Chosen of the Valkyries

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Berlin, Germany Prime

25 October 1985

Hauptmann Kurt Wieland wasn’t sure if he was being rewarded for good service or being punished for some unspecified offense. His unit had been recalled, shortly after Gudrun’s wedding, and deployed to defend the Reichstag, relieving a mixed unit of policemen, security troops and military forces belonging to the various political factions. He had strict orders, from Volker Schulze himself, to make sure that no one entered the complex without both clearance and a thorough search, but just about everyone who wanted to get in seemed to believe they could browbeat his troopers. He’d come far too close to ordering a complete strip and cavity search on one bureaucrat before the man had hastily backed down and stopped issuing threats to have the entire unit reassigned to Siberia.

Although how he expected to get us to Siberia is an open question, Kurt thought. I…

He jerked up as he heard the sound of an explosion, followed by several more in quick succession. Those hadn’t been shellfire! And they’d been well within the safe zone surrounding the Reichstag. He dreaded to think how many people had hurried into the safe zone, believing that the SS would leave it untouched, only to be caught now by bomb attacks on a scale unseen since the Arab Rebellions. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people were dead or wounded…

“Incoming fire,” Loeb snapped.

Kurt ducked behind shelter as the first antitank missile slammed into the defences, followed by a hail of RPGs. The first explosion shattered the guardhouse, but the Reichstag itself was largely unharmed. Kurt allowed himself a moment of relief – the designers had planned on the assumption that there would be a nuclear war – then started to bark orders as commandos opened fire, pouring gunfire into the Reichstag.

“Lock down the building,” he bawled. One of the explosions, unless he missed his guess, had been far too close to the barracks. The soldiers on duty would have problems getting to the Reichstag, even though they were bare minutes away if they sprinted. And if the bomb had been in the barracks, hundreds of good men would be dead now. “Send a warning up the chain. Tell them we need help…”

He swore again as he heard the sound of shellfire, shells crashing down all over the city. The SS had mounted a coordinated attack, hitting the Reichstag at the same time as they thrust forward and into the defence lines. Command and control networks were probably disrupted badly, if they weren’t down altogether. The defenders knew to hold the line – he’d had similar orders before his men had been pulled out – but it was going to be harder to send reinforcements to plug the holes before the SS rammed an infantry division through them.

“Aircraft,” Loeb barked. “Watch the skies.”

Kurt nodded, grimly. The SS air attacks had dropped down to almost nothing over the last few days, but now they were back with a vengeance. A missile rose up to blow one of the planes out of the sky, yet the others kept coming, targeting defence lines, garrisons and power plants right across the city. Berlin might survive the offensive, but life in the city would never be the same again.

He shook his head, dismissing the thought, as the shooting outside grew louder. It didn’t matter, not now. All that mattered was holding the line…

…And praying, desperately, that help arrived in time.

“The main offensive has begun, Herr Oberstgruppenfuehrer,” Weineck said. “Resistance is still strong.”

Alfred nodded impatiently. Taking out the enemy command and control network was a core facet of modern war, but it hardly mattered in Berlin. The defenders had nowhere to run and no reason to expect to be treated well if they surrendered. His forces had taken a handful of prisoners, but almost all of them had been badly wounded before they’d finally stopped fighting and two of them had died shortly after being captured. The basic interrogation – the POWs had been shipped east, on the Fuhrer’s direct orders – had made it clear that no one dared surrender, simply out of fear of being shot as soon as they were captured.

Damned bastards, he thought.

The thought gnawed at his mind. He was no stranger to the horrors of war – he’d seen more horrors than any pampered westerner – but allowing so many atrocities to be committed had been stupid. They hadn’t even had the sense to win the war outright before starting the reign of terror. And he’d wanted to stop it. It would have been so easy to hang a few of the worst offenders, just to encourage the others, but the Fuhrer had refused to allow it. Terror might weaken the defenders, he’d argued, yet it had also made them reluctant to surrender. And that gave them the determination to fight on when all seemed lost.

He looked up. “And the enemy reinforcements?”

“No movements as yet, Herr Oberstgruppenfuehrer,” Weineck said.

“They’ll move soon,” Alfred predicted.

He kept the rest of the thought to himself. The Fuhrer had shot a number of men for ‘defeatism’ and he had no intention of joining them. And yet, the military logic was beyond doubt. His force, burnt out after weeks of savage fighting, simply didn’t have the time to stand off even a single armoured thrust. And the enemy, if the latest reports were accurate, had enough panzers massing in place to launch two thrusts. His forces would wind up trapped between two advancing jaws.

We have to break through to Berlin, he thought, coldly. Whatever happens, we have to get through now. Or we lose.

