The Mistery of Belicena Villca
It was unlikely that inside the Gompa , the physical headquarters of the Ashram Jafran , there were any firearms ; and it was even more unlikely that some Lama was willing to defend his refuge with weapons .
The appearance on the run of Von Grossen and the SS officers was surprising and caused the panic of the villagers . Two grenades fell among them and completed that picture of nameless terror . The explosions , in the middle of the crowd , mutilated the nearest bodies and projected dozens of splinters in all directions , metal teeth eager to bite and wound the flesh , wild beasts blind and winged that killed at random . Von Grossen only had to shoot two times with the submachine gun , so that the hail of bullets dispersed the maddened crowd .
The whole group took preventive shelter under the gallery of a beautiful Tibetan-style Buddhist Pagoda , in order to prepare the next action . Kloster and Hans , in the center of the circle of Kâulika scimitars , lowered their backpacks and extracted the forty rifle grenades . They then took the 1914 Mausers and inserted two of them into the barrel adapter .
The rifle grenades were charged with phosphorus , which exploded at impact , and constituted a highly effective tactical firebomb . Shoot with a rifle similar to the Mauser , it was possible to hit precise targets at 300 meters . Their targets , the windows of the Monastery , invited them to launch the projectiles just 25 meters ahead .
Sitting on a square base of seventy meters on a side , the Gompa showed three rows of windows on the level above the front door , main facade that we saw from the front . It housed , as I said , about 500 Lamas of the Turmeric Bonnet , many of whom leaned out and harangued the Duskhas , now pleading , now commanding , to resist the enemy , to reorganize the defense , not to flee , etc . Perhaps the most paradoxical of such dramatic intimations was the one that assured , in the Name of the Blessed Lord , that the intruders were not demons but mere mortals .
There was also a large back door , which led to the White Island , and two small doors on either side of the building , all of which remained locked from the inside . The roofs , covered with brown tiles , sloped in gentle hyperbolic slope , and there was a central courtyard surrounded by galleries and fine columns .
In those moments , the Lamas noticed the fire that consumed the village and exhorted the people to fight it by using the water from the ponds and interior canals , which could be flooded in a matter of minutes by opening some locks that contained the pressure of the lake . Admittedly , some Duskhas remained calm in those tragic moments and ran to fulfill the orders , which the Lamas did not dare to carry out by themselves ; and there were others that tried in vain to oppose the voracity of the fire . But one thing is to stop an occasional fire , started by accident in this or that place , and another very different to face a hundred deliberately lit fires .
The fire became uncontrollable in certain neighborhoods and their residents fled in terror , some heading abroad , and others in the direction of the Lamasery . Without noticing the riddled corpses that littered the square , mobs from various directions converged at every moment to request Divine help from their Gods , while the Lamas urged them to fight immediately , against the fire and against the invisible but deadly enemies .
However , although it was deafening the wailing and screaming of the desperate , over the background noise produced by the crackle of burning things , the sound of firearms was no longer heard . Encouraged by such silence , the Lamas were now shouting prayers and mantras from almost every window .
Sixteen past one . Von Grossen ' s squad suddenly emerged from the darkness of the Pagoda and marched in close order of two at the back for some meters . An instant later Kloster and Hans fired the first two incendiary grenades towards two windows on the second floor : one hit the chest of the Lama who circumstantially shouted his speech and made him disappear under a blinding light ; another penetrated cleanly through the contiguous opening and exploded inside the Gompa . And through both windows , after the glow of the explosion faded , it was seen how the flames burned everything .
But the SS did not stop to evaluate the effect of their attack . After the two first , they continued to send grenades against the windows at the rate of ten per front , until completing forty . Kloster ran to the right , followed by Von Grossen and two Kâulikas , stopping at intervals to load the grenade and shoot . Hans did it from the left , protected by Heinz and three Kâulikas , shooting similarly .
No one had counted on the possibility that the Monastery had its own guard force , which went unnoticed for the Gurkha observer . However , this one was insignificant in number , although its members possessed good training in the use of the sabre . There they suffered the first and only casualty , when a surprising stab took the life of a Lopa from Von Grossen ' s group . The guards , two or three per door , stood outside and tried , showing a certain courage , to prevent the Monastery from
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