Interesting wasn’t the word Jäger would have used, but it would do. The trouble was, the Lizard panzers were not only better armed and armored than the ones the Wehrmacht had, they were faster, too. General Guderian hadn’t been joking when he said a panzer’s engine was as important a weapon as its gun.
A Tiger maybe half a kilometer off to the north of Jäger took a hit just as it was about to reach the cover of pine woods. It brewed up spectacularly, with a smoke ring going out through the cupola as if the devil were enjoying a cigar, and then with the ammunition cooking off in a display of orange and red fireworks. Some of the smoke that boiled out of it came from the burning flesh of its five crewmen.
Grillparzer got a decent shot at one of the Lizard panzers, but its armor held the round out of the fighting compartment. A trail of fire appeared from out of a snowdrift, with no Lizard panzers nearby: the Lizard infantry had come up. The rocket hit a Panzer IV in the engine compartment, which burst into flames. Hatches popped open. Men ran for the trees. A couple of them made it. Machine-gun fire cut down the rest.
Voices were screaming in Jäger’s earphones: “They’re flanking us, Herr Oberst!” “Two enemy panzers have broken through. If they get in our rear, we’re done for.” “Can you call for reinforcements, sir?”
If you were commanding a battle group, you didn’t have much hope of calling for reinforcements: battle groups got formed from the scrapings at the bottom of the barrel. Jäger’s men were right—if the Lizards got behind them, they were in big trouble. That made the requisite order easy, no matter how distasteful it was.
“Retreat,” Jäger said on the all-panzers circuit “We’ll fall back to the first line of defenses around Breslau.”
Three belts of fortifications ringed the city on the Oder. If they were penetrated, Breslau itself could hold for a long time, perhaps even in the way Chicago was holding in the United States. Though Jäger had distant relatives on the other side of the Atlantic, nothing he’d seen in the First World War or heard in this one till the Lizards came left him thinking much of Americans as soldiers. Chicago made him wonder if he’d been wrong.
But Chicago was far away. Breslau was close, and getting closer all the time as the driver retreated westward. The town had lots of bridges. If you managed to blow them all, Jäger thought, the Lizards would have a rough time crossing the Oder. When that occurred to him, he realized he didn’t really believe the Wehrmacht could make a stand at Breslau. But if they couldn’t hold the Lizards there, where could they?
“So you see, General Groves—” Jens Larssen began.
Before he could go on, Groves was glaring at him again, like a fat old bulldog getting ready to growl at a stranger across the street. “What I see, Professor, is somebody who won’t listen when I tell him no,” he said. “We aren’t packing up and moving to Hanford, and that’s all there is to it. I’m sick of your whining. Soldier, shut up and soldier. Do you understand me?”
“Oh, I understand you, all right, you—” Larssen clamped his jaw down hard on the scarlet rage that welled up in his mind. You goddamn pigheaded son of a bitch. He got more creative from there. He’d never seen an atomic bomb go off, but the explosion inside his head felt like one.
“They aren’t paying you to love me,” Groves said. “They’re paying you to do what I tell you. Get on back to work.” The boss of the Metallurgical Laboratory crew held up a hand. “No, take the rest of the day off. Go back to your quarters and think it over. Come tomorrow morning, I expect you to throw everything you have into this project You got it?”
“I’ve got it,” Jens said through clenched teeth.
He left the office and went downstairs. He’d leaned the Springfield he always carried against the wall down there. Now he slung it back over his shoulder. Oscar the guard said, “You don’t really need to tote that thing, sir. Not like you’re in the Army.” His companion, a jug-eared yahoo named Pete, laughed. His big, pointy Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.
Jens didn’t answer. He went out to the row of parked bicycles, lifted the kickstand to his with the side of his shoe, and started to head off north on the road back to Lowry Field, as Groves had ordered.
Oscar’s voice pursued him: “Where are you going, sir? The piles are that way.” He pointed down toward the athletic field.
The piles are on your miserable, snooping ass. With no tone at all in his voice, Larssen said, “General Groves wants me to take the day off and think about things in my quarters, so I’m not going back to the piles.”