The enemy were keeping their heads down, Hauptsturmfuehrer Hennecke Schwerk noted, as he led his men towards the first enemy position. It had been worked into a suburb of Berlin, a blur of housing, shops and a single large school, but twenty minutes of shellfire had left most of the once-proud suburb in ruins. The school was nothing more than a pile of rubble – he couldn’t help thinking that the children would be pleased – while most of the homes had been badly damaged. Only the shops remained intact, although their windows were smashed and several nearby vehicles were burning brightly. Hennecke’s commanders hoped to loot the shops to feed their men.

He dropped to the ground as he heard a burst of machine gun fire, then motioned four of his men into a flanking formation while the others opened fire, trying to keep the gunners from noticing that the attackers were trying to outflank them. They’d used the tactic before, time and time again, but this time it failed. Several other machine guns opened fire, picking off the flankers before they had a chance to get into position. Hennecke felt his lips curl in sharp irritation, remembering the pre-battle briefing. They’d been ordered, in no uncertain terms, to break through the enemy defences, stopping for nothing.

Tapping his radio, he called in an airstrike. There was a long pause, long enough for him to wonder if something had gone wrong, then three HE-477s roared over the battlefield, their cannons pouring explosive shells into the enemy position. The machine gun fire stopped abruptly, but the aircraft weren’t finished. Hennecke stayed low as one aircraft dropped a handful of tiny bombs on the enemy, then turned and flew eastwards. A missile rose up from the ground, behind them, only to drop to the ground and explode somewhere to the east. The pilots had escaped in time.

“Forward,” he yelled, as he rose and ran towards the smouldering remains. “For the Reich!”

There was almost no incoming fire, although he kept his head low just in case. The enemy seemed to have been wiped out, save for a couple of young men who were both badly wounded. There was little hope for them, he knew, even if they got to a field hospital in time. He shot them both – it was a mercy kill – and then swore as mortar shells started to land around them. The enemy had had plenty of time to plot out their firing positions…

…And a number of enemy soldiers were slipping forward, trying to launch a counterattack.

“Not this time,” he muttered, as he motioned for his men to get into position. “You’re not going to stop us now.”

“What happened?”

“A whole string of attacks, Mein Herr,” the operator said. He didn’t seem to know how to respond to a policeman – particularly one with powerful relatives – but at least he was trying to do his job. “One of them was on Councillor Wieland’s car…”

Herman blanched. He knew the plan – he knew what was intended to happen – and it wasn’t an attack on Gudrun’s car. Horst had told his handlers that Gudrun would be vulnerable in the afternoon, not midday… something had gone badly wrong. Had Horst betrayed Gudrun, his wife of a week? He doubted it – he was fairly good at reading people – but if he hadn’t, someone else had to have betrayed Horst. His handlers might have suspected his loyalty all along. And if that was the case…

He looked down at the map as report after report came in; bombings and shootings from inside the city, airstrikes and shellfire from outside the city. The quick-response team that had been on alert had already been deployed, racing to a commando assault on one of Berlin’s power distribution stations. Most military and government bases had their own generators, he knew, but losing power all over the rest of the city would cause panic…

“See if you can find any patrolmen free,” he ordered, finally. He doubted it would be possible. The thousands of men who made up the Ordnungspolizei – the men who had continued to serve after the uprising – would be scattered over the city, facing their own nightmares. “If you can, divert them towards the scene of the ambush.”

He groaned, inwardly, as the operators went to work. The whole plan might have been Gudrun’s idea, but he should never have agreed to it. He should have beaten sense into Gudrun and Horst when they actually tried to make the plan work, rather than risk his daughter’s life. And now he was trapped in the Reichstag, the building already under attack, unable to do anything to help either his daughter or his new son-in-law. All he could do was wait, watch and pray.

Horst slumped down next to the driver’s body, feeling oddly unable to move as he battled complete despair. He’d lost everything in less than a second, a feeling so profound that he was barely able to move. And yet, somehow, he managed to force himself to gather his thoughts. The commandos had escaped, taking Gudrun with them – he had to believe they’d taken Gudrun with them. They’d risked far too much to kill her when they could have ordered him to end her life.

Unless they doubted my loyalty even then, he thought, as he forced himself to stand. They might have feared to alert me too soon.

He picked up Gudrun’s pistol and stuck it into his belt, then hastily searched the driver’s body for anything useful. The man had been carrying a pistol himself, which Horst took, and an ID card, but very little else. Horst pocketed everything anyway and then stared into the remains of the car. There was no hint that anyone had died, as far as he could tell. He didn’t think the heat was hot enough to reduce a body to nothing but ash, but the SS had a habit of using incendiary grenades to burn down insurgent hovels in Germany East.

