Last Citadel wwi-3

by David L. Robbins

  She opened her eyes. No sound or light told her she was alive until one of the U-2’s wire struts broke with a comic sproning. Her head was too heavy to lift. She faced the ground, which jumped with uneasy shadows. Katya turned her throbbing head enough to see a flare on the ground, and the curtain parted, memory pierced her. The U-2 had not been pulverized in the crash but somehow had come to rest standing on its engine like a dart flung into the earth. She was suspended in her harness. Vera was dead in the cockpit behind her. Ah, Vera.

  Leonid’s flare hissed, she tasted its smoke blown at her. Where was he?

  Katya’s chin hung against her chest. The number of her predicaments flooded in on her; riding this awareness came pain. She fumbled with her safety belts but could not muster the strength in either hand to pull the catches. Both shoulders felt wrenched out of joint; her head seemed ready to snap off her body from the ache rising through her neck.

  The flare began to fizzle, its time almost done. Katya sensed the weight of Vera dangling at her back. She tried again to get out of the wreckage, pushing back her pain to work her hands on the buckles.

  In the last sizzles of the flare, a knife appeared beneath her throat.

  The German patrol! They’d come to finish off the Night Witch! No, no, Katya thrashed her head and arms, she kicked her feet in horror, the pain in her body forgotten. No!

  ‘Calm down, calm down,’ a male voice urged. The words were Russian. It was Leonid! ‘Sit still, damn it!’

  The blade withdrew. A strong hand went into Katya’s hair and yanked up her head to see. The face that slid close to hers was dirty and unshaven, yellow teeth flickered in the dying flare.

  ‘I’m going to cut you out of here. Do you understand me?’

  Katya tried to speak but her throat stayed clamped in hurt and the ebb of her terror. She tried to say Vera’s name.

  The face issued an order to someone else. ‘Kick some dirt on that fucking flare, fast!’

  Instantly, the white light went out. The hand that gripped her head by the hair let go. Katya heard a snipping sound, several hands pushed up on her in the cockpit and she was released into them past the shreds of the slashed belts.

  ‘Can you walk?’ The hands lowered her out of the cockpit. They tried to put her on her feet. Her knees buckled. Dark shapes did not let her hit the ground.

  ‘Her,’ she mumbled. ‘Get her.’

  ‘No time,’ the voice answered. ‘You two carry this one. Let’s go.’

  Before she could protest, she was dragged away from her plane. The tops of her flight boots scraped over the ground. The three men smelled of wool, sweat, and grass. The sourness of gun oil rose from their backs, where their carbines were strapped.

  ‘Leonid. Where…?’

  The man hurrying on her left, short and burly under her arm, answered. ‘He ran away before we could find him. We weren’t expecting you to swoop in like that.’

  No, Katya thought. Leonid wouldn’t have done that. He would have run to the plane the moment it crashed, he would have gotten me out of the wreck. He would have gotten Vera out.

  ‘He…’ she forced the words out, to defend Leonid, ‘…wouldn’t run away’

  She felt the partisan’s heavy shoulder shrug under her weight. ‘Then the Germans got him.’

  CHAPTER 8

  July 3

  0120 hours

  Wehrmacht train

  north of Khar’kov,

  near the Ukraine-Russian border

  the Russian steppe

  A knock sounded on Luis’s compartment door. He snapped awake. His sleep was never deep anymore, this frail frame he despised needed only shallow rest.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A message for you from the engineer, sir.’

  Luis pulled his heels off the bench across from him. He stood and arranged his uniform. No trooper would see him in disarray, he was a Waffen SS Captain. His father had always told him the power is in the performance.

  He slid the cabin door all the way back. The soldier seemed surprised, expecting the door to be only cracked at this time in the morning, not to encounter such alertness.

  ‘Give it to me, Private.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Good morning, sir.’

