1945 (43 page)

Instinctively, Richer interposed his bloody hand.

"Let's hog-tie him and let him lay," said Al. "The brass is 
gonna want some prisoners, and this one's an officer. That's why I was careful not to kill him in the first place. I wouldn't a' killed the other one I got either, except he was farther away and startin' to move," he added apologetically.

Frank laughed. "Well, don't you worry about that, Al. Me 'n Lloyd, we sure as shootin' shot to kill."

"Jesus mercy, come over here!" Lloyd, who had left the cousins to their friendly squabble, shouted.

For a moment Richer was alone. He turned his head slightly and saw the three of them standing off to the side of the road, staring wordlessly at the covey of dead girls, paying special attention to the one he had not shot. Suddenly the sailor turned away from the others and gagged.

A few moments later the three loomed over him again.

He tried to move, rolling up on his right side.

Frank Watson, a sheriff who firmly disapproved of police brutality, kicked him in his wounded shoulder so that he slammed back against the pavement with a keening gasp of pain.

"Monster," Lloyd hissed, bringing his rifle to bear, so that it touched the lashes of Richer's left eye.

"No, wait," said Al. "You know I don't hold with shootin' prisoners of war. Soldiers shouldn't ought to do that to each other. Besides, if we shoot theirs, they'll shoot ours ..."

Lloyd looked ready to mutiny.

"'Course I don't see any enemy soldiers around here," Al continued, "just this puddle of filth." He gazed straight at Richer. "I'll be scouting a bit. Meet you down by that corner," he said, pointing. Then, with an attempted ironic nod to Richer that was spoiled by the look of loathing he couldn't suppress, Alvin York turned and moved on down the road.

Free at last, Frank knocked Lloyd's rifle away with his shotgun, then centered it on Richer's chest.

Richer, as he was meant to, saw the trigger finger slowly start to tighten.

"Come on fellas," he gasped. "I was just having a little fun. It got a little out of hand, is all. I got excited. You know how it is." The finger relaxed. Lloyd looked at him speculatively, as if trying to imagine what exacdy the words he had just heard could mean. The shotguns muzzle drifted downward.

"Yeah, 'yer right. There ain't nothin' like havin' a little fun," he finally replied thoughtfully, the muzzle having drifted farther yet.

"I wasn't the only one!" Richer's voice was high-pitched as a girl's.

"The other ones didn't have blood on their hands," the sheriff replied, then added calmly, "Now you see if you think this is fun, you Nazi bastard."

They left Richer lying there, his groin a red mass. He was still alive, but he wasn't having any fun.

12:20 A.M.

"Howdy boys. What took you so long?" York called to the other two when they finally found him.

Rather than answer they continued to stare dumbfounded at the array of scattered dead and neatly arrayed living-but-hog-tied Germans on the street before them.

Finally Lloyd looked at him sternly and said, "Alvin, now don't make any jokes and don't tell me any lies. How did you
do
that?"

York smiled modesdy. "Well, that's a funny story...."

12:21 A.M.

As the assault team formed up in the corridor Skorzeny went back to the stairwell and started up. His radio operator was at the top of the stairs.

"What news?"

"We just lost contact with Richer. All hell broke loose on K-25. Three more bombers are down, and the second strike hit the wrong part of the building. Holzer just called in and said the hell with the pickup, he's staying on to finish the job."

Skorzeny nodded. Holzer was the sort to do something like that rather than admit defeat, and his men would follow him to Hell—literally in this case.

While they were talking three men came running up, one with a Panzerschreck, the other two carrying an MG-42 machine gun and ammunition.

"I know you said two, sir," the one in charge said hurriedly, "but we only had one."

"Well, we'll have to make do. Come with me."

"Something else is developing," the radio operator called out before they could leave. "Increased counter-fire coming from the east end . . . reports of armed figures moving this way... they just overran our antitank gun and mortar crew blocking the road in."