“Oh. Okay.” But instead of letting it go at that, Oscar spoke quietly to Pete for a moment, then said, “I guess I’ll come with you then, sir, make sure you get there all right.”
Make sure you do what you’re told. Oscar didn’t trust him. Nobody here trusted him. Between the Met Lab and Colonel Hexham, they’d all got together to screw up his life eight ways from Sunday, and now they didn’t trust him. Wasn’t that a hell of a thing? “Do whatever you damn well please,” Larssen said, and started pedaling.
Sure as shit, Oscar climbed aboard his own bicycle and rolled after him. Up University Boulevard to Alameda, then east on Alameda to the air base and the delightful confines of BOQ. Jens didn’t think much of the place as somewhere to do any serious contemplating, but he’d take the day off and see what sprang from it. Maybe he’d be able to look at things differently afterwards.
The day was cold but clear. Jens’ long winter shadow raced along beside him, undulating over snowdrifts by the side of the road. Oscar’s lumpier shadow stayed right with it, just as Oscar clung to Jens like a leech.
For a long while, they had the road to themselves. Oscar knew better than to try any casual conversation. Larssen despised him quite enough when he was keeping his mouth shut.
About halfway between the turn onto Alameda and the entrance to Lowry Field, they met another bicycle rider coming west. The fellow wasn’t making any great speed, just tooling along as if out for a constitutional. Jens’ jaw tightened when he recognized Colonel Hexham.
Hexham, unfortunately, recognized him, too. “You—Larssen—halt!” he called, stopping himself. “What are you doing away from your assigned post?”
Jens thought about ignoring the officious bastard, but figured Oscar wouldn’t let him get away with it. He stopped maybe ten feet in front of Hexham. Oscar positioned himself between the two of them. Oscar was a bastard, but not a dumb bastard. He knew how Jens felt about Colonel Hexham.
“What are you doing away from your post?” Hexham repeated. His voice had a yapping quality, as if he were part lapdog. His face, as always, was set in disapproving lines. He had pouchy, suspicious eyes and a shriveled prune of a mouth with a thin smudge of black mustache above it. His hair was shiny and slick with Wildroot or some other kind of grease; he must have had his own private hoard of the stuff.
Jens said, “General Groves ordered me to take a day off, go back to my quarters and just relax for a bit, then get back to it with a new attitude.” Fat chance, if I have to deal with a slug like you.
“Is that so?” By the mockery Hexham packed into the question, he didn’t believe a word of it. He wasn’t any fonder of Jens than Jens was of him. Turning to Oscar, he said, “Sergeant, is what this man tells me true?”
“Sir, it’s exactly the same thing he told me,” Oscar replied.
Hexham clapped a dramatic hand to his forehead, a gesture he must have stolen from a bad movie. “My God! And you didn’t check it with General Groves yourself?”
“Uh, no, sir.” Oscar’s voice suddenly went toneless. He might have been trying to deny he was there while standing in plain sight, a trick Larssen had seen enlisted men use before.
“We’ll get to the bottom of this,” Colonel Hexham snapped.
‘We’ll all go back to the University of Denver and find out just precisely what—if anything—General Groves told Professor Larssen to do. Come on!” He made as if to start riding again.
“Uh, sir—” Oscar began, and t
hen shut up. A sergeant had no way to tell a colonel he was being a damn fool.
“Come on!” Hexham growled again, this time staring straight at Jens. “We’ll get to the bottom of this malingering, damn me to hell if we don’t. Get moving!”
Jens got moving. At first he seemed to be watching himself from outside. He unslung the Springfield, flipping off the safety as he did so. He always carried a round in the chamber. But as the rifle came up to his shoulder, he was back inside his own head, calculating as abstractly as if he were working on a problem of atomic decay.
Tactics . . . Oscar was the more dangerous foe—not only was he closer to Jens, he was a real fighting man, not a pouter pigeon in a uniform. Jens shot him in the face. Oscar never knew what hit him. He flew off the bike saddle, the back of his head exploding in red ruin.
Jens worked the bolt. The expended cartridge jingled cheerily when it hit the asphalt Colonel Hexham’s eyes and mouth were open as wide as they could be. “Good-bye, Colonel,” Jens said sweetly, and shot him in the head, too.
