Sean decided they wouldn’t actually step into that unknown; they’d low crawl into it instead. Dropping to their bellies, Sean and his men slithered to the big steel door.
It was unlocked. They pushed it open and found no enemy to oppose them. But there was no friend to meet them, either.
The team rose to their feet. The entryway was a design they’d seen in German strongpoints before: after a straight run of twenty feet or so, there was an abrupt right-angle turn, where you met a setback blast wall with a narrow passage space on either side. Dim electric light leaked around the edges of the blast wall.
“They paid their light bill, at least,” Sean mumbled.
There was a sense of emptiness beyond the blast wall. The floor was thick with concrete dust just like they’d found in the cellar below Bunker 4, shaken loose from the walls and ceiling by the endless barrage. There were footprints in the dust Sean and his men hadn’t made, and even in the dim light those footprints looked fresh.
Sean huddled his men together and said, “I’m gonna gamble that there’s GIs in here. Stay behind this blast wall.”
Before any of the men could ask what form this gambling would take, he yelled, “ANY GIs BACK THERE?”
A voice replied, “WHO THE FUCK WANTS TO KNOW?”
“MOON. THIRTY-SEVENTH TANK.”
“MOON…THAT’S A PRETTY FUNNY NAME FOR A KRAUT,” the voice said.
“YOU AIN’T TOLD ME YOUR NAME YET, PAL.”
“CUTTER, TENTH INFANTRY. WHY DON’T YOU TELL ME WHO JUST WON THE WORLD SERIES, HERR MOON.”
“THE CARDS.”
“SO YOU LISTEN TO THE RADIO, TOO, EH, FRITZ? THEN TELL ME THIS: WHO WAS THE WINNING PITCHER?”
“WHO GIVES A SWEET FUCK?” Sean replied. “NOW ARE YOU GONNA CUT THE SHIT AND LET US IN? WE CAN PROBABLY DO EACH OTHER SOME GOOD HERE.”
“WHERE YOU FROM, MOON?”
“CANARSIE.”
“WHERE THE HELL IN GERMANY IS THAT?”
“IT AIN’T IN GERMANY, NUMBNUTS. IT’S IN BROOKLYN. NOW HOW ABOUT IT?”
Sean could hear hushed voices in discussion but couldn’t make out most of the words. There were several different speakers, and they seemed divided on what to do next.
Finally, Cutter said, “HOW MANY WITH YOU, MOON?”
“THREE. LOOK, IF YOU DON’T WANT TO PLAY BALL, WE CAN JUST LEAVE YOU TO FUCKING DIE HERE.”
Another hushed conversation ensued before Cutter said, “ALL RIGHT, STEP OUT FROM BEHIND THAT WALL ONE AT A TIME, REAL SLOW.”
Sean stepped out first, passing around the wall into a concrete corridor stretching the length of the bunker. Halfway down that corridor were three GIs huddled behind a low pile of rubble. Poking out of that pile was a .30-caliber machine gun aimed straight at Sean.
One of the GIs—a buck sergeant—stood and said, “Shit, why didn’t you say you’re a tech sergeant?” The voice left no doubt: this was Cutter.
“Why? You wouldn’t shoot a Kraut pretending to be a tech sergeant? You in charge here, Cutter?”
He seemed reluctant when he replied, “Yeah, I guess so.”
“You guess so, Sergeant Cutter? What fucking army you in, anyway? If you’re senior, you’re in charge, right?”
“Yeah…but I gotta show you something, Sarge,” Cutter replied.
He led Sean farther down the corridor. Near its end, they stepped through a door into something that resembled an orderly room. It seemed unoccupied, until Cutter pointed behind a desk.
Huddled in the far corner was a US captain, seated on the floor, his knees pulled against his chest. He looked Sean’s way without seeming to see him, the vacant stare through dark-rimmed eyes focused on something far away, perhaps in another dimension only the despondent could see. Sean had seen it too many times before. He’d even felt himself slipping into that hopeless certainty a few times: you were already dead and there wasn’t a damn thing you could do about it. Officers weren’t exempt, either. In fact, combining the extra pressures and responsibilities of command with the relentless slaughter of combat sometimes drove officers over the edge faster than ordinary dogfaces.
