Cauldron of Blood (22 page)

Now
he was a metre away from the monster, he and his horse splattered by the snow churning up by the tracks. He made a last calculation and took a deep breath. Still the Fritzes hadn’t seen him, although he could have reached out and touched the turret.
‘
JUMP
!’
he commanded himself and sprang right out of the saddle, sabre clutched in his right hand.

He
slammed onto the snow-covered deck. For one long moment he crouched there, praying that he wouldn’t slip, trying to recover his balance, while his horse, whinnying furiously, broke away and fled panic-stricken for the trees. The Cossack officer righted himself. Now they must have heard him. Balancing the best he could on the wildly swaying deck, he ran to the turret.

To
his surprise it wasn’t closed. Had they not heard him after all? He clutched his sabre hilt, which was wet with sweat, more firmly and cautiously raised his head above the turret-level.

It
was empty!

He
swallowed hard and was tempted to jump off there and then. Was this a ghost tank? With difficulty he controlled his wildly beating heart and stared into the green gloom of the inner turret. Not only was there no commander, but no gunner too, though the red lights which indicated that the 75 mm cannon was loaded and ready to fire, glowed brightly. What in the devil’s name was going on?

He
steeled himself and then sheathing his sabre and pulling out his pistol, he dropped into the turret. Bending to his knees, pistol at the ready, finger curled wetly around the trigger, he peered into the driver’s hatch.

It
was
empty
too
!

‘
In the name of the devil!’ he cursed in absolute bewilderment, as he crouched there in the empty turret, feeling a cold finger of fear trace its way down the small of his back. ‘What is going on—’ He stopped short. A thick stick, perhaps the handle of a fire-axe, or something of that kind, was wedged under the clutch and over the accelerator and keeping it depressed!

‘
By the Black Virgin of Kazan!’ he cried aloud, the fear leaving him swiftly, as if someone had opened an invisible tap. ‘That’s how it was done!’

The
next instant, he was standing upright in the swaying turret, hands cupped around his mouth, crying, ‘
Sotnik
, get on the radio, they’ve done a bunk!
Sotnik
, can you hear me...
They’re
beating
it
....’

*

Schulze paused, leaning weakly against a snow-heavy tree. ‘All right... all right,’ he gasped. ‘Take five, lads... Don’t want to rupture you lot of cardboard soldiers!’

Matz,
who had been hobbling after the rest the best he could with his artificial leg, came level with the gasping Wotan men, their breath coming in harsh, leathern-lunged wheezes, and said scornfully. ‘Look who’s talking! Why, you big ape-turd, you’re about ruptured yerself!’

Schulze
ignored his running-mate’s comment. Instead he concentrated, head cocked to one side, to the noises of the forest. But there was no sound from that direction, save for the howl of the wind. ‘Don’t seem as if they’ve tumbled to it yet,’ he said.

‘
Let’s just hope so,’ the Butcher said, his eyes full of fear. ‘Because if they catch us out here in the open....’ He didn’t finish the end of his sentence, but the fugitives all knew what the big sergeant-major meant.

‘
Hold yer water, you big soft piss-pansy,’ Schulze snarled, ‘or I ‘ll carve yer legs off at the knee — and turn yer into a shitting pygmy!’

The
terrible threat worked and a sullen Butcher fell into an immediate silence, while the others stared expectantly at the grey outline of Schulze’s face in the flying snow.

‘
All right, lads, I’ll not attempt to pull yer pissers,’ he said after a moment. ‘We are out on our own with a shitting good chance that we might bump into a Popov patrol. Though in this weather anyone with any sense will be toasting his toes around a nice hot stove!’

‘
Or in the hay with some nice hot piece of gash,’ Matz interrupted irreverently.

‘
Schnauze
?’ Schulze snarled, though he was grateful for Matz’s support; nothing ever seemed able to get him down. ‘But it’s obvious we’ve fooled the Popovs for the time being. It’ll take those Panthers a good bit till they run out of fuel or bump into some obstruction that’ll stop ’em. So, that’s all to the good.’

