James Becker - Echo of the Reich

The black jackboots, black breeches and tunic were chillingly familiar, as was the peaked cap bearing the eagle insignia with the skull symbol, the Totenkopf — Bronson knew that much German-mounted below it. On the left-hand side of the uniform hung a chained black ceremonial dagger, and the lapel bore a rank badge bearing four square pips above two parallel bars. Bronson remembered military ranks from his days in the army, and that, he was sure, was the German rank Obersturmbannfuhrer, equivalent to a British lieutenant colonel. The only splash of color was the blood-red armband displaying the all too familiar black swastika in a white circle.

Then Marcus turned slightly to his left, and for the first time Bronson could see his right lapel. There, gleaming in the overhead lighting, he could clearly see what he’d been expecting ever since the German had stepped into the garage: the twin lightning-bolt runes of the SS.

Two of the men then raised their right arms toward Marcus in rigid salutes, salutes which he returned. Then the two men turned on their heels and walked out to the cars.

He’d been right. The German hadn’t created his own private army. Instead, he’d revived the most feared and detested military unit of all time, the SS or Schutzstaffel, the black-uniformed thugs responsible for running the concentration camps and perpetrating the vast majority of the atrocities recorded during the Second World War. The SS had fielded almost one million men, and had managed to enslave, torture, experiment on and eventually kill some twelve million people, most of them Jews. But they’d also directed their lethal attentions toward other “undesirables” who might in some way contaminate the purity of Hitler’s ideal of an Aryan race, such as Poles and Slavs, the mentally and physically handicapped, political dissidents, clergymen and homosexuals. Of all the forces, of all the nations, involved in the global conflicts of the twentieth century, the SS had been by far the most chillingly efficient as a killing unit, and by far the most reviled.

Bronson knew that what he was staring at wasn’t some toothless neo-Nazi revival, a bunch of deluded socialists wearing shirts with silly badges. From what he’d already found out about Marcus, he guessed that he was as close as possible to the real thing.

Not neo-Nazi. Just Nazi.

And that worried him more than anything else.

24 July 2012

Just under half an hour later, once the two cars had departed and the house was again still and silent, Bronson moved back from his observation position below and behind the bushes and stood up, his joints and muscles protesting.

He had two choices about getting back to his car. He could retrace his steps through the wood, but that meant passing close by the house again, and in the dark he wasn’t sure he could do that without tripping over something or making enough noise to be detected. Or he could work his way down through the wood, moving away from the house all the time, until he reached the road. Then he could simply walk along it, turn right up the rough track and get to his car that way.

It wasn’t a difficult decision.

He took a last look at the house and turned away, moving slowly and carefully and keeping inside the wood itself. The further away he got from the property, the quicker he felt able to move, and in less than five minutes he stepped over a narrow ditch and onto the tarmac surface of the Rothen road.

When he reached the open area in front of the house, Bronson crossed to the opposite side of the road, just in case there were any watchers positioned. His rubber-soled shoes made almost no sound on the tarmac, but as a precaution he stepped onto the grass verge and walked along that, where his footsteps would be completely silent.

The house still looked empty in the faint moonlight, the only light the steadily blinking telltale on the external alarm box, which meant that somebody had armed the system again, presumably after the occupants-and he had counted at least four men plus Marcus still in the house-had retreated to their bedrooms.

Beyond the house, Bronson crossed back to the east side of the road. The beginning of the track was easy to find because the gap in the undergrowth was wide, though the track itself was barely visible in the moonlight. He checked the road, but saw no vehicles in either direction, then began making his way along the track. Bronson was fairly sure he was alone, but he still took his time and exercised caution as he headed toward the clearing where he’d parked his car, keenly alert for any noise that would indicate the presence of one of Marcus’s men, or anyone else, for that matter.

In the end, it was something he smelled that alerted him. The faint whiff of tobacco smoke was unexpected but unmistakable. Somebody had smoked a cigarette on or near the track in the last few minutes.

It could have been one of the locals out walking his dog last thing in the evening and enjoying a cigarette. Or it could have been somebody a lot less innocent, and Bronson wasn’t about to take a chance.

The instant he detected the smell, he stopped moving. Then slowly and silently he moved over to his right, toward the trees and bushes that bordered that side of the track, removing the Llama pistol from his waistband as he did so and clicking off the safety catch. He knew that there was already a round in the chamber, so the weapon was ready to fire.

For several minutes he stood motionless by the trunk of a large tree, concentrating with every fiber of his being on looking and listening for any movement or noise from the wood in front of him, anything that would show him where the armed man-and Bronson was sure that the man who had smoked an incautious cigarette would be armed-was positioned. He heard no movement, but he did hear a low murmur as somebody spoke, the words indistinct. Then another voice, clearer and probably closer, replied with a single syllable: “Ja.”

That changed the odds; there were at least two of them waiting for him in the darkness of the wood ahead.

Still Bronson didn’t move, his mind racing as he considered his options. He could walk away, abandon the car, but that really wasn’t much of a choice. He needed a form of transport, but hiring a car wouldn’t work because his passport didn’t match his driving license, and if he stole a vehicle that would set the German police on his tail within hours. He needed the car, and that meant somehow getting into the clearing and incapacitating the men Marcus had positioned there.

For a moment he wondered how he’d been detected. He could only assume that before one of the clandestine meetings of the “new” SS in the house, Marcus probably ordered his men to do a quick search of the surrounding area. That would have been carried out while Bronson was asleep, and he guessed he was lucky that they’d only found the car, not him. And when they told Marcus it was on British registration plates, they’d know exactly who it belonged to.

Because he’d heard no movement, only the two brief snatches of conversation, Bronson still didn’t know exactly where the men were waiting for him, so he did the next best thing: he tried to work out where he would have positioned his men if he’d been told to set up an ambush in the clearing.

With two men, he’d probably station one in the undergrowth directly opposite the opening between the two large trees, and the second man over by the car. That way, both of them would see the intruder at about the same moment, as he stepped into the clearing and, if the intention was to eliminate him, they could cut him down in their crossfire.

And the other thing Bronson would have done was to position a car or other vehicle some distance further up the track so that, if by some miracle the target was able to incapacitate the men waiting in ambush in the clearing, the third man in the car would be able either to follow him when he drove away or, more likely, to ram him and attempt to stop him as he headed down the lane.