Douglas Jacobson - The Katyn Order

He leaned against the edge of the window, watching her in the flashes of light. He had to make her go. He knew that. The AK were out of options. They were trapped in Old Town, and the route through the sewers held the only way out. Surrendering to the Germans would be a death sentence. And when the Russians finally decided to enter Warsaw, Adam knew the terror squads of the NKVD would be right behind the Red Army. Any AK commandos still alive would spend the rest of their days in a Siberian gulag.

But Adam wasn’t headed back to the sewers. Raczynski Palace served as a field hospital for hundreds of wounded AK commandos who couldn’t escape. If the building survived the bombardment, he knew that SS storm troopers would move in and finish off the wounded men. Colonel Stag knew it too. But there was nothing he could do about it. And Adam knew there was nothing he could do about it either. He couldn’t stop it. But, when the time came, he could take out some of the storm troopers with him. Perhaps, at long last, all of the killing might actually mean something.

A light flashed twice from the south. Then three flashes from the north, and a moment later Rabbit’s group was on the move, running single file down the street, dodging around the rubble.

A burst of artillery shook the palace building and lit up the street like a searchlight. Adam stood ramrod stiff and clenched his fists, watching the slender figure in a blue uniform running right behind Rabbit. Silently, he urged her along. Run! Run!

Then a massive concussion knocked him to the ground. Adam groped around to retrieve his glasses and scrambled to his feet. He fumbled to slip them back on, then looked in horror through a cracked lens at the street below where a massive cloud of dust billowed up from a crater three meters across. The runners in the second half of the single-file line had disappeared.

Frozen with fear, Adam watched helplessly as the runners in the front half of the line stopped and looked back. There was instant commotion. Natalia waved her arms, frantically pointing back up the street at the smoking crater. Rabbit tugged at her arm. Some of the others pushed her forward.

Natalia hesitated and continued to point at the crater.

Adam pounded on the window frame and shouted out loud, “Run! Goddamn it, Run!” Only the hospital patients in the next room heard him.

But that’s exactly what she did.

And then she was gone.

THE SMELL WAS OVERPOWERING. Sharp sulfurous gas and the stagnant stench of mold and human excrement swept over Natalia. She fought off a wave of nausea as she stepped off the climbing iron into the foul, knee-deep wastewater with muck up to her ankles. Torrents of water swirled around her, and she stumbled forward, almost falling. Hammer, the husky commando in front of her, grabbed her around the waist as she struggled to lift her right foot from the muck.

“The rope! Grab the damn rope!” Rabbit shouted from the head of the line, the faint glow from his lantern swinging back and forth, briefly illuminating the slime-covered walls.

Natalia put one hand on Hammer’s shoulder and felt around in the filthy, rapidly flowing water until she found the rope. It was slippery, and she had to hold tight with both hands to keep from falling. She heard Rabbit shout something, and the rope suddenly went taut, jerking her forward as the group set off into the dark, forbidding labyrinth. Natalia hung on, swallowing hard to keep from vomiting. She concentrated on lifting one foot at a time, praying she wouldn’t lose a boot.

They plodded forward, the rope jerking back and forth as people slipped and stumbled, splashing in the squalid wastewater. Suddenly, the rope went slack and someone in front of Hammer cried out, “Jesus Christ, it’s a body!”

“Keep moving!” Rabbit yelled back.

The rope went taut again and a moment later Natalia stumbled over a squishy hump underfoot. She clung fast with both hands and kept her eyes forward, focusing on Hammer’s broad silhouette to force the grisly image out of her mind as she stepped over the submerged corpse.

They continued on, torrents of putrid water rushing past, carrying not just human waste, but rotting plants, sticks, gravel and broken boards that slammed into the back of Natalia’s legs. Her trousers were shredded by the jagged splinters. Wastewater oozed through the brick roof, dripping on her head until her hair was sticky and matted, and her eyes burned.

“Step up!” Rabbit yelled as the group made a left turn into a smaller tunnel with the main flow of water rushing off in a different direction. It was drier and the footing better, though the tunnel’s low ceiling forced them into a crouched position. Natalia banged her head a few times and, in front of her, Hammer crawled on all fours.

Overhead she heard crunching noises and the unmistakable clatter of steel tank treads as Rabbit called out, “Passing under Holy Cross Church!”

Then a thunderous bang echoed off the brick walls.

The rope went slack. Voices shouted and shrieked.

“Grenade!” shouted Bobcat from his position at the rear of the line.

Another bang, and the tunnel filled with smoke.

“Get moving!” Rabbit shouted. “The fuckin’ Krauts are throwin’ grenades down here! Get moving!”

The line jerked forward, and Natalia stumbled, scraping her knee on the concrete floor. Hammer reached back and grabbed her elbow until she regained her footing. Choking on the acrid smoke, she clung desperately to the rope as the line surged forward.

The group staggered on through the narrow, tube-like tunnel for what seemed like an eternity. Hunched over, her back aching, her knees bruised and bleeding, Natalia thought about Adam, about Berta, about her job on the railway—anything to push away the paralyzing dread that the roof would collapse, that this is where it would end, here in the sealed tomb of a sewer tunnel.

Finally, they turned right and climbed down into a larger tunnel, the shadows from Rabbit’s lantern flickering on greasy, oval-shaped walls. Up and down the rope line, the commandos fell quiet now as fatigue settled in. This tunnel had higher ceilings—even Hammer could straighten up—but they were back to flowing wastewater and dozens of corpses lying in the sticky, ankle-deep muck. Natalia had lost any concept of time but was certain that hours had passed. Rabbit’s voice became hoarse and weary as he called out their locations.

Progress slowed as they passed under Warsaw University. The area above their heads crawled with SS troopers and Panzer brigades. Overhead, the crunching sounds of tank treads, clattering machine guns and exploding artillery shells hammered Natalia’s eardrums until she thought her head would split open.

The fearsome screeching of dive-bombing Stukas signaled that dawn had come, and the rope went slack whenever the group neared a manhole. Rabbit doused the lantern and crept forward searching for any crack of daylight and the ambush that might be waiting.

They slogged southward under Nowy Swiat, and had just passed the intersection with Jerusalem Avenue when Natalia heard the metallic clank of a manhole cover being pried off behind her.

A sudden burst of daylight illuminated the tunnel.

“Run!” Bobcat shouted from the rear. “Run! Run! Get mov—!”

A blinding flash! An instant later a searing wave of heat from a flamethrower knocked Natalia face down into the muck. She scrambled to her knees, struggling to grab the rope, but her feet slipped sideways on the greasy floor.

The rope jerked wildly. The tunnel echoed with agonized wails from those at the back of the line.

Rabbit stood frozen at the head, staring back into the tunnel, the eerie glow of the lantern reflecting the horror in the boy’s eyes. Then he turned away.