If only they could reach the cave, they would be safe there!

Behind them suddenly flashed the twin headlights of the evil vehicle of death. Its engine roared as it bounced across the rutted, open, grassy pasture. Already, Jakob knew, the back of the truck contained a dozen or more of his kind, rounded up this very night, hunted down like animals. Now the agents driving it sought to add him and his family to the number of those who would be shot before the night was out.

He urged his exhausted legs on, heart pounding, afraid that one of them would stumble in their flight and be found by their pursuers.

Behind them he heard the truck, at reckless full throttle, speeding toward them. But the menacing eyes of its headlamps, like thick arrows of light, probing the night with fiendish, bouncing glares through the blackness, still had not illuminated their fleeing forms.

Gasping for breath, Jakob felt himself slowing. He knew that every step might send him and the children sprawling over the grass and dirt, announcing their presence with cries and screams, to be followed the next instant with a spray of machine-gun fire!

With agonizing slowness he lifted his feet, step after step, feeling that each of his boots weighed more than the two youngsters in his arms.

In front of him, Ulrike had reached the cave!

If only he could get his family into it and out of sight in time!

The sounds of the truck grew louder. The luminescent beams panned the field.

Jakob reached the cave. Ulrike was already squatting down inside. Lungs heaving and scarcely able to stand, he set each of the children down, then hurriedly guided them down into the subterranean hole where their mother waited—first the girl, then his son.

“Jakob… Jakob, please don’t leave us here alone!” cried Ulrike from the depths of their hiding place.

“It is the only way you will be safe,” replied Jakob.

“Please, Jakob—please stay with us!”

“I must know you are alive! They will search until they find us. I must be a decoy and try for the woods. I will come back. If I do not, you must find the man they call Luddoff. He will take you to safety.”

“No, Jakob—”

“Be sure to place the pole against the boards for support.”

Jakob backed away from the hole, then grabbed the two large slabs of wood to set over it.

“Jakob, no… please—”

But his wife’s final pleas were lost to his ears with the thudding against the earth of the planks as he dropped them into position.

Hastily he tore at grass and weeds with frantic fingers, throwing clumps and chunks of dirt and sod over the opening to the makeshift cave to camouflage it.

Then once more he took off at a desperate run across what remained of the field. If only he could make the woods on the other side!