Echo of the Reich

by James Becker

  Before he reached it, another figure appeared, quickly followed by about seven or eight others, most of them carrying bags—Bronson guessed they were the men he had seen arriving earlier. As far as he could tell, they were dressed in the same clothes they’d been wearing before, but as he stared through the binoculars at the group, now standing and talking more or less in the center of the garage, one figure immediately stood out.

  Bronson knew that he would never forget Marcus’s face. It wasn’t simply that he recognized the man who’d forced him to kill a helpless human being, it was what the German was wearing that gripped his attention.

  The black jackboots, black breeches and tunic were chillingly familiar, as was the peaked cap bearing the eagle insignia with the skull symbol, the Totenkopf—Bronson knew that much German—mounted below it. On the left-hand side of the uniform hung a chained black ceremonial dagger, and the lapel bore a rank badge bearing four square pips above two parallel bars. Bronson remembered military ranks from his days in the army, and that, he was sure, was the German rank Obersturmbannführer, equivalent to a British lieutenant colonel. The only splash of color was the blood-red armband displaying the all too familiar black swastika in a white circle.

  Then Marcus turned slightly to his left, and for the first time Bronson could see his right lapel. There, gleaming in the overhead lighting, he could clearly see what he’d been expecting ever since the German had stepped into the garage: the twin lightning-bolt runes of the SS.

  Two of the men then raised their right arms toward Marcus in rigid salutes, salutes which he returned. Then the two men turned on their heels and walked out to the cars.

  He’d been right. The German hadn’t created his own private army. Instead, he’d revived the most feared and detested military unit of all time, the SS or Schutzstaffel, the black-uniformed thugs responsible for running the concentration camps and perpetrating the vast majority of the atrocities recorded during the Second World War. The SS had fielded almost one million men, and had managed to enslave, torture, experiment on and eventually kill some twelve million people, most of them Jews. But they’d also directed their lethal attentions toward other “undesirables” who might in some way contaminate the purity of Hitler’s ideal of an Aryan race, such as Poles and Slavs, the mentally and physically handicapped, political dissidents, clergymen and homosexuals. Of all the forces, of all the nations, involved in the global conflicts of the twentieth century, the SS had been by far the most chillingly efficient as a killing unit, and by far the most reviled.

  Bronson knew that what he was staring at wasn’t some toothless neo-Nazi revival, a bunch of deluded socialists wearing shirts with silly badges. From what he’d already found out about Marcus, he guessed that he was as close as possible to the real thing.

  Not neo-Nazi. Just Nazi.

  And that worried him more than anything else.

  30

  24 July 2012

  Just under half an hour later, once the two cars had departed and the house was again still and silent, Bronson moved back from his observation position below and behind the bushes and stood up, his joints and muscles protesting.

  He had two choices about getting back to his car. He could retrace his steps through the wood, but that meant passing close by the house again, and in the dark he wasn’t sure he could do that without tripping over something or making enough noise to be detected. Or he could work his way down through the wood, moving away from the house all the time, until he reached the road. Then he could simply walk along it, turn right up the rough track and get to his car that way.

  It wasn’t a difficult decision.

  He took a last look at the house and turned away, moving slowly and carefully and keeping inside the wood itself. The further away he got from the property, the quicker he felt able to move, and in less than five minutes he stepped over a narrow ditch and onto the tarmac surface of the Röthen road.

  When he reached the open area in front of the house, Bronson crossed to the opposite side of the road, just in case there were any watchers positioned. His rubber-soled shoes made almost no sound on the tarmac, but as a precaution he stepped onto the grass verge and walked along that, where his footsteps would be completely silent.

  The house still looked empty in the faint moonlight, the only light the steadily blinking telltale on the external alarm box, which meant that somebody had armed the system again, presumably after the occupants—and he had counted at least four men plus Marcus still in the house—had retreated to their bedrooms.

  Beyond the house, Bronson crossed back to the east side of the road. The beginning of the track was easy to find because the gap in the undergrowth was wide, though the track itself was barely visible in the moonlight. He checked the road, but saw no vehicles in either direction, then began making his way along the track. Bronson was fairly sure he was alone, but he still took his time and exercised caution as he headed toward the clearing where he’d parked his car, keenly alert for any noise that would indicate the presence of one of Marcus’s men, or anyone else, for that matter.

  In the end, it was something he smelled that alerted him. The faint whiff of tobacco smoke was unexpected but unmistakable. Somebody had smoked a cigarette on or near the track in the last few minutes.

  It could have been one of the locals out walking his dog last thing in the evening and enjoying a cigarette. Or it could have been somebody a lot less innocent, and Bronson wasn’t about to take a chance.

  The instant he detected the smell, he stopped moving. Then slowly and silently he moved over to his right, toward the trees and bushes that bordered that side of the track, removing the Llama pistol from his waistband as he did so and clicking off the safety catch. He knew that there was already a round in the chamber, so the weapon was ready to fire.

