The Front (Book 3): Berlin or Bust

by DiLouie, Craig

  A pistol banged. The draugr shrugged, its head remaining tilted at an obscene angle to thud against its shoulder while it walked.

  Muller looked around for the source of help. He hadn’t fired. Then he did.

  The bullet pinged off the creature’s helmet. The head flopped back before returning, seeming to dance on the thing’s shoulders as it lurched toward him. The grin stretched on its dead face until it become impossibly wide.

  Another flash and bang in the dark. The draugr toppled into the snow and lay still.

  Muller fell to his knees panting.

  Leutnant Reiser holstered his smoking pistol. “Los, los, you idiot. We are wasting time here.”

  Muller pulled himself to his feet and followed the lieutenant into the darkness.

  He’d dropped into hell.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  DISORIENTED

  Gefreiter Steiner struck the ground and rolled to a dazed stop. His parachute floated away across the snow like a startled ghost. Somehow, he’d undone all four clips on his harness and shrugged it off along with his Mae West.

  He sat up and surveyed his surroundings. Deep snow barely illuminated by starlight and the waning moon. A line of trees, probably a hedgerow. The black silhouette of a distant farmhouse, which he intended to avoid as if it were Dracula’s castle. Several kilometers away, the wreck of a downed C-53 blazed energetically, having taken God knew how many German souls with it.

  On an ideal drop, the planes would fly as close together as possible at low altitude over a visible target. That was the best way to drop paratroopers in a very tight dispersion. It also wasn’t what happened. The German interceptors had wreaked havoc on the American transports, scattering the sticks.

  The skies were quiet now. And he was lost.

  You aren’t lost, he thought. You’re closer to home than you’ve been in eighteen months.

  He was quite a ways from Meissen, his hometown on the Elba River, near Dresden. Still, this drop felt like a homecoming, even if he returned as an invader.

  Liberator, he told himself. It was all a matter of perspective.

  God, he missed the old war. His side had been losing, but at least things were simple.

  Weapons banged around him with yellow light bursts, mostly Lugers. Two men shouted at each other before the wind swept their voices away and delivered a blood-curdling scream from somewhere else.

  Steiner jumped to his feet fumbling for his own Luger and found the .45 pistol he’d received in trade. An excellent trade, actually; it was a solid handgun. Their tanks couldn’t stand up to the Tigers and Panthers, but otherwise the damned Amis had the best of everything and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of it.

  Gone was his fleeting death wish born of shame from serving a regime that created the monstrous super soldiers. He’d challenged the Americans to punish him, but he hadn’t thought they’d actually kill him. He’d figured they’d rough him up a bit and scratch his shame’s itch. Now he had zero wish to die, especially by being chomped on by carnivorous corpses.

  Another pair of Lugers popped in the dark. The flashes oriented him. The strong wind hadn’t taken him as far afield as he’d thought. If he was right, First Squad and some of his own squad was just on the other side of the hedgerow, along with a weapon container for the platoon.

  Right now, for him, happiness was a machine-gun. He felt naked without it. The MG42 was one of the most brutal infantry weapons of the war, and he had one of his very own. Weighing only twelve kilos, the bipod-mounted medium gun blasted anything in front of it with up to 1,500 rounds per minute.

  Though it was rugged and able to function in dust and mud, so many were lost that they were hard to get these days. Many squads made do with the lighter MG34, which had a tendency to jam. Steiner jealously guarded his MG42 and took care of it as if his life depended on it, which it did. He longed to get his hands on it again and hoped Weber and Braun, his assistant gunners, had survived the drop.

  Time to move before this scheisse sandwich got any worse. Damn this jumping at night. It was hard enough to organize after a jump in daylight.

  Steiner crept to the hedgerow with his .45 held out in front of him, ready to punch a hole in anything that moved. The hedge was thicker than it had looked in the dying moonlight. He flailed through the branches, growling at real and imagined terrors, and spotted a group of figures moving around a weapons container downed in the middle of a field. They froze and looked his way, some appearing to have weapons raised.

  Steiner let out a bird call.

  One of the figures said, “Halt, wer da?” Stop, who goes there?

