The Second Objective

10

Stavelot, Belgium

DECEMBER 16, 6:30 A.M.

Erich Von Leinsdorf’s squad had been on the road for three hours, working their way back from the Meuse, when they heard the artillery barrage begin in the east. Von Leinsdorf patted Bernie on the shoulder as he drove, and showed him the time: Operation Autumn Mist had begun exactly on schedule. With the offensive under way, their task on its first day was to disrupt the American reaction. Moving east, they had already reversed or removed half a dozen road signs at key intersections to confuse Allied troops who would soon be swarming toward the invading forces. They also severed three telephone and telegraph trunk lines between Spa, Liège, and the American Front.

Bernie huddled over the wheel, unable since hearing about it the night before to shake the idea of a “second objective” out of his head. They were trying to injure or kill more Americans, and it made him sick. The thought of what Von Leinsdorf would do to him if he tried to interfere paralyzed him.

The barrage from the east ended abruptly at 0630 hours. Bernie knew that was the signal for the three army groups to begin their advance into Belgium and Luxembourg. If all went according to plan, German paratroopers and assault squads would already be swarming through the Losheim Gap, ripping holes in the Allies’ defenses, opening the way for the tanks.

A light appeared on the road ahead of them as they entered a clearing. Bernie slowed when he caught sight of it. The overcast sky had begun to turn gray with the approach of dawn, and he could make out what looked like a farm boy standing by the side of the road, swinging a lantern. The boy waved at them and stepped into their path.

“Keep your distance,” said Von Leinsdorf.

Bernie stopped the jeep about fifty feet in front of the boy. He waved his hands again and walked toward them.

“American?” the boy shouted. “American?”

“Whoa, hold up there. What do you want, kid?” asked Bernie.

“American, yes?”

“That’s right. What do you want?”

The boy glanced nervously to his left, toward a tangled, overgrown hedge to the right of the jeep. Something rustled in those branches. Von Leinsdorf grabbed his rifle and dropped down in the seat.

“Drive, drive!” he shouted.

Bernie stepped on the gas and ducked, just as a rifle barrel pointed at them out of the dense branches. He heard two loud booms. The jeep fishtailed in the mud then righted itself and skidded forward. The boy on the road pulled out a pistol and pointed it at the windscreen, but the jeep’s right front fender clipped him on the leg, spun him around, and knocked him to the ground before he could fire. Von Leinsdorf came up from the floor of the backseat firing an M1, emptying an entire clip at the brush behind them.

“Stop!”

Bernie slammed on the brakes. Von Leinsdorf jumped out of the jeep and ran toward the trees, slamming another clip into the rifle.

“Get the boy!” he shouted.

Bernie pulled his pistol and jumped down, crouching low around the jeep. The boy on the ground was writhing in pain, whimpering, trying to reach the pistol lying a few feet from him in the snow. Bernie hurried over and kicked the gun out of his reach. The boy glared up at him, pain and raw hatred contorting his face.

“Amis, fuck you!”

“Easy,” said Bernie. “Take it easy, you little shit. You all right?”

The boy spat at him.

“Ami, I hate fucking Amis,” he said. “Fuck you.”

Von Leinsdorf came around the hedge dragging a second boy by the collar, carrying an old shotgun. He manhandled him to the ground next to the first boy. As he went down, the boy’s coat came off in Von Leinsdorf’s hand. Something he saw made him laugh.

“What’s so funny?” asked Bernie.

Von Leinsdorf moved and Bernie saw that the boy wore a red armband with a Nazi swastika around his left arm. Bernie stripped the coat off the wounded boy on the ground; he was wearing a swastika as well.

“God damn,” he said. “Fucking Hitler Youth.”

“I told you this was more Germany than Belgium.” Von Leinsdorf spoke to the boys in German. “Meine kleine Hitlerjugend. So tell me, you pick up a signal the invasion is about to begin and try to pick off some Americans with your father’s bird gun, nicht wahr?”

The boys stared at him in shock. Von Leinsdorf broke down the ancient double-barreled shotgun and popped out the spent shells.

“You are German?” asked the second boy, in broken English.

“That’s right. Not that we don’t appreciate your enthusiasm,” said Von Leinsdorf, “but you nearly shot my head off.”

“Are you really soldiers?” the wounded boy asked.

“What are you, the village idiot?” asked Bernie.

“Where’s your father?” asked Von Leinsdorf. “In the army?”

“He was killed. In Russia.”

“He’d be proud to know his son is a patriot. Even if you don’t know which side to shoot at.”

They heard a rumble of heavy vehicles rolling up behind them along the same road. Headlights flashed through the woods. Von Leinsdorf yanked the wounded boy to his feet.

