“And I’ll plant Tellers beyond the fallen-rock zone. So if men come over the rocks, one will trip off a Teller, and kaboom, his legs are on the way to Moscow.”
“The Russians don’t care about mines,” said Wili Bober.
“Think of the psychology,” said Deneker, also the unit intellectual. “You have to consider psychology in all things. Russian peasants who are being driven by NKVD troops don’t care about mines, on the theory that the mines are uncertain death, depending only on random footfall, while defying the NKVD is certain death, of the Mosin-Nagant 7.62-millimeter kind. If boys get up here, they’ll be elite troops, parachutists, some sort of commando or special group of Ivan prima donnas. They’re already heroes, they value themselves highly, they have many tales to tell if they survive, as well as a happy postwar experience to look forward to. They do not want to get blown up crossing a mountain gap when they’ve already won the battle as well as the war. They’ll hold back and go round up some peasants to frog-march through the minefield. That’ll take hours.”
“I think he has a point,” said Karl.
“All right, then. Mines here but not in front of our positions,” said Wili.
“Hmm,” said Karl. “And he has a point.”
“Karl, you’re the boss. You have to decide.”
“I hate to decide,” said Karl. “That’s why I joined the parachutists. So I wouldn’t have to decide things.”
“Split the mines?” said Deneker.
“Sounds fine to me,” said Wili.
“There, see, you didn’t need me at all,” said Karl.
There weren’t many other decisions to be made. Sandbags were filled, mines planted, trenches with firing notches dug and connected by crawl alleys so the men could fall back out of sight, trees that interfered with the lanes of fire felled, water collected, the radio monitored. Log frames were built and strung with K-wire. The machine gunners found the best natural points to put the two MG-42s on tripods, then broke down the ammunition for quick use, being sure to set up several shorter belts for the drum-shaped belt carriers, lighter and easier to manipulate, so that if the gunners fell back, they could take the guns off the tripod, grab the drums, and use them in fire and movement situations, say, covering the other men as they retreated beyond the site of Deneker’s big explosion. Other men broke down the typically overengineered cardboard crates that each contained twenty boxes of twenty 7.92mm cartridges, and inserted each cartridge into the FG-42 mags, until all were filled; the surplus went into a pile contained in the emptied crate, so that men could dip in and help themselves to handfuls if the fight went on too long. The Panzerschrecks were loaded and spare rockets placed next to them. Grenades also were laid out, their screwcaps half unscrewed, all oriented uniformly so the man grabbing one could flick off the cap, pull the fuse cord, ignite the fuse, and toss the thing with no wasted motion. Bandages, splints, wound wrappings, sulfa, morphine needles, miles of gauze and tape, anything to save a man from bleeding out, it was all there in easy reach. Karl didn’t have to say a word. Someone even erected a sign in exquisite Gothic calligraphy: “Die Gebärmutter des Gingers”—Ginger’s Womb.
As far as the scouting duties, they, too, took care of themselves. Wili had drawn up a master rotation way back in Italy, and though much reduced of manpower, it still governed turns by which, at any given moment, six men were on sentry duty. They moved to places beyond the northern outskirts of the position, on the assumption that if this mythical Red-White Witch were to come, she would come from that direction. If she cut lower, good for her and too bad for her stalkers, as she’d evade. But the betting was that she’d head to the Womb if on the run, for the simple reason that beyond it would be safety, since any Germans would be interested only in fleeing to Uzhgorod far below that side of the Carpathians and wouldn’t be looking about for snipers. She could go to ground for a few days, wait till the situation had calmed, then sneak over the crest and link up with Red Army units.
Pipes were smoked, as were Effekt, Ring, and Select cigarettes; uniform regs were ignored; some genius really put in a hard day’s labor making the latrine as pleasant as possible and built a shower out of a six-gallon water can; schnapps was drunk; candy and cookies and Ukrainian bread were eaten; and generally it was not a bad little excursion. Jokes were told, card games with penny-ante stakes were played, memories were recalled, masturbation ignored, there was a whole pile of Der Signal magazines to use for clean-up duties.
All preparations done, all duties fulfilled, there was not much left to do but the eternal ordeal, waiting for action that might or might not come. However, the next morning, after an eventless evening, the odor of burning trees drifted up, carrying the information that the SS Police Brigade was back.