The clank of the second cartridge on the roadway brought Jens back to himself. He felt exalted, as if he’d just got laid. He even had a hard-on. But two bodies sprawled in spreading pools of blood would take some explaining he couldn’t give, no matter how much both the stinking bastards had it coming.
“Can’t go back to BOQ, not now, nosiree,” Jens said. He often talked to himself when he was alone on the road, and he sure as hell was alone now. He’d made certain—dead certain—of that.
Couldn’t go to BOQ. Couldn’t go back to the pile, either. Okay, what did that leave? For a second, he didn’t think it left anything. But that was just a last bit of reluctance to face what had been in the back of his mind for a long time. Humanity didn’t have any use for him any more. People had been rubbing his nose in that ever since Barbara let him know she’d been spreading her legs for the lousy ballplayer she’d found. They didn’t need him in Denver. They wouldn’t listen to his plans, they’d gone ahead and built a bomb—built a couple of bombs—without him.
Well, to hell with humanity, then. The Lizards would care to hear what he had to tell them. Yes, sir, they sure would (dim memories of Thornton Burgess stories floated up in his mind from childhood). They’d know how to reward him properly for telling them, too. But he wouldn’t be doing it for the reward. Oh, no. Getting his own back was a lot more important.
He carefully put the safety back on, slung the Springfield over his shoulder, and headed east. The sentries at the entrance of Lowry Field just nodded to him as he rolled past. They hadn’t heard the rifle shots. He’d worried a little about that.
A map unrolled in his mind. They’d find the bodies. They’d chase him. If they understood he was heading east toward the Lizards, they’d probably figure he’d go east on US 36. That was the straight route, the route a crazy man who wasn’t hitting on all cylinders would take.
But he wasn’t crazy, not even slightly. Not him. He had US 6 and US 34 north of US 36, and US 24 and US 40 south of it, plus all the little back roads between the highways. Before long, he’d pick one. Somewhere not far from the Colorado-Kansas border, he’d find the Lizards. He bent his back and pedaled harder. It was all downhill from here.
“Yes, sir,” Mutt Daniels said. The way he said it told what he thought of the order. Cautiously, he added, “We been doin’ a lot of retreating lately, ain’t we, sir?”
“So we have.” Captain Szymanski also looked sour about it.
Seeing that, Mutt pushed a little harder: “Seems like we ain’t needed to do most of it, neither, not from the way the fightin’ went beforehand. And this latest, this here, is just a skedaddle, nothin’ else but. Sir.”
His company commander shrugged, as if to say he couldn’t do anything about it no matter what he thought “Major Renfree and I have been screaming to the colonel, and he’s been screaming to the high command. There’s nothing he can do to get the orders changed. From what he says, they came right from the top, from General Marshall himself. You want to call up FDR, Lieutenant?”
“It would take somethin’ like that, wouldn’t it?” Daniels sighed. “Okay, sir, I don’t know what the hell’s going on. I’ll just shut my damnfool mouth and do like I’m told. Anybody’d think I was in the Army or some damn thing like that”
Szymanski laughed. “I’m glad you are in the Army, Mutt You keep everybody around you all nice and loosey-goosey.”
“I’m not glad I’m in the Army, meanin’ no offense to you, sir,” Mutt said. “I done my bit in the last war. Only reason they need old farts like me is on account of the Lizards. Wasn’t for them bastards, I’d be lookin’ ahead to spring training, not tryin’ to figure out how to pull my men back without lookin’ too much like I’m doin’ it.”
“We’ve got to do it,” Captain Szymanski answered. “I don’t know why, but we do. And if that’s not the Army for you, what the devil is?”
“Yes, sir.” If Mutt laid down the bunt sign, the fellow at the plate had to try and bunt, whether he liked Mutt’s strategy or not. Now it was his turn to do something he really hated because the higher-ups thought it was a smart move. They better be right, he thought as he climbed to his feet.
Sergeant Muldoon looked anything but happy when he brought the news from on high. “Jeez, Lieutenant, they’re sandbaggin’ so hard, they could build a wall around these damn Lizards with all the sand,” he said. “We should be kickin’ their ass instead o’ letting them push us around.”