“Go home, get the hell out of here,” he said. “Those are real Americans coming now.”

“You better think twice before taking any more potshots if you want to live till dinner,” said Bernie.

The second boy put an arm around his injured friend and helped him limp toward the trees.

“And don’t forget your blunderbuss,” said Von Leinsdorf, hurling the old gun after them. The boy picked it up and they helped each other stumble out of sight.

Bernie and Von Leinsdorf hurried back to the jeep and saw Gunther Preuss slumped forward in the backseat. He turned to look at them, a pinched, fearful hangdog stare. His left hand gripped his right shoulder, blood seeping between his fingers.

“Oh shit,” said Bernie.

“It’s nothing,” said Preuss. “It’s nothing, Erich, I swear.”

“Let me see,” said Von Leinsdorf.

He pried Preuss’s hand away from the wound. The uniform was shredded across his unit patch, the flesh of his shoulder peppered with shot. Other pellets had sprayed him across the neck and the right side of the face. All three areas were bleeding copiously.

“God damn it,” said Leinsdorf.

“Please, Erich,” said Preuss, tears running down his face. “Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me.”

Bernie could see Von Leinsdorf weighing the odds, and his hand moved toward his pistol.

“It’s not that bad,” said Bernie.

“Get out of the jeep,” said Von Leinsdorf.

“I can patch him up,” said Bernie. “It’s not going to kill him, he won’t slow us down-”

“Out of my way. Preuss, get down-”

Von Leinsdorf reached for Preuss. Bernie grabbed his hand.

“Don’t do it.”

“Let go of my hand, Brooklyn-”

Before they started to struggle, both men were caught in the convoy headlights; eight vehicles-jeeps, transport trucks, and a towed antitank gun-turned into the clearing behind them. Von Leinsdorf shook off Bernie’s grip and stepped toward the oncoming vehicles waving his arms. Bernie could see a platoon of rifle infantry hunched in the trailing canvas-backed trucks.

The lead jeep pulled up alongside Von Leinsdorf. An American captain in the backseat stood up.

“What’s the holdup?” asked the captain.

“Somebody fired on us when we drove in,” said Von Leinsdorf. “One of my guys is hit.”

“Let’s take a look at him,” the captain said, then turned and called to the rear. “Get a medic up here!” A man jumped out of one of the transports and jogged toward their jeep. “Was it Krauts?”

“We couldn’t see. We returned fire, I think they moved off-”

“You a recon unit?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“Well, don’t go after ’em, all hell’s broke loose up ahead-”

“We heard shelling. What’s going on?”

“Who the hell knows? We’re getting reports they started coming at us in force soon as that artillery knocked off. Radio’s saying there’s Kraut paratroopers up along the ridgeline-”

“No shit-”

“We’ve got units strung out all along this road; everybody’s ass is hanging out. They want us to hook in and form a line at Malmédy-”

The medic opened his haversack and stepped up on the jeep’s sideboard to take a look at Preuss. Bernie hovered next to him.

“He can’t even talk,” said Bernie. “Think he’s hit pretty bad.”

Taking his cue from Bernie, Preuss rolled his head back, moaning as the medic ripped the arm of his jacket down and probed the wound. Preuss didn’t respond to any of the medic’s questions; Bernie answered in his place.

“We heard they might try a spoiling attack,” said Von Leinsdorf.

“Hell, you hear those planes overhead, the V1s? They’re throwing the works at us. It’s no fucking spoiling attack-”

“He needs a field hospital,” said the medic, sifting a packet of sulfa powder onto Preuss’s shoulder.

“We were on our way to Vielsalm,” said Von Leinsdorf.

“Screw that, I’m overriding it, you’re coming with us,” said the captain. “Two hundred ninety-first Combat Engineers. Got orders to drag every able body we can muster in there. Fall in behind me, Lieutenant. We’re about five miles from Malmédy.”

The medic jumped into the jeep beside Preuss, unrolling a bandage. Bernie looked for guidance at Von Leinsdorf, who nodded at him to climb in. Bernie steered their jeep into line behind the captain and they continued down the road.

“One hell of a morning, huh?” said the medic to Von Leinsdorf.

“You said it, pal.”

Malmédy, Belgium

DECEMBER 16, 6:30 A.M.

Earl Grannit’s jeep covered the mile back to Elsenborn at top speed, dodging through a moving wall of vehicles as the artillery barrage continued behind them. The village was in an uproar, hungover soldiers roused from sleep running in every direction. Frantic citizens clogged the roads, belongings in hand, evacuating to the west. Grannit pulled up next to the checkpoint at the edge of town, waved over one of the young MPs trying to control the traffic spilling in from the east, and flashed his CID credentials.