  For several minutes he stood motionless by the trunk of a large tree, concentrating with every fiber of his being on looking and listening for any movement or noise from the wood in front of him, anything that would show him where the armed man—and Bronson was sure that the man who had smoked an incautious cigarette would be armed—was positioned. He heard no movement, but he did hear a low murmur as somebody spoke, the words indistinct. Then another voice, clearer and probably closer, replied with a single syllable: “Ja.”

  That changed the odds; there were at least two of them waiting for him in the darkness of the wood ahead.

  Still Bronson didn’t move, his mind racing as he considered his options. He could walk away, abandon the car, but that really wasn’t much of a choice. He needed a form of transport, but hiring a car wouldn’t work because his passport didn’t match his driving license, and if he stole a vehicle that would set the German police on his tail within hours. He needed the car, and that meant somehow getting into the clearing and incapacitating the men Marcus had positioned there.

  For a moment he wondered how he’d been detected. He could only assume that before one of the clandestine meetings of the “new” SS in the house, Marcus probably ordered his men to do a quick search of the surrounding area. That would have been carried out while Bronson was asleep, and he guessed he was lucky that they’d only found the car, not him. And when they told Marcus it was on British registration plates, they’d know exactly who it belonged to.

  Because he’d heard no movement, only the two brief snatches of conversation, Bronson still didn’t know exactly where the men were waiting for him, so he did the next best thing: he tried to work out where he would have positioned his men if he’d been told to set up an ambush in the clearing.

  With two men, he’d probably station one in the undergrowth directly opposite the opening between the two large trees, and the second man over by the car. That way, both of them would see the intruder at about the same moment, as he stepped into the clearing and, if the intention was to eliminate him, they could cut him down in their crossfire.

  And the other thing Bronson would have done was to position a car or other vehicle some distance
further up the track so that, if by some miracle the target was able to incapacitate the men waiting in ambush in the clearing, the third man in the car would be able either to follow him when he drove away or, more likely, to ram him and attempt to stop him as he headed down the lane.

  In fact, that was something he could check, he hoped. Bronson gripped the binoculars and took two cautious steps to his left, moving just far enough to enable him to see up the track, while keeping most of his body hidden in the undergrowth. He raised the binoculars and started looking at the land in front of him. In the dark, the instrument was less help than he had hoped, and at first he was unsure what he was looking at; everything just appeared to be different shades of gray.

  Then he managed to identify the edge of the wood on the right-hand side of his field of view and slowly moved the binoculars to the left, looking for the more or less straight line of the track. Then a faint glint appeared in the eyepieces, and Bronson immediately focused his attention on that. There was a dark square shape just about visible some distance away, and what he’d seen was the faint reflection of the moonlight off one of the headlamps. He had no idea what type of vehicle it was, or how many people were inside it, but it was definitely some kind of car, and just as definitely it hadn’t been there when he’d arrived.

  That was at least a confirmation, albeit an unwelcome one, that his tactical analysis had been fairly accurate. What he had to decide now was what to do about it, and as far as he could see, only one option made sense. There was no point in trying to sneak into the clearing to tackle the men hiding there while another group was sitting in the car in the lane, waiting for him to make a move.

  He had to sort out the people in the vehicle first. And as he decided that, another thought struck him. Something that could actually turn the situation around in his favor. The only question was what he should do about it.

  What he couldn’t do, quite obviously, was to continue walking up the track. That would just ensure that he was either captured or killed within a matter of minutes. Instead, he had to make use of the large open field that lay over to his left.

  But for several minutes, Bronson just stood beside the tree and waited, because there was one other factor he’d noticed that might give him a tiny advantage. There were a few small and more or less circular clouds in the sky, all drifting slowly northeast, and a couple of them were soon going to obscure the moon.

  The moment the first cloud blotted out the faint light, Bronson stepped back onto the edge of the track, keeping as close to the trees and bushes as he could without actually touching them, and began retracing his steps.

  He didn’t go all the way to the end of the track, because he was very aware that the moon would reappear any moment, and he needed to get into the large field as quickly as he could. As soon as he reckoned he was out of sight of whoever was waiting in the car, he turned to his right and started jogging toward the center of the field. The ground rose toward the north, and he was reasonably certain that he was now effectively over the horizon as far as the people waiting for him were concerned.

  Then he started heading east, this time much more slowly and cautiously, trying to get his bearings and, more important, hoping to spot the position of the waiting vehicle before the watchers inside it could see him.

  A brief wash of pale white illumination swept across the field as the moon reappeared from behind the clouds, and Bronson immediately stopped moving. From his different perspective, looking across at the track from one side rather than along it, and from the slightly higher ground near the middle of the field, the vehicle was clearly visible.

  It was a dark-colored saloon, possibly one of the BMWs he’d seen previously being driven by members of the group. It was less than a hundred yards in front of him, facing down the track, but in the poor light he had no idea if the car was empty or filled with armed men. That was something he needed to find out before he got too close to it.

  The moon vanished again, this time behind the larger cloud, and the landscape was plunged into darkness once more. Bronson knew he had perhaps four or five minutes before the cloud moved away, a brief enough timescale for what he had to do.

