine Allied agents and you, the lost Troy operative. I'd been right for a good while."

As her words sunk in, Ava tried to collect her wild thoughts. Where were the men she was meant to take? Had they already been taken away by the Gestapo? Had they been shipped to separate camps? Had her entire trip been completely pointless?

"How long have you been doing this?"

"Moiss." (Months) She answered softly, causing Ava to press the barrel into her busted flesh to make her louder.

"Right, I'm going to need your full attention before you go into shock." Ava kept the pressure on the wound, her eyes hard. "The men Nina, where are they?"

"In the field," She hissed. "They're locked inside the cellar, under a barrel of hay."

Smirking, Ava yanked the gun from the injury and stood, her boots sliding in the drying blood. As Nina choked by sobs in the background, Ava fought to process the information just given to her as she tried to decide exactly what to do. Leaving her alive was leaving loose ends, and she knew all too well that loose ends always came back to strangle you when you least expected it. In her hand, the rough metal of her Colt weight heavily as she weighed through her own options. Her answer, however, was fairly obvious.

"You know what the Resistance does to collaborators Nina?"

She didn't give an answer; instead her labored and pained breathing was the only sound.

"That's alright, I don't really know myself. They do things differently than I do and it's not something the Maquis like to talk about unless the situation's at hand." Ava smirked, her thoughts drifting. "But I think that's the best part, it lets your imagination run fucking wild. I heard one story of them tying a collaborator to a horse and dragging them to death."

"So," Nina drawled, "What are you saying exactly?"

"The resistance doesn't have time to deal with you," She answered pushed in a new clip. "So that leaves me. If I let you live, the Gestapo will find you and you're going to be their number on suspect."

If it were possible, Nina's face paled even more.

"And you'll talk to save your own goddamn ass. Anyone would – well, that's a lie, anyone who is like you would. You'd tell them all the secrets you've kept so far. And we can't have that."

During training at the Farm, they had been told that to kill, no matter how normal it would become in war, would always be hard up close. To watch the desperation leak into a person's eyes in their last horrifyingly fleeting moments of life. Watching that same desperation fade into acceptance, her NCO had said, would be even worse. Death was guaranteed to all in war and as a soldier it was best to accept you were already dead.

"Well," She corrected, snapping the cartilage into place. "I can't have that."

As soon as the words passed her lips, Ava had pulled the trigger. The distinct sound of the gun filled the air along with the sound of a splintering skull, the sickening crunch that only lasted a second. Blood splattered across Ava's shirt and face, causing her to frown as she whipped her cheek.

Goddamn it.

Turning her back on Nina's corpse, Ava robotically stripped the Major of anything useful – weapons, money – before finally pulling on his discarded coat. It was something she couldn't pass up, in the shade of OD wool it would make winter easier than her Luftwaffe jacket would. A few breathless moments later Ava had the coat's pockets full of jewelry and silver cutlery and was out the back door of the house. Time wasn't to be wasted.

It wouldn't be hard for Ava to figure out which cellar Nina had been talking about, not after Ava had spent fifteen days inside it herself. It was a small fucking piece of work, self dug and built before the German's occupation had been finalized. Placed in the middle of nowhere on the Peyroux property there wasn't anything noticeable about it. Aseal and Samuel had both described it like a troop transport ship: cramped, dim and like a broiler in the summer. A necessary evil.

That was the past though, and she easily shook off those thought as she trekked deeper into the unruly backfield. Each of her footfalls was light and delicate, dodging anything that would make too much noise. It wasn't hard with the moonlight, anyway. It felt like someone had shot a flare off.

PFC Smithson Utivich never once second-guessed his decision to enlist in the Army and serve his country. And he sure as hell hadn't questioned his decision of joining the Lieutenant's regiment…but he was nervous. Sure, they had all survived the jump (where he had landed in a tree and Hirschberg, of all people, had to cut him down) and they'd made it to their rally point but something felt off. Something stopped Utivich from feeling entirely at ease.