“Were you on duty here night before last, son?” asked Grannit.

“I guess I was, sir,” said the MP.

“A jeep came through, sometime between nine and midnight, three men. Anything come to mind?”

“Coulda been ten like that, sir.”

“I’m only looking for one. Think about it. Something stand out?”

Another shell burst, closer to the village, less than a hundred yards from where they were parked. The MP ducked down; Grannit didn’t flinch. “Yeah, maybe. There was one came through from Bradley’s headquarters, Twelfth Army. Seemed like they were a little off course.”

“Who was in it?”

“Couple of officers. A lieutenant, I think, that’s who I talked to. They had a private driving.”

“Was their pass in order?”

“I think it was.”

“Where were they headed?”

“Somewhere south of here.”

“You get any names?”

“Sorry, Lieutenant, that’s all I remember.” Another shell exploded, even closer, and the MP ducked again. “Jesus, what the hell’s happening?”

“There’s a war going on,” said Grannit.

He steered them past the checkpoint, getting bogged down in traffic and mud on the main road halfway through the village.

“I never been shelled before,” said Carlson. “You been shelled before?”

“No. I’d say once is enough.”

“Yeah, I don’t need to go through that again.”

“Next chance you get at a radio, call Twelfth Army,” said Grannit, “see if they’ve got any patrols in this sector answers to that description.”

Carlson wrote it down.

“Where we headed, Earl? We going after them?”

“Has our job changed in the last ten minutes?”

“I guess not.”

“These are wrong guys, Ole.”

“Okay, so we’re going after ’em. So where we going?”

“You remember the location of that field hospital where they took Sergeant Mallory?”

Carlson searched his notebook. “I think I wrote it down.”

“It was Malmédy, wasn’t it?”

Just as Carlson found it in the book. “Sixty-seventh Evac.”

67th Evacuation Hospital, Malmédy

DECEMBER 16, 8:00 A.M.

When the artillery barrage began at dawn, no one at the hospital paid it much mind: By the time it ended an hour later, shells had started to land near Malmédy, word came in that the Germans had punched a hole through the American line, and paratroopers had been spotted on the ridge less than three miles away. The operating theater, which had been running at less than a third of capacity during the recent lull, was put on full alert.

A wave of ambulances arrived within minutes-front-line soldiers with blunt trauma and shrapnel wounds. Many had suffered puncture wounds when shells shattered the trees, firing splinters in every direction. A number of civilians were injured when a rocket hit near the town’s medieval Catholic cathedral after morning mass, knocking down a wall and ringing the bells.

Earl Grannit and Ole Carlson entered the large tent complex on the outskirts of Malmédy just after 7:30 A.M. They moved past a crowd of wounded GIs stacked in the prep area, located the surgery ward, and found the senior nurse on duty, Dorothy Skogan, working in postop recovery. Grannit showed his credentials and asked about Sergeant Vincent Mallory. Skogan didn’t know the name, but recognized him from Grannit’s description.

She told them Mallory had arrived earlier that night, without dog tags, just after 3:00 A.M., accompanied by a medic and a pair of MPs. He had been shot three times and his complicated surgeries lasted over two hours. By the time they finished, the soldier had stabilized, his severe blood loss restored by transfusion. The surgery team had just wrapped out of the OR when the bombs started flying.

“What’s his condition?” asked Grannit.

“Critical but stable. Severe blood loss, shock and hypothermia. Gunshot wounds to the right shoulder, left hip. His jawbone’s shattered, most of his teeth fractured.”

“Is he conscious?”

“No. Won’t expect him to be for hours, if then.”

“Well. We really need to talk to him.”

“That may be difficult, Lieutenant. The bullet tore up his tongue, and we had to wire what was left of his jaw to a plate. I didn’t even know his name until you just told me; he didn’t have his tags.”

Grannit looked at Carlson, frustrated. He quickly told her that Mallory had been shot and left for dead with three other men for over twenty-four hours before they’d found him. “Anything strike you as unusual about him?”

“When I was prepping him, I found an empty ampule of morphine in his field jacket. There was sulfa on all three wounds. I found bandages compressed against the wounds on his hip and shoulder that stopped him from bleeding out.”

“So the medics took care of him during transport,” said Grannit.

“No, that’s my point. The medic in the ambulance said that’s how they found him.”

“We’re the ones who found him,” said Grannit, puzzled.

“And you didn’t notice this?”

“No. You’re saying somebody gave him first aid before we got there?” asked Grannit.

“That’s what the medic said,” she replied. “I don’t think the sergeant was in any shape to do it himself, do you?”