Sean asked Cutter, “So when did the captain here lose his marbles?”
“When all that shelling started. We were in the south trench. We tried to get back to the wire and get the hell out of here, but that artillery…it was like they had our number.”
“So you guys weren’t even supposed to take this bunker?”
Cutter looked at him like he’d just made a bad joke.
“Take the bunker? Hell, no, Sarge…”
“Any other GIs in here besides your outfit, then?”
“No,” Cutter replied, “but there’s Krauts on the top floor.”
“How many Krauts?”
“I don’t know. A lot.”
“What about the basement?” Sean asked. “The tunnel entrance?”
“There’s nobody there.”
“Good. How many guys you got, Cutter?”
“About half the company. Maybe forty guys…out of the eighty we started out with.”
“And you’re the top kick?”
“Yeah, I think so. All the senior non-coms and officers are dead or missing, maybe…except for the captain over there.” Then Cutter shrugged as if to say, But he’s as good as dead to us, too.
“Forty GIs, huh? That’s a whole lotta guys if you’re all inside a building like this. Too many, probably. You even try to clean out the Krauts?”
Cutter recoiled, as if the mere suggestion of attacking the Germans upstairs was enough to kill him. “Look, Sarge,” he pleaded, “half of my guys are so green they still got creases in their pants. When we first came inside here, we walked right into the Krauts. A lot of shooting. Couple of our guys got killed right then and there. A bunch of the rookies just cut and ran. Don’t know where the hell they are now. The Krauts went up the stairs, and ever since, it’s been we don’t bother them, they don’t bother us.”
Something concerned Sean even more than the fact the Germans were in the building: the misinformation Lieutenant Chenoweth had received from Battalion was dangerously misleading. American troops were not holding Bunker 3. They were only hiding here, with no intention—or capability—of fighting anyone. He felt in jeopardy being among them, these men who felt that if they did nothing, perhaps, mortal combat would simply pass them by. They hadn’t yet learned that when someone doesn’t do his job, everyone dies.
Sean said, “I’ll tell you what, Sergeant Cutter. We’re gonna get rid of those Krauts on the top floor. Me and my guys just come from the tunnel to Bunker 4 and the gun batteries. There’s a platoon of engineers down there who are gonna blow up them guns, but we need to keep the tunnel entrance covered so no Krauts can get in and run up their asses. And we need this bunker, especially the top floor, to do that.”
Cutter looked like he was going to be sick. He sputtered, “But…we….we don’t…”
“Knock off the blubbering, Sergeant,” Sean told him. “In fact, me and my guys’ll do the hard work for you. How many grenades you got?”
Cutter just shrugged and said, “I don’t know. A lot, probably.”
“Good. Get us eight grenades. Got any radios?”
“Just a couple of walkie-talkies.”
Sean asked, “Do they work?”
“We can’t raise anyone back at Battalion.”
“Course not. You’re too fucking far away. But can you talk to each other?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Good,” Sean replied. “I’ll take them, too. Now what about bazookas? You got any?”
“Yeah, we’ve got two.”
“I’ll take ’em. How many rockets you got for ’em?”
“We ain’t fired them, so unless we lost the rounds out there somewhere…”
“I’ll make this easier for you,” Sean said. “Get me four rockets.”
Cutter looked horrified. “You’re not going to try and go up the stairs, are you?”
�
�Fuck, no. How stupid you think I am, Cutter? We’re going outside, up the hill, and fire them rockets through those big gun ports on the top floor.”
“But…the barrage…the searchlight…”
“But nothing, Cutter. We just gotta synchronize with ’em. How the hell you think we got here? Besides, that searchlight is just like illum rounds. At these distances, you only see the movement, not the thing that’s moving. If you freeze, you’re invisible. Now get me that shit I asked for, on the fucking double.”
Sean watched as Cutter tried to round up a few of his soldiers to collect the equipment. The sullen, unresponsive men were scattered in various rooms along the corridor, huddled together as if hiding from a bogeyman. One soldier, a tall, lean young man slouched with a few others in a corner of what resembled a ransacked kitchen, replied to Cutter’s order with a raised middle finger. Sean took that gesture to be aimed at him, too.