  “Are you real?” Steiner called out.

  “Get your ass over here, Otto,” Animal said.

  He hurried across the field, grunting at the effort of trudging across a thick blanket of snow. “Give me my goddamn MG.”

  He spotted Oberfeldwebel Wolff, Schneider, Weber, Beck, Braun, Engel, and two shooters from First Squad.

  “Have you seen the leutnant?” Wolff asked him as he approached.

  “Nein.” Steiner smiled as he hoisted his beloved MG. “When I do a bird call, you’re supposed to answer.”

  “You bring a friend?”

  The men raised their weapons again as another figure thrashed through the hedgerow and walked up to them.

  “Friend,” the thing rasped.

  Animal torched it with a burst from his flamethrower. The creature kept on advancing without breaking its stride. Then it pitched forward into the snow with a high-pitched squeal that went on for an unnerving amount of time.

  “Scheisse,” Beck said. “Scheisse, scheisse, scheisse.”

  “Gefreiter Schneider,” said Wolff, “conserve your fuel. Your weapon is our last resort.”

  “Verstanden, Herr Oberfeldwebel.” Understood, Master Sergeant.

  The sergeant said, “We’re kilometers from the drop zone. We can’t wait for the others. We have to get to the assembly point.”

  The paratroopers continued to load up on as much ammo as they could carry, mostly linked ammo belts for the MG42. Weber hauled out the skis and poles, which would get them through the snow much faster until they reached the city.

  Wolff checked his compass and pointed. “Berlin, east. We’ll go in that direction and keep looking for landmarks. If we run into Spandau, we know we have to head south. If we run into the Havel, we wait for the rest of the regiment. Is that clear, Fallschirmjäger?”

  “Clear, Herr Oberfeldwebel,” they murmured.

  “Contact!” Beck raised his bolt-action rifle and fired a round, which triggered the entire squad to shoot wildly into the dark.

  “Cease fire!” Wolff roared. “Is the target down?”

  “Fucking idiots!” a voice yelled from the darkness.

  “Oh,” Steiner said. “That’s Schulte.”

  The sniper walked toward them dusting snow from his sleeves. “I’m glad your aim is no better than your judgment, Wolfgang.”

  “His judgment ain’t bad,” Animal said. “You have to know by now we’re all dying to shoot you, Erich.”

  Schulte retrieved his scoped K98 rifle and loaded a clip of five cartridges into the internal magazine. “I’m in the company of true heroes.”

  Oberfeldwebel Wolff shook his head. “Let’s go then, heroes.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ASSEMBLY

  Oberfeldwebel Wolff led his men on an eastward ski trek until the sun began to burn off night’s edge.

  “Halt,” a voice called from a line of trees ahead.

  “Second Platoon,” Wolff called out.

  “Come in.”

  He looked back at his squad, who leaned panting on their poles by the twisted bodies of two dead draugr. “This should be the assembly area.”

  The men nodded, no doubt thinking about brewing up hot American coffee. Animal dragged the tied-up rafts behind him in the snow.

  A makeshift camp occupied the assembly area along the banks of the Havel River. Fallschirmjä
ger heated rations and boiled water on their Esbit stoves. Dropped on gliders, motorcycles with sidecars zipped in an out of the camp, ferrying wounded to the aid station. Despite the difficulties of the landing, the men seemed to be in good spirits. They again stood on German soil.

  Wolff assigned his men to a patch of ground under a copse of trees and roamed the camp searching for Leutnant Reiser and Jäger Muller.

  Instead, he discovered Eagle Company’s headquarters, where Hauptfeldwebel Vogel, Hauptmann Werner’s staff sergeant, was ordering his men to dig in.

  “Herr Hauptfeldwebel,” he hailed.

  The grizzled sergeant major smiled. “Jurgen. How goes it?”

  “My squad is accounted for except for one. Leutnant Reiser is also missing.”

  “We’re missing over eighty men,” Vogel said. “Which isn’t too bad considering a night jump and losses in the air. Any of your men wounded?”

  “Nein, Herr Hauptfeldwebel.”

  “That is good. We suffered fifteen percent casualties just from the jump. Twisted ankles and ghouls. Get your men some hot food and a little rest. We’re moving out in an hour to stay on schedule.”

