If the German hadn’t looked up, he might well have lived. The sequence of events was so rapid that Lockhart later couldn’t recall what started them. Manoli maintained it was the sound of a mule, but Lockhart thought that it was nervous laughter from one of the andartes that had caused the officer to look into the woods.

The German’s drunken eyes met Lockhart’s, and just as they were registering a glassy surprise, Lockhart opened fire. The impact sent the oberstleutnant’s body hurtling back toward the car. And then there was a pause, as Lockhart and the partisans looked down at the twitching body, the man’s penis still leaking urine.

Lockhart ran toward the car, aiming at the driver through the passenger window. The young man had frozen. It had only been twenty seconds since his officer had stepped from the car, and now he was looking into the barrel of a British machine gun.

“Hands up!” shouted Lockhart.

The driver continued to look back at him, rigid with fear.

“I said put your hands up!”

The man didn’t move.

Just as Lockhart was about to shout again, the car windshield shattered. The driver’s face instantly turned into an unrecognizable mess. Lockhart looked to his right, toward the front of the car. There was Manoli, the barrel of his Marlin smoking.

“Fuck all of them.”

Lockhart nodded slowly, looking back at the fresh corpse.

The rest of the men began to extract what they could from the car and the bodies. Within a minute, money, cigarettes and the men’s pistols had been removed. Even their boots were taken. In a rushed attempt to conceal it, the car was then pushed into the ditch, with the body of the oberstleutnant restored to the passenger seat.

“They’ll kill many for this,” said Manoli. “Ten of us for every one of them, and I expect they’ll burn down a village. And then there’ll be the rapes and the tortures.”

“We didn’t have a bloody choice,” Lockhart replied.

“I know, I know,” Manoli muttered darkly. He walked back to the woods, and Lockhart thought he heard him stifling a sob. The band followed. They were silent, shocked at the violence. For some, it had been their first engagement with a hated enemy. All were eager andartes, but the rawness of the killings had turned even the strongest of their stomachs.

Lockhart spent the rest of the hike in a daze. Despite the intensity and seriousness of his training, he had partly convinced himself it was all a big adventure. And now he had killed a man, added another to his list. He felt a long, long way from Anna, wherever she was.