As the group settled in for a few hours of rest, softly singing folk songs everyone but Yona knew, Zus sat beside her, his arm around her, and though a few people looked at them with curiosity, no one said anything. After nightfall, instead of building beds, most of the group found refuge in the hollows of the fallen tree trunks, sleeping alone, except for Zus and Yona, who slept beside each other on a bed of leaves, her head on his chest.
Just past midnight, Chaim, who had taken the second shift guarding the group, shook Yona gently awake. “It’s time.”
Indeed, the nearly full moon shone down, bathing the forest in more light than Yona would have liked. They were close to civilization, so the trees here weren’t as dense as they were in the deeper parts of the forest, nor were the canopies overhead as thick. The stars that were often hidden in the forest’s depths looked here like spilled sugar across the blackness of the sky.
“Are you ready?” Yona whispered to Chaim before helping him to wake the others.
“To ambush a German convoy? No, I don’t think I ever will be. But we are in desperate times, yes?” He sighed. “I just want to feed my family and make it back to them. I want to live to see Jakub and Adam grow into adults. Is that too much to ask?”
“No,” Yona replied. Beside her Zus stirred and sat up. “It is the very least any of us deserves.”
In fifteen minutes, the group was awake, their knapsacks packed, their guns loaded, adrenaline buoying them. “We’ll be to the road in an hour,” Yona said, looking at the assembled group one by one. Beside her, Zus was studying his brother with concern. Yona watched as Zus crossed to Chaim, put a hand on his shoulder, and said something into his ear. Chaim nodded and looked up, sharing a moment of silent understanding with Zus, and then Zus looked to Yona and nodded solemnly.
They moved through the woods in darkness, their path lit only by the moon and stars above, silent except for the crunch of leaves beneath their feet. The light disappeared behind clouds for a bit, plunging them into darkness just as they had to cross a small river, but it returned in time to illuminate the wide road ahead, which seemed to slice the forest in two.
“There it is,” Rosalia whispered almost reverently.
“There it is,” Chaim echoed, but his tone was different, filled with trepidation.
“All right,” Zus said as the group began to whisper among themselves. “We must get in position. We don’t know how early they come through. Rosalia, you go a hundred meters east with Leonid. Remember, we will only stop a cargo vehicle, and only one that is alone, or it will be too dangerous. You two will fire the first shots to disable the vehicle. Aim at their wheels; the best we can hope for is that they spin out of control, disorienting the soldiers for a few seconds. After that, we lose the element of surprise. Joel, you and Maks head down there, across from Rosalia. If another transport truck comes up behind it, you’ll need to disable them quickly so the tables don’t turn on us. The rest of us will split up, here, there, and there.” He gestured to two spots on the other side of the road. “We will have to be ready the moment Rosalia and Leonid begin shooting, because it will be only seconds before they return fire. Anything else, Yona?”
She shook her head slowly. The assuredness of his plan reminded her how little she knew about his past; he spoke like someone who had led military missions before.
“Once upon a time, I trained to be in the army,” he said softly, reading her mind as the group began to disperse to their assigned locations. “I’ll tell you all about it one day.” The words were an unspoken promise that they’d both survive.
Yona wound up beside Zus and Chaim, in the shadow of a giant oak that reached over the road. Across the way, Benjamin and Michal hid behind trees several meters apart, each accompanied by his wife. As clouds drifted across the moon, Yona could see only the white of their eyes in the darkness until the sun began to rise, pinking the sky to the east.
It could have been hours before the first transport came through, but instead, just as the sun crept above the horizon, they heard the low rumble of a vehicle in the distance. Up the road, Rosalia stood and waved everyone down. Yona’s heart thudded against her rib cage; what had seemed like a good idea moments before now seemed like a recipe for disaster.
Time seemed to stand still as the noise got louder and louder. A shadow appeared from around the bend, and a few seconds later, a large truck rumbled into view. It was a German Opel Blitz, a cargo truck with a dozen soldiers seated in the open rear. With that many men back there, it couldn’t be carrying many provisions, and Yona assumed Rosalia would notice the same thing and hold her fire. But then, in a flash, Rosalia rose from the bushes, her gun leveled, and fired once, calmly, accurately, into the Blitz’s front left tire.