Then again, he thought, it doesn't help we're hiding in a hole.

Clammy palms ran anxiously along his Army issue M1 Garanda. He could barely see the dim silhouettes of the others from where he sat, his back pushed into the dirt wall. It was humid, the air stale and thick making each breath to taste foul. Opposite, he could see the spark of a light – a lighter – and the comforting, rich scent of Lucky Strike tobacco.

Wicki.

The Austrian-American had a tendency to smoke when his nerves were frayed, and from what Smithson had seen (and smelt) Wicki'd gone though half a box as they crossed the Channel.

It'd become increasingly easier to recognize one in another in the dark after all the time they'd spent in each other's company training. Or it was for Smithson, though he chalked that up to him being obsessively observant. As proof, it didn't matter there wasn't enough light to see his rifle, because he knew Andy Kagan was on his right, drooling as he slept. Not even an air raid would wake him up. Smithson knew too that on his left was Omar Ulmer, who was drumming his fingers on his kneecaps and humming with all his nervous energy. Next to Omar there would be Zimmerman and Sakowitz, both men murmuring quietly amongst themselves – which Smithson didn't find out of place since they only ever spoke to one another anyway.

Then there was the group's Sergeant, a herculean Bostonian by the name of Donny Donotwitz. He had been pacing like some sort of corralled Mustang for the last four hours and didn't seem as if he'd stop. His footfalls where heavy and wide as he huffed in the darkness – with, Smithson assumed, his carved bat faithfully in his grasp. While there was an unspoken agreement that Donny himself was unnerving, he was even more so as he paced in the cellar.

It didn't take much for Smithson to imagine what it would be like to hear the carved Louisville slugger crack into the skull of a Wehrmacht soldier. Donowitz had been bragging for weeks and now that he was in occupied territory he couldn't do a goddamn thing. It was almost sort of funny.

There was a sudden snap of tin on tin before Lieutenant Aldo Raine's aggravated voice filled the darkness. Out of reflex, Smithson sat straighter to attention, knocking shoulders with Hirschberg jostling him awake.

"Goddam't Donowitz, would ya be still f'r one fuckin' minute? Jesus son, 'er like a bull."

The first thing they taught her at the Farm was how to pick locks. It was imperative they learn, so they had spent hour after hours picking the delicate insides of the most unreliable relics to the most advanced money could buy with duel tumblers. You'd be surprised how often life and death hung on whether or not you can pick a lock.

But none of that shit mattered if she couldn't find said lock.

Ava's hands were pink, flushed and numb from the freezing air as she hurriedly dug through mounds of hay for the seeming non-existent cellar. It was ridiculous the way she was furiously digging, flinging rotten hay and dirt in the air, for men who might not even be in the cellar. It wasn't helping that fifteen excruciating minutes had passed and she hadn't found a goddamn thing and the entire field was filled with hay mounds, each as inconspicuous as the last.

As she was making her way to the next mound she tripped on a rusty axe, barely catching herself to stop herself from eating dirt. Pushing herself to sit on her haunches, she immediately began digging through the dew covered hay mound before her. It was frustrating slow work to say the least.

"Ah – What the hell?" Ava drew her hands back with a hiss, gripping her left fingers tightly. Small, minute splinters covered her fingers. Biting back a long string of cruses she brushed the wood out, only to realize she'd found the cellar. Clearing out the rest of the hay to reveal the door and its lock she pulled out her pick kick – which was nothing more than a gloried piece of sharp, thin metal – and began her work.

Several minutes passed before it became clear that the ancient, rusted piece of shit wouldn't give. At least not to her. While she had been good (at least good enough to pass her test at the Farm) it had always been Samuel's job to do the picking and this lock just wasn't giving into her. So, picking it was out of the question. So were bullets, she couldn't exactly shoot it off. The bullets could ricochet and hit her, or more horrifying, they'd call attention to her.