‘
Get on with it, Schulze,’ Matz said. ‘This cold’s freezing the nuts off ’n me.’

‘
I’m only trying to put you all in the picture, Matzi.’

‘
Who do you think you are — shitting Rembrandt?’

‘
I’ll Rembrandt you, if you don’t knock it off. Now this is the drill.
Obersturmbannfuhrer
Peiper has given me a course to follow. We are going to take it. Just before dawn, he is going to halt at a certain grid reference and wait for us. There we’ve been promised help by the Fuhrer HQ to get through the Soviet perimeter holding the river line. Now,’ he forced himself to sound confident. ‘What do you say to that for a plan?’

‘
Not much,’ the Butcher said gloomily. ‘It’s got as many holes in it as a knocking-shop full of whores.’

‘
All right, sunshine,’ Schulze said with heavy patience, ‘will you just go and stick yer head up yer own arse for a couple of minutes while I get on with it. My guess is that we’re about two hours behind Peiper. Naturally they’ve got wheels, but in this kind of weather they can’t be going much more than five klicks an hour. I don’t doubt that we’ll make it to the rendezvous in time.’

‘
And if we don ‘t, Schulzi?’ Matz asked.

Schulze
looked down at him through the flying snow-flakes. ‘Then, my little crippled friend,’ he said carefully with more confidence than he felt, ‘you’d better go down on your bended knee and start praying to the Great Jehovah and All His Triangles...

It
was now exactly seven hours to dawn....

*

‘
The
Fuhrer
!’ von Igel gasped. ‘Oh, my arse...
oh
my
aching
arse
!’

‘
The
Fuhrer
himself
?’ the pilots all around him echoed, eyes full of awe, as the announcement shocked them out of their drowsiness.

Hastily
von Igel grabbed his hat and put it on then, as an afterthought, held his hand over the receiver. ‘That’s what the operator said. It’s Archer himself... and... he wants to speak to...
me
....’ He gulped and looked around their shaken faces, as if he wanted them to laugh out loud at him and tell him that someone was playing a joke on him. No one did.

‘
But I said — me!’ he repeated.

Still
no one burst out laughing and said, ‘Get on the stick, Kurt, they’re pulling yer pisser!’ He stared around at their young faces desperately and knew that it was true: Adolf Hitler, the Ruler of Europe from the Channel Coast to the Urals, was about to speak to him, Major von Igel, Commander of the Black Eagles, at one-thirty in the morning!

‘
Major von Igel?’ that familiar, guttural Austrian voice asked.

He
gulped. ‘
Jawohl
,
mein
Fuhrer
,’ he managed to say. ‘
Major
von
Igel
zur
Stelle
.’

‘
Good evening... or is it good morning!’ Hitler said in a conversational tone, like a man who had dined well and was at ease with the world, his stomach full, his mind peaceful. ‘Sorry to bother you at this unearthly hour, my dear Major, but the circumstances make it inevitable.’

A
dazed von Igel found himself saying, that it did not matter, and that he and his crews were on stand-by duty as it was.

‘
Ah, my brave airmen,’ Hitler sighed. ‘What would I do without them, especially my Black Eagles, the bravest of the brave!’

Von
Igel gulped — the voice made him want to weep. ‘You shit,’ an angry little voice within his head snapped. ‘He’s trying to rub honey around yer beard! It’s the usual old crap these rear-echelon stallions pull to get stupid front-swine like you to go and get their turnips shot off.’

  ‘
Generaloberst
Jodl tells me that weather conditions on your sector of the front are very bad,’ Hitler continued. ‘Is that true?’

‘
They aren’t very good,
mein
Fuhrer
.’

He
could hear Hitler hesitate at the other end of the line, which was abnormally free of static and interference, as if when the Fuhrer spoke, not even Nature dare interfere with the perfect transmission of his voice. ‘But are they too bad for your brave fellows to fly?’

Von
Igel looked around the circle of faces craned forward all around him, ‘They are bad, sir,’ again he heard his own voice as if it were coming from very far away. ‘But not altogether impossible to fly in. There will be casualties, of course.’

