Death Train

by Levinson, Len

  “Oh I will—right now. Sister Nathalie and Sister Marie will help, too.”

  Father Henri walked away quickly and gathered together Sister Nathalie and Sister Marie. Mahoney knew the prayer wouldn’t mean a damn thing but at least it would keep those three out of trouble. Doctor Lambert came close, kneeling beside a patient on the floor.

  “How’s it going, Doc?”

  Doctor Lambert shook his head sadly.

  “Yeah, I know how you feel.”

  Mahoney took out a new cigar and lit it up. Well, he thought, I guess this is gonna be it. We’re either gonna stop those tanks or we’re gonna be rat food.

  This is probably gonna be my last cigar, he thought as he blew smoke into the air.

  Leduc and Cranepool returned with ten men and handfuls of hand grenades.

  “Put the grenades on the ground,” he told them.

  They did and he counted nineteen hand grenades. He divided them into four piles. “Okay,” he said, “Leduc, Cranepool, me, and you,” he pointed to one of the Frenchmen, “will take these grenades, and when we come up out of the hole we’ll run to the tanks and try to throw the grenades into the treads. If the hatches are open, try to drop the grenades inside. The rest of you will try to cover us. Any questions?”

  Nobody said anything. They stood stolidly; they knew what the odds were. They also knew they were the best odds they could get.

  “Everybody got enough ammo?” Mahoney asked.

  They all nodded.

  “Anybody got a flashlight?”

  Leduc took one out of his shirt.

  “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  They moved into the tunnel, Mahoney and Leduc in front. It was long, winding, and dark, and smelled like decay. Shells burst above them, shaking loose dirt from the ceiling which fell onto their berets and shoulders. Mahoney hoped the tunnel was long enough to put them deep into the German position. He’d hate to come up out of the ground and find himself looking down the barrel of a cannon on a Panther tank. Looking at the dirt walls, he wondered if he’d soon be in his grave. Well, he thought, I’ve lived a pretty good life, I think.

  They came to the end of the tunnel. There was a trap door on the ceiling a foot above Mahoney’s head. He reached up and pushed it, but it wouldn’t budge. He pushed harder, and it moved a little.

  “There must be a lot of rubble on top of this trap door,” he said. “We’ll have to blow it away. I’ll need one hand grenade from every man.”

  Leduc, Cranepool, and the Frenchman each handed him a grenade, and he pulled one from his own lapel. He took off his favorite leather jacket, tied its arms to the latch on the trap door, and fastened the four hand grenades to it. Then he stuffed his other grenades into the pale blue cotton shirt he was wearing. He slung his submachine gun and bandoliers of ammunition over his shoulder and loosened the pin on one of the hand grenades on his leather jacket.

  “Okay,” he said. “The rest of you go around that corner down there and get down. I’ll pull this pin and then run as far as I can.”

  “You’ll only have four to six seconds,” Cranepool said.

  “You think I don’t know that, asshole?”

  Leduc reached into his shirt. “I have some string,” he said.

  “You’re a good man, Leduc,” Mahoney said, taking the ball of string.

  Mahoney tied the string to the pin of one of the grenades on his jacket, and then they all backed up in the tunnel until they were around a bend. Mahoney held the string in his hand and looked around the bend at his favorite leather jacket hanging from the trap door. He thought he’d never find another jacket like that one but in a little while he’d probably be someplace where he needn’t need a leather jacket at all.

  He turned to the others. “As soon as I pull the cord, it’s up and out of this tunnel. I’ll go first, Cranepool will be second, and Leduc third. I want you to come up out of that hole firing your weapons and fighting like wildcats. Those of you with grenades should head straight for the tanks and plant them fast before anybody knows what’s going on. Any questions?”

  Nobody said anything. They all knew it was a suicide mission with little hope of success, but they had no alternatives left. It was a basic matter of do or die.

  “Okay,” Mahoney said. “Get ready.”

