The Second Objective

9

The Road to the Meuse, Belgium

DECEMBER 15, 7:00 A.M.

The three other commando teams working under Erich Von Leinsdorf crossed into Belgium before midnight and passed through American lines without incident. Gerhard Bremer’s team spent the night with a family of German sympathizers in the town of St. Jacques. American deserter William Sharper’s team, posing as a forward recon unit for Fifth Army, reached their safe house in Ligneuville. Karl Schmidt’s team lost their way, fell in behind a convoy of American vehicles heading west, then peeled off after midnight and spent the remainder of the night hidden in a forest. All three teams were up and on the road, heading west, before first light.

Von Leinsdorf’s squad spent the night on the floor in the parlor of Frau Escher’s apartment over her butcher shop in Waimes. Bernie Oster drifted between sleep and consciousness, disturbed by a persistent vision of their fleshy hostess storming into the room with her meat cleaver while they slept. Every time a floorboard groaned, a blast of adrenaline went off in his gut like a firecracker. By five A.M. Bernie couldn’t lie still any longer and went downstairs to piss.

The woman was already working at the bench in the shop’s back room. He could see her distorted shadow splashed against the far wall and heard the rough rasp of a bone cutter. He stepped quietly outside into the frigid morning air, his feet crunching on a crust of muddy frost. Their jeep sat just around the corner. The International Highway stretched out in front of him. The impulse to bolt hit him so hard he couldn’t catch his breath.

But which way should he run? Back toward the German line, into the teeth of the offensive that was about to be unleashed? Not as long as Erich Von Leinsdorf had access to a radio; they’d shoot him as a deserter, or take him for a GI and kill him on sight. Maybe if he lay low for a day and changed into civilian clothes, he could slip across once the attack began. But the odds of making his way home to Frankfurt without papers or travel passes were low. He tried to put the thought from his mind, but after months of Allied carpet bombing, for all he knew his parents were already dead.

No, he should head deeper behind the American line, try to hook up with one of their units, and tell them the Krauts were about to invade. Would they buy it? Wasn’t that what they’d trained him for these last three months? To pass as an American? In his heart of hearts, in his mortal soul, he was still a kid from New York who wanted his old life back. But what if he broke down under questioning, and the truth came out?

Who was he kidding? Betting his life on the mercy of the U.S. Army with the Germans about to rain holy hell down on them? He’d be court-martialed and shot in no time flat. So how could he warn them without dying for it?

One other way occurred to him. They had stashed their regulation Wehrmacht gear in four jerricans strapped to the jeep. He could take off in the jeep, change into his German uniform, then walk west waving a white flag and surrender as a deserter who’d just come across the lines. Tell them everything he knew about the coming attack, and live out what was left of the war as an Allied prisoner. That was his best chance, but only until zero hour. As soon as bullets started flying, his bargaining chip lost its value. But did he know enough about the offensive beyond what his own brigade was doing? His knowledge about even that was sketchy; Von Leinsdorf had kept them in the dark.

His mind raced back and forth, stuck on a final question: Was it worth the risk of giving Erich Von Leinsdorf a reason to hunt him down?

“Did she feed you breakfast?”

He turned sharply. Von Leinsdorf stood six feet behind him.

Jesus, I didn’t even hear him coming.

Bernie worked to keep the traitorous thoughts he’d been dancing with off his face. Von Leinsdorf took a piss, supremely casual, a cigarette on his lip.

“Fuck no,” said Bernie. “Not after that dinner she fed us. Bet my left nut this fucking village is missing some cats.”

Von Leinsdorf chuckled, and buttoned his pants back up. “Go tell Preuss we’re leaving.”

“She said the Americans took all her food? Jesus, how fat was she before the war started?”

“Get Preuss.”

Bernie worried for a moment that the man had read his mind.

“What, you don’t want to see her again either?”

“Fuck no,” said Von Leinsdorf, and smiled slyly.

He found Preuss hunched over the table in the kitchen, greedily scarfing down a thin fried egg and another plate of sausages from Frau Escher’s display case of mystery meats. The woman sat on a stool in the corner polishing Preuss’s new GI boots.

“Well, ain’t this a cozy picture of domestic bliss,” Bernie said.