  “Verstanden.”

  “The river’s frozen over, so we’ll be leaving the rafts.”

  “Good. That’ll help us make up some lost time as well.”

  Vogel didn’t answer, distracted by a messenger. Wolff saluted and watched the men dig in while medics treated the drop casualties. He returned to his squad shaking his head. The Fallschirmjäger were elite troops, suicidally brave and good at killing, but they were fighting a new war with old doctrine. Vogel had ordered his men to dig in because that’s what you did. The draugr, however, weren’t about to come at them shooting, making it a waste of energy.

  He found his men huddled around their stoves, boiling coffee. Wolff sat on a log and produced a box labeled, US ARMY FIELD RATION K, BREAKFAST.

  Chopped ham and eggs in a can, biscuits, malted milk tablets, dried fruit bar, Wrigley’s gum, toilet paper, and Halazone water purification tablets. He devoured the food, grateful for the calories, and pocketed the rest. Then he drank his coffee.

  Steiner held up his pack of Wrigley’s to inspect in the early light. “They’re trying to turn us into gum-chewing Amis.”

  Weber laughed. “It is the source of their kampfgeist.” Fighting spirit.

  Wolff thought that wasn’t far from the truth. The gum aided digestion, gave the soldier sugar, and released tension. Good rations won wars. In the German ranks, a deteriorating diet had led to scurvy, dysentery, even typhus.

  “Ugh,” said Steiner. “Cinnamon flavor.”

  Beck held out his pack. “What flavor is this? I will trade you.”

  “Wintergreen. Sure, I’ll trade.”

  Gunshots echoed across the snow at random intervals, though nobody seemed to care. Wolff did. It gave him an idea.

  “Squad, gather weapons and follow me,” he said.

  He led them onto the snowy field past the pickets and raised his binoculars. Attracted by the gunfire, draugr lurched across the snow toward him. Two more poor souls from the Reserve Army, wearing steel helmets and field-gray greatcoats.

  “Everything you know is wrong,” he told his men. “Consider yourselves raw recruits again.”

  “What do you mean, Herr Oberfeldwebel?” Beck asked him.

  “Suppressing fire means nothing against these ghouls. Covering fire. Cover itself. Even concealment, unless you’re actually hiding from them.”

  The men had learned fire and maneuver as the two pillars of light infantry tactics. Lay down as much lead as you could to establish fire superiority and suppress, and then flank on one or both sides to destroy the enemy.

  None of that mattered to the draugr.

  Wolff said, “You keep fighting like the war is still going on. You have to unlearn everything and start fresh. Watch.”

  He lay prone on the ground and extended his FG42’s bipod from the barrel collar to give him a firing platform. He loved the automatic weapon, which had been designed specifically for paratrooper use. It delivered the size and weight of a standard infantry rifle but with the firepower of a light machine-gun. Normally, he selected automatic fire to punch the enemy with short, lethal bursts. From now on, he’d favor single shot, as the enemy had changed.

  As the ghouls grew near, they let out a moan. Of joy or despair, he didn’t know. Probably both for these creatures that embodied schadenfreude. He took hold of the angled pistol grip and nestled the ribbed buttstock against his shoulder. Then he aimed at one of the ghouls using iron sights.

  He exhaled and squeezed the trigger. The first draugr pitched back and toppled. The second quickened its pace, growling now with arms swinging as it dragged its mangled leg behind it.

  “I almost feel sorry for the poor bastards,” Beck said.

  “You should,” Wolff said. “Enough pity to kill them. It’s an act of mercy. See how he hurries so I can stop his suffering. So he can finally rest in peace.”

  He fired again and heard the slug punch through the thing’s helmet with a metallic sound, as if it had been struck by a hammer.

  The ghoul fell on its face and lay still.

  Wolff stood patting his rifle. “Take your time. Aim carefully, firing prone when you can from a distance and with somebody watching your back. Conserve ammunition. Stay close together, covering 360 degrees around you.”

  He imagined the ideal formation in a pitched battle against the draugr would be something like a Napoleonic square, as long as it was mobile, had more ammunition than there were ghouls, and had an egress path in case they needed it.

