CHAPTER 21
Ivano-Frankivsk
THE PRESENT
The leg never bruised. But the next morning it announced that it preferred to take a day off. It ached dully from ankle to knee to steel ball in hip, which might have annoyed the steel ball, so it started hurting, too. Bob took six ibus and felt a little sick. But today was not going to be a day of running up hills. He met Reilly in the lobby with his first, most urgent question.
“You’re sure you don’t want me to drop you at the station and you can go back to Moscow?” he asked her. “We may be in danger.”
“No, not at all. It’s my story. I’m on it, I will follow it. Now it’s even more interesting. What could it possibly be linked to, seventy years later, that would matter?”
They slipped into the restaurant, where a breakfast buffet was set up, and went heavily into yogurt, fruit, juice, and coffee. Then they slipped out to the secluded open-air dining section and sat in leafy splendor.
Swagger had seated himself to watch the entrance; he noted the exits, he examined the waitstaff to make sure each was familiar and dressed identically to the others, he checked everything that moved. He also secretly wished he had a gun and felt very vulnerable without one.
“No climbing today,” said Reilly. “All right, there’s a city not far away called Kolomiya, about thirty kilometers to the south. They have a famous Easter-egg museum.”
“Great idea,” Swagger said.
“What’s interesting about it is that it’s also got something called the Museum of the Great Patriotic War. A great collection, the guidebook says, of stuff from the war—they never forget, it never goes away, it’s Ukraine, Stronski told you the flowers on the graves are always fresh, remember? Maybe there’s something there that’s worth seeing.”
“Yeah, that’s good, I like that. Plus, on the highway we get to see what’s coming, what isn’t. Nobody sneaks up on us.”
* * *
The museum was another melancholy hall of sacrifice and valor. The partisan movement against the German invasion had been relatively successful but monstrously expensive. It was a war without prisoners, mercy, or hesitation, with atrocity common on each side. The Germans wouldn’t dignify their opponents with the term “partisans” and officially called them bandits. They specifically determined that the rules of war were not to be obeyed in the matter of bandits, which let the leash off their counterterror troops for ad hoc massacres.
Walking the halls was looking into a tunnel in time, the end of which was a sepia rendition of the gallows, where the Germans hanged so many, or the pits, where they shot so many more.
“It’s pretty awful,” she said after another exhibit on the subject of a razed village, a community slaughtered. “It’s Yaremche times a thousand, so big that there’s nothing of Yaremche here. Eight hundred, six hundred, five hundred, gone in an afternoon. Yaremche’s puny hundred and thirty-five don’t get a mention.”
One of the halls turned to the Germans and exhibited uniforms, weapons, communication gear, boots, all of it safely behind glass. Swagger stared at a dummy SS man in the spotty-leopard dapple of the late-war camouflage-pattern smock, heavy jackboots, with an MP-40 in his hands and all the right equipment in place, the bread bag, the entrenching tool, a holstered Luger, a foot of wicked bayonet, the haversack, that instantly recognizable helmet with the medieval steel flare that covered the ears and back of the neck and made every Landser somehow look like a Teutonic knight out to slaughter the inferior. Next to the double lightning flashes on the collar of his tunic, the emblem of a curved sword was displayed.
Bob looked at the explanation, which was in three languages. He read the English one.
Counter-partisan soldier of SS-13th Mountain Division, Police Battalion, which was active in trans-Carpathian area in summer 1944. These men committed many atrocities and were especially feared and loathed by Ukraine citizenry.
“He’s our boy,” said Swagger. “He’s the guy who burned Yaremche and hunted Mili.”
“He’s scary,” she said.
“Mili knew how to deal with ’em. She did the hard work enough times. Great damn gal. Sniperwork, alone, taking fire. Still she’d put one center mass, and then he wouldn’t scare nobody no more. I’d put one right between his eyes,” Swagger said.
“It’s still a mystery, all these years later. These people, their adventure in death. What drove them? How did so many go insane?”
