Von Leinsdorf shook each man’s hand before they all exited the cottage and went their separate ways. He placed a hand on Schmidt’s shoulder, holding him back.
“I realize that in our former positions we hold equal rank,” said Von Leinsdorf, once they were alone. “And that you’ve held yours slightly longer than I have mine.”
“That’s correct.”
“Be that as it may, Colonel Skorzeny has put me in charge of this mission. I take that responsibility seriously. If you ever question my authority again, I’ll kill you.”
Von Leinsdorf stared at Schmidt until he recognized the terror he had over the years grown so accustomed to seeing in weaker men’s eyes, then walked outside.
The men of his squad, Bernie Oster, Marius Schieff, and Gunther Preuss, were waiting for him near their own jeep, loading in supplies.
“Good news, gentlemen,” said Von Leinsdorf. “We’re going across to night.”
5
Northeast Belgium
DECEMBER 14, 1944, 8:40 P.M.
Shivering under a sky thick with stars, three GIs manning the Frontier Control Station lit a fire in a discarded oil drum, in violation of blackout orders. Their tin-roofed hut offered no relief from the arctic air riding in behind a storm front. Winter hadn’t officially arrived, but the season’s first storm had dropped six inches of snow the night before. Although they were less than four miles from the German border, and occasionally heard engines gunning in that direction, only sporadic skirmishing had broken the calm during the weeks they’d been stationed there. So each night after dark they lit a fire behind their hut and took turns warming their hands, while the others sat inside, playing cards by the light of a Coleman lantern.
They were green recruits—a sergeant and two privates—drafted in the last six months and hastily trained. Their 99th Infantry Division had deployed in the Ardennes only a month before, thrown in beside new units too raw for combat and veterans too beaten down for more. The men’s regiment, the 394th, had dug in along a twenty-mile perimeter that paralleled the Belgian-German border, a craggy, forested gap between two mountainous ridges. Stationed at thousand-yard intervals, the soldiers of the 394th spent their days and nights in bone-chilling foxholes, staring at a silent forest, protected from the elements only by rough ceilings of pine branches.
By comparison these three men of Rifle Company F, Squad “D,” had drawn a plush assignment, guarding this checkpoint on an old logging road a mile north of the village of Elsenborn. Ten miles to the rear their base camp offered hot meals and showers, Hollywood movies, and touring swing bands that played weekly USO dances swarming with grateful Belgian girls. A conviction had spread through their barracks that the war was all but over. A month of frigid nights hunkered down in the Losheim Gap seemed an easy way to work off your part in the war effort. They might even sail home without firing a shot in anger.
“Sarge,” said Private Anderson, from behind the block house.
“What is it?” answered Mallory from inside.
“Something coming.”
Headlights washed over the block house window. Sergeant Vincent Mallory of South Boston grabbed his Garand M1 carbine, and Private Jack Ellis followed him out the blanket hanging over the open doorway. Private First Class Chick Anderson stationed himself at the gate beside the striped wooden arm that crossed the dirt road.
A single vehicle drove toward them from the direction of Kalterherberg, a crossroads four miles north, near the German border. Mallory recognized the round headlights and straining gearbox; a Willys Jeep, pack mule of the American Army. He stepped forward and waved the lantern, flagging them down. Ellis readied his rifle and flanked his sergeant in the road ten yards ahead of the gate.
The jeep slowed as it approached. Top down, windscreen flipped up. A GI in the front passenger’s seat stood up and frantically waved his arms at Mallory.
“What the fuck—where the hell is this?”
When the jeep stopped a short distance away, Mallory could see that the GI wore a private’s stripe. Skinny, agitated, barely out of his teens, black curly hair peeking out from a helmet shoved back on his head. The driver beside him kept his head down, eyes straight ahead on the road.
“Where you coming from?” asked Mallory.
“Jesus, I got no idea—we been driving around out here for I don’t know how fuckin’ long—how long, Lieutenant?”
He turned to an officer behind him in the backseat. Mallory swung the lantern around.
Four men in the jeep.
The lieutenant with the bar on his collar leaned forward: compact, blond, good-looking, mid-twenties, a confident big-man-on-campus smile.