  They got down on the dirt floor. Mahoney pulled the string, then jammed his fingers into his ears. The seconds passed like days, and then there was a huge explosion. The tunnel shook and dirt poured through cracks in the ceiling as a cloud of smoke and dust swirled back at them.

  Mahoney carried his submachine gun in one hand and ran through the smoke to the light that streaked through the hole where the trap door had been. Chewing his cigar, he braced himself and leapt up to the hole, grabbing the edges and pulling himself out. He grabbed the submachine gun, looked up, and found himself staring at the barrel of a cannon of a tank only thirty yards in front of him! That tank was flanked by the five other tanks the SS had left, and Mahoney realized with horror that he’d come up in the worst possible place—

  directly in front of the advancing tanks and troops.

  “Get back!” he shouted into the hole.

  But Cranepool was already climbing out. Leduc, who was next, took one look and ducked his head. Bullets began to whiz like angry gnats around Mahoney and Cranepool.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here!” Mahoney screamed.

  He turned around and ran in a zigzag pattern toward the church. The machine guns, mounted on the tanks, fired at them; the tanks aimed their cannons at them. The SS troops fired, and Mahoney knew he was going to die. “Oh Lord,” he said, “if you get me out of this one I’ll go to Mass every Sunday and I’ll stop fornicating for evermore.”

  Ahead of him were some houses, and beyond them he could see the stone wall that surrounded the church. The air was filled with a hail of death and then his right leg exploded and he toppled head over heels to the ground.

  They got me, he thought, writhing on the ground. He looked down and his thigh was a mass of blood and torn flesh. He rolled over onto his stomach, grabbed his submachine gun, and fired at the tanks even though he knew it would do no good. He realized that he’d come to the end of the line.

  Cranepool dropped to the ground beside him. “You all right, Sarge?”

  “Make a break for it back to the church, Cranepool. I’ll try to cover you.”

  They were lying behind a small pile of rubble.

  Cranepool looked over it and saw a patrol of SS men advancing. He raised his submachine gun and fired at them until his clip was empty. They scattered, dropped to the ground, or fell back. Cranepool jammed a new clip into his submachine gun.

  “Cranepool!” Mahoney said. “I told you to get the fuck out of here!”

  “I’m takin’ you back with me, Sarge.”

  “You’ll never make it with me! I said get the fuck out of here! That’s an order!’

  Cranepool gritted his teeth as bullets whizzed all around them. A German threw a hand grenade, which exploded ten yards away from Mahoney and Cranepool, causing a rain of battlefield debris to fall down upon them. One of the tanks fired its cannon, but the round fell far behind them.

  “I said get out of here!” Mahoney said.

  “I’m not leavin’ without you, Sarge,” Cranepool answered.

  “That was an order, goddamn you!”

  “You’re wounded and you don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “I’ll court-martial you, you son-of-a-bitch!”

  “Shut up, Sarge. I’m tryin’ to think.”

  But Cranepool really didn’t have much to think about. He had to get them out of the deathtrap they were in, but first he’d have to create some kind of diversion. He pulled all the hand grenades off his shirt, loosened all the pins, and laid them on the ground in front of him.

  “What do you think you’re doing, asshole!”

  “Keep your head down, Sarge.”

  Cranepool raised himself a bit
and hurled the grenades two by two as fast as he could. Then he hugged the ground as it shuddered with the violent explosions.

  “Let’s go Sarge!” Cranepool yelled after the last grenade went off.

  In front of him the air was thick with dust and smoke from the explosions. Cranepool picked up Mahoney, draped him over his shoulder, and began to run toward the houses. His legs were unsteady, because Mahoney weighed two hundred and forty pounds, but Cranepool was a strong young man who’d been doing hard work on a farm all his life.

  “You fuckin’ asshole!” Mahoney yelled. “Let me down!”