They had reached Mallory’s cot in the recovery tent. His lower face and neck were encased in a yoke of bandage, an IV drip fed his arm, oxygen tubes straddled his nose. His face looked swollen as a football. Skogan wrote Mallory’s name on a strip of tape and fixed it to his cot.

“Least we know his name now,” she said. “He was lucky that bullet hit him in the jaw. It was headed toward his brain.”

“You didn’t happen to save the bullets, did you?”

“We’re a little busy right now.”

“It’s important. Ole’ll give you a hand,” said Grannit.

“Where you from, Dorothy?” asked Carlson, as he walked away with her.

“A long way from here, kiddo,” she said. “Madison, Wisconsin.”

“No kidding. I’m from Sioux Falls.”

Grannit moved to take a closer look at Mallory. He studied the angle of the wounds, visualizing him back at the checkpoint, trying to re-create the encounter.

He was behind you. You turned and he fired point-blank. He thought the first shot took you out. The second and third were afterthoughts, as you fell. Then he got distracted by the other men and assumed you were dead. He killed Private Ellis, while the second shooter took care of Anderson. Then he killed the second shooter, his own man.

Why?

Because he was hit. Private Anderson returned fire and shot him before he went down. Chest wound from an M1. Possibly fatal, but not right away. So our man didn’t want to take a chance and leave one of his own behind.

Two head shots. No hesitation. Kills his own man. They toss his body next to the other vics, take all their tags, placing a big bet nobody would notice this stranger among them. Drive on to Elsenborn.

Two officers, one private driving the jeep. One lieutenant who does the talking, and probably the shooting. All the way from Twelfth Army, Bradley’s HQ in Luxembourg, almost a hundred miles south.

So who treated Mallory’s wound before we got there?

Grannit shook his head to stay awake and rubbed a hand over his eyes, waves of fatigue washing through him. He’d been gunning for forty-eight hours straight; it was a sudden struggle to keep his thoughts on track.

Fuck it. The trail was cold. Now the Krauts launch this offensive. That tipped over the fucking applecart. No chance he’d ever get to the bottom of this now.

The idea burned a hole in him. He never let go of a case while he was on the job. Why should it be any different over here? Because life was cheaper? Did that make these murders any less important?

Vince Mallory lying there, hanging by a thread, his life shattered. Somebody did this to him. Find out who.

No excuse not to finish the job. He’d made that promise a long time ago, and backed it up ever since.

His mind kept working through the fatigue. Don’t let go. There’s more to this than you can see.

He needed coffee. He went to look for some.

Captain Hardy of the 291st Engineer Combat Battalion led his small convoy into Malmédy at 7:45 A.M. They found the tent complex of the 67th Evac Hospital on the outskirts of town. Bernie pulled up outside next to a line of ambulances. Hardy stopped his jeep alongside them and barked directions.

“Get your man squared away. Our rally point’s near the cathedral on the eastern approach.”

“We’ll be there,” said Von Leinsdorf, snapping a salute.

Hardy’s jeep pulled away. The medic helped Bernie guide Preuss down from the back of their Willys.

“We’ll get him inside,” said Bernie. “Thanks for your help.”

The medic swung onto the back of one of the convoy trucks as it drove off. Preuss stumbled and Von Leinsdorf grabbed his other arm. They propped him up between them, through the traffic congesting the front of the tent. Preuss moaned, half-conscious, in a morphine haze.

“What the hell do we do?” asked Bernie.

“We can’t leave him here,” said Von Leinsdorf. “For obvious reasons.”

Two nurses stationed at the entrance trotted out to help.

“Where’s he hit?” one of them asked.

“Right shoulder,” said Von Leinsdorf.

“Bring him this way.”

Holding Preuss between them, they followed the nurses into the tent, then set him down on a stretcher in a waiting area overflowing with wounded. A passing nurse kneeled down to take a look at Preuss just after he hit the canvas.

“He’s had first aid already,” said Dorothy Skogan.

“Medic gave us a hand on the way in,” said Von Leinsdorf. “What’s the procedure?”

“We’ll take him, but there’s going to be a wait. There’s a lot of wounded ahead of him.”

She stood up briskly and moved on. A young, moonfaced MP with a blond brush cut walked after her, and took a passing glance at Von Leinsdorf and Bernie. Von Leinsdorf met his eye, deep concern evident on his face, which the MP, Ole Carlson, took for worry over their wounded friend. Preuss moaned again, drifting in and out of the morphine clouds, head rocking from side to side.

“Schiesse…Schiesse…”

Bernie knelt down next to Preuss and laid a hand over his mouth. “Easy, easy, don’t talk.”