“And he’s supposed to be our fucking navigator,” said the lieutenant. “Show him our pass, dummy.”
“All fucking night like this,” said the jittery private, handing over their trip ticket to Mallory, then turning to Ellis. “You got any smokes, buddy?”
Mallory read the trip ticket, which looked in order, then scanned the unit markings stenciled on the jeep’s hood. “You fellas are a long way from Twelfth Army, sir.”
“Tell me about it,” said the lieutenant, a slight Southern twang in his voice. “We left HQ in Luxembourg eight hours ago. Supposed to hook up with the 106 in Vielsalm at eighteen hundred.”
Mallory handed back the pass as he watched the fourth man, in the back beside the lieutenant, unfold a large map.
“You overshot it, sir,” said Mallory. “Vielsalm’s twenty miles southwest of here.”
“That’s fuckin’ beautiful news,” said the private, as Ellis handed him a cigarette. “I tried to tell you, sir, we should’ve turned left about two hours ago— Hey, thanks, man; you got a match?”
“You don’t want to light that here, son,” said Mallory.
“Right, shit, what am I thinking?” The private stuck the cigarette behind his ear; Mallory noticed his hands were shaking.
“Probably don’t want to be running your headlights either,” said Mallory. “Didn’t they give you blackouts?”
“Is that why you stopped us, Sergeant?” asked the lieutenant.
“This is a roadblock, sir. We’ve got orders to stop everybody.”
“Well, I’m glad you did. Maybe you can give Private Knucklehead here some pointers on reading a map.”
“If I ever get it back— Would you please let me see that?” the private pleaded with the fourth man, who had just flicked on a flashlight, buried his face in the map, and showed no interest in handing it over.
“You’re coming from the direction of the Kraut line,” said Mallory.
“No shit,” said the private. “Why do you think we turned around? You could smell the fuckin’ Wiener schnitzel.”
“Kind of unusual to see four men in a jeep,” said Mallory.
“We’re escorting Captain Conway here,” said the lieutenant, nodding to the man beside him. “New intelligence officer for the 106.”
“Captain.” Mallory saluted the man, who didn’t respond, still shining his flashlight over the map, looking for something.
“Aren’t you supposed to ask me for the password, Sergeant?” asked the blond lieutenant.
“That’s right. If we’re not sure of the men.”
“So what do you do if somebody doesn’t know it? I mean, Christ, I don’t know it myself.”
“Don’t worry about it. Password’s ‘Betty Grable.’ They’ll ask you for it at the next roadblock outside the village.”
“I want to ask these guys a question—would you please give me that back, sir?” said the private to the intelligence officer.
Thinking the kid seemed a little out of line talking like that to an officer, Mallory signaled Anderson to raise the gate. In his peripheral vision Mallory noticed that the jeep’s driver had no unit insignia on the shoulder of his field jacket.
“So what unit you guys with anyway?” Mallory asked the driver. “Hey, buddy?”
The driver turned toward him but didn’t answer. T
he man looked older than he expected, lined and weathered, forty if he was a day. He smiled and nodded at Mallory, but it seemed like a rehearsed response, furtive and uncomprehending.
This guy’s not right, whispered some primal instinct.
Mallory felt a surge of adrenaline kick in. His index finger reconnected with the trigger of his M1.
“We’re Field HQ, Radio Company,” said the blond lieutenant, smiling again. “Could I trouble you to give us a hand reading our map?”
The driver gave an awkward wave and turned away from Mallory, training his eyes straight ahead again. In one smooth move the lieutenant stood up in the back and snatched the map from the private’s hand just as he wrested it away from the intelligence officer.
“No problem, sir. You know, our radio’s on the fritz,” said Mallory, moving no closer to the jeep. “Maybe one of you could take a look at it?”
“We’re already running pretty late—”
“Sure it’ll just take a second, sir. Get it working, we could hail the 106 for you, let ’em know where you’re at.”
Neither man moved as the lieutenant looked down at Mallory for a long moment; then he smiled again. “Private Tenella, grab your kit.”
The lieutenant slipped over the edge of the jeep, landed like a cat, and stopped to fold the large map down to a manageable size. Mallory tried to catch Ellis’s eye, but he was helping the private fish out some tools from the back of the jeep.