“Wili,” said Karl, “they must be close to done with those damned things. Take the Kübel down with Deneker and see if you can pry our Flammenwerfer loose. Get two if you can. They’ll buy us extra time if it comes to that.”
“Be back in a couple of hours.”
“Bring some Ukraine gals and beer back, too, Wili, if you can,” one of the parachute infantrymen hollered, to the delight of all.
* * *
The run to Yaremche was easy enough, just a few kilometers, especially now that the cart had been detached from the Kübel. Wili and Deneker arrived in an hour and a half, sighting nothing on the long crank down the road. They found the village shielded in smoke, though not as densely as before, and could see crews deploying Flammenwerfers on a last stand of trees, which blazed almost colorlessly in the hot sun, sending out waves of heat. But where there had been ten or so, now only two of the fire-spurting units were in play. In fact, six of them lay in the shade of the hut that Wili saw was Salid’s command location on the Yaremche road, for he noted that a hole had been punched in the roof and the triangular wire unit that formed the aerial of a radio transmitter extended through it. A panzerwagen and a truck also denoted the spot as important.
A couple of SS fellows came out, including a sergeant like himself, swarthy fellows, familiar in their battle tunics, though foreign in the silhouette of some kind of curving Arabian sword on their tunic collar. It was a festival of camouflage, with the spattered mud pattern the SS favored competing in busyness with the Parachutists’ bonebag splinter pattern, splashes versus slashes. In Wili’s opinion, the splinter was far more amusing than the splatter.
“Good morning, Sergeant,” said Wili. “I’m Bober, Twenty-one Para, Battlegroup Von Drehle, from up at the canyon position. I’m here for one of those Flammenwerfers. General Von Bink set it up for us to relieve you of one. I’d take two if I could get ’em. Ivan does not like flamethrowers.”
It developed that none of the SS men spoke German, only Serbian. But in a few minutes—the SS guys meanwhile offered the parachutists some water and cigarettes—a man with both languages arrived.
Wili repeated his request, the German speaker translated it to Serbian, and the answer, in time, came back through the same conduit.
“Do you know Von Bink is no longer in command of anything? I can’t let you have the equipment without my commanding officer’s okay. And he’s currently occupied.”
“Please,” said Wili, “I don’t have time for any runaround. Think of the order as coming from Command, not Von Bink, but we can’t wait here for your guy to show up. What is he, shitting in the woods or screwing a whore?”
The humor did not translate well, even if Deneker thought it was funny. And the Serbian NCO started to make some kind of excuse, so Wili cut him off airily with, “Look, let’s make this easy. Hop in, we’ll drive around and find your CO, he can give you the okay, and we’ll be out of here before nightfall. No one knows when Ivan’s coming, and no one knows how fast he’ll get here. We need those weapons on our line.”
The Serbs looked at each other, and Wili picked up some kind of odd signal between them, as if they weren’t sure whether to comply, were uncomfortable with the idea of compliance, but at the same time didn’t want to get in so
me kind of dispute with the two parachutists, which might have its own ramifications.
In time, the senior NCO agreed, if reluctantly, and Deneker climbed into the tiny backseat while the Serbian sergeant—Ackov seemed to be his name—climbed in front.
“Point the way,” said Wili, and Ackov pointed into Yaremche proper. It was the usual Ukraine shit, a lot of shoddily constructed wooden houses with hay roofs, each with a chicken yard, the grid more approximate than precise, though the waterfall and the pedestrian bridge over the river that cut the village in two was an interesting touch. No one had trimmed grass or pulled weeds this century, which the precision-oriented Bober found offensive. No one had planted flowers, no one had raked plots or swept the wooden sidewalks. Such peasants! What could you do with them? Before they reached the bridge, they reached the village’s only substantial structure, a church, also wooden and not constructed of stone; it looked like a strong wind would blow it down. Parked in front stood another camouflaged panzerwagen with a tall radio antenna, clearly the command vehicle of Police Battalion.
“Hmm,” Wili said to Deneker, “I guess our fellow is a pilgrim to the holy land,” and Deneker laughed, because both knew Salid was a Muslim.
Outside, a couple of 13th Mountain SS thugs stood guard with MP-40s, but under Ackov’s nod, they cleared the door, and Wili and Deneker stepped in behind the Serbian sergeant.
