Chapter 23: Not Out of the Woods

Herman Schmidt smoked a cigarette and waited for his men to report back. Thirty minutes had gone by and there was no sign of his prey. He had heard no more howling of wolves, nothing.

Schmidt sighed, exhaled smoke through his nose and looked down at the little old man, dead as the tree Schmidt was sitting on. He wondered how the fellow had figured into all of this. He suspected this had been the man the Gestapo agents had seized.

But there was no asking them because they, too, were dead.

One of his subordinates approached.

“Still no sign of them, sir.”

Schmidt flicked his cigarette butt into the stream and watched it float away.

“One of those men was wounded. They could not have just disappeared or outrun us,” Schmidt said, standing up. The shadows were growing long. Darkness was pooling here and there as thick as water. Finding the fugitives was going to get harder.