Lukas got the directions—it was another two kilometers of walking, but that meant next to nothing to him. When he started toward the bridge over the River Spree, his step was lighter than it had been in a hundred miles.
NORTH BANK OF THE WARTA RIVER, POLAND, 1322 HOURS GMT
“You are Colonel Alexis Petrovich Krigoff?”
Krigoff examined the speaker, one of four men in black trench coats and clean, dark fedoras. They were from the NKVD, he knew at once, and—like any sensible Russian—he felt a tremor of nervousness in his belly as he made the identification. But he forced himself to remain outwardly calm, reassuring himself that they couldn’t possibly be after him.
“I am Krigoff,” he replied. He gestured with the sheaf of communiqués in his hand, the parcel that he had been carrying over to the army headquarters truck. “I am busy with important matters of army intelligence—what do you want?”
He was pleased to see the man’s look of apology; the colonel had guessed right, and in fact these secret policemen obviously did not want to antagonize him.
“Forgive the interruption, Comrade Colonel. I was told to seek you out, to have you accompany us on our mission. We were hoping that you could take us to General Yeremko.”
“Of course. I understand that the work of the state is more important than all other functions. It so happens that we may find the general at my intended destination in any event.”
He led the four agents of across the muddy field. All of the headquarters encampments were like this, these days—the army was moving forward so fast that even the generals often slept in the backs of the trucks. Having fractured the initial German defensive line, they were rushing through Poland, drawing near to the prewar border with Germany. Only one more geographic obstacle, the Oder River, lay between the Red Army and Berlin.
The spokesman for the NKVD officers fell into stride beside Krigoff. Like all such, he looked dour and humorless, and Alyosha forced his own face to match that expression. Inside, however, he wanted to do handsprings. His note to the chairman had apparently provoked a very quick response, and he was delighted that he would be able to see this matter carried through to its conclusion.
“General Yeremko?” he called, knocking at the door of the large trailer that served as the office of the intelligence chief.
“Ah, Alexis Petrovich—come in,” said Yeremko cheerfully. The old man had some color in his cheeks again, and in fact looked better than he had in days. “That was a nice bit of analysis you did … .” His voice trailed off when he saw the agents follow his subordinate through the door.
“These men are here to see you,” Krigoff said, dispassionately. In point of fact, it occurred to him that he might have actually liked Yeremko, under other circumstances. Now, in wartime, with the responsibilities of national welfare on his shoulders, this was a luxury he could not allow himself to indulge.
“General Yeremko,” said the NKVD spokesman, stepping forward. “We have instructions to escort you back to Moscow. Your hard work is being rewarded, and you shall have the chance to get some much-needed rest.”
Yeremko was looking not at the speaker, but at Alyosha. The old man’s eyes had the same expression Krigoff, when he had been a boy, had seen in the eyes of a puppy. The mongrel had come to him, once too often, to beg for food. Alyosha had kicked the dog away, and had gotten this same look in return. He winced; it was not a pleasant memory, and it angered him that this pathetic and incompetent old fool would bring it up at a time like this—a time that would be celebrated as Krigoff’s own, personal triumph.
“Can I have a moment to collect my things?” asked the general sadly.
The NKVD agent shook his head. “I am sure that your replacement will have them sent along in good order,” he said stiffly. “If that should prove necessary.”
Yeremko’s shoulders slumped, but he nodded in understanding and reached for his jacket and fur hat. As he pulled them on the bulky garments somehow made him seem even smaller.
“May I ask—who is to replace me as head of the intelligence section?”
“Yes,” echoed Krigoff. “Who is the new chief?”
The agent pulled a paper out of his pocket and handed it to Alyosha. “Comrade Colonel, these are the instructions of no less than the chairman himself. You are to assume your new post, at once.”
Only when Yeremko was led away, flanked on both sides by the four agents, did Krigoff allow himself that thin smile. This was a great victory, he knew, even though it meant much more work for him, greater responsibilities. He could get to those tasks in short order.
Then he would find Paulina, and tell her. He was already planning a small celebration.
15 FEBRUARY 1945
ARMEEGRUPPE H HEADQUARTERS, OUTSKIRTS OF FRANKFURT AM MAIN, GERMANY, 2236 HOURS GMT
The Douglas C-47 Dakota transport had been hastily painted with the new colors and insignia of the German Republican Army; for the sake of convenience, these had temporarily been established as the prewar Weimar standards. On a night mission like this, insignia hardly mattered. The plane was flying without lights in an overcast sky—the classic case of the black cat in the coal cellar at midnight.
Not much was left of the Luftwaffe in the old Armeegruppe B area of operation (minus Sixth Panzer Army, of course), and the Americans had eagerly “borrowed” most of the surviving Me-262 jet fighters to start the process of reverse engineering. In exchange, however, Rommel was able to count on American air support—a luxury that only those who had been on the receiving end of air superiority could appreciate fully—and even had a few American planes transferred into his army.
The transport pilot was an American captain seconded to the Germans, and the German operational commander rode in the copilot’s seat. He could fly, but hadn’t received more than a quick checkout in the C-47. He could spot, however.
