An Army of One: A John Rossett Novel Read online

  Dedication

  For Anna, who finally brought me home

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Tony Schumacher

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Liverpool

  It was raining.

  Blowing in left to right off the river. Silver sheets that caught the streetlamps, looking like shoals of tiny fish, twisting and turning in a swell.

  The Bear breathed into his right fist, then stretched his fingers before wrapping his hand around the rifle stock again.

  He rolled his shoulders and rested his cheek against it. It was so cold it made his face ache. He waited, it warmed; he blinked, then looked down the telescopic sight.

  The same peeled-paint door stared back at him.

  He moved and the rifle creaked a little. The view in the sight smudged black, then came back into focus. He breathed out through his nose, then shifted his aim a fraction to the right.

  The docker was still there, still smoking, still waiting by the car. Hunkered in his coat, looking left and right, making sure whoever was in the warehouse behind him wasn’t about to be disturbed.

  “Time, time, time.” Softly, to nobody but himself, as the crosshairs crept up the docker’s chest, then settled on his face, just below his left eye.

  The Bear blinked and saw his own eye in the reflection of the sight for a fraction of a second. He tried to focus on it, catching the swirl of a silver iris before it blurred out of view. He breathed in, slow and deep, trying to ignore the pain that was starting to knot in his neck.

  He thought about moving position, climbing higher in the empty warehouse. He decided against it. He’d chosen the spot badly, he knew that, but there wasn’t much he could do about it now. He felt the pain, enjoyed the pain, lived with the pain, then forgot it.

  If his neck was sore tomorrow it would be sore.

  His right index finger traced the trigger guard, then folded back into place on the stock. The rifle creaked again, like it was stretching out an ache the same as him.

  His mouth was dry. He had a canteen of water in his bag but decided it would have to wait. He listened to the rain dripping through where the roof used to be. High up above him, away in the darkness, off through the holes in the shredded floors of the empty bombed-out building he was hiding in.

  He was down in the docks. Surrounded by the warehouses that had taken the worst of the punishment when Liverpool had been bombarded by the German army. Years ago now, back during the fighting that had taken place to gain control of the city during the Battle for Britain. There had been a collapsing clamor to get on the last ships, away down the oil-slicked river as the Nazis had choked the life out of the land all around it.

  Back then the Bear had just been Karl Bauer.

  Back then the Bear had been normal.

  Back then the Bear’s hands had just been splashed with blood.

  All these years later they were drenched in the stuff. The Bear saw it in his dreams, tasted it in his food, smelled it in the air, and sweated it in his nightmares.

  He was blood.

  He was Captain Karl Bauer.

  He was the Bear.

  He’d been a member of the Waffen SS that had thundered through France, then onward through England, before finally hammering on Liverpool’s door. What was left of the British army had almost universally scrambled to the few ports up north that were still operating.

  The ships hadn’t hung around for long. They had slipped out of the river like shy lovers disturbed by the sound of a key in the door.

  The River Mersey had slapped against the quayside walls the night the boats left. A sarcastic round of applause under a smoke-smudged sky traced with searchlights, flak blast, and shadows.

  The ships headed north, running for the safety of the Atlantic. As far away as they could get, as quickly as they could get there. Most of them hadn’t made it; they’d been sunk even before the city surrendered.

  Truth be told, from what Bauer had seen, it was a miracle Liverpool had managed to last two days.

  A miracle or maybe a nightmare, depending on your point of view. For forty-eight hours, German ordnance pounded from all sides. Across the River Mersey a long line of artillery had lined up and shelled the city center, while from every main road into the city, tanks and armor had rained heavy death.

  And rain it had.

  Death had been a downpour.

  Thousands had died in the tightly packed streets, in a bombardment that blasted tenements and terraces to pieces. There had been no way out for the population as the ring around it squeezed tighter and tighter, until on the final night—it choked.

  By the time the Germans switched off their engines, there was barely one brick mortared to another.

  It had taken a week for what was left of the population to be driven out of their holes and cellars, blinking into the new dawn of the New Order.

  The Bear hadn’t stopped for long that first time he visited. There was barely time to catch the breath he’d been chasing since he crossed over the Channel from France a month earlier. He had moved north, pushing harder, crushing harder. Day after day, week after week, carrying the fight to an enemy that was on the ropes but didn’t have the sense to go down.

  Even when it was over, he didn’t have the time to breathe.

  He was one of the best of the best. He had shown talents that proved he was needed to wheedle the woodworm. The ones who wouldn’t surrender, the ones who had to be hunted.

  So he didn’t stop.

  He never stopped.

  When the battle was won, the occupation began. The Bear lived in the ruins he’d created. Picking off resistance wherever he was needed. There was nobody better at it than him, so he was the man who did it.

  The hunter, the killer, taking no prisoners.