  Germans shouted orders and fired at the figures fleeing through the dust and smoke. Bullets of all types sliced the air around them, and Mahoney was sure he’d get one of them right up his ass.

  Cranepool jumped over a stone wall about three feet high in front of one of the houses, falling to the ground and bringing Mahoney down with him. A group of Resistance fighters behind the fence were making their last stand. Cranepool rolled Mahoney onto his back and looked at the leg.

  “How’re you feelin’, Sarge?”

  “What a fuckin’ asshole you turned out to be!”

  “I’ll put a bandage on it.”

  “That was the dumbest thing I ever saw in my life!”

  While Mahoney fulminated, Cranepool took out his field dressing, tore off the wrapping, and covered Mahoney’s wound with it. The wound was big and messy, but it was coagulating.

  “You’ll be all right, Sarge,” Cranepool said as he tied on the bandage.

  “You fuckin’ asshole.”

  Cranepool finished tying the bandage, then looked over the stone wall. The SS tanks and troops were massed in front of them, and it looked as though they were preparing to make a final assault on the French positions. Cranepool looked behind him. There were only a scattering of houses, and then the church. It looked like the battle was just about over.

  Mahoney raised himself up and looked at the Germans, his cigar still clamped in his mouth. He quickly reached the same conclusion. The Germans would overrun them soon, and they couldn’t retreat because there was no place to go. He looked to his sides and saw the Resistance fighters firing volley after volley at the Germans. They were caught up in the heat of the battle, trying not to think of their prospects for survival.

  Mahoney raised his submachine gun and tucked it into his shoulder. He took aim and fired a burst at the German position. What the fuck, he thought, nobody lives forever and I guess my number is coming up.

  Cranepool, however, thought of no such thing. As he fired his submachine gun, he thought that somehow he and Mahoney would be saved. He had no rational basis whatever for thinking that, but the kid was simply optimistic most of the time, regardless of the gravity of the situation.

  Then the tanks began to rumble forward, with the SS infantry in close support. The Germans were making their final push.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's villa in Ulm was filled with flowers, for it was the morning of his wife’s birthday. The gifts were stacked on the drawing room table, and Rommel, in his red striped bathrobe and slippers, watched his wife open the box containing the shoes he’d bought in Paris.

  His wife’s name was Lucie, and when he married her she’d been a dancer. She had black hair and mysterious eyes set in a square face that was attractive in a peculiar, masculine way. She took one of the shoes out of the box and said eek with delight, for they were shiny and black, with an open toe in front and a strap in back, the very latest fashion from Paris, just what she needed.

  She placed one shoe on the floor, bent over, and slid her foot into it, but it wouldn’t go. “Oh Erwin,” she wailed, “the shoe doesn’t fit!”

  “It doesn’t fit?” he asked. “But you sent me an outline of your foot, and I showed it to the shoe salesman. He said it was your size.”

  “It’s not!” She kicked the shoe off again and pouted. “The salesman cheated you! He sold you the wrong size!”

  As Rommel rushed forward to comfort Lucie, there was a knock on the door.

  “Come in,” he said.

  His housemaid Karolina entered the room. “Herr Feldmarschall Rommel is wanted on the telephone,” she said.

  Rommel walked through the sliding door to the phone in the smoking room, thinking that it probably was Hitler’s adjutant calling from Berchtesgaden to notify Rommel that the Fuehrer would see him that afternoon.

  “Rommel here,” he said, picking up the phone.

  “This is General Speidel,” said the voice at the other end, “and I’m afraid I have bad news, sir. The enemy invasion has begun.”

  A shiver passed up Rommel’s spine, and he gripped the phone more tightly.

  “The invasion has begun? How? When? Where?”

  “Well,” Speidel said, “the picture isn’t completely clear yet . . .”

  “Where!” screamed Rommel.

  “Well sir, it appears that there have been seaborne landings at various points between Caen and Cherbourg, and airborne landings also in that same area.”