  Luis took the folded sheet without looking down, keeping his eyes glued to the young grenadier’s face. Was there any hint of surprise on the boy at the gaunt white form who’d opened the door? No. Good. Luis nodded and the soldier clicked his heels in attention. Bearing, thought Luis. Bearing. This soldier could snap me in half if he had a mind to, but I can make him jump off this moving train with a word.

  Luis opened the page. The private waited.

  He read the one-line message, then looked the soldier up and down. Strong boy, he thought, big blond lad. But the soldier was not German. The insignia on his collar and sleeve revealed he was Czech. He and Luis had this in common, they were non-Germans serving in the SS. Because of their massive losses, the SS was recruiting outside Germany. Standing here on this rattling train deep in Russia, blond and dark, were two samples of the reach of Hitler’s ambitions.

  Luis patted the boy’s arm.

  ‘Tell the engineer to stop the train.’

  The soldier set his jaw, a love of taking orders was clear. Looking at him, Luis thought: This boy has not been to Russia before. The soldier said, ‘Yes, sir!’ and left. Luis reached back for his cap, nestled it on his head, and walked to the next compartment. He knocked.

  ‘Major Grimm.’

  Behind the door, a sleepy throat snorted and coughed.

  ‘Yes. Yes, who is it?’

  ‘Captain de Vega.’

  ‘Captain. What time is it?’

  ‘Open up, please, Major.’

  ‘Yes. A moment.’

  The major slid back the door only inches, disheveled, the plat of hair he combed over his wispy pate hung below his ear. Luis saw he was barefoot and in his undershirt.

  ‘Do you have a sidearm, Major?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A weapon, sir. Do you have a gun with you?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘Please strap it on and come with me.’

  The fat officer sighed, then nodded, resigned. ‘Give me a…’

  The major started to close the door to dress but Luis gave him a displeased glance, that he would not care to linger outside a shut door, waiting. The major slid the door full open and turned to his task.

  The car jerked to the squealing of brakes, the train slowed and stopped. Under the gasps of steam from the locomotive, the officer donned his pants, tunic, and boots. Out of a travel case he took his Luger pistol and holster and buckled them on. He asked no questions.

  Luis led him down the hall to the passenger car door. He spoke over his shoulder. ‘As ranking officer on this train, I thought I should alert you, Major. I’ve received a radio message that the tracks are broken ahead at the Oktabrskaya station. We cannot get through just yet. I’ve ordered the train to a halt.’

  Luis stepped out of the train onto the rail mound. The major clambered down behind him.

  ‘Why are we stopping out here in the middle of…’

  ‘Shhh, Major. Please.’

  The train stood still, the locomotive continued its heavy metal breath, waiting for the order to continue. On either side of the tracks stretched a field, without trees or bushes. His ears caught nothing, not the rustle of a leaf or the shush of a breeze, so vast was the open land, just a flat earth black with unmown grasses.

  ‘They won’t come here.’

  ‘Who won’t come here?’ the major asked.

  ‘The partisans.’

  ‘Partisans?’

  ‘They’re trying to stop this train, Major.’

  Something in Luis’s flat tone kept the major from further queries. The officer’s bare head pivoted up and down the empty tracks, he seemed suddenly aware he was alone outside the train car with only a skinny SS captain and their two pistols. The notion of partisans was a fearsome one, bearded
wild men in civilian clothes who fought with abandon, with vengeful crudeness and animal cunning. They were natives who knew every inch of the land and had the local populace to abet them. But there’s no danger right here, Luis thought. He’d seen enough ambushes, set a few himself, to know when and where they were likely Not here, without cover to attack and retreat. No, they’re waiting somewhere ahead. There will be trees beside the tracks and they’ll come out of them.

  Luis lifted his nose, sipping the night air, calculating. The major asked, ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘The SS has received reports over the past few days that the Russians would try to bomb the Oktabrskaya train station. This they did tonight, apparently quite well. Blowing up the station was just a delaying tactic, Major, to slow the train in case the first partisan attack fails. While we wait for the tracks to be mended, they’ll have time to organize another ambush.’

