Clay sprang up and shoved his rifle through the brush.

“Klaus!”

“Friedrich!”

“Hans!”

Why were the Germans shouting roll call? Locating each other? Trying to scare the Rangers?

Clay licked his dry lips and opened his eyes wide to the darkness.

Gunfire broke out in front of him, yellow muzzle flashes, bright tracer fire.

He fired at a muzzle flash, another, another.

Machine-gun fire shredded the hedgerow above him, and he ducked. Branches and leaves pelted his helmet and back.

Up to his feet, another few shots. His ammunition clip pinged out, and Clay rammed another into place.

An explosion behind him shook the ground—a mortar shell in the open field behind his hedgerow.

“Lieutenant!” A Ranger thundered down the lane toward the command post. “The Germans have broken through. We couldn’t hold ’em. There’s guys getting killed everywhere.”

“To the highway!” Taylor yelled.

“Get going, Ruby. I’ll tell the others.” Clay scrambled out of the foxhole and to Holman and Brady’s position. “To the highway! Taylor’s orders.”

Holman cussed out the orders. “I can hold ’em.”

Gunfire rang out to the northwest, behind the lines of the next platoon, the steady burps of a German machine pistol. Was that gun in Nazi or Ranger hands?

“Don’t be a fool. Get moving.” Hunched over, Clay darted back the way he’d come. Good. Ruby had left.

Next to the command post ran a north-to-south lane. To the south, flashes and stuttering gunfire filled the lane. The men in the outpost had to be putting up a fighting retreat.

Clay pointed his rifle that way. But in the darkness he didn’t dare add his own bullets, in case he hit a Ranger.

Instead, he ran north, following other hunched-over Americans, keeping his feet high to avoid roots and rocks and branches.

A scream from close to his former position. “I surrender! Kamerad! Don’t shoot!”

Clay stumbled and caught himself on the hedgerow. That was Bob Holman. Why hadn’t he obeyed the order?

He ran up the lane, pausing to check the fields through gaps in the hedgerows. The gunfire sounded farther and farther away.

Finally his boots thudded on blacktop.

To his left Rangers gathered on the highway, calling off names and companies. Clay called out his.

“Back to the point,” cried a lieutenant Clay didn’t recognize in the dark. “We’ll split up, take different paths.”

Made sense. That way all of them wouldn’t get captured or killed, and maybe some would make it through.

“Hey, Pax.” Ruby sidled up to him. “Where’s Holman? Brady?”

“I heard Holman surrender. Don’t know about Brady. Told them to get out.”

Ruby grunted. “Holman never could listen to no one.”

“Glad you listened.” Clay’s throat suddenly constricted. He and Ruby were the only ones left from their squad. Although he refused to give up on Gene. Not yet.

“Let’s go!” That was Lieutenant Taylor.