It was true. It wasn’t just partisan war, which can drive good men to do evil things. He knew that, had seen it. He thought: I’ve been on the wrong end of a partisan war. Unless you have, there’s no way you can feel the rage, the frustration, the fury that the straight-ahead soldier feels for an enemy who strikes at night, melts into the trees, and smiles at you and sells you a Coke the next day. When your buddies start showing up with their noses and dicks cut off, you tend toward peevishness. It’s a goddamn cesspool of bugs and leeches and rats and maggots, and it breeds atrocity, sure as hell.
This was something more. It wasn’t just frustration at taking casualties from the partisans. It was something darker, more troubling, a mass descent into the conviction of superiority along some bogus grounds that led them to believe they had the moral right to the slaughter. They had a butcher’s mandate. They had become death itself. After seeing so much blood, blood lost all meaning, and some limit had been broken and now there were no limits and one could kill and kill and kill. From the pits to the crushed villages to the camps, it was a melody in one dark tone.
Finally he said, “I’d like to pretend some of them didn’t fall for it. They didn’t all line ’em up and shoot ’em down, did they?”
“There may have been some good ones,” she said.
“We could use a good guy in this story. This poor girl lost in the land of the monsters. When does the hero show up?”
CHAPTER 22
Chortkiv
Behind Russian Lines
JULY 1944
The Auntie Ju took off from the Luftwaffe airfield at Uzhgorod, flew low to the north, and banked east through a gap in the Carpathians at Tarnopol. She stayed low over the Ukraine flatlands as her pilots put her on course for Chortkiv, ten kilometers behind Red lines so that, when she reached the drop zone, she could climb to five hundred meters and let the boys out to do their jobs. She should make it fine, since there was no Soviet radar this far south of Moscow, the Red Air Force rarely flew at night, and even the anti-aircraft gunners, in this lull before the offensive everyone knew was coming, got some extra shut-eye.
What was left of Battlegroup Von Drehle fit into the one plane, though it was tight within the corrugated tin fuselage, all the boys knee to knee, facing each other in the cramped space. All wore the clipped Fallschirmjäger helmet, its flaring Teutonic rim removed so that it looked something like the leather hat the ridiculous Americans clapped to their heads when they played a game they insisted on calling football. All wore the faded “splinter” forest-pattern camo smocks, which the fellows sportingly called “bone bags,” knee pads, and lace-up boots, the latter mandatory if you didn’t want your shoes falling off while you floated down. All had combat harnesses and their FG-42s or STG-44s strapped across their bodies. All wore a collection of magazine pouches suspended horizontally on either side of their chests, on a kind of horse-collar shoulder harness, and in each pouch nested a box of twenty 7.92s or thirty 7.92 Kurzs. All wore RZ-20 parachutes, which made all uncomfortable, though if you were going to jump out of an airplane, you could put up with a little discomfort. All wore their parachute infantry emblems, a stylized plunging eagle in gold upon a silver wreath. All wore their seventy-five-engagement badges. All wore bread bags on slings, though loaded with M-24 grenades. All weighed a ton with all the junk on.
Some smoked, some just looked out disconsolately into the distance. Hard to read expressions, as all had smeared their faces with burnt cork, so they looked like a very bad minstrel show about to break into a lackadaisical “Old Man
River.” It wasn’t really a group anymore, in the grand military meaning of that term, which conjured divisions and regiments and battalions, and was called one these days only as an administrative convenience. It was more of a squad, one officer, one noncommissioned officer, and thirteen men. But you couldn’t say “battlesquad,” as that sounded ridiculous, and these parachutists cared entirely too much about their damned dignity.
They were lean young men with the severe faces of mummies. Most had jumped into Crete with Von Drehle four years earlier. Most had served with him in Italy for a year. Most had been with him in Russia now for two. Most had been hit and come back, most had killed dozens if not hundreds of enemy soldiers, blown up every kind of structure imaginable, destroyed tanks and other armored vehicles, most could fieldstrip their FG-42s blindfolded in seven seconds, or throw an M24 through the door of a racing railway car forty yards away, or cut a man’s throat with a yank from the blade of a gravity knife, or rescue a dictator from mountaintop imprisonment. They were very, very good; they were the best, in fact, and they were all that was left of the 21st Parachute Battalion of 2-Fallschirmjäger, one of the storied airborne divisions of the Reich.
