Untouchable | Hans Landa

Chapter one

A long time later

He wiped a hand over his brow. The hot air was slick with flies and pollen and the smell of cow shit, heavy and clinging on to your skin. No one spoke a word. They were all eyes darting, peeping at each other, crouching on the soft soil to the sound of bird chirping until their legs stiffened and ached from it. It wasn't what they were listening after, that was something else entirely.

Lieutenant Aldo Raine shifted his weight from one leg to the other, the movement quiet, unnecessarily slow to make the least sound. He grimaced, from the strain in his legs from having sat in this ditch for hours. To his right, inches from his head, the old stone wall had an opening. Right across sat one of his privates and behind him several heads stuck up. Utivich was eyeing him from time to time, impatience plain in them, but he urged them to remain quiet, remain in their position. The American heard a few more of them shift behind him, the rustle of uniforms, a sniffle, how someone scratched the back of their head.

Now they weren't sitting like that, crumpled up in a ditch behind a stone wall thousands of miles away from home just for fun. They had a mission. Any second now the sound of boots would hit against the gravel of the road just beyond their hiding spot. The earth would jolt with it, and once they heard it that was their cue to act. The German troops that were heading their way wouldn't know what hit them, and by then they would be too startled to even have the time to wish their mothers goodbye before Sergeant Stiglitz would put a bullet through their forehead. The Basterds for sure weren't known for their mercy and each and every one of the German soldiers knew they didn't make a habit of taking prisoners.

The details about this troop they were now awaiting in crushing silence was of course classified information, but the Basterds had gotten a hold of it yesterday from the staggering, weeping uniformed German right before the Bear Jew had bashed the first blow straight to his temple with a disgusting, wet crack.

Raine inclined his head, his brows coming down low while he listened. He thought he had heard something that stood out. There it was again, the sound of twigs breaking, of the crunching of gravel. It didn't sound like no army, had the enemy officer suspected something and sent a single soldier out first? Ever so slowly he peeked out through uneven shelter the wall provided, up at the road. Before he had time to shout an order one of his men had acted by their own volition. With a shift leap over the wall he sprinted towards the country road where they had planted the mine and tackled the young woman who was strolling straight towards it to the ground.

Damn you Donny, the American lieutenant shook his head.

She came back to consciousness before she opened her eyes. What first that made itself known was the dull pain at the back of her head, sore and pulsing. She tried to keep her features plain, to not give away a single clue, but felt her eyes shutting more firmly, her muscles tensing while she listened. There was sound coming somewhere in the background, the crackle of a radio, the shuffle of a chair. Her mind was working frantically to make sense of it all, how she had scurried along the graveled road, but then there was no more than a gap in her memory. Just the aching, it flashed white and hot behind her eyelids. A musty, acid smell of dust and mold stung in her nose.

She was apparently not as good an actor as she took herself for. The micro movements of her face, the way her eyes swirled around behind closed lids, the hard set of her brows in concentration, it must have given her away. The stain and focus which had fallen over it the moment she grasped consciousness. 

"...I think she's waking up" someone drawled to her right, then the faintest sensation, a rough finger running up her calf. She jerked it away from the touch, her eyes flew open. She heaved herself up on her elbows, rattling the gurney she was lying on into motion by the sudden lurch.