“There!” The German commander pointed. Although the German spoke only a few words of English and vice versa, that was enough for this mission. Two parallel lines of lights pointed the way to their temporary runway.
The C-47 landed bumpily on the grassy field between lines of burning flares, cutting its twin engines as soon as it touched down, and rolled to a stop. Shadowy figures ran toward the plane, local partisans drafted for this special operation. The rear door swung open, and a line of black-clad commandos exited. Their faces were painted black; black knit hats were pulled over their hair.
The ground leader, a German man in civilian clothes, spoke rapidly. “We have two trucks waiting for you.”
“Good,” replied the erstwile copilot and team leader, also in German. “Drivers?”
“Wehrmacht uniforms, also ready.”
“Good. We have less than half an hour to reach the headquarters compound.”
“That should not be a problem. The traffic is virtually nonexistent.”
“Let’s go.”
The commandos and several of the escorts moved off into the nearby woods separating the field from the road where the trucks were waiting. Their engines cranked as the men approached. The remaining partisans stayed behind. On a signal that the trucks had pulled away safely, the C-47 pilot started his engines again, swiveled the plane around, and started his takeoff taxi. Much lighter with the load delivered, the Dakota lifted quickly off the ground and started its return flight.
There was little need for conversation as the trucks rumbled toward the Armeegruppe H headquarters, an older military compound that dated back to World War I. The mission commander reviewed his maps as much to deal with pre-mission jitters as with any actual uncertainty about his plan. Large sections of the compound had been softened up by bomber raids over the past year, and it was relatively easy to sneak into broken sections of the fence in spite of guard patrols.
The mission commander divided his team into pairs. Each had a name and a location. Silently, they moved off. The commander and his partner had two names on their list. The first, an SS-Brigadeführer, had a house on Generals�
�� Row. There was only a single sentry so far behind the lines, and he was removed easily. Then into the house, up stairs that creaked—not loudly enough to wake a sound sleeper, but agonizingly loud for the people climbing the stairs—and to the master bedroom. And then came an end to subtlety: one hard kick and the door flew open. A sleepy brigadeführer and his mistress woke, startled and disoriented.
The commandos had orders to capture, not kill, if possible, and so while the commander held his Schmeisser at the ready, his partner took cuffs from a black satchel and locked the brigadeführer to the bed stanchion. A rough gag shoved into his mouth stopped the sputtering, confused protests.
The terrified mistress, however, had not been anticipated. “We’re not going to hurt you,” the mission commander said, but who would believe an armed man in black bursting into one’s bedroom? He stifled her scream with his gloved hand, but she bit him, hard, and struggled to escape. It took both commandos to subdue her, to tie her to the other side of the bed and gag her. She glared at them with murder in her eyes.
“Maybe she should be the SS officer, hein?” the mission commander said to the immobilized brigadeführer, who had just now woken up enough to sputter helplessly through his gag. “Good fighter, that one.” He saluted the imprisoned woman. “Someone will be along in a few hours,” he said, and the two men headed for their next destination, further along Generals’ Row.
The second sentry posed no more problems than the first, but instead of quietly opening the door, the mission commander knocked once, paused, then three more times. With that, the door opened, and a Wehrmacht officer wearing colonel-general insignia came out.
“Herr Generaloberst!” said the mission commander, coming to attention and saluting.
“Welcome to Armeegruppe H headquarters. Have all my troublesome officers been immobilized?”
“In progress now. We’re here to protect you.”
“Damn straight. I don’t fancy ending up like Heinz Guderian.” Generaloberst Karl Student grinned in the darkness. “I guess this means it’s official—Armeegruppe H has just joined the German Republican Army.” He reached out his hand.
“Welcome to the winning team, General,” said the mission commander, shaking it.
17 FEBRUARY 1945
NINETEENTH ARMORED DIVISION, WEST OF WEIMAR, GERMANY, 0612 HOURS GMT
“This is General Custer calling for Major Reno. Do you read?”
Ballard winced at the code names he and Smiggy were using for the day. They had seemed kind of amusing at first, but the present was turning out to be just a little too close to the past for his comfort. The connection was undeniably apt, however, for if any U.S. Army unit was venturing into the equivalent of Indian country right now, it was the Nineteenth Armored.
How long had it been since they’d had a good, American presence on their left flank? More than two weeks, by Ballard’s reckoning. And during that time they had done nothing but race onward, as fast as they possibly could. Once again, good old Nineteenth Armored was forming the vanguard of Third Army. That army was spreading out across the country, liberating towns in Germany even more quickly than they had in France. Ballard knew that the US Seventh Army and the French First Army had crossed the Rhine south of them, and these forces were moving strongly through the Black Forest, driving on Nuremberg and Munich. Hodges’ First Army, too, had crossed the great river barrier, and was moving into north Germany, though its front remained a hundred miles or more behind Third Army’s. Farther to the north the Nazis had kept control of their armed forces, and were making a staunch defense of the Ruhr Valley and the north German plain against British and Canadian forces.