  Eight? Or was it nine years since the first person fell in his sights? He’d lost count of the years, lost count of the deaths, and now none of it mattered or made sense.

  He blinked. He was back.

  He turned his head and looked to a black corner next to him where a rat was sniffing the air and scratching some rubble. The Bear stared; the rat paused, an eye glinting as it tried to decide if he was a threat.

  He wasn’t.

  The Bear lowered his hand. The rat sniffed his index finger and then darted away as he tried to stroke the top of its head.

  He watched it retreating back to the shadows, then settled again, eye to the sight, same as always.

  He saw the peeled-paint door opening.

  He squinted, watching as first one man, then another, and then another exited through the doorway.

  They weren’t happy, he could see it, and he knew why.

  He smiled.

  He shifted the rifle on the rest he had m
ade out of rubble and old rags. He didn’t need to worry about the breeze and rain off the river. He was close enough. The bullets he’d polished and cared for would blast through the wind without giving it a second thought.

  They just needed the right target for the first shot.

  He scrolled through them.

  Docker, docker, docker, driver, docker, seaman, too young, too old . . . suit.

  One of them was wearing a suit.

  Smart, dark, well cut, probably tailored. The man wearing it was walking to the car, squinting in the rain, one hand up to protect his hair.

  “Hello,” the Bear said quietly, and the rat in the shadows stopped sniffing and looked at him again.

  The Bear pulled the trigger.

  It felt intimate, the violence passed between them like the brush of a lover’s lips.

  They were one hundred yards apart, but still locked in an embrace.

  Time seemed to stop.

  Then there was the telltale spray.

  Then the man in the suit dropped down dead.

  The Bear breathed out, worked the rifle bolt without moving his elbows or head, then fired again. Like idiots in a silent film, the men from the warehouse were looking down at the body in the suit. One wiped a hand across his own blood-spattered face and stared at it.

  The Bear shot him next.

  The bolt click-clacked, smooth on its fresh oil.

  The Bear breathed out through his nose.

  Then shot the kid just behind the ear.

  The bolt click-clacked, but this time he heard brass on brass as the ejected cartridge hit another in the rubble near his elbow.

  They were ducking now, eyes looking up and around. He could see that a couple of them had pistols in their hands. The streetlamp next to them flickered as the city electricity supply labored under the strain.

  One more.

  He shot the one crouching on the wrong side of the car.

  He deserved to die for being an idiot.

  The Bear shifted slightly, trying to mark a target through the side windows of the vehicle. The streetlamp’s flicker and the rain made it difficult. He blinked, waited for a shift in a shadow, a sign, something to kill.

  Someone shot out the streetlamp.

  The Bear waited for his eyes to adjust.

  Everything seemed blue, deep blue and black.

  He waited.

  He sighed. He’d only shot four of them. He’d wanted more. He drifted his aim back to the door, which was still closed, the paint sucking the light out of the sight. He scanned the car again.

  Nothing.

  He frowned.

  Four would have to do.

  He thumbed the safety and then, using his elbows, pushed himself up to his feet. He waited a second, the rifle still in his shoulder, his eye near the sight, as he scanned the scene one last time.

  Nothing but the pooling blood.

  Time to go.

  The Bear slung the rifle over his shoulder, then picked up his satchel and StG 44 assault rifle. He turned, took a step, and dropped through a gap in the floorboards down to the floor below. It was almost pitch black, and although his night vision was still weak from the streetlamp, he moved fast. He’d spent long enough beforehand tracing the route out of the warehouse. He knew every broken floorboard, every overhanging beam.

  He was the Bear; he didn’t make mistakes.

  He moved like a slick black cat in the nighttime shadows. Smooth, fluid, light on his toes, with soft words on his lips barely louder than the breath that carried them.

  “Four steps, turn right, drop down . . .”

  He stopped only once, at the blasted hole in the wall, on the ground floor where he had gained access.

  He listened to the falling rain slapping on the cobbles. The alleyway was empty. He tilted his head and opened his mouth. Letting the sounds of the night echo in his mouth.

  Nothing.

  “Don’t forget the doorbell . . .”

  He knelt and gently unhooked the almost invisible trip wire from the booby-trapped grenade he had set earlier. He reassembled the grenade quickly and dropped it into his satchel. He picked up his rifle, then stepped through the hole in the wall and out into the dark back alleyway.

  “Do not move,” a voice barked from behind him. “I mean it . . . do not move one muscle or we will blow your fucking head clean off.”

  The Englishman sounded like he was about to shit his pants. The Bear weighed the odds as he stared off down the alleyway toward where he had parked his car. He took a breath, quarter-turning his head to the left, looking for a shadow, some clue to where the man behind him was standing.

  “Stand still!” Another voice, to his right. “We are police, drop your weapons!”