‘
As the saying has it, my dear Major, one cannot plane a piece of wood without making shavings. And, of course, you realize the importance of this mission? It is not only the fate of
Obersturmbannfuhrer
Peiper which concerns us, but also that of my old comrade-in-arms
Gauleiter
Kirn, the man who once saved my life.’

‘
I understand exactly,
mein
Fuhrer
.’

‘
Then you and your brave Black Eagles will fly?’

‘
We will, sir.’

‘
Then God bless and protect you, my dear Major. I wish you every success.’ Suddenly the line went dead for a moment, however, just as a petrified von Igel was about to put the phone down, Jodl’s dry voice replaced the emotion-charged one of the Fuhrer. ‘When?’ he asked laconically.

Von
Igel flashed a quick look at his watch, not daring to look at his comrades, knowing that now he had betrayed them. There would not be many of them who would live to see this day out. It was exactly one forty-five. He licked suddenly dry lips. ‘In exactly four hours, sir,’ he replied.

‘
Good.’

The
line went dead and von Igel was left staring at the receiver, his face blank, but his mind racing with the knowledge that he had just condemned the famed Black Eagle Squadron to death.

SEVEN

It had been a long frightening night.

There
had been scare after scare and twice one of the halftracks had broken down, thrown a track or had ice form in the carburettor. While the mechanics had worked at it in the freezing cold, the others had stood around numbly, with their shoulders bent in the flying snow like comdemned men.

Just
before dawn Peiper had asked for volunteers to check their front, now that they were coming close to the Russian positions on the river line. The young Baltic baron had suggested that he should go on alone, as he spoke Russian, and check out the situation. He had failed to return!

Now
the sky was already beginning to break up, the black giving way to grey, indicating that dawn would soon be upon them, and a worried Peiper, his halftracks completely exposed in that snowy waste, wondered when the damned flyboys would make their appearance to help him break through the Ivan positions on the river.

‘
It is cold without the motors running,’ Gerda, the fat whore, reminded him that if he remained here much longer with the halftrack engines off, they might never start again. ‘It’s enough to freeze the piss up inside of you!’

Peiper
laughed softly. ‘Now come on, Gerda,’ he chided. ‘You know ladies don’t — er — piss!’

Gerda
looked at him coyly, her fat face blue with cold, a great opaque dewdrop at the end of her pinched nose. ‘No more they don’t,
Ober
—’ She stopped short. ‘What’s that?’

‘
What ‘s what?’ Peiper asked in sudden alarm.

Gerda
pointed a trembling hand to the east.

Peiper
groaned. A solitary red flare was ascending slowly into the whirling snow sky and he did not need to be clairvoyant to know that it had been fired by the Soviets. For a horrified moment he stared at it petrified, unable to think or make a decision; then he realized the danger he was in. ‘All right, you heroes,’ he bellowed. ‘Stand by. We’ve got visitors!’

The
new threat put life into his frozen soldiers. Hastily they seized their weapons, checking the bolts to ensure that they had not frozen up, and looked at Peiper expectantly. The young colonel stood upright in the cab of the leading halftrack, night glasses fixed on the horizon to their east. Apart from the plummeting red flare, there seemed nothing there, but he knew flares meant soldiers and he could guess that the only troops out there in that miserable snow waste were Soviets.

With
his free hand, he wiped the glasses free of driving snow and swung them anew from left to right. He stopped suddenly. A dark shape — vague but definitely there — slid into the calibrated glass. Hurriedly he focused the glasses more accurately. Around him the men tensed, knowing that he had spotted something.

What
was
it
?

Slowly,
almost thoughtfully, Peiper lowered his glasses and faced them. ‘Soviet reconnaissance car,’ he said, trying to fight back the defeat in his voice. ‘We’ve been spotted...’

*

With a roar that shook the Stuka so that von Igel thought the whole plane could fall apart, the special supercharger burst into life, great jets of white smoke streaming from the exhausts. All around him, Stuka after Stuka, assisted by the alcohol-powered supercharger, did the same. In an instant the dawn air vibrated with noise that drowned even the roar of the storm.