They were also sick to death of all this shit. Really, three and a half hard years of war, who wouldn’t be? One had been wounded six times, most between four and five. Von Drehle himself had been to the hospital four times, once on Crete, once in Italy, and twice in Russia.
He was not sure if he was a captain or a major, as the promotion had been promised but the paperwork possibly lost, though it was not that important. People usually called each other by first name in the Green Devils, and everybody knew who the bosses were. He also had a great many medals, although he couldn’t tell you what they were. He’d once been somebody’s idea of the ideal and had his pix in all the rags and was the closest thing the Germans came to an Errol Flynn, with appallingly handsome features, a ginger smudge of mustache, and wavy blond hair. The nose and the cheekbones seemed to have been designed by slide rule, and you could not take a bad picture of him. He was very pretty, but he could fight.
He was used to being famous, loved, and admired. Before the war he’d been a racing driver for Mercedes and had finished third in the Monaco Grand Prix in 1938, at the age of twenty-one, in his W154 “Silver Arrow,” a ballistically shaped high-velocity screamer of an automobile. He liked the thrill of speed, a perfect outlet for his excessive hand-eye coordination, his overbusy intellect, his quick-as-death reflexes, his extraordinary vision, and his insane bravery. He liked battle for exactly the same reasons, at least the first three years of it.
“Karl, how long you figure?” asked his oberfeldwebel, or staff sergeant, Wili Bober.
Von Drehle flipped his wrist to look at the Italian frogman watch he wore, on the theory that if it operated underwater, it would probably operate in battle.
“I have 0115,” he said. “Didn’t Von Bink say the jump estimate was around 0130?”
“I can’t remember,” said Wili. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
“I wasn’t paying attention, either. Is this one a bridge or a railhead?”
“Hmmm,” said Wili Bober, “maybe I’d better ask one of the fellows.”
They laughed. It was a game between them to see who could affect the sloppiest nonchalance about the mission. Sometimes senior officers overheard and misunderstood; Von Drehle once had to go to a general to get Bober off charges.
Of course they knew. At Chortkiv, a three-arch stone bridge over the River Seret had served to funnel Soviet elements up to the line for the offensive for a week now, though at a typical niggardly Russian pace. There was no Luftwaffe except beat-to-shit transport buggies like this Auntie Ju here, so it couldn’t be bombed, and it was out of artillery range. Now the 2nd Ukraine Guards Army had been ordered into the area, and it was known to have six armored divisions, about six hundred T34s and tank destroyers, all ready to go. The four hundred tanks on this side of the river could be turned back by Von Bink’s 14th Panzergrenadiers and Muntz’s 12th SS Panzer, but not a thousand. Ergo, someone had to blow up the bridge.
Bober removed his water bottle, unscrewed the cap. “Schnapps. Very good. From some girl, last leave, a thousand years ago. Somehow it got through,” he said, offering it to Von Drehle.
“Ah. The blur. Most helpful. What a superb soldier you are, Wili.” He took the jug and sent a fiery splash down the throat. Yes, the mallet hit him hard, easing his nerves, slightly defracting the low lights of the aircraft interior, softening the vibrations of Auntie Ju’s three engines.
“When we finish this one, we’ll kill the whole bottle.”
The cabin door opened and the copilot leaned out and shouted over the roar of the engines, “Karl, we’re on our final run and will be climbing to altitude in about three minutes.”
“Got it,” said Karl. He turned to Wili. “It’s time.”
Wili nodded. “I’ll tell the fellows,” he said.
Wili was the wise elder of Battlegroup Von Drehle. He’d been there from the start, done all, seen all, survived all. He was the one with six wound stripes. He was twenty-four.
He stood against the sway and vibe of the plane, oriented himself, and grabbed the rail that ran down the top center of the fuselage.