Preuss looked up at him, half-chewed food in his mouth, slack-jawed and clueless. Frau Escher offered Bernie a plate for himself, but his stomach turned at the thought of it. He pulled Preuss out the back door, still carrying his boots, to where Von Leinsdorf had backed up their jeep.

The woman waved from her doorway as they drove off. Preuss waved back. Bernie saw her wiping her eyes with a handkerchief.

“She’s set her cap for you, Preuss,” said Von Leinsdorf.

“Cap? What is this?” asked Preuss.

“She’s in the market for a husband.”

“You want to fill that position, Preuss?” asked Bernie.

“I like her cooking,” said Preuss.

Bernie meowed like a cat.

“Here pussy, pussy, pussy,” said Von Leinsdorf. “Here pussy, pussy, pussy.”

“I don’t appreciate,” said Preuss, turning red. “I don’t appreciate.”

Bernie and Von Leinsdorf broke out laughing.

The highway filled with routine morning traffic as they traveled west. Allied security loosened, and the road took on the look and feel of an ordinary day; citizens going about their business, soldiers minding theirs. They passed a major crossroads outside Malmédy, then worked southwest through Stavelot to the bridges over the Ambleve River at Trois-Ponts. The Ambleve was the last geographic obstacle before the ground graded down toward the Meuse River valley. Bernie watched Von Leinsdorf make coded entries in his notebook, detailing each defensive position they passed. The deeper they drove, the more encouraged Von Leinsdorf became; the Allies had no idea what was about to hit them.

By late afternoon, as daylight faded, they drew within sight of the Meuse River and the bridge at Amay. They pulled off the road on a steep bluff above the river, into a stand of woods. Heavy clouds rolled in as they made camp, a new weather system lowering the ceiling and reducing visibility, exactly as forecast. Allied aircraft would be neutralized by those skies, attack planes and reconnaissance alike. Preuss broke out packets of American K rations they’d taken from the dead GIs. Bernie activated their field transmitter, adjusting the antennae until he secured a signal. Preuss came over to show him one of the K rations.

“Look here,” said Preuss. “Can you believe this?”

“It’s just a slice of cheese, Preuss.”

“No, look, it have bacon in it,” he said, pointing to the cheese, then taking a bite. “Real bacon. Here, try.”

Bernie took a bite to humor him. The cheese was hard, dry, and bland as wax, but carried an insistent odor of rancid pork.

“That’s okay, Preuss.”

“An army which can do this,” said Preuss, shaking his head in admiration. “Cheese mit bacon.”

Von Leinsdorf climbed a nearby embankment, unfolded a map, and studied the bridge below through field glasses. Light traffic, half of it American military, flowed in both directions. Sandbags surrounded an antiaircraft gun emplacement and a single machine gun on the eastern shore, manned by what looked like a single platoon. He saw no forces at all on the western shore. Bernie joined him, while Preuss sat a short distance away with a pad and pen. Trained as the reconnaissance officer for their squad, he began sketching in details of the bridge on a hand-drawn map.

“That’s why we’re here?” asked Bernie. “That bridge?”

“Our first objective,” said Von Leinsdorf. “We take and hold it, and two others between here and Namur, before the Americans can destroy or defend them.”

“Just me, you, and lard-butt over there.”

“The entire commando company. Tomorrow, after our recon. Bremer, Schmidt, and Sharper’s teams are scouting the other two.”

Bernie thought about it for a moment. “You said first objective.”

“Did I?”

“Does that mean there’s a second one?”

Von Leinsdorf didn’t look at him. Bernie felt him hiding something, and tried again.

“All those crazy stories flying around camp. We went through all that training just to take a few bridges and sit on our hands?”

“What are you asking?”

“You know what I’m asking,” said Bernie. “Are we supposed to do something else?”

Again Von Leinsdorf kept quiet.

“Doesn’t take a genius to figure it out,” said Bernie, trying to keep the alarm from his voice. “Skorzeny gave you another assignment. You picked the other squads.”

“What if he did?” said Von Leinsdorf.

“Then come on, at least tell me what it is.”

Von Leinsdorf bent over the radio to transmit a coded report of their progress.

“When our tanks cross this bridge,” said Von Leinsdorf, “all that stands between them and the coast at Antwerp is seventy miles of open highway. Once they’re past here, we move on to something else. And that’s all I can say.”

He stared at Bernie, hard, then turned back to the radio.