“You know it, I know it, the captain knows it, the colonel knows it, but General Marshall, he don’t know it, and he counts for more’n the rest of us put together,” Daniels answered. “I just wish I was sure he had some kind of notion of what he was up to, that’s all. What’s that they say about ‘Ours is not to wonder why’?”
“The other part of it goes something like, ‘Ours is to let the bastards kill us even when they don’t have a clue,’ ” Herman Muldoon said. He was cynical enough to make a sergeant, all right. And, like any decent sergeant, he knew fighting city hall didn’t pay. “Okay, Lieutenant, how we gonna make this work?”
Mutt let stories from his grandfathers give him the clues he needed to do the job right. He thinned his main line down to what either granddad would have called a line of skirmishers, then to nothing but pickets. To disguise that as best he could, he made sure the pickets had automatic weapons and both the bazooka launchers in the platoon.
To try to hold back Lizard armor, the brass also had a lot of tanks and antitank guns well forward. Mutt didn’t quite follow that: it was as if they wanted the Lizards to go forward, all right, but not too far or too fast. He hoped the big picture made sense, because the little one sure as hell didn’t.
His men had the same feeling. Retreat was hard on an army; you felt as if you were beaten, regardless of whether you really were. The troops didn’t look ready to bug out, but they didn’t act like men with their peckers up, either. If they had to fight and hold ground, he wasn’t sure they could do it.
Not that much of Chicago looked like ground worth holding, anyhow. As far as that went, one stretch of rubble was pretty much like another. Even tanks had a rough time making their way through piles of brick and stone and craters big enough to swallow them whole.
He was taken by surprise when he came upon one stretch of halfway decent road as his unit trudged north. “You can go that way if you want to,” an MP doing traffic control said, “but it makes you easier for the Lizards to spot from the air.”
“Then what the hell did anybody build it for?” Mutt asked. The MP didn’t answer. Odds were, the MP couldn’t answer because he didn’t know. Maybe nobody knew. Maybe the Army had cleared the road just so people walking along it could get killed in carload lots. Mutt was past the stage where anything had to make sense.
Not far from the southern end of the road, he watched a team of soldiers busily repairing a house. They weren’t repairing it to look like new, they were repairing it to look like the
wreckage all around it. It looked as if they’d knocked down the whole side nearest the road. Inside was a wooden crate big enough to make a pretty good Hooverville shack. In a little while, though, you wouldn’t be able to see it because the soldiers would have restored the wall they’d knocked down. By the time they were done, the place would look as ugly as it had before they started.
“Ain’t that a hell of a thing?” Muldoon jerked his thumb at the soldiers. “Are we fighting the Lizards or are we building houses for ’em?”
“Don’t ask me,” Daniels answered. “I gave up a long time ago, tryin’ to figure out what’s goin’ on.”
“They ain’t gonna stay there and try and hold on to that box, are they?” Muldoon asked. The question wasn’t aimed particularly at Mutt, who didn’t have any answers, but at whoever in the world might know. Muldoon spat in the mud. “Sometimes I think everybody’s gone crazy but me, you know?” He gave Daniels a sidelong look. “Me and maybe you, too, Lieutenant. It ain’t like it’s your fault.” From Muldoon, that was a compliment, and Mutt knew it.
He thought about what the sergeant had said. He also thought about the way the brass was running the fight here in Chicago. If they’d just kept at what they were doing, they could have pushed the Lizards back to the South Side, maybe even out of Chicago altogether. Oh, yeah, it would have cost, but Mutt had been through the trenches in the First World War. He knew you had to pay the price if you wanted to gain ground.
But instead, they were pulling back Mutt turned to Muldoon. “You’re right. They must be crazy. It’s the only thing that makes any sense a-tall.” Solemnly, Muldoon nodded.
Heinrich Jäger slammed his fist down on the cupola as his Panther rumbled out of Öels, heading west toward Breslau. He was wearing gloves. Otherwise his skin would have peeled off when it hit the frozen metal of the panzer. He wasn’t crazy—no, not he. About his superiors, he had considerable doubts.
Worldwar: Upsetting the Balance Page 62