“He’ll come out okay, buddy,” said Carlson.

“Thanks,” said Bernie, lowering his head.

Carlson walked away following the nurse. Von Leinsdorf knelt beside Bernie.

“Take his tags,” said Von Leinsdorf.

“What?”

“Put these on him,” he said, slipping another set of dog tags from his pocket. “Take his ID and anything else that could tie him to us.”

Bernie reached into Preuss’s shirt and yanked off his tags as Von Leinsdorf stood watch. Bernie slipped the second set of tags into Preuss’s pocket, then pulled his forged ID card out of his jacket.

“Where’s his lighter?” asked Von Leinsdorf, as he tucked the card away.

“How should I know?”

“Find it.”

Bernie realized what he was asking. “I’m not doing that.”

“Then wait outside.”

“I know what you want it for; I’m not letting you do that-”

A young admitting nurse with a clipboard walked up to them. “I need some information before we take him to the ward.”

Von Leinsdorf reached past Bernie into Preuss’s pocket, fished out the tags they’d just put there and handed them over. “He’s not with our unit. We were driving by, he flagged us down and passed out in the jeep, so we brought him in.”

The nurse examined the tags and wrote down the name. “Sergeant Vincent Mallory.”

“See, we didn’t even know his name,” said Von Leinsdorf, continuing to rummage through Preuss’s pockets. “Maybe we can find something else to help you.” He fished out a silver Zippo lighter and a pack of cigarettes. “Don’t suppose he’ll be needing these for a while, huh?”

“You don’t know anything else about him?”

“You know as much as we do,” said Von Leinsdorf, pocketing the lighter.

The nurse printed the name on a strip of white tape and attached it to the stretcher. “You did a good thing just getting him this far.” She signaled a couple of orderlies, who lifted Preuss’s stretcher and carried him toward an adjoining tent.

“Where you taking him?” asked Bernie.

“To prep him for surgery. If you don’t know this guy, there’s no reason to wait, it’s going to be a while.”

The nurse moved off, following the stretcher.

“Shit. He’s going to come out of it and start crying for his Mutter,” said Von Leinsdorf.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Von Leinsdorf looked around, thinking, before he answered.

“Wait here,” he said.

Von Leinsdorf followed Preuss into the next tent. As he entered, he picked up a clipboard hanging next to a bulletin board, pretending to study it as he tailed the stretcher. The orderlies set Preuss down in the busy prep center, where two dozen wounded lay waiting, separated by screens, attended by an assembly line of nurses and orderlies.

Standing near a busy nurses’ station by the entrance to the operating theater, Von Leinsdorf watched them strip off Preuss’s jacket and shirt and plug him into an IV. Moments later, Von Leinsdorf buried his face in the clipboard when Dorothy Skogan walked up to the desk with Ole Carlson and a supervising orderly.

“I don’t have time for this shit now,” said the orderly.

“He just wants the bullets we pulled from the maxillofacial we did this morning,” said Dorothy.

“We got a hundred people shot to shit, what’s the rush?” asked the orderly.

“Criminal investigation,” said Carlson, showing his badge. “There’s a harder way to do this, you want to give that a try?”

The orderly sighed. “Patient’s name?”

“Mallory, Vincent Mallory. He was brought in late last night.”

Von Leinsdorf was about to move toward Preuss when he heard that name, and stopped to listen.

“Where is he now?”

“He’s in recovery. I’ve got to get back to work,” said Dorothy.

“That’s fine, I can take it from here,” said Carlson. “Thanks for your help, Dorothy.”

Skogan left for the operating theater. The orderly sifted through a pile of paperwork on the desk, looking for Mallory’s.

“Your chances ain’t good. We usually toss everything when we scrub down,” said the orderly.

“Anything you give us is really appreciated,” said Carlson, smiling patiently.

Neither of them noticed Von Leinsdorf walk out of the prep tent. He stopped a passing nurse to ask: “I’m looking for a man from my unit just came out of surgery, where would he be?”

She directed him outside to an adjoining tent. Von Leinsdorf carried the clipboard with him, sloshed through the mud, and parted the flaps of the recovery tent. Quieter in here, fewer lights, sharp contrast to the chaos in the OR. Patients rested on cots in cubicles created by curtains. Two nurses moved from one man to the next, making notations, monitoring medication. Von Leinsdorf slipped on a white coat, kept his focus on the clipboard, and drew no attention as he walked by. He glanced in each cubicle he passed, reading the names on strips of white tape attached to the foot of their cots.

