Ian Slater - Rage of Battle

“They get caught doing that,” murmured Waite, “they’ll be shot as spies.”

“Maybe,” agreed David, “but I’ll tell you something, Ted.”

“Fred.”

“Well, Fred, would you think of pulling up a lieutenant for his ID?”

The cockney, finishing his cigarette, pulled out another and lit it from the first. “Suppose not, old cock — Jesus, they’re gonna cause one hell of a lot of confusion if they get inside the pocket.”

“Nothing to getting inside it,” said David. “Everything’s screwed up inside there anyway — units split up, some of our guys inside, most of us dropped outside. They won’t be checking ID. These bastards’ll get through, all right.”

Waite nodded. “Afraid you’re right, mate.” He paused, cigarette held meditatively down in front of his knees. “They’re after bloody Munster.” He turned to Brentwood, his tone infused with the urgency of delayed revelation. “That’s it, Yank!”

“David.”

“They’re after bloody Munster. Our prepo site! Christ, mate!” Waite was feeling beneath his poncho for his cigarettes, forgetting he had one on the go. “They blow that depot — it’ll be a fucking slaughter.”

“Unless our guys can get out first,” said David. “Evacuate.”

“Where to?” asked Waite, fidgeting with his lighter. “No fucking Dunkirk this time, matey — boats waiting. Last I heard was they got fucking armored all round us. Getting ready for a big push, they are — west of Hannover. Right down to the fucking Rhine and on to Bumsum.” He meant Brunssun, south in Belgium, where the German operating out of headquarters dug deep in the coal mines. “And once we start crossing the Rhine,” Waite added, “it’ll be absolute tucking chaos. Sitting ducks. That’s what our lot will be.”

“Maybe not if the evacuation’s orderly,” said David.

Waite turned to Brentwood, his movement revealing white, bony legs like those of some overgrown chicken. “Orderly? No such fucking thing, Davey boy. It’ll be a balls-up.” They could hear artillery rumbling like thunder southwest of them from about twenty miles inside the pocket.

“Doesn’t have to be a mess,” said David, adding, “I’ve been in a pull-out.”

“Where?” asked Waite, his tone that of an incredulous senior talking to a freshman.

“Pyongyang.”

Waite raised an eyebrow. “You were with Freeman?”

“Yeah.”

“Freeman! Well, me old son, hats off! You should know. What was it like getting out then?”

David didn’t answer — the remembrance of the bloody retreat so vivid in his memory that for the last twenty-four hours, from the moment he’d hit the Hercules’ slipstream, it had overwhelmed him, the reason he hadn’t moved from beyond the crater, curled up against the protective carcass of the dead man. Waite was probably right. When they had got out of Pyongyang, there had been only fifteen hundred men to think of. And while it had gone much better than expected, they’d lost a lot going in. Trying to get out a quarter million men trapped in the pocket by a ring of steel would be a different proposition altogether. What had his father always told the three of them, Lana, too? “When the going gets tough—” It was old hat, but it made him feel ashamed of his recent loss of nerve. “Least it won’t be an air withdrawal,” he told Waite. “We’ll have the bridges.”

“What?” asked Waite, and David Brentwood knew instantly from the cockney’s tone that some of the bridges must be blown.

“How many?” he asked Waite, who was now watching the Stasi guard shouting at a man in another group of prisoners for his dog tags.

“What — how many bridges blown?” It was another man’s voice, also a cockney, sitting behind them, an eye partially covered with a blood-congealed bandage, the compress having slipped down on the man’s cheek, revealing a pus-filled gash beneath the black-red swelling. “All of ‘em, mate. Right, Waite? The whole fucking lot.”

“Marvelous, in’t?” said Waite as they watched the other Russians coming in, taking off their jumpsuits and looping the appropriate — British or American — dog tags about their necks. The Stasi guard was handing one of the Russians who was wearing a U.S. Army corporal’s uniform — with a machine gunner’s flash patch — a St. Christopher medal, which the guard apparently thought was part of the American’s ID. There were guffaws from the prisoners and barely suppressed laughter from some of the Russians. Then the tall Russian, wearing the American airborne lieutenant’s uniform, quietly walked over to the young guard, took the St. Christopher medal, and put it on.

“Then,” concluded David, “we’re going to have to swim across if all the damn bridges are blown.” They could hear the artillery, Soviet or American, they couldn’t tell, increasing.

Wake indicated the Stasi guards stationed around the edges of the pine wood. “Don’t know whether you’ve noticed, me old dallin’, but those Kraut goons ‘ave got a nasty habit of shooting people. My advice, old cock, is to sit tight for the duration. You’ve done your bit. ‘Sides, this lot’s only going to last a couple more months, then someone’s gonna threaten to push the big one and that’s going to get ‘em to the table.” Waite glanced back at his wounded comrade. “That right, Bill?”

“ ‘Ope so,” said Bill, his pallor like chalk, his arm, which he could hardly lift, making an unsuccessful attempt to keep the bloated flies away from his eye.

“I don’t think so,” said David, slowly, his gaze held captive by the curling twist of cigarette smoke disappearing into the mist that now shrouded the pines about the Russians’ mobile headquarters. “No one wants to use nuclear weapons — they’ll use up everything else first.” He flicked the cigarette away, the tiny red ember dying in the mud. “Anyway, no war’s finished when it was supposed to. Experts always get it wrong. After the second war, everyone said the next would be so high-tech, so mobile, it’d be over in no time. Hell, we’re bogged down in that pocket worse than—” He glanced across at Waite. “You know, World War Two wasn’t anything like as mobile as all the films make out. Soldiers dig in soon as they can. Then others try to root them out. Same old story. Look at our fighters — they can’t break through to Russia, and the Russians can’t break through to England. We’re in the middle. I heard bayonets last night.”

“Yeah,” said the Englishman with the bloodied eye patch. “So did I.”

“The Poles,” said Waite.

“Ivans,” put in someone else. “Shit — our sergeant told us bayonets were for museums and can openers. No one would ever use them again to—”

“Will you guys knock it off?” came a voice from the back. “Talking about the friggin’ war. Talk about women or something, for Christ’s sake. What I’d like now is a good lay.”

The Russians were ready to go — in all, sixty-two had captured Allied uniforms. The one in the American airborne lieutenant’s uniform was doing a last-minute check to see that none of the uniforms was too ill-fitting, making several men swap because sleeves were too short, pants too tight. Anything about the uniform that might draw undue attention was being weeded out. Next, he passed an American airborne Kevlar helmet along the line to collect their watches, followed by another in which prisoners’ watches had been collected, each man double-checking that there was nothing engraved on the watches that might arouse suspicion if they were questioned after being infiltrated behind enemy lines.

“We have to escape,” said Brentwood quietly. “Soon.”