"You men, downstairs. I will follow you shortly. Wait for me," Skorzeny called. Then, to the radio operator, "All teams are to initiate pullback to the pickup point
now.
Get the intelligence team packed up and out of here. Just ten more minutes here, that's all we need!" Even as he turned and started back down the stairs he heard a sudden increase in firing from outside.

Going back down into the smoke-filled basement he caught up with the Panzerschreck team.

"Give me that," he snapped, and grabbing the shoulder-launched rocket he made his way down the corridor, stopping just short of the turn that led to the storage room.

"Martel!"

"Come on in!"

"Martel, I'm giving Marshall and the rest of you one last chance, tell him he's got two minutes. Either he comes out or we come in and kill you all."

"We've been waiting for fifteen! What's the matter, getting a little nervous about what happens to people who come through this door, Skorzeny? I'll be real disappointed if you turn coward." Martel laughed sardonically. "Big brave commando faced off by a bunch of desk jockeys! How will
that
read in
Signal,
hah?"

Skorzeny looked back at the fifteen men of his assault team. "Forget the two minutes. It's now. If you can locate Marshall, grab him. Shoot everyone else."

He pulled the safety release on the rocket, hoisted it to his shoulder, and kneeled in the middle of the corridor.

Martel, peering up over the side of the barricade, saw no reason to assume that they actually had two minutes. He looked at the scientists who had picked up the weapons of the fallen MPs and were now on the firing line. Some of them were trembling, but all were as ready as they could be, and needed no admonition.

Suddenly a spear of fire was flung from the end of the darkened corridor. It roared over his head, shrieked the length of the room, and impacted on the far wall with a thunderclap roar. Since a Panzerschreck's shaped charge was designed to penetrate armor, most of this one's explosive force was wasted in blasting a crater into the concrete wall, but enough blew back to fill the room with a cloud of wall fragments and noxious effluvia.

Still groggy from the blast, Martel forced himself up— then ducked back as a heavy machine gun coughed. There were no direct hits, but the rounds ricocheting off the back wall added to the rocket's contribution with a howling blizzard of steel and concrete.

When he realized the machine gun was firing high Martel popped up and tried to return fire, but he was driven back down as the stream of bullets lowered, slashing into the filing cabinets. Some of the rounds finally cut clear through the government red tape to tear apart the men crouched on the other side, and the room echoed with screams of death and terror. Then the machine gun cut off, and half a dozen grenades bounced in.

Martel, arms covering his head, crouched over Marshall as the grenades exploded in a nearly simultaneous roar that was followed up almost instantly by the high-pitched ripping snarl of Schmeissers. Knowing that they must, Martel and Marshall came back up, weapons leveled and firing.

For a short time that seemed very long the room was an inchoate maelstrom of smoke, flames, and stroking flashes of gunfire. Then a flare went off. Suddenly it was brighter than day, and Martel was horrified to see that several Germans had joined them. But three died as he looked while another sprinted across the intervening space and leaped atop the barricade — and then tumbled onto Martel. Marshall grunted in satisfaction as he dropped his revolver and reached over to snag the fallen German's machine pistol. Marshall popped up and fired a burst — then dropped like a sack, his face a bloody mask.

The remaining two invaders were crouched behind the cabinets that had been scattered by the blown door. Marshall was not their only victim, and under cover of their fire five more Germans burst through the door and systematically started to fire at the crowd of scientists huddled behind the secondary barricades. Two of the new intruders fell, but the other three followed up their initial fire with a coordinated rush, leaping atop the first barricade, shooting downward at the remaining armed defenders as they did so.

Momentarily no longer targets, a desperate frenzy took hold of the surviving scientists and they scrambled over their barricade and charged madly forward. Since the three atop the cabinets were otherwise engaged, the disorganized rush was partially effective—several of the unarmed civilians died from the careful covering fire from the two still crouched in the corner, but all but one of the Germans quite literally fell back from the barricade, to be dispatched one after another by armed defenders in what had become a one-sided exchange.