They will want her alive, he told himself, again and again. They will want her alive.

He shuddered at the implications. Gudrun had been a symbol of hope – the hope of a life without fear – from the moment she’d gone public and told the regime that she, a mere university student, had no fear of them. Merely killing her would never be enough, not if her body was never recovered. Karl Holliston would want to crush her beneath his heel, he would want to make it very clear that he had captured and smashed the symbol of hope, he would want to use her death to boost his cause. And yet, the cause had grown far beyond her…

Her death won’t change anything beyond giving us a martyr, he thought. And that means he needs to turn her against us.

The sound of shooting and shellfire grew louder as he reached the end of the side street and peered down the main road. One of the outriders was lying dead on the ground, his motorcycle long since gone. People were stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down, these days; Horst had no doubt that the bike would be sold shortly, if the thief hadn’t already managed a sale. Strip the police signs from the bike and it might as well be a civilian model, as long as no one looked too closely.

He checked the body – the outrider had broken bones as well as a cracked skull – and found his radio, but it was broken. Horst fiddled with it for a long moment, then gave it up as a bad job. There was no hope of repairing the radio without tools, spare parts and time, none of which he had. Instead, he hurried down the street, thinking hard. The quick-response team had failed to show, which meant that there was no hope of help. If the shooting really was coming from the Reichstag, and it certainly sounded that way, anyone who might have come to help had too many problems of their own.

They must have planned the timing perfectly, he thought. Hit Gudrun and snatch her, then attack the Reichstag and everywhere else, forcing us to react to them. And then send in the troops to finish us off while we’re distracted.

There was nothing he could do about that now, he knew, but he could head to the bar Gudrun’s father had identified for him. It was unlikely that the commandos would have taken Gudrun there, but the bartender was almost certainly an SS contact, if he wasn’t an outright operative. He might – he might – know where Gudrun had been taken. And if he refused to talk, Horst would make him talk. He knew precisely how to hurt someone to cause maximum pain, but little real injury. The man would talk, Horst promised himself, no matter what he had to do…

It wasn’t much, he knew all too well, but it was the only hope he had.

They’ll try to get her out of the city, particularly if the battle is lost, he told himself. He knew his own people all too well. And if that happens, I have lost everything.

The bunker was oddly aseptic, Volker had often thought. There was a battle raging above his head and another being fought on the edge of the city, but the bunker was calm and utterly composed. He sat in the heart of the war room, safe and secure, even though men were dying as the fighting raged on. And yet, there was nothing he could do about it.

“Power stations are out in Sections Five through Seven,” an operator said. “Emergency power is off-line; I say again, emergency power is off-line.”

“Seven aircraft have been shot down over the front lines,” another added. “No pilots have been reported alive.”

“Sniper active near the walk,” a third warned. “Police units have been dispatched.”

Volker shook his head, then looked at Voss. “Are we holding?”

“For the moment, barely,” Voss said. “They’re coming at us hard, hammering our lines with staggering force. A number of our guns have already run out of ammunition.”

“Then pass the word to the relief forces,” Volker ordered. Time had almost run out. “Tell them to come in, guns blazing.”

Voss nodded, shortly. “Jawohl, Herr Chancellor,” he said. “It shall be done.”

He strode away to issue orders, leaving Volker alone with his thoughts. Karl Holliston had to be out of his mind. A smart man would have backed off, realising that the Reich could be sundered in two – and see who came out ahead, in the months and years to come – but Holliston had sent uncounted thousands of his men to their deaths. And he’d committed atrocities that practically guaranteed that the SS would never be accepted in the west, not now. Too much hatred had been unleashed.

But you were in the SS, his thoughts reminded him. You knew how fanatical they could be.

It was a bitter thought. He’d been taught to fight, to take advantage of every fleeting opportunity, but he’d never really been taught to think. His masters wanted the ultimate soldier, one who would fight to the bitter end, yet never question orders. He’d fought in more battles than he cared to remember, before he’d finally resigned. And yet he’d never questioned orders.

He shuddered. And he hadn’t questioned his son’s silence either, had he? He’d never really understood what he’d served until Gudrun had rubbed his face in it. She would have made a fine daughter-in-law…

…And yet, marrying Konrad would have ruined her.

He sat back in his chair, knowing there was nothing else he could do. There was no point in issuing further orders, not now. His people on the ground knew what to do, even if they lost contact with the Reichstag. Berlin might fall, but the relief forces would trap and destroy the Waffen-SS. The die was cast…

…and what happened now would determine if the Reich lived or died.