He found Mallory’s name but didn’t recognize the man on the cot as the sergeant he had shot at the checkpoint. His face was bloated by surgery and covered with bandages. Another man stood to the right of the cot, arms folded, looking down at Mallory. Broad shoulders, rangy, weathered-a “tough customer” was the slang that came to Von Leinsdorf’s mind. The man wore a regulation uniform with no insignia. That may have been the privilege of an officer, but this one had the leathery aura of a seasoned noncom. Von Leinsdorf walked past the cot, stepping in to look at a patient two beds down.

Von Leinsdorf pieced together a scenario: Someone found Mallory where they’d left him in the woods. Alive, against all odds. He might have talked about the shooting but his condition suggested otherwise. Von Leinsdorf had learned as much as anyone alive would ever want to know about the nuances of dying. He knew exactly how to gauge death’s approach, when it was ready to make its final embrace.

This man was hanging by a thread. A whisper would nudge him into its arms.

The man standing over Mallory rubbed his face and headed for the exit. They nearly collided; Von Leinsdorf let him pass. As soon as the man left, Von Leinsdorf stepped back to Mallory’s cot and took Preuss’s Zippo lighter from his pocket. Opening a pocketknife he pried away the wick and flint and removed a small glass vial from the cavity. He used the knife to cut a slit in the IV bag attached to Mallory’s arm. Snapping the head off the vial, he poured the clear contents through the slit into the bag. A nurse walked into the ward. He pocketed the empty vial and walked away without looking back. Stepping out of the tent, he dropped the vial and crushed it into the mud.

A minute later Grannit walked back into the tent with a cup of coffee, saw the man’s legs bucking and kicking, his arms twitching, head whipping from side to side, his breathing rapid and labored. He called out for the nurses and used all his weight to restrain Mallory on the cot. The man’s eyes opened, the pupils fixed and unseeing. Bright cherry-red blood streamed from his nose and mouth. By the time a trauma team arrived, Mallory’s limbs had gone rigid and he had stopped breathing. Grannit stepped back and let them work.

Bernie sat on his helmet beside a Christmas tree near the entrance of the admitting tent. Every time an officer passed, he agonized about whether he should take him aside and identify Von Leinsdorf as a spy. Once they had the German in custody, he might be able to blend into the chaos and fade away. But the thought of a second objective held him back. Von Leinsdorf wouldn’t crack even if they tortured him, of that he was sure; he’d sneer at a firing squad while they tied the blindfold on. Bernie didn’t know how many others in their brigade had been assigned this second objective, so unless he found out what it was, he couldn’t do a thing to stop it. Until then he needed Von Leinsdorf alive and in the clear. But how many others would he kill before then? That was the equation he had to live with. Now that the attack had started, trying to surrender would only get himself shot. He kept his head down, picked up a newspaper, and tried to shrink into the corner.

It was the American service paper, Stars and Stripes. His eye was drawn to a headline on the front page.

ALLIES BOMB IG FARBEN

German Industrial Giant Near Frankfurt Hit Hard

Daylight Raid Leaves Nazi War Machine Reeling

His father still worked at IG Farben. He’d had no contact with his family since leaving for Grafenwöhr in October, at which point both his parents were alive. That suddenly seemed in doubt.

Bernie’s gaze drifted to the improvised Christmas tree, gauze serving as tinsel, surgical clamps and scissors hung like ornaments. The meager attempt at holiday cheer, his own peril, and the growing crowd of wounded arriving for treatment brought him to the verge of tears. A nurse’s aide offered him a cup of coffee. He declined, and his forlorn look drew her sympathy.

“Hard being away from home this time of year, isn’t it?” she asked.

He looked up at her. She was a plain girl, early twenties, with crooked teeth and a one-sided smile.

“I guess you could say that,” said Bernie.

“I love Christmas. Never spent one like this before. Where you from?”

“Brooklyn,” he said, surprised when it came out of his mouth.

“Really? We sailed out of the Brooklyn yard on our way over a few weeks ago. You’ll be happy to know it’s still there. I’m from Wichita. That’s a long way from New York. Might even be farther away from it than where we are now.”

“I don’t think you can get any farther away than this.”

“Don’t worry now, you’ll be going home soon,” she said.

She patted him on the back. Her kindness made it hard for him to say anything more. He spotted Von Leinsdorf coming toward him through the room, wearing a doctor’s white coat, and stood up.

“Get in the jeep,” said Von Leinsdorf. “Keep the engine running.”

“Where are you going?”

“Make sure you’re pointed toward the road,” he said, taking off the coat and heading back toward the prep tent.

“I want an autopsy,” said Grannit. “I need to know what killed him.”