Wili expected religious darkness lit only by stained glass, but that was not what he got. He got illumination. At the far end of the church, where the altar once was the centerpiece, a bright beam—dazzlingly bright—defined a rectangle, and it was so bright that its harshness bled the image of color. Laboring in the pitiless glare, three husky Serb SS men, stripped of tunic and smock and down to undershirts, labored sweatily with hammer and nail to erect some sort of wooden gantry, its crossbeam perhaps seven feet off the ground. They were not accomplished carpenters, and the construction looked fragile, supported by a clumsy network of buttressing lumber. But they seemed to be nearing completion.
Then Wili noticed what appeared at first to be some sort of mechanism on a tripod, but since it was outside the zone of illumination, its identity wasn’t clear. He stepped closer, and it resolved itself into a moving picture camera.
Next to it stood a cluster of men who turned at the intrusion. They were all SS, but only one was in Mountain Division camouflage, and he came forward as Ackov hailed him, and Wili recognized him as Sturmbannführer Salid, with his dark glossy hair, his penetrating eyes, the delta of mustache against his mouth, under his prominent nose. His skin was coppery, his expression so earnest and duty-driven that Wili doubted he’d ever laughed at anything in his life.
He and the sergeant spoke animatedly in Serbian and then he turned to Wili, who raised his hand for a somewhat desultory “Heil Hitler,” which Salid returned smartly.
“So, Sergeant,” he said in the same impeccable German that Wili recognized from his argument with Karl at the gate of Andrewski Palace, “you’ve come for your Flammenwerfer. I take it you are well dug in up at the canyon.”
“Yes, Herr Sturmbannführer,” Wili replied, not finding it within himself to call an Arab pimp “sir,” “we’ve constructed a superb defensive position and mined the canyon itself, so that when the time comes, we can close it in one second to any Ivan tanks. Thirty pounds of Cyclonite make a very persuasive argument.”
“Good, good, I’m pleased. But you understand that is only part of the mission. The other part is to nab any bandits we drive before us when we sweep through.”
“Yes, Sturmbannführer, that has been explained. Major Von Drehle has half his complement on patrol in the forest to intercept any bandits on the move to the Womb.”
“I will make this point to Von Drehle over the radio, but I state it here for the record so there can be no misunderstanding. In two days or so, we will begin this sweep operation, and it is crucially important that we intercept a certain bandit.”
“The woman. The White Witch.”
“So they call her. She’s up there. We must get her. It is a Reich priority from highest headquarters. The obergruppenführer-SS is bravely putting himself at risk in order to lure her into the open so that we may take her alive. It is an honor for your unit that it was selected for this job. Clearly your operations have impressed all. No common group of infantry dregs could be trusted. It’s vital, because this woman must be interrogated in Berlin by specialists, so that the full breadth of her knowledge of various—”
“Who is that?” said Wili, interrupting.
“Excuse me. Please do not—”
“My God,” said Wili. “What the fuck is going on here?”
He had noticed a solitary figure sitting in the front row of pews, motionless. Wili stared, shifting slightly to get a better angle.
“General Von Bink! What on earth are you doing to General Von Bink?”
“This is no concern of yours, Sergeant Bober. I have authorized the transfer of the Flammenwerfer-41. Now please go about your business and leave me to mine.”
But Wili pushed past him, past the knot of men, got to the front of the church, and there indeed, ramrod-stiff, sat General Von Bink. His hands were clearly tied behind him. He wore his Knight’s Cross tight around his neck, his service cap with the stiffener removed for raffish effect, his black double-breasted Panzerjackit, a brown belt, and black boots, highly shined, under riding breeches with the general’s red stripe. His holster was empty, its flap open.
“Good afternoon, Sergeant Bober,” he said. “How nice to see you. I would rise, but you know, it’s difficult under the circumstances.”
“Sir, I—What is going on?”
“Evidently these gentlemen have arranged transport to my next duty assignment, which appears to be in hell.” He smiled.
“This officer is to be hanged by piano wire,” said Salid, who had followed Wili to the spot. “He has been found guilty in absentia in Berlin. We are following orders. His execution is to be filmed and forwarded to Berlin. Now get out of here, Sergeant. You have your duty.”