I don't need Krauts sniffing around here.

Making a rash decision, she leaned to her right and grabbed the rusted axe she had tripped over earlier. It probably wasn't the smartest thing, what she was about to do, but it was her only option. In the distance, the sounds of German shouts could be heard – or was that just her imagination? – signally she was running out of time.

It wasn't smart, she knew, but she had never been the most subtle when it came to improvising. Ava held back her hiss of discomfort as she swung back the axe and it fall onto the lock.

"We shouldn't be waiting here in this fucking hole, Lieutenant."

"What'ya wanna do, Sergeant?" Raine mocked. He had to at least humor the boy, keep him busy. "Go trekin' 'round France with no god'amn idea as'a where these Kraut bastards are? Gonna look 'hind every bush and tree are ya son? Good plan, it'll get ya promoted."

"No," Donny admitted slowly. "But waiting for some fucking skirt in the goddamn dark isn't exactly getting shit done is it, sir?"

Raine sighed. "That may be, but runnin' 'round like a chicken with yer head cuff off – because that's what 'ou're insinuatin' – ain't gonna do us much good either."

The Lieutenant's words marked an end to the topic and there was silence as everyone else absorbed their words. The air was thick and now heavy with doubt at their commanding officer's words. While Raine was right – none of them knew the terrain of France well enough to navigate it without being caught – they couldn't help but feel like they were wasting time. The war was slipping through their fingers like sand. They'd spent months training and not fighting and with each hour that passed, the invasion was crawling closer and with it, what could be the end of the war.

"Utivich," at the sound of Raine addressing him, the young PFC from Manhattan sat straighter. "You got a watch Private, how long we been 'ere?"

"I, uh, I don't know sir," He replied guiltily. "My watch broke during the jump."

Beside him Hirschberg snickered. "You mean when you landed in a tree it broke. The tree broke your watch."

There was a collective chuckle from everyone, as Hirschberg had proudly rehashed the story more than once to anyone who'd listen. However, before the poor Private could say a word to defend him there was a distinct noise from the door that silenced everyone. With all eyes trained on the area where the wooden stairs were, they waited for something.

Bam. Thud. Bam. Thud.

Which each hit that reverberated in Utivich's ears, thundering and deep, he winced and his grip became tighter around his rifle. The stone had been stuck in his throat seemed to drop to his stomach as he realized what Raine had known all along. If it were a German on topside, it was all over. One stick grenade and they were done for.

After a few minutes the pounding finally ceased and within seconds the door was yanked open. Every one of the men seemed to be holding their breath and their weapons at the ready.

"On my last jump, I had a compass." The voice was feminine, but nowhere being soft and delicate like Smithson was used it. It was rough and if it would have had fangs, it would have bit them. Despite the dismissive wave Raine gave the men, they kept their fingers on their triggers.

"Is th'at so? Well I had'a map."

As they slowly descended the short staircase to squat, Smithson was given a face to match the voice. Dressed in the coat of a high ranking German, her white shirt was smeared with blood, as was her cheek. Under her eyes were bruise-looking half moon shapes, almost the same color as her hair that stood out against her paleness. Her skin was unnaturally sallow causing her to look sickly and wild, like a mental patient at the end of their rope and her red-rimmed eyes just added to it.

The thousand-yard stare.

It wasn't like Smithson hadn't seen it before; it'd br odd if a soldier hadn't. He'd seen it in North Africa, on the British soldier who'd been at Dunkirk and couldn't get out.

"Now that the pleasantries are out of the fucking way, I suggest you gentlemen move -" In the distance there was the vague sound of an explosion. "And quickly, if you don't mind."

An awkward silence fell between them all. It was clear to the men this was their contact, the so-called skirt they had been waiting for but there were no pleasantries, no military sense of organization around her. The faint sounds of a dog barking and German shouts had Aldo sliding away his small dented tin, nodding slightly.

"You 'eard the lady, move it men!"

Utivich didn't need to be told twice.