Of course, there were good, solid German units on Ballard’s left flank, most notably Rommel’s favored Panzer Lehr. Just a month ago Ballard’s men had been engaged in a knock-down, drag-out battle with that same unit, and now they were protecting each other from the rogue units of SS and loyalist Wehrmacht that still made the German countryside a dangerous place.
As if to underscore his thoughts, Ballard heard a crackling chatter of machine-gun fire in the distance, underscored by the crump of several tank or antitank guns. At least one of them was a deadly 88, the colonel could tell by the sharp crack of sound.
“General Custer—this is Major Reno!” the radio chattered into life.
“This is Custer—go ahead,” snapped Ballard anxiously.
“We have a strong defensive position in front of us,” Smiggy reported. “One 88 with a commanding view of the road and the fields—no good cover, and I have a report of tanks moving around my left. Can you get some guns on the bastards?”
“I’ll patch you through to Crazy Horse,” Ballard responded, using the code name for Major Diaz and the artillery battalion. “They’re not far back—if you can give him some coordinates, he should be able to help you out.”
Meanwhile, the Sherman tanks of CCA were breaking off of the road in near-instinctive reaction, pushing through a copse of light woods that provided little serious obstacle to the churning M4s. Ballard sat in the turret of his command tank and, for the time being, simply watched. These were veterans, these men of the Nineteenth Armored, and they knew what to do and how to do it.
For the first phase of the fight, they gave ground—stubbornly—and allowed the Germans to reveal their strength and dispositions. The American tanks fired rapidly, high explosive shells exploding in the woods. The Germans played it cautiously, firing from concealment, but pressing forward with enough armor to convince Ballard that he was facing his first major enemy formation since the Rhine crossing. One of the Shermans exploded in an orange billow of fire, and several more kicked into reverse, rolling backward through the trampled saplings, firing as they retreated.
At the same time the tanks of his second company were moving quickly. He saw them disappear into a little draw, driving over the lip of the embankment and dropping out of sight one after the other, and he knew that they had discovered some sort of road—or even a forest cart path; the nimble tanks didn’t need much of an avenue to make headway—leading around the enemy flank. The tanks of Company A retreated only far enough to conceal their hulls behind the raised roadway, and from here they blazed away furiously. Now the tankers were loading armor-piercing rounds, and at least one scored a direct hit on a panzer pushing through the ravaged woods.
Moments later, artillery shells screamed overhead and plunged into the lightly forested terrain, sending rippling shock waves through the air and great bursts of fire, smoke, dirt, and splintered timber showering through the air. Ballard could sense the hesitation in the German tanks, which couldn’t have numbered more than an understrength company. Still, it was a little startling to encounter even this much of an enemy force, after the days of open-field running that had brought them already halfway to Berlin.
But now the momentum of the attack was clearly broken. At least two more panzers were burning, struck by some combination of Sherman antitank rounds or lucky artillery strikes. His infantry, firing with small arms and a few .50-caliber machine guns, had forced the German troops to ground. Everywhere the enemy was seeking shelter, the men more concerned with saving their own lives than pressing home the offensive against the American veterans.
It was time for the coup de grâce.
“This is General Custer, for Wild Bill—come in, Wild Bill.”
“This is Wild Bill, General. What do you want me to do?” Captain Kelly, of his infantry company, asked the question in his Boston twang.
“Time to take the action home—can you get your boys up and moving?”
“Roger, General Custer—we’ll be at them in a minute.”
“Sitting Bull, this is Custer. Are you in position?” Next he got in touch with the captain in charge of Armor Company B, and learned that the Shermans that had vanished into the woods had moved far past the German armor, and were ready to smash the enemy in the rear.
“All right, Sitting Bull, Wild Bill, let’s get this wagon train on the roa
d!”
The counterattack unfolded in textbook fashion. The German tanks were using a low ridge as cover but a half-dozen speedy Shermans burst from the woods directly behind them, coming up on the panzers and knocking out two of them with the first volley of shots. The others quickly withdrew, driving wildly along the crest of the ridge, then skidding down into a ravine on the far side. The whole platoon was composed of obsolete Mark IIIs, a sign of just how far down into the barrel these Nazi bastards were scraping.
Only that 88 was providing a serious threat, and Ballard had his driver move forward so that he could get a look as his infantry crawled forward down a long, deep ditch, looking to take the antitank gun in the flank. The GIs moved quickly but carefully, and he was pleased to see that they were avoiding casualties even as they drew ever closer to the gun, which was dug in behind the stone wall of a small farmyard.
Even so, Ballard was surprised by how quickly the shooting stopped; he expected that it would take another fifteen minutes before his men could have brought the defensive position under direct fire. But he saw Germans coming forward with their hands up, and his own men advancing to take them prisoner. Their morale must have been even lower than he had thought.
He was even more surprised when the radio again chattered, Smiggy sounding quite surprised, although quite pleased as well. He even forgot to employ the code.
“Colonel, you won’t believe this, but the sons of bitches are surrendering! We have a hundred prisoners already, and more of them are coming out of the woods with their hands up!”
“More than a hundred?” Ballard said, surprised in his own right. “Are we bagging a whole battalion?”
Fox at the Front (Fox on the Rhine) Page 32