Wili turned. “Are you mad? Or a fool? This officer has six wound stripes. He’s fought in three wars. He’s been in the front line of every tank offensive since 1939. He’s a survivor of Kursk and Stalingrad, Sebastopol, the entire Ukraine going and coming. He has the Knight’s Cross with oak leaves and every other goddamned bit of ribbon and tin there is. He is a great man, a hero of the nation. He is no traitor. You cannot treat him like this.”
“Sergeant, you grow wearisome. Don’t force me to have my men discipline you.”
“You crazy Arab bastard, you have no right to—”
“Sergeant, watch your mouth. You have already committed insubordination and are dangerously close to treason.”
Salid was suddenly surrounded by three of his men, including the muscular carpenters and one of the door guards with the MP-40. At the same time, Deneker had gotten around to Wili’s shoulder and was whispering quietly, “Wili, Wili, Wili, let’s not lose our heads.”
“You’re the fucking traitor, Arab. If you harm one hair on this man’s head, I’ll see you burn in hell. Who the fuck—”
“Sergeant,” barked Von Bink, “disengage now. Sturmbannführer Salid, the man is simply a blowhard, he meant no harm. Please excuse him.”
“You cannot hang this man on piano wire in a desecrated Ukraine church,” said Wili. “It is a sacrilege. It is against all that the German military stands for. It mocks the sacrifices of millions of men who gave their lives here in the East.”
“The Reich considers him a traitor, and I have very explicit orders.”
“Sergeant Bober,” the general said, “I am ordering you as commanding general of the Fourteenth Panzergrenadier Division to cease and desist. You do no one any good this way, and you rob me of what little dignity I have left. Please leave at once and return to your duty post. This is a direct order, and I expect it to be obeyed.”
Wili had a mind to draw his P38, shoot
Salid, then turn and shoot Von Bink between the eyes. Better that than strangulation at the end of a piano wire loop lifting him six inches off the ground for the pornographic pleasure of Berlin perverts watching the film a week later. If the Serbs shot Wili, so what? He wasn’t going to survive the war anyhow, what difference did it make? Best die for something he believed in instead of holding open a pass so that SS motherfuckers like the Arab pimp here and his crew of Serb Jew-killers could make their getaway.
“Wili,” whispered Deneker, “think of the mess. You’ll get Karl and the fellows all fucked up, the politics will be a nightmare, they’ll go off to Dachau. After all the shit we’ve been through, they’ll end up hanging on piano wire.”
“Listen to your friend, Bober,” said the general. “He speaks wisely.”
Wili turned. He snapped to attention. He saluted the general with his right hand snapped sharply to his brow in the classic old style.
“Herr Generalleutnant Von Bink, my compliments and compliments of Second Parachute Infantry, Regiment Twenty-one, Battlegroup Von Drehle. You, sir, are a hero, an inspiration, and a gentleman. We were lucky to serve under you, and we will never forget you.”
He turned and stomped out.
CHAPTER 41
The Carpathians
Heading South
THE PRESENT
You sound like you’re running,” said Jimmy, two thousand miles away, presumably sitting on a sofa before a fire, sipping fine whiskey from a decanter.
“The same long story. Do you have anything?”
“Actually, yes.”
“You talk, I’ll walk. Pardon the heavy breathing.”
“We had very good chaps in radio intelligence and coding,” said Jimmy from his sofa, “and it seems we were aware that by 1944, Stalin was cutting off partisan units he didn’t trust in their pro-Soviet enthusiasm. He knew he’d won this war; he was trying to win the next one. So our people saw our own opportunity for some mischief-making. SOE sent a ‘black’ Halifax bomber to Alexandria. The SOE used its genius for code-breaking and was able to talk to a number of partisan groups. We offered the supply on which Stalin was reneging. This bomber went forth every night and flew from Alex into the underbelly of Europe and Russia, dropping C-containers of arms and ammunition to designated groups. I’m sure some were Russian ruses, but I’m also certain many were legit. The C-container load was exactly what one would need to run a guerrilla war, a revolution, a coup d’arms: one No. 4 T for sniper and assassination duty, five Stens, two thousand rounds of 9mm, fifty of .303, twenty-five Mills bombs, and five Webley revolvers. According to the records, the Bak Brigade of the Ukraine People’s Front received their loads—three C’s—on February 9, 1944. So to answer the question, that is exactly how a No. 4 T could be and in fact should have been available to your sniper in July 1944.”