Nudging Cutter out of the way, Sean asked the soldier, “What’s your name, hot shot?”
Looking up at Sean with the same disregard he’d shown Cutter, the man defiantly replied, “Tillotson.” He spoke with the slow, bassy drawl of a Texan. His rifle lay beside him in the floor’s dust and grime as if it’d been thrown away.
Sean told him, “Pick up that weapon, Private Tillotson, and get on your feet, right fucking now.”
“I ain’t doing shit,” Tillotson replied. “You’re just another dumb fucker fixing to get us all killed.”
Sean stood over him, glaring down. “Don’t make me say it again, shithead.”
Leaving his rifle on the floor, Tillotson rose to his feet with irritating slowness. He was taller than Sean by an inch or two and maybe even had a few pounds on him. Hands balled into fists, his deep voice became a menacing rumble: “Why? What’re you gonna do about it, Sergeant?”
“How about this?” With the precise skills of an accomplished street fighter, he delivered a quick and powerful left jab squarely into Tillotson’s face. Nobody who heard the pop doubted he’d just broken the man’s nose. The splatter of blood confirmed it.
Tillotson collapsed to the floor like a house of cards. Holding his bloody face in his hands, he wailed, “You broke my fucking nose, you bastard!”
“That’s Sergeant Bastard to you, pal,” Sean replied as he jerked the man back to his feet. “But you’re fighting the wrong guys.” Then he retrieved the M1 from the floor and slung it over Tillotson’s shoulder.
“Take the private here over to the doc,” he told Kowalski. “Use the tunnel door downstairs. Tell Lieutenant Chenoweth he can have him, then get your ass right back here.”
As he was led from the room, Tillotson whined, “I’m gonna press charges, Sergeant.”
“Yeah, you do that, numbnuts. Now get him the hell outta here.”
Then Sean turned to the rest of the stunned GIs in the room and said, “Anybody else here got a problem with authority figures today?”
No one said a word.
“Good. Then get up off your sorry asses. You got work to do.”
He pointed to a soldier wearing corporal’s stripes. “You with the two stripes, let’s start earning that non-com pay. Roust the rest of these sad sacks from wherever they’re hiding and assemble them in the corridor, on the fucking double.”
Kowalski slid the heavy iron bolt on the tunnel door in the basement of Bunker 3. Swinging the door open, he prodded Tillotson to walk into the tunnel entrance.
He wouldn’t move.
“Look, pal,” the tanker said as he pressed his Thompson against the back of the reluctant soldier’s neck, “keep feeding me your bullshit and I’ll shoot you right fucking here. Nobody’ll ever believe the Krauts didn’t do it.”
Tillotson started walking toward the tunnel, slowly at first, finally reaching a normal pace.
“That’s more like it, Tex,” Kowalski said.
When they reached the tunnel entrance they’d blown open earlier, Tillotson said, “I’m gonna bring your Yankee ass up on charges, too, Corporal.”
“First off, dimwit, I ain’t no Yankee. I’m from Chicago. Second, every man in that room saw you take first shot at Sergeant Moon.”
“That’s a damn lie,” Tillotson protested.
“Prove it, deadbeat. It’ll be your word against the word of a veteran non-com whose shirts got more time in the laundry than your redneck ass has in this damn army. And as far as bringing me up on charges, I ain’t gonna lose no sleep over that, either. Now you better stay close, because if we get separated, those GIs down there are gonna shoot your ass because you don’t know the fucking password.”
Tillotson had no answer for any of that. Shoulders slumped, holding his hand over his battered face, he looked like a boxer who’d just taken the ten count.
“Now get your ass moving, before you bleed out through that schnoz of yours.”
By the time Kowalski returned to Bunker 3, Sean had worked out how they’d deal with the Germans on the top floor. He and his three tankers would form two bazooka teams, with two rockets each. They’d exit the bunker the way they came in and climb the hill to its back side, where only the upper reaches of the top floor protruded above its peak. The few trees that had survived the relentless bombardments would augment the darkness to provide concealment—and perhaps some cover—for the teams. After expending their four bazooka rockets into the gun windows of the top floor, they’d immediately rush to those windows and throw their grenades—eight in total—into the bunker.