  Rommel was surprised. He had thought that when the invasion came, it would take place in the 15th Army Sector near Calais. “When?”

  “We’ve been receiving reports since one-thirty this morning, sir.”

  “Why wasn’t I notified?”

  “We didn’t want to disturb you, sir, until we knew the enemy’s intentions.”

  Rommel closed his eyes. He didn’t think the Allies would launch their invasion at low tide, but they had. They had outsmarted him and he wasn’t even there to do anything about it.

  “Speidel,” Rommel said calmly, struggling to keep his emotions under control, “what have you done so far?”

  “We have offered resistance to the enemy, sir, and have been trying to discover where his main thrust will come.”

  “Have you sent in the Panzers yet?”

  “No sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because these landings might be a feint.”

  “They may be, but they may not be. Now listen to me carefully, Speidel. We’ve got to stop them on the beaches before they become too firmly entrenched. Therefore I want you to rush all units in your command to those beaches immediately. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Also, I want you to make immediate arrangements for men and equipment throughout France to be brought up to the coast today, and especially to the area where the landings already have taken place. Do you think you can handle that?”

  “Well, there’s been a problem, sir,” Speidel said.

  “What kind of problem?”

  “We’ll have difficulty moving men and equipment in by rail, which is the most effective method, because I’ve received a report that the rail line in this sector has been sabotaged.”

  “Call the engineers and have it fixed, you fool!”

  “I’ve already conferred with them, and they said it might take a month to get the line running again.”

  “A month!” growled Rommel.

  “Yes sir, there’s been quite extensive damage to a tunnel near the town of Vernisset.”

  Rommel ground his teeth together. ‘Then you’ll have to scour your area for units that can be brought up to the line immediately. I don’t care how small the units are or what they’re doing—I want them moved to the beaches at once! Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m leaving immediately for France. Try to hold things together until I get there, will you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And remember, the principle to follow is to attack and attack again, is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That is all,” Rommel said. “Carry out your orders.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Rommel slammed down the receiver and thought that everything that could possibly go wrong had in fact gone wrong. His command had been taken by surprise; he himself had not been at his post; no one had ever taken
bold or imaginative action in his place; and he couldn’t even rush massive reinforcements to the beaches because the rail line was sabotaged. The Fuehrer would not be happy when he found out about all that.

  Rommel rushed back to the drawing room, where Lucie was opening her birthday packages. She saw the flush in his cheeks and excitement in his eyes. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I must return to the front immediately. The Allies have launched their invasion at last.”

  She frowned but didn’t say anything, because she’d been married to him since 1916 and was accustomed to dramatic changes in plans brought about by military necessity. He kissed her and said he was sorry. She told him she understood.

  Rommel ran upstairs to put on his uniform and prepare to leave for the front. He hoped he would get there before it was too late.

  Chapter Forty

  Major Richter stood with his hands on his hips, watching his tanks and SS men advance. He knew that there weren’t many guerillas left and their ammunition must be running low. He’d roll his tanks right over them and grind their bones into the dirt; then he’d destroy that church and the rest of the town. It would be a lesson to all the citizens in the area that they should never harbor terrorists.

  Richter took his hands off his hips and rubbed his palms together. Perhaps he could take a few prisoners and torture them, thereby gaining significant new information. He took out a cigarette and lit it, blowing smoke out the side of his mouth. His tanks and men were advancing steadily toward a stone fence, behind which some terrorists were attempting to fire back and stop them. But nothing can stop the mighty SS, Richter thought.

  The door opened to the limousine hidden safely behind a wall which was still standing. Grunwald came running out and rapidly crossed the twenty yards separating he and Major Richter.

  “Sir!” Grunwald said. “You’re wanted on the radio!”

  Richter turned and marched back to the limousine. He dropped into the front seat and picked up the microphone. “Major Richter speaking,” he said.

  “This is Colonel Spengle,” said a voice coming from the dashboard. “Where are you Richter?”