“Betty Grable,” said the lieutenant, shaking his head, as he passed Mallory, headed for the block house. “What’ll they think of next?”
“I don’t know. Can you believe that bombshell married Mickey Rooney?” asked Mallory.
“I heard it, but I don’t believe it,” said the lieutenant.
Mallory ran a last visual check on the driver, who was rummaging for something on the front seat. His finger firmly on the trigger, Mallory raised the muzzle toward the lieutenant’s back as he turned to follow him, when the man pivoted in his direction.
All Mallory saw was the map, taut in front of his face, moving straight at him. A muffled pop, and the lines and shades of Belgium burst inward. The first bullet caught Mallory under the right ear, shattering his jaw, glancing off the bone, and tearing through the other side of his mouth. Choking on blood and shattered teeth, he dropped his rifle and was reaching for his throat when Von Leinsdorf fired again, catching him in the right shoulder, spinning him around.
The intelligence officer, Gunther Preuss, stood up and hit Private Ellis in the face with the flashlight. Bernie dropped his toolbox and backed away from the jeep.
The driver vaulted out of the jeep and ran toward Anderson at the gate.
Preuss jumped down after Ellis from the jeep, a knife in his hand. They landed with a heavy thud, Ellis underneath giving a groan as Preuss’s full weight compressed him.
Anderson turned at the gate to see the driver with a machine pistol in his hand, ten feet away, closing fast. Anderson raised his rifle. They fired simultaneously: Anderson squeezed off two shots; the driver emptied his magazine.
Von Leinsdorf fired once more at Mallory as he toppled over, then turned casually away as if bored with a conversation. Preuss had his knife buried in Ellis’s ribs, bearing down on him, using his left hand to push the barrel of Ellis’s rifle away from his chest. Grunting with effort, Ellis stubbornly held the gun with both hands, trying to inch a finger toward the trigger. Eyes wild, Preuss looked up at Bernie, standing a few feet away.
“Das Gewehr!” he said. “Erhalten das Gewehr!”
Bernie didn’t move. Von Leinsdorf marched over, pointed the pistol, with a long steel cylinder attached to the muzzle, at Ellis’s head, and fired twice. Once the American went slack, Preuss slapped the rifle away and rolled off the body, breathing heavily.
Bernie felt shock stun his system. He’d never seen anyone die before. He couldn’t think; he couldn’t move.
“What the fuck?” whispered Bernie. “What the fuck?”
“Get hold of yourself,” said Von Leinsdorf; then he turned to Preuss and pointed. “Drag the bodies into those woods.”
Von Leinsdorf jogged back toward the gate. Private Anderson lay dead, sprawled facedown in the dirt, bleeding from half a dozen wounds. The driver—merchant seaman Marius Schieff, from Rostock—had propped himself up against the base of the gate, pistol still in hand, looking down at a dark stain spreading across his field jacket.
Von Leinsdorf knelt down beside him and spoke to him gently. “Marius? How bad is it? Can you walk back to the line?”
Schieff smiled grimly. “Walk five miles?”
“We can’t turn back, my friend,” said Von Leinsdorf.
“Ich weisse,” said Schieff. “Go on, leave me here, maybe someone finds me—”
Von Leinsdorf stood up and without hesitating fired twice into Schieff’s head at close range. He unscrewed the silencer as he glanced into the guard house, then holstered the weapon and walked back to the jeep. Gunther Preuss was already on his feet, grunting with effort as he dragged Ellis’s body toward the nearby woods. Bernie hurried toward Von Leinsdorf.
“Jesus Christ, what the fuck did you do?”
“I told you to be quiet. Collect their tags, get the bodies off the road—”
“You know the orders, god damn it, we’re not supposed to engage, somebody must’ve heard those shots—”
Von Leinsdorf walked past him to Mallory’s body, flicked open his lighter, and fired up a Lucky Strike as he looked at the dead American. “Who’s married to Betty Grable?”
“Betty Grable, the movie star? Fuck if I know—”
“Mickey Rooney?”
“No, it’s not him—wait a minute, let me think a second—it’s that bandleader, Harry James—what difference does it make?”