For Martel the action suddenly freeze-framed: the man still standing on the barricade was—

"Skorzeny!"

Only when the figure suddenly looked down at him with an expression of joyful recognition did Martel realize he had shouted that name aloud.

"Martel!"

As his own Weapon swung toward his enemy, Martel saw that the muzzle of Skorzeny's machine pistol had already gone from narrow oval to full circle, and he was staring at his death—or would have been had Skorzeny's Schmeisser not chosen that moment to jam. As Martel's weapon came in line, Skorzeny's foot lashed out quicker than thought, knocking the barrel high, and before Martel could bring it back down, two hundred and fifty pounds of human attack-dog was on him.

Martel was naturally a strong, athletic man—before the age of powered control devices fighter pilots didn't come in any other variety—and since the crash of his Corsair his initially therapeutic weight-training regimen had made him very strong indeed. But he had suffered gready this night and soon the other's tiger strength had borne him down. Their short, fierce struggle ended with Martel's wounded arm pinned under him and the other in Skorzeny's iron grip—which left one of Skorzeny's hands free to pluck a dagger from his boot.

"Good game, Martel! And now—"

It hadn't been
that
hard a night. With strength amplified by pure desperation, Martel's captured right arm jerked to parry the descending dagger. Rather than pushing through the bridge of his nose and on into the brainpan, the plunging blade merely sliced the side of his forearm to the bone.

As Skorzeny attempted to draw the dagger back for another stroke, Martel snatched at the German's knife-hand, momentarily immobilizing it as he scrabbled backward with his free arm, trying for leverage, for a roll to the side, for a moment more of life. Then his hand closed on something roughly rounded, warm and metallic. Marshall's discarded forty-five.

By now Skorzeny had jerked his knife-hand free. As he raised himself for a lunging stroke that would never be deflected, his eyes widened in astonishment and he jerked his head aside, almost far enough, as the revolver had its say. With the aid of Skorzeny's convulsive leap the shot flung the German backward against the side of the barricade, where he somehow found the strength to flip himself over it before collapsing, hands clenched to the left side of his face.

Martel stood up, leaned over the barricade, aimed—and as he squeezed the trigger a German soldier leaped between Skorzeny and Martel's pistol, taking for himself the bullet meant for his commander. Before Martel could fire again he was forced back to cover by renewed machine-gun fire that continued for some little time. When next he could look up he saw three black-clad figures stumbling around a comer to the stairway, covered by two more walking backward, machine pistols poised, behind them.

The room was suddenly quiet, except for the cries of the wounded and dying and the crackling of the fires. The entire action had taken perhaps two minutes, his hand-to-hand with Skorzeny no more than fifteen seconds.

Jim peered into the confusion. Skorzeny was nowhere to be found, nor any other living German. Among the defenders only he and a single Ranger remained armed and at least somewhat dangerous.

"Come on!" Jim said to the Ranger, who was standing there dazed. He started for the door. After a moment the Ranger followed. Together they moved cautiously down the corridor, which was carpeted with German dead, the floor slippery with their blood. Coming at last to the corner, Jim nearly lost his footing on the hundreds of shell casings from

the heavy machine gun sitting in the center of the hallway.

Thoughtfully, Jim stripped a grenade from a dead soldier. Discovering that his left arm would barely answer, he handed the grenade to the Ranger, who pulled the ring, swung the grenade carefully around the corner without exposing himself, and let fly. After it exploded the Ranger launched himself in a rolling dive across the opening, firing a burst as he did so. When there was no answering fire he rose and motioned for Jim to follow.

They continued down the corridor, passing half a dozen more dead Germans, the Ranger kicking their weapons out of their reach just in case. Finally they came to the gaping doorway leading to the stairs. The door itself lay broken where it had come to rest after being blown off its hinges. Now Jim could see that the opposite wall of the stairwell was shimmering with reflected light from above.