  “Now then,” Wolff said, “who wants to be next?”

  Everybody did. Over the next hour, the men lay in the snow and slew draugr. At first, the paratroopers hesitated at shooting unarmed men, especially Germans. Schulte balked at shooting a civilian woman who capered at them across the snow. It had to be done, and they all had to do it, as it was first and foremost an act of mercy. Every kill rewired their tactical instincts and renewed their confidence. They were taking heart. They could do this. It might not even be that difficult.

  Wolff knew better. When they reached the city itself with its buildings crowding all around, the balance of power would shift to the infected.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  TIERGARTEN

  The sun was coming up as the C-53 howled over Berlin’s red rooftops. Heavy with eighty pounds of gear, Sergeant Wilkins shambled to the door.

  The light turned green.

  Wilkins grunted as he bent his knees, but he was too heavy to jump. His gear snagged in the doorway, holding him fast.

  He’d seen men towed by a plane in the air, battered beyond recognition until his comrades pulled him back inside. “Wait!”

  Lieutenant Chapman shoved him into the wind. “Tally ho, Wilkie!”

  His canteen, bayonet, and God knew what else ripped away as he tumbled forward. He remembered to twist in the air as he plummeted toward the earth like a three-hundred-pound bomb.

  The parachute deployed with a crack. Slammed by the jerk, he swayed under the canopy. His general-purpose bag dangled below him like a ball and chain.

  Wilkins worked his shroud lines to steer into the wind. Then he set his eyes on the ground, looking for his landing point. The Brandenburg Gate loomed to the east. The landmark oriented him.

  The pilots had done their work well. He wouldn’t be coming down a chimney like old St. Nick. Right now, his biggest worry was trees.

  Which were everywhere in the vast city park.

  The ground rushed up at him perilously fast. He spotted one of the amber lights the pathfinders had placed to mark the drop zone. Brace for impact!

  The bag struck first, followed by the rest of him in a practiced roll.

  The ground broke under him, following by an electrifying shock.

  He’d landed on a frozen pond. The fall had broken the ice. Freezing water covered his back and soaked into his ruc
ksack, making it heavier. He struggled and floundered as he tried to gain purchase.

  Another para hurtled out of the sky and struck the ice, going straight through.

  “Bloody hell!” Wilkins screamed.

  The ground appeared to swallow the paratrooper, leaving only the parachute canopy. Then the hole sucked that down too.

  The ice around Wilkins crackled. He stopped moving. The freezing water burned his numbing back. That Yank paratrooper song grated through his mind, repeating the line, “Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die!”

  “Hello?” he gasped. “Help!”

  The rest of the team was landing, thankfully on solid ground.

  “Hang on!”

  The voice belonged to Davies, who’d shed his parachute and rucksack and now crawled toward him on all fours.

  “Can you take hold of my rifle, Sergeant?”

  “A tad closer, if you please, Corporal,” said Wilkins, who’d had five years of maintaining a stiff upper lip drilled into him.

  He grabbed the rifle. Davies heaved.

  Wilkins rolled out of the hole. The corporal dragged him far enough for comfort and helped him shuck his waterlogged ’chute and pack.

  The other paratroopers gathered around.

  The lieutenant grinned at him. “Close shave, eh, Wilkie?”

  “We lost a man in the ice.” Wilkins’ teeth chattered as he surveyed the team. “Brown, sir. He’s gone.”

  The grin evaporated. “Damn. Well, let’s not lose you too. Dry off.”

  The sergeant stripped to the waist, dried himself, and put on fresh thermals. The rest he wrung out as best he could and put back on. The men rubbed his back to get his blood flowing. Pins and needles followed by fire.

  “Any sign of the Pathfinders, Lieutenant?”

  “No,” Chapman said. “They laid down their beacons and lights as instructed, but there’s otherwise no sign of them. No sign of a struggle. Not even footprints.”

  “It’s eerie, sir,” Davies said.

  Wilkins chafed at the attention he was getting. He hated anybody babying him except Jocelyn. He shrugged off their hands. “I’m good to go anytime, sir.”