“Could have been any number of things,” said the surgeon who’d worked on Mallory, not eager to oblige. “Postoperative trauma, delayed reaction to anesthesia-”

“His original wounds were enough to kill him,” said a second doctor.

“We were told he’d come through that surgery, that he’d recover,” said Grannit.

“The truth is, Lieutenant, these things aren’t predictable,” said the surgeon. “We see it every hour of every day. Each man has a different breaking point. Sergeant Mallory reached his.”

Grannit looked at the weary doctors in their blood-soaked gowns-decent men, trained to heal, not kill. He could hardly expect a different reaction: What was one more dead soldier? After watching so many young men lose their lives, what else could they do but turn up their hands?

A passing nurse overheard the name. “Did you say Mallory?”

“That’s right,” said Grannit.”

“But he hasn’t even gone into surgery yet.”

“Yes he did, he was postop.”

“When did they operate?”

“Last night when he came in.”

“But I just admitted him fifteen minutes ago.”

“What’s the first name?” asked the surgeon, looking at the chart. “We can’t be talking about the same Mallory.”

“First name’s Vincent,” said Grannit. “Vincent Mallory.”

“Sergeant Vincent Mallory, that’s him,” said the admitting nurse. “I just took the information off his tags-”

“Where is he now?”

“In the prep tent.”

“Show me,” said Grannit.

They hurried toward the tent, burst through the flaps, and searched down the busy rows, the doctors following.

“Did he come in alone?” asked Grannit.

“No, a couple of soldiers brought him in-”

The admitting nurse pulled back the curtain isolating his cubicle. Gunther Preuss lay on the cot, an IV in his arm, bright red blood sliding from his mouth and nose, his body racked with convulsions.

The nurse and doctors hurried to the patient’s side, calling for help. Grannit caught movement out of the corner of his eye. An officer in uniform walking against traffic out of the tent at a rapid pace. Grannit took off after him, pulling his Colt, holding it aloft so people would notice.

“Out of the way!”

The crowd parted, some hitting the floor in alarm. The officer heard the shouts and, without looking back, sprinted out the front of the tent. Grannit hurdled a cot, bowled over a couple of soldiers, and jammed his way out after him.

A jeep was pulling out of the parking area, wheels skidding in the mud. Two men on board. Grannit saw the officer he’d followed haul himself into the front seat as it slipped away. The glint of silver bars on his collar. A lieutenant. No stripes on the driver’s jacket, a private.

Grannit gave chase to the edge of the parking area, aiming the pistol but unable to sight a clear shot. He waved down a motorcycle dispatcher, flashed his badge to the driver, then yanked him off the bike when he slowed and jumped on. Jacking the bike around, he downshifted to gain torque in the mud and slid onto the narrow road heading into Malmédy. He spotted the jeep a quarter of a mile ahead crossing a small bridge into town. Grannit downshifted again and opened the throttle.

“Keep going,” said Von Leinsdorf to Bernie. “Head southeast.”

“What happened? Where’s Preuss?”

“Just do as I tell you,” said Von Leinsdorf, glancing behind them.

Bernie whipped the jeep around the town center, a welter of narrow, ancient streets, avoiding collisions, wheeling around obstacles, ignoring traffic signs. The sidewalks were packed with citizens carrying suitcases and bags, pushing carts full of possessions, fleeing from the German advance. Twice he narrowly missed civilians who darted suddenly into the street, one carrying a bright green parrot in a cage. As they reached a narrow bridge leading out of town, they came face-to-face with an American half-track headed the other way. Bernie steered to the right without slowing and accelerated past it, only inches to spare, the jeep’s right fender sending up sparks as it scraped against the stone wall.

Behind them, Grannit dodged through oncoming traffic, weaving around slower cars and trucks. Crossing the first bridge into town, he veered into an intersection and nearly collided with a stalled wagon. Turning hard right, he jumped the bike up onto a sidewalk, leaned on the horn, and shouted for people to clear out of his way. He skirted a group of Allied soldiers organizing a defense along the town’s eastern perimeter on the near side of a second bridge. Halfway across the bridge, he slammed on the brakes when a column of American vehicles barreled into the village. Grannit stood up on the bike, looked ahead, and caught sight of the jeep across the bridge, moving down a long straightaway into the country. Some MPs jumped out of a jeep to set up a roadblock and direct traffic. Grannit shouted at them, showed him his badge.

“Clear this bridge, god damn it!”

The MPs waded into traffic and cleared a path for him. Soldiers riding into the village shouted at Grannit that he didn’t want to head that way. Paratroopers had taken the towns to the east, and columns of panzers were coming up behind them.

