“And I assume none of you has love for the Jew and the Bolshevik?”

The question made Emil uneasy, made him think of Adeline risking her life for that woman, Esther, back in Pervomaisk, and how much his wife had loved her employer in Birsula, Mrs. Kantor. But after the other men shook their heads no, Emil shook his head as well.

Gesturing to the two-track, Haussmann said, “Follow this way north three kilometers. You’ll be met by other officers, and I will be following you out there shortly.”

“When will we be coming back, Captain?” Emil asked. “I have a wife and sons waiting for me at home.”

Haussmann studied him closely for the first time. “I don’t give a damn about your wife or your sons. You’re in for a busy night, farm boy.”

The two-track ran out through fields of ripe wheat awaiting harvest and then climbed into bluff-and-ravine country that in the last red rays of light might have been called beautiful on any other day. The sun set. Twilight was deepening when Emil heard the first shots cracking at a distance, a spurt and then a volley, another spurt and then a second volley. He did not like the sound of the gunfire and wanted to turn back.

He could see several of the other men wished to reverse course as well. But that SS captain said he would be following them out on this same path shortly. Emil supposed he could take off and loop around the path. But would they let him just get his horses and wagon and leave? His gut said no. His gut said they’d probably kill him.

Emil kept walking into the gloaming, smelling the good clean scent of the wind after the rain, and hearing more shots and then shouts and cries that with every step closer became the voices of innocence screaming for mercy.

Emil’s feet felt leaden. His breath had turned shallow, and his heart hammered in his chest. They’re shooting Jews and Bolsheviks, aren’t they? That’s why he asked. Just like Esther said they did in Pervomaisk. Wait, are we next? Are they sending us out here to be shot?

In the two months the Nazis had occupied Ukraine, Emil had heard of other Volksdeutsche being beaten and shot as examples of what happened when locals did not follow their orders. He decided to make a run for it, loop back, and take his chances getting the horses and the wagon. But when he lagged to the rear of the group and started to turn, headlights slashed across him from behind and back toward the fields.

Emil felt gut-punched. That had to be Captain Haussmann coming in a vehicle behind them up the two-track. If he tried to run now, he’d be seen. Tasting acid at the back of his throat, he pressed on with the others, up and over a rise where several hundred meters ahead he saw more headlight beams cutting the deepening twilight from left to right. Scrub brush grew on either side of the trail now. A steep hillside rose to his right. The truck headlights appeared to be aimed at something behind it.

As he got closer, Emil saw that the headlights came from six big Wehrmacht trucks parked parallel to each other and thirty meters apart. Beyond the vehicles, in shadows near the far periphery of the headlight glare, there were vague, wavy charcoal forms moving. More guns went off, close enough to make him startle, cringe, and slow his pace when he realized the shooting was all happening on the other side of that hill where all the headlights were pointed.

The vehicle behind them came roaring up. Its headlamps hit Emil from behind and lit up the terrain ahead, revealing SS soldiers milling about the rears of the trucks, and casting aside the shadows beyond them. The wavy charcoal forms had become distinct people now, hunched over, some clothed and others naked, men, women, and children shuffling behind that sidehill toward the darkest edge of night.

“You there, Volksdeutscher,” Captain Haussmann called. “Climb up in the back. We’ll take you the rest of the way.”

Emil did not want to get up in the open back of the vehicle. He wanted to get around the truck and flee for his life. But fear of a bullet between the shoulder blades stopped him, goaded him to climb up behind the cab of the smaller lorry with the other men.

The truck went into gear, drove across the last hundred and fifty meters, its headlights cutting deeper into the northern shadows, revealing wave after wave of despondent, weeping people trudging eastward under the watchful eyes of SS soldiers bearing machine guns on the bluff above them.

The truck rounded the hill and pulled over almost immediately into a cut in its north flank, out of the headlight glare. Emil stared in horror over the roof of the cab, seeing husbands holding tight to their wives, mothers leading their terrified children by the hands, and six older men with long white beards waving in the westerly breeze, their backs to the rim of a deep ravine that dropped away into darkness.

Eight SS soldiers were reloading their rifles and pistols about thirty meters from the Jews. There were five of these eight-man units strung out close to the long rim, all of them facing lines of trembling and praying people, some standing to face the guns, some away on their knees, all flanked by the long line waiting to perish.

Please, God, Emil prayed. Don’t let this happen. Don’t let them do this.

A shorter SS officer rushed up the moment Captain Haussmann climbed from the cab. He saluted Haussmann, said, “Heil Hitler.” Haussmann returned the salute and said, “How many to report, Captain Drexel?”

“We just began, Captain Haussmann.”

“How many so far?”

“One hundred and eighty-seven.”

There was an obvious rivalry between the two men, but then the shooting started, and the mothers and their children and the young and the old and the lovers and the loved and the lonely and the lost and the families clinging and the six old men with wispy beards blowing in the westerly breeze all jerked with bullet impacts before crumpling and falling backward into the ravine like so many dolls blown over. Up and down the firing line, from one execution squad to the next, the rain of lead went on until no one at the rim was left standing and Emil could not gape in horror any longer. He rested his forehead on the roof of the cab, every muscle in his body shaking uncontrollably before he felt his insides boil. He lurched and puked over the side of the truck. Several of the other men were vomiting as well.

When the shooting subsided and the crying and wails for mercy began again, Haussmann barked, “All of you: down out of there. You have work to do! Raus!”

“I didn’t hurl,” said a younger guy with an oily beard and a filthy jacket and cap. He smiled, revealing a missing lower tooth. “I want to see more of them Jews die.”

“Name?” Captain Drexel purred.

“Helmut.”

“Helmut, you’re just the sort of eager young man we’re looking for in the new Greater Germany,” Drexel said. “We will see how you all do tonight. If we are satisfied, we will recommend you to the VoMi for paid assignments in the future.”

Helmut grinned at Emil, who could barely climb down and felt imbalanced when he did. The ground seemed to shift under his feet, and everything around him looked distorted.

“Four of you will prove yourselves with Captain Drexel,” Haussmann said. “And the other four will come with me.”

Helmut immediately went to Haussmann’s side as did two others. But four had gone to Drexel, and Emil had no choice but to join Haussmann.

More Jews were being led to the ravine. Children were whimpering. Men and women cried piteously. He could hear them, but he could not look at them.

Please, God, don’t make me a part of this, he prayed. And please don’t make me kill anyone. I’m begging you. I am many things, but I am not a murderer.

“You will each be assigned to a unit,” Haussmann said. “You are expected to do whatever is asked of you until we are finished for the night. And then you can go home.”

New victims were being led or dragged to the edge of the ravine. Haussmann retrieved a Luger from the truck cab and then walked them to the closest of the shooting units. The eight SS men were grimly loading or cleaning weapons, lit cigarettes dangling from several of their lips. The men smelled unnaturally foul to Emil, as if their hearts and souls had been so corrupted by mass murder that the invisible, evil pus of it was seeping out of their skin and pouring from their lungs. When one of them glanced their way, Emil saw the deadest eyes he’d ever seen in a living man. Then the wind shifted, swung one hundred and eighty degrees, due out of the east, bringing with it the stench of bodies rotting in the ravine.

Emil fought not to gag. How many are down in there already?

“Who will prove his loyalty to the führer first?” Haussmann asked, holding up the Luger and waving it.

“I’ll go,” Helmut said.

Haussmann ignored him, looked at Emil, and held out the pistol by the barrel. “You first, farm boy. Show us you are someone the Reich can count on.”