Okay, asshole, thought Bernie. Keep your secret. But I’m going to find out what it is.

East of Elsenborn

DECEMBER 16, 1:00 A.M.

“Their relief detail showed up as scheduled at fourteen hundred hours yesterday afternoon,” said the MP, “but the squad’s position couldn’t be immediately ascertained.”

“You mean they weren’t here,” said Grannit.

“That’s correct, sir.”

The MP walked Grannit from the jeep toward the cinder-block guard house. The young soldier-too eager to please-had been first on the scene with jurisdiction ever since he’d arrived a few hours ago. Once the bodies were discovered, a crowd had descended. Grannit could already see they’d made a hash of it, two dozen soldiers trampling the crime scene. What was left of the snow had melted into thick slurry and frozen again during the night. Grannit picked up a stick and ran it along the ground.

“What’s your name, son?”

“Chester Brosh, sir.”

“Chester, take a deep breath, blow your whistle, and get that giant cluster fuck over here behind this line I’m drawing,” said Grannit.

“Right now, sir?”

“Yes, right now.”

Chester blew his whistle. It took five minutes to clear traffic in front of the block house. Grannit had the drivers line up all the vehicles in a semicircle and turn on their headlights. Once the block house was lit up and secure, he walked around and studied the scene from different angles, knelt down to look at some tire tracks, pointed out areas he wanted Ole and the other MPs to comb over, then told Chester to lead him to the bodies.

Grannit used a flashlight to follow the ground toward the woods as they walked. Under a dense copse of fir trees, many of the branches still laden with snow, three bodies lay next to one another. They were stiff with cold and rigor mortis. Each had been stripped of his jacket and dog tags. One was missing his boots.

“Anybody ID these men?” asked Grannit.

“Guys from their squad say this is Private Anderson and that’s Private Ellis,” said Brosh, pointing to the man without boots. “They had a third man out here with them, Sergeant Mallory, but we can’t find him.”

“So who the hell is this guy?”

“They didn’t know him, sir.”

Grannit looked at the third man. Near forty. Weathered, windburned face and a working man’s hands. He studied the man’s right hand, then examined his wounds. A single shot, left torso, with a large exit wound through the back, probably a rifle round. Double-tap gunshot wound to the head, small-caliber, close-range, the same as Ellis. He had a small tattoo on his right shoulder, a nautical anchor and rope. Grannit looked into the man’s mouth, then took out a plastic bag and secured it around the man’s right hand.

Grannit lit a cigarette and settled back on his haunches. All three men had been killed out by the road; then, judging by the boot prints, they were dragged back here by three fellow GIs. As he examined the ground, he noticed another faint drag line in the dirt moving away from this spot deeper into the woods. He followed it with his flashlight. About fifty yards into the trees the beam flashed on another pair of combat boots. Grannit pulled his pistol and hurried toward them.

A fourth man had dragged himself away from the others. He had scooped out a shallow depression to keep himself warm, and covered himself with downed branches, which Grannit hurriedly tossed aside. The soldier still wore his field jacket and lay on his side, curled up, unconscious. Grannit felt for a pulse.

“This man’s still alive,” said Grannit.

A medic summoned to the scene covered him in blankets and pumped four units of blood into Sergeant Mallory as they drove him to a field hospital ten miles away in Malmédy.

At five in the morning Grannit completed his sweep of the checkpoint. The other soldiers hadn’t been any help, but Ole Carlson collected eight shell casings from around the guard gate, six small-caliber and two copper-jacketed M1 rounds. Ten yards short of the gate, where Grannit found tire tracks in the mud, he turned up three more pistol rounds. Grannit also bagged a broken cigarette, a Lucky Strike, unsmoked. He pinpointed a number of bloodstains-one on the base of the road gate itself-and a few more footprints, all of them regulation GI combat boots.

Before they took the bodies away, Grannit asked the medic to have the hospital remove any bullets before they were turned over to a graves detail. He needed them for forensics, and if it wasn’t too much to ask, he also wanted autopsies. The medic said he’d try, and told him to come by the field hospital later that morning when they’d have a clearer picture of Sergeant Mallory’s condition. Grannit agreed. If Mallory made it, Grannit wanted to be there when he came around.

Ole Carlson brought him a cup of coffee from a supply wagon and they stood near the block house, stamping their feet to stay warm.