  He moved quickly down the gentle slope, angling slightly over to his left so that he would be able to approach the car from the right rear quarter. All mirrors have blind spots, and he hoped that the car’s occupant—or occupants—would be concentrating on the view in front of them, straining to see their victim as he walked up the track toward them. They probably wouldn’t be expecting him either to carry the fight directly to them or to approach them from behind.

  He stopped moving the moment he could discern the bulky shape in the darkness in front of him, and eased slowly down to lie full-length on the ground. He guessed the car was only about twenty-five yards away. He still had no idea how many men were inside it, and that was vital information. He raised the binoculars to his face, adjusted the focus and stared at the car.

  It was too dark to see anything clearly through the windows and obviously no lights were switched on in the interior of the vehicle. But as his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he saw a faint movement in the front seat, on the driver’s side, but no sign of anybody sitting in the other front seat, or in the back of the car. And that, he supposed, made sense. It looked like there was just a single occupant. The ambush in the clearing was where they expected to trap him; the man with the car was just an insurance policy in case something went wrong.

  And if Bronson’s plan worked, it would certainly go wrong for them.

  He slowly rose into a crouch, and then backed away until he could no longer see the car, which meant that nobody in the car could see him. The field was hard-packed earth mostly covered in grass and presumably used for grazing cattle or maybe sheep. But there were a few low stumpy bushes dotted around the edge of the track, and one of those might help him.

  Bronson moved about fifty yards behind the car, staying inside the field, and began tugging on the stems of the small bushes he found growing there. Most were firmly anchored by their roots, but within a couple of minutes he’d found one right at the edge of the field that wasn’t. The stem moved slightly when he pulled it.

  He reached around to the belt on the right-hand side of his trousers and snapped open a small holster that contained the folding multi-tool that he never traveled without. He opened it and, working by feel, selected the knife blade and locked it into place. Then he worked the blade around the base of the bush, digging it into the ground to cut through some of the roots. It gave way suddenly, and he found himself holding the bush with a couple of pounds of earth still attached to the roots. It was just what he needed.

  He folded up the multi-tool and replaced it in his holster, then walked cautiously back toward the car, approaching it at an oblique angle, hopefully staying out of sight in any of the rearview mirrors.

  He stopped about twenty feet behind and to one side of the car, measuring the remaining distance by eye, then acted. He swung the bush back, and then lobbed it underarm toward the vehicle. It was another BMW, as he’d guessed, this one a 3-series.

  The bush with its cargo of earth described a parabola, landed with a dull thud almost directly in the middle of the trunk lid, then slid off it and fell to the ground behind the car. The impact wasn’t enough to damage the vehicle, but Bronson was sure the man inside would have heard and felt it. And would want to investigate the cause.

  For a few moments nothing happened, and he wondered if he’d been wrong, if the car was empty, if he’d been tricked by a shadow and hadn’t seen anyone in the driver’s seat. Maybe the car had simply been used by the men waiting in the clearing as a means of transport.

  Then he heard a click, and immediately closed his eyes to preserve his night-sight, because the driver’s door of the BMW had just swung open, triggering the interior light. Bronson knew that the bulb was very low powered, just a few watts, but in the blackness of the night it was like a searchlight snapping on.

&n
bsp; He stared down at the ground before he opened his eyes, but then the light was extinguished as the man closed the door again. Bronson looked up and watched as a dark, bulky figure stepped around to the back of the car.

  As soon as the man looked down at the bush, he muttered a single word—“Scheiße”—which Bronson didn’t need to be a linguist to translate.

  But by then, he was already moving.

  31

  24 July 2012

  Bronson covered the dozen or so feet to the other man in a few swift and silent strides, then stopped right behind him. He reached forward over the man’s left shoulder and wrapped his hand around his mouth. At the same moment, he hit out with his right fist with all the power he could muster. The blow connected with the other man’s back beside his right kidney, exactly where Bronson had been aiming. It was an incapacitating, not a killing, blow. The man loosed a sudden muffled grunt of surprise and pain as he arched backward.

  Bronson was already pulling him in the same direction, and the man tumbled helplessly to the ground, cracking the back of his head on the hard-packed soil as he did so. But Bronson hadn’t quite finished with him, and swung his right fist again, this time aiming for the solar plexus, driving every vestige of breath from the man’s body. And he followed that with a sharp uppercut to the jaw to complete the process. The man’s head snapped backward as unconsciousness claimed him.

  It was a rapid and brutal demolition job, and had offered the man no possible chance of responding, which was precisely what Bronson had intended. For about half a minute he stood where he was, staring down the track into the darkness and listening intently. He doubted if the noise of the assault could have been heard more than a few yards away, but he needed to be certain nobody was approaching him. But he heard nothing, no sound of movement.

  Then he bent down and quickly searched the unconscious man. He found a Walther pistol—this one a PPQ model, very similar in appearance to the smaller Glocks—in a shoulder holster and with two spare magazines in a belt pouch. A metal tube in one of his pockets turned out to be a suppressor for the weapon.