  He was flanked on both sides. He did the calculations and worked out that he would be able to get them both if he dropped to a knee to throw off their aim as he turned. He steadied himself.

  “Do as you’re told!”

  Another one, farther back, judging by the sound of his voice, maybe crouching.

  Shit.

  He raised his free hand slowly in surrender.

  “Okay, I surrender. Let’s see where this takes us.”

  Chapter 1

  Wapping, London

  Rossett sat silent in the darkness. The sounds of the night settled on his shoulders like sorrow, then faded until it was so quiet, he could hear the ticking of his watch drowning out the beating of his heart.

  He didn’t move.

  He barely breathed.

  He was alone, patient, staring into nothing. A part of the darkness, as much as it was a part of him.

  He knew they were near; they’d come eventually.

  He’d be waiting.

  “I find punching people rather relaxing.” Finnegan rubbed his chin with a hand that looked like a bruised ham and looked across at Hall.

  “What?” Hall was tired; the night had been long and his patience was short.

  “I’m just saying, I find it relaxing.”

  Hall shook his head and went back to staring at a poster of the Führer. It was pasted on a sooty black brick wall, right next to where they were parked. Old Adolf was shaking hands with Prime Minister Mosley, who was bending a little at the waist, so as not to look too tall next to his boss.

  Hall thought that Mosley looked like a spiv or some sort of ponce with his pencil mustache. He shook his head, embarrassed that that was the best that Britain could come up with to run the country.

  Hall frowned. Someone had had a go at ripping the poster off the wall, but only the top left corner had come away. It was hanging limp, damp in the morning air like a mongrel’s ear.

  god save the king! was daubed in thick strokes of red paint across Hitler’s face. Hall wondered which king they were talking about: the one in England, or his brother, hiding halfway around the world?

  “There is something about the ‘whump, whump, whump,’” Finnegan started up again. “I don’t know . . . it calms me down, makes me feel peaceful.”

  Hall dragged his eyes away from Hitler and over to the darkened shop on the other side of the road. He willed it to open up for the day so they could get on with what they had gone there to do.

  Finnegan kept on talking to nobody but himself.

  “When I was a kid, I used to like smacking the sheep’s heads my mam would buy to make soup with. I’d take them in the back alley and see if I could break the bones. When my old mam found out she’d try to do the same to me, ’cos I’d gone and ruined the dinner.”

  “Will you be quiet?” Hall’s patience tapped out.

  “I’m bored, that’s all.”

  “Be bored quiet.”

  Finnegan folded his arms and shifted on the leather seat with a squeak. And then a forty-watt bulb across the street saved Hall from more torture.

  “Finally,” Finnegan said for both of them.

  Hall looked around to check nobody was about. Finnegan licked his lips and started to rock slightly, excitem
ent mounting, boredom forgotten, seat creaking softly, as if the springs were getting excited, too.

  “Wait till we can see him, all right?” Hall said, trying to put the brakes on his partner.

  “Yeah,” Finnegan replied, suddenly a man of few words.

  “No speeches. Just in and out, there’s no need for drama.” He looked at his partner. “No drama. Yeah?”

  Finnegan’s blood was rising; Hall could tell by the sound of the springs creaking faster underneath him. He had another go at reining Finnegan back in.

  “Don’t kill him. Remember he’s an old bloke, he can’t pay if he’s dead.”

  “Is that him?” Finnegan pointed toward the shop.

  Forty watts can cast a lot of shadows on a dark morning. Both men squinted, looking for movement. Hall checked his watch: 6:50 a.m., nearly opening time.

  “Old bastard might just pay and save us the bother,” Hall said quietly.

  “I hope not,” Finnegan replied. “I want to—” He broke off as the silhouette of the shopkeeper appeared at the glass door and turned the closed sign to open. “Here we go.”

  Finnegan opened the car door.

  Hall caught his arm.

  “Don’t kill him, remember? We just want the money.”

  Finnegan pulled his arm free and stepped out of the car. The studs in the heels of his shoes cut the quiet of the morning and made it sound colder. He adjusted his coat and pulled up his collar, acting like a gangster in one of the movies they used to show before the war.

  From the other side of the car Hall emerged. He also worked his collar, dragging it up so high that he looked like a buzzard waiting for breakfast.

  Both men set off across the road toward the shop, breath rising like steam. Finnegan was slightly ahead of his partner, flexing his shoulders and rolling his head on his bull neck as he picked up speed.

  The door of the shop opened when Finnegan was five feet from it. He didn’t hesitate, his pace certain with the confidence of a man who seldom had to slow down.

  In the doorway stood the shopkeeper, openmouthed, carrying a wicker basket of mop heads. The first item for the pavement display he’d put outside every morning, excluding Sundays, Easter, and Christmas, for the last forty-two years, clutched high up on his chest.