Von
Igel looked to left and right, briefly catching a glimpse of his pilots’ set faces, outlined in the green glow of the cockpits, through white flurries of driving snow.   ‘Joseph, Mary, Jesus,’ he whispered, using the old Bavarian expression, ‘
do
help your poor flyboys this shitting snowy dawn!’ He raised his thumb to the ground crew crouched below, the wind whipping their clothes tight to their skinny bodies and yelled: ‘Chocks away!’ Next instant he slammed the cockpit cover home.

The
ground crew needed no urging. They ripped the chocks away and retreated, pulling the ropes after them. Von Igel flashed a last look at instruments, knowing that it was going to take all his flying skill to get the crate off the deck in this storm.

To
left and right of him, the other Black Eagles were revving their engines madly, knowing that if they lost power at the crucial stage of take-off in this terrible wind, it was curtains for them.

Von
Igel flashed a last look left and right and then, as the green signal flare arced into the sky from the make-shift control tower, started to taxi forward, lining his gyro and magnetic compasses at two-fifty degrees. He licked suddenly parched lips. Even
now
he couldn’t see the outline of the runway in spite of the lights. What was it going to be like once he really started moving? Instinctively he pushed the throttles forward, while inside him a frightened little voice warned him not to do so — it could spell disaster.

Abruptly
he became calm, as the wind started to buffet the plane and the snow began to drive at the cockpit like heavy white flak. With eyes keenly alert and glued to the flickering luminous green of his two compasses, adjusting the rudder and flaps with neat deft movements of his skilled hands, von Igel urged the plane forward.

Now
he started to gather speed. The wind force increased. Faster and faster he rolled, feeling the bump of the tyres as they hit a protuberance in the snow. The wind smashed into him. He grabbed the controls just in time. The speedometer needle flickered up to a hundred – and beyond. Soon now he must attempt the take-off. Again the wind slammed into the Stuka. He grabbed the rudder and stopped the movement which would have swung him right round directly into the path of the planes behind him.

Now
he was sweating hard. The drops poured down his face in a hot lather and his goggles were beginning to steam up. But he dare not take his hand from the controls to clean them. Every second counted.

One
hundred twenty kilometres an hour! He must attempt the take-off in a couple of seconds. The snowflakes pelted his window, reducing visibility to nil, despite of the cleaners racing back and forth, working full out.

‘
Komm
Suesse
!’
he whispered fervently. ‘Come on, little sweet-one, do as Daddy tells you....’ Gently he began to edge the stick back. ‘Don’t let your lover-boy down-’

The
Stuka lurched violently, caught by a huge gust of wind. The tail started to swing round.
‘
Shit
!’ he roared and grabbed for the rudder-control. The rubber of the tyres screamed in protest. For a moment he thought he wasn’t going to do it. And then suddenly she was back on course and the Stuka was rolling forward through the tremendous storm once more.

‘
Lift
...
please
lift
!’ he sighed and continued the backwards action of the stick. The nose tilted upwards. The engine roared angrily as it took the strain. The angle became ever steeper. Abruptly the harsh thump-thump of the tyres over the rough surface of snow gave way to nothing save the howl of the wind and the roar of the engine going all out.

He
had done it! He felt his shoulders slump in relief, relaxing a little from the strain of holding the Stuka on course and at the same time, sensed the warm trickle of urine running down his left leg and into his flying boot.

Down
below, unseen by Major von Igel, three of his Stukas were burning fiercely in the snow, while the ground crews fought to rescue the screaming pilots trapped in their cockpits. What was left of the Black Eagles were airborne. Now it was dawn.

*

‘Horsemen!’ the Butcher croaked fearfully, as they crouched among the firs, weapons at the ready.

‘
What did you think — Father Christmas?’ Matz asked scornfully.

‘
Shut up!’ Schulze hissed and took in the scene.

The
snow had let up a little and now in the clear light of a new dawn, the steppe sparkled with fresh snow, clearly outlining the dark shadows of mounted men plodding stolidly towards them across the steppe.

‘
I bet they ‘re Cossacks,’ the Butcher whispered. ‘Those bastards have no mercy.’