  The major fidgeted. ‘Another ambush?’

  ‘Yes. After the one tonight.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  The major was repeating things again, but Luis grew patient now that he knew what was going to happen. The engineer had followed his instructions and alerted him when the train approached Slatino, ten miles south of the Ukraine border with Russia, twenty miles south of Oktabrskaya.

  Luis eased his voice and said, ‘Yes. That’s why I’m here.’

  The officer cocked his head at Luis.

  ‘You may get back on board, Major. I’ll join you shortly.’

  Major Grimm turned on the sooty rocks. He climbed the steps back into the passenger car.

  From the steps he asked, ‘How did you know, Captain de Vega?’

  Luis nodded into the vast darkness of the Russian steppe.

  Yes, he thought, let’s begin, and he harkened back to the huge silence of the plaza when the bull first enters the ring.

  ‘I know, Major, because we have infiltrated the partisans.’

  July 2

  0200 hours

  Luis ate only half of the bratwurst sandwich. He offered the rest of it to the engineer. The man declined, making a face to indicate he was too nervous to eat.

  Luis looked around the locomotive compartment. It was not unlike the innards of a tank with all its dials and handles, everything made of metal and glass, but roomier. He admired the power of the big, pulsing machine to pull the immense weight trailing behind them. With a smile he considered how easily any one of his Tiger tanks straddling these tracks could shoot this locomotive into the ditch. But he did not say this, he was not feeling competitive. The engineer was executing his job well and with discipline, doing what Luis told him to do. The man did not also have to be brave.

  Luis kept watch on the terrain beside the tracks. Major Grimm had wanted to wait until morning to continue but Luis made the decision to keep going the rest of the way under the cloak of night, a trainload of new Tigers would be ripe for a Soviet air attack. Besides, this was his train, his first assignment back on active duty, and it was going to arrive at Oktabrskaya at sunup, as scheduled, even if the station there was in shambles.

  ‘That’s enough,’ he told the engineer. The man worked his levers and cords and the train slowed with a tremendous sigh. When it was stopped, Luis climbed down onto the rails, his Luger in one hand, a flashlight in the other. From one of the troop cars, a soldier climbed down and waited. Luis flashed his light at the soldier once, the soldier flashed back.

  Luis walked ahead. The train panted in stillness behind him. He trod the rail mound leaving the flashlight off, fixing his gaze on the racks; this was the third time in the twenty kilometers since Slatino he’d escorted the train through a passage of trees lining the rails. The scanty body he was trapped in made almost no sound walking the ties, his balance was so good he could stay on a single rail for a hundred meters before stepping off. His night vision was remarkable. He was sharp, like his nickname, cutting through the night.

  The partisans will come with fifty men, he thought. That was the SS intelligence.

  Somewhere close to the Ukraine border. He paused and turned back to the unseen train a half mile behind him now. He blinked his flashlight twice. He knew without seeing that the soldier he’d stationed a quarter mile between himself and the train was signaling with another flashlight for the train to move forward. In response to the signal, Luis heard only a distant heave of steam.

  The phalanx of trees was at least another mile long. The woods appeared to him as a jagged edge of deeper night, like the blackest paper roughly torn and pasted beside the tracks. He walked, head down, considering the partisan plan, filling in the gaps of his knowledge with what he would do in their position. Fifty men with small-arms, on foot, would wait in the trees. They’ll expect the train to come barreling past. When it does, they’ll blow the track under the locomotive or perhaps under one of the troop cars. The train will derail and the partisans will rush in a single wave out of their cover, across fifty meters of open ground on either side. Many cars will be upended, the garrison will be stunned or injured. They’ll engage in a quick and fierce firefight. In the midst of the shooting, they’ll head for the tanks with more explosives to spike the cannon barrels. Then the partisans will melt back into the steppe, and Luis will make his return to his SS division Leibstandarte by reporting the death of the ten Tigers that were under his protection.