“I gave him the wrong answer. He was about to do something heroic.” Von Leinsdorf picked up Mallory’s legs and glared at Bernie. “Are you just going to stand there, Brooklyn?”
Bernie grabbed Mallory’s arms, and they carried him toward the woods. “But how did you know that? How could you possibly know that?”
“There’s no radio in the shed,” said Von Leinsdorf.
Gunther Preuss, the overweight former bank clerk from Vienna, stomped past them on his way from the woods back toward the guard gate.
“Was sollten wir mit Schieff tun?” asked Preuss.
“Take his papers, empty his pockets, put him with the others,” said Von Leinsdorf.
“Kann ich seine Aufladungen nehmen?”
“For Christ’s sake, Preuss, the body’s not even cold—”
“Mine...they fit no good,” said Preuss elaborately.
“That the best you can do?” asked Bernie. “You sound like fucking Frankenstein.”
“Then take one of the American’s boots,” said Von Leinsdorf.
“Danke, Unterstürmführer—”
“And speak English or keep your mouth shut, you fat, fucking, useless piece of shit.”
Preuss dropped his shoulders and broke into a harried trot. Von Leinsdorf looked over at Bernie, with a sly smile. “What do you think? My slang is improving, yes?”
Bernie glared at him. “You said ‘kit.’”
“What about it?”
“It’s not a ‘kit,’ it’s a toolbox.”
“You’re right,” said Von Leinsdorf. “Kit’s British. Fuck all.”
“And you’re on Preuss’s case? You’re fuckin’ nuts, you know that?”
Von Leinsdorf laughed, blew smoke, enjoying himself. Twenty yards into the woods, they dropped Mallory’s body beside Ellis under a thick stand of evergreens. A gust of wind stirred the branches overhead, dropping clots of wet snow on them.
“Why’d you have to kill Schieff?” asked Bernie.
“He was gut shot, he wouldn’t have lasted an hour—”
“We could’ve treated him, taken him for help—”
“He knew the risks. Besides, you heard what our friendly sergeant said ba
ck there,” said Von Leinsdorf, tapping Mallory’s boot with his. “Americans ride three men to a jeep. You’d think our fearless leaders might have picked up that little detail, eh, Brooklyn?”
Von Leinsdorf leaned down, opened their shirts, and slipped the dog tags off Mallory and Ellis.
“Cover the bodies,” he said, tossing the tags to Bernie. “Take their ID, jackets, weapons, anything else we can use. You’re driving.”
Bernie caught the tags and dropped them into his pocket. His nightmare had come to life; American blood on his hands. Four men dead in less than five minutes. And Von Leinsdorf seemed to like it. He was practically humming as he walked away. But how long now before they became the hunted?
He saw Mallory’s foot twitch once as he rifled through the man’s field jacket. He leaned down and realized Mallory was still breathing.
Once Von Leinsdorf was out of sight, Bernie took a sulfa packet, bandages, and an ampule of morphine from his pocket, and knelt down beside the gravely wounded sergeant.
6
Southwest of Liège, Belgium
DECEMBER 14, 9:00 P.M.
Earl Grannit leaned out the window of the engine car and looked back along the length of the U.S. Army transport train, eleven freight cars trailing behind them as they rounded a broad turn. He gazed out at the smooth moonlight glancing off the Meuse River as it flashed through the trees, then at his watch under the bare bulb of the cab. He shoveled more coal into the firebox while he waited for his engineer to finish a call on the radio, talking to dispatch.
“How close are we?” asked Grannit, over the roar of the engine, when the call ended.
“Four miles,” said the engineer. “Next station’s Clermont.”
“What about our backup?”
“Says they’re all in place. Ready to go.”
“Famous last words,” said Grannit.
“Think they’re gonna make a move, Earl?”
“I’ll take a look.”
Grannit swung outside on the handrail, found his footing, and inched back along the ledge rimming the coal car. He stepped across to the first freight car, climbed the ladder to the roof, set himself, and looked ahead down the tracks. He could already make out the Clermont station lights piercing the night in the distance. Then he spotted a crossing in the foreground, where two cars were flashing their headlights toward the oncoming train. The engine had already started to slow; he heard the whining steel grind of the brakes.