‘
I’ll have no mercy on you, if you don’t knock it off,’ Schulze threatened. ‘Yer can’t hear yerself think with you yacking like that.’ He sniffed and knew instinctively that the Cossacks were following them. Naturally their tracks had soon been obliterated by the snow, but here and there in the shelter of the trees they had lasted long enough for the Popovs to spot them.

Schulze
did some quick thinking. They were in no position to stand and make a protracted fight for it. The Wotan troopers were too weak and too few. But neither could they keep on their present course. By his reckoning, they were only some one and a half kilometres from where Peiper and the rest were waiting for them for the last stage of the break-out and they might well lead the Cossacks straight to Peiper. No, that was not on. What was he going to do?

For
a while he watched the purposeful advance of the Russian cavalry, the leaders bending low over the necks of their mounts, pausing now and again before changing direction. There was no doubt about it; they were tracking the Wotan. Schulze made his decision.

‘
Listen, you big arse with ears,’ he addressed the Butcher. ‘I want you to take the boys and keep going on the set course.’ Hastily he unstrapped the compass from his wrist and handed it to an unwilling Butcher.

‘
But they’ll see us,’ he quavered, his face ashen with fear.

‘
But
they’ll
see
us
!’ Matz mimicked his frightened tone mercilessly.

‘
Of course, they will,’ Schulze snapped. ‘That’s exactly what I want ’em to do.’

‘
Why?’ the Butcher asked.

‘
Because, my big, brainless fart-cannon, me and Matzi here are gonna play hero again and save your fat useless arse. Now get the lead outa ya britches and move out!’

‘
But—’

‘
No buts, and remember keep out in the open where the Popovs can see you nice and clear.
Now
go
!’

One
minute later a terrified Butcher, who kept flinging anxious glances over his big shoulder, was on his way, leading the rest of the Wotan troopers strung out in a long line, plodding through the knee-deep snow, while Matz and Schulze crouched in the trees, their machine pistols at the ready, the rest of Wotan’s spare magazines tucked into their belts, waiting....

*

‘
Obersturmbannfuhrer
Peiper, sir,’ a worried voice cut into Peiper’s reverie.

He
swung round, lowering his glasses as he did so. It was the Golden Pheasant. ‘Yes,
Gauleiter
?’ he asked. Like most frontlike SS men he disliked the ‘brown boys’ with their fat bellies, gross appetites and pomposity. Indeed, as a young cadet he had always worn civilian clothes outside the barracks so that he need not salute them, and he had never joined the Party for the same reason. ‘What is it?’

‘
Don’t you think it is time we moved on?’ the Golden Pheasant asked. ‘God knows if the engines will start again in this weather,’ he shivered dramatically and his jowls quivered. ‘And if they attack,’ He indicated the dark ominous shapes beginning to group on the horizon, ‘we haven’t a chance.’

‘
Agreed,’ Peiper said with more ease that he felt. ‘But without our aerial artillery we haven’t got a chance in hell.’

‘B
ut do you really think that planes will be able to get through in this weather,
Obersturmbannfuhrer
?’ the fat Party man said, putting Peiper’s own fears into words.   ‘
Unmöglich
!’

‘
Nothing
is impossible,
Gauleiter
,’ Peiper said, flinging another glance at the sky, which was already beginning to turn a leaden grey quickly, indicating that the fine spell would soon end in another snowstorm. ‘Besides, if we have to make a run for it, it would be better to do so under the cover of the new storm.’

For
once the
Gauleiter
’s fears were overcome by scorn. ‘My dear young sir, do you really expect the enemy to wait till then? They can read the weather just as we can. They’ll undoubtedly attack before then.’

Almost
as if responding to his scornful words, there was a sudden burst of noise on the horizon and swinging round Peiper was in time to see the first little group of armoured reconnaissance cars, well spread out on the sparkling surface of the new snow, begin to slither down the slope towards them.

‘
Get that
panzerfaust
up here!’ he cried, the
Gauleiter
, the missing planes everything forgotten now in face of the final threat, ‘They’re coming....’