“What do you think happened, Earl?” asked Carlson.

“They drive up in a Willys out of the north, down the logging road. Pull up short of the gate. The detail’s playing cards inside; they step out to question them. Whatever the beef was, it starts here, next to the jeep. Mallory, Ellis, and the third man are tapped by the same shooter. Somebody else kills Anderson over by that gate. The third man’s hit first by a second shooter, in the chest, with an M1. Then he was shot in the head afterward like the others. The third man’s the only one of them who discharged his pistol.”

Carlson stared at him with his mouth open. “Geez, you think he killed the other two?”

“No, Ole,” said Grannit patiently. “He got shot the same as Ellis, right? In the head.”

“Right.”

“I think the third guy ran toward the gate and shot Anderson-he’s got six small-caliber rounds in him-and Anderson shot him back with the M1. Won’t know for sure till I see the bullets, if they don’t fuck that up at the hospital, which is a big if.”

“Okay,” said Carlson. “So we got GIs shooting GIs. Maybe it’s a robbery. Maybe the parties knew each other. Maybe the killers drove out here to settle some score, or a gambling debt-”

“Facts first, theories later.” Grannit stepped forward, setting the scene. “Our third man came in on the jeep with three others. One of those men is the main shooter.”

“They shoot ’em, drag the bodies, dump ’em in the woods, and just drive off?”

“That’s right. With one of ’em wearing a new pair of boots,” said Grannit. “Ask the MPs in Elsenborn if any jeeps came through there last night that fit the profile. See if any infantry dug in around here heard anything. The trail’s already cold.”

Carlson hurried off toward the other MPs. Soldiers carried the bodies by him on three stretchers, covered by ponchos. Grannit asked them to hold up. He uncovered the third man, looked at the tattoo on his arm again and the dental work in his mouth. Then he examined his boots. He wore them without leggings, against dress regulations, but not unheard of in the field. Reaching inside, he found a small photograph tucked in the calf of the man’s right boot and held it up to his flashlight. A casual Kodachrome snapshot with scalloped edges, probably taken with a Brownie, of a woman in her mid-thirties standing on a dock near a waterline. An ordinary brunette in a swimsuit, overweight, her arms folded self-consciously across her middle, forcing a smile for the camera. Bright midday sun overhead, shining in the woman’s eyes, causing her to squint.

The man’s wife or girlfriend at some vacation spot, probably the last one they spent together. A row of buildings lined the shore to the right, a couple of street vendors visible in soft focus behind her. The developer’s stamp on the back was slightly smudged, but it looked like “August 1944.” Grannit kept looking at it. Something about the photograph felt wrong, although he couldn’t put his finger on why.

Grannit shined the flashlight on the face of his watch: 5:30. Daylight wouldn’t break for another hour. He caught a flicker of bright light out of the corner of his eye to the east, miles in the distance. As he looked up, more pinpricks of intense light blossomed, like an immense panel of flashbulbs going off. The thick cloud cover on the eastern horizon began to glow as if a full moon had just lit up the sky.

It occurred to him in that split second that the last few hours had passed silently, none of the distant small-arms fire you heard this close to the front. Not even a dog barking.

Grannit ran toward the ring of vehicles, calling for Carlson, looking for their jeep. He jumped in behind the wheel, shouting at Ole to get in-

Just then a roar like a hundred distant thunderstorms filled the night from the east, shattering the silence with a series of cascading booms that stepped toward them in intensity.

Then the barrage hit and obliterated time.

The first fourteen-inch shells whistled overhead and crashed through the highest trees. A shower of others landed and detonated across a thousand-yard range, shaking the earth in a continuous shudder. Grannit saw a string of explosions and flame rising to the east, closer to the border, lines of trees uprooting in eruptions of fire. High above, at a piercing frequency above the rumbling artillery, he heard the deadly whine of V1 missiles. On top of that, screaming engines of aircraft flying low, headed west, emitting a sonic roar unlike any planes he’d ever heard before. White blossoms, small solid clouds, hundreds of them, mushroomed in the gray clouds above. It took a moment for Grannit to register that he was looking at a sky full of parachutes.

Carlson jumped into the jeep as Grannit stepped on the gas. As they skidded onto the road, a shell landed where Grannit had been standing thirty seconds earlier and demolished the cinder-block guard house.