As their jeep cleared the outskirts of town, Bernie steered onto the shoulder. American military vehicles crowded the westbound side of the road, carrying soldiers on hoods of jeeps and hanging off the sides of trucks. The men wore the haunted look of battle fatigue and many were wounded. Bernie could hear the boom of artillery and the rattle of small arms to the east. Von Leinsdorf lit a cigarette and couldn’t keep a smile off his face.

“Quite a sight, Brooklyn,” said Von Leinsdorf. “Your amateur American Army. What did I tell you? Retreat’s too dignified a word-they’re bugging out after only four hours.”

Bernie didn’t respond, alarmed by an image he was picking up in the rearview mirror.

The moment the MPs opened a path, Grannit muscled the bike across the bridge, accelerating through the gearbox as he roared past the retreating American column. He caught sight of the jeep again, at the top of a rise less than a mile ahead, where the road headed into a stretch of gently rolling hills. He tried to coax more speed out of the jeep as they crested another hill.

“Somebody’s following us,” he said.

Von Leinsdorf looked back and saw the motorcycle clear the hill behind them. He picked up his rifle. When they reached the top of the next rise, the bike had closed the gap to less than half a mile.

“Who is it?” asked Bernie.

“I don’t know. Maybe we forgot to pay our bill at the hospital,” said Von Leinsdorf, screwing a telescopic sight onto the rifle. “Pull over at the bottom of the next hill.”

When they reached the base of the hill, Bernie pulled off the road onto a hidden drive that led to a farm house in a stand of pines. Once they were out of sight, he cut the engine. Dust settled. Over the country silence, they could hear the buzz of the approaching motorcycle. Von Leinsdorf steadied the barrel of the rifle on the back of the windscreen and waited. The buzz grew louder. He looked down the sight, settling the crosshairs on the peak of the hill.

Bernie swiveled around when he heard a clatter of breaking dishes from inside the farm house. The face of a GI appeared in a window, then the door swung open; a group of six young soldiers hurried toward them.

“Jesus Christ, get out of sight,” said one of them. “What the hell are you doing?”

Von Leinsdorf took his eye off the sight and looked over, annoyed.

“They’re right on top of us, get out of sight!”

A rumble shook the earth, along with it the high-pitched whine of steel grating on steel. On the far side of the woods to the east three Panther tanks appeared and wheeled to a stop on the summit of the next hill, straddling the road. Walking alongside and behind them, in skirmish formation, were a column of black-jacketed soldiers. On their collars Bernie saw the double-lightning insignia of the SS Panzergrenadiers.

Aboard the bike, Grannit hit the top of the incoming hill and skidded to a halt when he saw the tanks astride the next rise, a quarter of a mile in front of him. Behind them, stretching as far as he could see, was a solid column of soldiers, mounted artillery, and half-tracks filled with infantry. In a hollow below and to the right he spotted the jeep he’d been chasing. A squad of GIs was trotting toward it from a nearby stone farm house.

Von Leinsdorf found Earl Grannit in his sights as he crested the hill, and nestled him right in the center of the crosshairs. As he was about to fire, Bernie grabbed the barrel, yanking it off target.

“I think that’s one of ours, Lieutenant,” he said, for the benefit of the approaching GIs.

Von Leinsdorf glared at him but didn’t respond. Bernie refused to let go of the rifle.

“You don’t want the Krauts to know we’re down here, do you?”

The soldiers from the farm house reached the side of their jeep. They were all Bernie’s age or younger, frightened and confused.

“You got to get us out of here,” one of them said.

“Who the fuck are you?” snapped Von Leinsdorf.

“Rifle company, 99th Infantry,” said their sergeant. “We were mining a logging road near the Skyline Drive. Krauts started coming out of the woodwork. Our jeep got hit. We’ve been dodging ’em for hours, trying to get back to our line.”

“They’re all over the fuckin’ place,” said another. “What the hell are we supposed to do, Lieutenant?”

One of the young Americans, wearing a bandage on a leg wound, started crying. They all looked to Von Leinsdorf for guidance, like a lost pack of Boy Scouts. Von Leinsdorf could barely conceal his disgust.

“They haven’t spotted us yet,” said Bernie. “Hop on, we’ll make a run for it.”

The six GIs crowded into the backseat and jumped onto the running boards as Bernie turned the engine over.

Looking down into the valley, Grannit saw the officer he’d been chasing since the hospital stand up in the jeep and hold up his rifle. The man met his eye and waved jauntily, just as the jeep turned and headed onto a dirt road behind the farm house.

As Grannit turned back to the hill, a turret on one of the tanks turned in his direction. He spun the bike around and accelerated down the hill back toward Malmédy, just as the first tank round came whistling over his head and exploded off to the side of the road.