Sergeant Cutter’s men had been organized into four teams: the first on the north staircase; the second on the south staircase; the third would cover the ground floor from any intrusion; the fourth would be in reserve and go wherever needed. Cutter would carry one of the walkie-talkies. Sean had the other radio, with which he’d signal the start of the bazooka teams’ attack.
Any Germans not killed or incapacitated outright from the rocket and grenade attack would probably try to flee down the staircases. It would be the job of Cutter’s team one and two to cut them down before they could form a new pocket of resistance on the first floor. Any Krauts who attempted to escape through the top floor gun ports onto the hill would be dealt with at close range by Sean’s teams using their Thompsons.
Once Sean’s teams had finished their work, it would be up to Cutter and his men to climb to the top floor and secure it. “Make sure you don’t rush the top floor from both staircases at once,” Sean cautioned, “so you don’t end up shooting each other.”
Sean’s last words to Cutter as his team headed out of the bunker: “Remember what my grandma always used to tell me…Boy, don’t fuck up.”
As they started up the hill, Kowalski asked, “You think they’re gonna be watching out those top floor windows?”
Sean replied, “Yeah, maybe.”
“So what happens if they spot us?”
“Then the fight starts a little sooner than planned, Ski. But I’m betting they’re more concerned with the GIs on the ground floor at the moment.”
Sean’s bet was a good one. They made it to a position among a few trees about thirty yards from the bunker without drawing any German fire. “One problem,” Sean said softly. “We can’t make out the fucking gun windows, dammit. We’ll have to wait until the searchlight comes around again.”
“But then we’ll be lit up, too,” Kowalski said.
“Yeah, but things better be happening so fast by then it won’t matter.”
Sean put the bazooka into firing position on his shoulder. He whispered to the other team, “You guys ready?”
They both answered, “Yeah, Sarge.”
“Okay, I’ll call your target as soon as it’s lit up.”
Sean told Cutter over the walkie-talkie, “Ten seconds.”
The searchlight was sweeping back their way. Sean muttered, “Almost, almost…”
And then they were bathed in light harsher than any daytime sun. They could see four apertures in the concrete wall, gaping opaque rectangles much wider than they
were high.
“TAKE THE TWO RIGHT,” Sean called to his other team.
Then there was the whoosh-whoosh of the two bazookas firing. As the rockets streaked toward their separate targets, he was sure he’d seen the twinkling muzzle flash of a German machine gun…
Until the rockets flew inside and exploded. He’d barely had time to catch a breath when his loader patted him on the helmet, the signal the bazooka was reloaded.
He fired again. So did the other team.
The searchlight had panned past them. Suddenly, the beam skittered to a halt and reversed itself back toward the bunker. Sean could see clouds of smoke and dust spewing from the windows in the brilliant light. There were no guns firing, only the screams of wounded men inside.
Then, inexplicably, the searchlight resumed its scan across the fort.
“Pineapple time, boys,” Sean said. “MOVE OUT.”
Racing to the bunker, they hurled grenade after grenade into the windows until they had no more.
As the last one exploded, Sean called on the radio, “Cutter, take the top floor, NOW.”
Sean’s men climbed onto the roof, ready to shoot down any Germans trying to escape out the gun ports. It seemed like a safe place to be; not one round of the shifting barrage had landed on the bunker since they’d left the tunnel.
Fifteen, then thirty seconds went by with no sound from the bunker other than the wailing of the wounded. They’d expected gun shots, shouting, any indication Cutter’s team was on the top floor.
Sean spat into the radio, “Where the hell are you, Cutter?”
His reply: “We’re still on the staircase.”
“Why?”
“You blew out all the fucking lights. Pretty slow going in the dark.”
Sean said, “In about ten seconds, the searchlight’s gonna light the place up like Christmas. Move your ass.”
The searchlight swept across Sean and his men as they lay motionless on the roof. It quickly moved on, not bothering to pause on them like some accusing finger.
“I guess they really can’t see you if you ain’t moving,” Kowalski said.
Fortress Falling (Moon Brothers WWII Adventure Series Book 2) Page 26