It was enough signal. The young men tossed out cigarettes; a few crossed themselves or at least looked skyward under the impression that the Almighty still had a rooting interest in the fate of the last Fallschirmjäger in South Russia; all clambered heavily to feet, bearing their load of clanking equipment. All secured themselves by grip to the ceiling rail and hooked up.
There was too much noise and vibration for Von Drehle to give any kind of speech, even if he’d had the pep, but as he slid down to the front of the line, he tapped each of the fellows on the shoulder and gave him a wink or a nudge. They seemed to like that, though how could anyone really tell with the darkened, greasy faces?
He arrived at the jump hatch far down the fuselage, where a crewmember had already placed himself to pull it open on the green light. This boy looked about thirteen. God, were they raiding kindergartens these days? At least this one had gotten a fairly cushy job in the Luftwaffe and wasn’t perched on some penal battalion PAK 8.8 waiting for the arrival of several hundred 34s, plus an entire army of drunken peasants with bayonets.
Cinching his static line to the rail, Von Drehle looked back and saw fourteen pairs of eyes, no features, fourteen helmet silhouettes, fourteen fists locked around the rail, fourteen plumes of breath. He also saw the tube of a Panzerschreck, the German version of the American bazooka, useful to open Red sardine cans but a pain in the ass to carry. It weighed a ton, and some poor bastard had to jump with it. Who was on it this time? It seemed like it was Hubner’s turn.
“Green Devils, one-eyed Wotan himself salutes you!” he shouted, putting a fist to his plunging eagle badge and saluting, a tradition, and though nobody could hear him, they shouted back, in unison, the same imprecation; he couldn’t hear them, either.
The plane suddenly seemed to lift, the pilots got it to altitude in just a few seconds, the light went green, the young man pulled mightily and got the hatch open against the suction of the wind.
Von Drehle stepped into the cold air, went into the spread-eagle as the wind hit him, felt the rush of the fall as gravity claimed him and he had a giddy second of weightlessness—it still thrilled him—and the battering of the propwash against his face. The tail boom sailed by and his static line snatched the RZ-20 canopy from its packing and another second later he was jerked heavily as the canopy took on a full load of suspending atmosphere. Below him, dark and quiet, was Russia.
* * *
One of the boys got lost. He just never joined up with the main group in the target zone, a pasture seven kilometers of rural landscape from the bridge itself. Von Drehle hated to lose men. He had lost so many! He hated it! A certain part of him wanted to abort the job right there, send out search parties, find the soldier, and head straig
ht back to his own lines. But he couldn’t do that.
“Maybe he’ll catch up to us,” Wili Bober said.
Everyone knew this to be unlikely. Dieter Schenker, lance corporal, veteran of Italy and Russia, three wounds, two Iron Crosses, was almost certainly hanging upside down in a tree with his neck or his back broken. If conscious, he would have taken out his gravity knife and cut his own wrists, to bleed out in quiet comfort. If the Russians found him, they might take some bayonet sport with him before killing him. That’s the kind of war it was.
The second thing that went wrong was the map. It took them on detours around two villages that brought them hard against infantry campgrounds, where Ivan had put some of his six billion or so soldiers to rest for the night before moving closer to the front lines for the big show upcoming.
Battlegroup Von Drehle had to detour from two detours, and that cost time. The point was to get to the bridge well before dawn, eliminate any sentries, rig the explosives and leave a timed fuse, and be some kilometers away when the fireworks went off. This fantasy disappeared almost instantly—old racing adage: no plan survives the first lap—and they didn’t get there until the sun began to flare over the edge of the world. So it would be a daylight job.
Fortunately there was foliage along the riverbank, and Ivan hadn’t seriously considered a bridge-blowing raid this far behind the lines. He was getting overconfident with his billions of men, millions of tanks, and thousands of shiny new American trucks to spare him bootleather. Well, that was his big mistake. The parachutists, moving stealthily through the heavy underbrush along the bank, were able to get themselves to the bridge. Now they gathered in its lee, could see the sandbags and K-wire Ivan had dumped and strung nonchalantly, more as ceremony than as tactical necessity.