  Luis stopped. He turned a full circle on the rails and tingled. He’d walked into the place where he would have set the snare were he the one lying in ambush. A curve in the tracks. A band of trees on both sides of the rails. Wide fields behind them, no villages close by. Luis cast his gaze into the brush and branches left and right, and peopled the dark with twenty-five dirty faces per side, breaths held, fifty fingers on triggers. He walked another dozen quiet steps, sensing the Russians’ anger; in the darkness he pitched his own wrath against theirs, and in the spark that was made when the two met and struck, he saw the explosive.

  He froze on the track. The train was far back and puffing, waiting for his signal to come forward. The partisans would be waiting just ahead, expecting the train’s momentum to carry it past the point of the tracks they intended to blast, toppling the cars in front of them. Perhaps they haven’t heard the train yet; Luis himself could barely make out the huffing locomotive.

  He hoped they hadn’t seen or heard him, either.

  He bent low, approaching the mine with five careful strides. Wedged sideways between the tracks was a fat log, like a damsel tied there in the night. Luis knelt beside it, feeling the bark, listening into the darkness for the sound of boots coming to draw a knife across his scrawny neck. With exploring fingers, he determined the nature of the bomb. Jammed between one end of the wooden trunk and the left-hand rail were two bars of C-3 explosive, two and a quarter pounds of the stuff smashed between the wood and the steel. Luis skimmed fingers across the putty lumps of plastique, feeling for the blasting caps; there would be two, wired together in case one failed. He found them and pulled his hand away; blasting caps were notoriously volatile, far more than the C-3 itself.

  Luis admired the cleverness of the partisans. The section of tree trunk had been laid between the tracks as tamping for the explosive. When the C-3 blew, only one track would be severed, the one on the inside of the curve. This rail would break to the side, not up. The tram cars leaning around the bend in the tracks would derail to the inside of the curve, and because one set of wheels would be lower, the cars would spill over.

  Luis saw the single electric cord running to the blasting caps. The slender wire ran left, straight into the trees in front of him. This was not good. The partisans were right there, forty meters away. Slowly, he put his Luger pistol in the hand holding the flashlight, and reached his empty hand into a tunic pocket for his wire cutters.

  He dropped the Luger.

  The thing clattered, metal tattle-tale on the big granite stones of the rail mound. Luis wasted not a second. He clutched the wire cutter and snipped the wire, felt the wire coil away
from the blasting caps, then pulled the caps out of the C-3 as quickly as he dared. Once the explosive was disarmed – the detonators were out in seconds but to Luis it seemed an hour – he jumped to his feet and took this new physique of his on its first flat-out run.

  He turned on the flashlight and blinked it three times into the darkness that swallowed the train. This was a different signal. Then he threw the flashlight away and drove his arms and legs as fast as he could. It was good to hear his boots were not always so silent; this time they tore down the rail ties with blaring purpose.

  The first shots sounded in the trees. He could not tell how close the bullets came to him, he was running and huffing so hard he would have to get hit by a bullet before he would know if they had a bead on him. He ran down off the rail ties into the grass; it made no sense to race straight down the tracks, it made him too easy a target. More reports cracked out of the trees on both sides. Luis reproached himself for a clumsy ass, dropping the pistol like that. He ran on, exhilarated, laughing with manic gasps at every shot fired behind him that missed; he was too thin to be much of a target.

  The waist-high grass beside the rail mound did not slow him. Like running on the moon, he thought, pumping his knees and elbows; whipped-up pollen flew in his face, a night breeze brushed his puffing cheeks. But what speed, he thought, where is the gravity of the world now?

  He lost count of the shots the partisans fired at him. He wasn’t worried about being wounded, they never got a clear look at him in his speeding black uniform. He just wanted to get back to the train fast, before the partisans could repair the cut wire and blow the track anyway, settling for that little victory and making their escape. Luis had more planned for them.