Paul Christopher - Michelangelo_s Notebook

When they reached the edge of the woods, the sergeant made a “get low” gesture. Sitting on his haunches, he had a brief conference with Reid.

“There’s a ditch and then the road. There’s an old Panzer, burned out, catercorner. The hatch is open. We should be able to get a pretty good look down into the farm. The tank’s at the top of the hill.”

“The sniper?” Reid asked.

“If we come up low the tank will be between us and that tower. Unless he’s looking for us it should be okay.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Watch my back.”

“Okay.”

They waited just inside the screening woods, trading puffs from one of the sergeant’s Luckies. The sniper might not be looking for them, but a sharp eye might see cigarette smoke wafting up in the still, early-morning air. The overcast sky wouldn’t help either. No smoking, drinking or screwing while you were fighting a war. He field-stripped the smoke, grinding the hot ash under his combat boot. Didn’t quite seem right; you should be able to have one last bit of pleasure before you were snuffed with a bullet from some invisible Kraut’s Steyr 95.

The sergeant slid out through an opening between the trees and dropped down into the ditch that ran beside the road. He crawled forward until he was in the shadow of the old tank. Coming at it low, from the rear, he saw that it wasn’t as badly damaged as he’d first thought. He could see the exposed rear differential blown to shit and one of the treads had been blown off the right rear assembly but that was about it. From the way the road was chewed up behind it the tank looked as though it might have been strafed by a fighter. American, Brit, Russkie, who knew? The Panzer 1 had been designed originally as a practice tank. It had thin 8mm armor and only a couple of machine guns with no cannon. Good against infantry but no better than a tin can if it ran into another tank, even a crappy old M1 or a guy with a bazooka. On the pro side-if you were a Kraut-was the fact that there were thousands of them and they used only a two-man crew: The driver and a combination commander, observer and machine gunner.

The sergeant left Reid down on the ground behind the left-hand tread. He climbed up the side of the tank, avoiding the sharp, sheet-metal mud flaps and the cheese grater-pierced metal of the muffler cover. He pulled himself up to the turret, using the big eyebolts used to hold a spare length of winch cable, then slithered through the hatchway and into the gunner’s chair. There were foot pedals to swing the turret and each of the twin guns was on a swivel, able to move up and down independently. Between the guns was a long metal telescopic sight. The sergeant peered through the eyepiece but the far magnifying lens had shattered during whatever firefight had stopped the tank.

The inside of the tank was the usual sandy beige color and there didn’t seem to be any blood, so maybe the crew had gotten away clean. The fact that the tank was still here meant the road wasn’t used very often, which almost certainly meant that the trucks down on the farm had come from the east. That was something to chew on, since that’s where Hitler’s place was supposed to be-Berchtesgaden or whatever it was called.

He tried to imagine coming face-to-face with King Kraut and couldn’t imagine it. For the past four years when he thought about Hitler it always came out like Charlie Chaplin. You couldn’t really take the guy seriously with that mustache, could you? On the other hand, you could take a bunch of guys with those big fucking helmets seriously, that was for sure.

The sergeant eased himself out of the gunner’s seat and slid down into the bottom of the tank. All the ports were open so he squeezed into the driver’s seat. He eased the binoculars out of their case and looked down at the farm. He could immediately see a great deal of activity.

Several men in shirtsleeves were sponging off the trucks’ windshields and more men were hanging out laundry on a makeshift line that ran from the side mirror of one of the trucks to a post beside a well opening on the other side of the cobbled courtyard. Two men in civilian clothes-lightweight crumpled suits, one brown, one blue-were smoking cigarettes beside one of the small outbuildings. Both men had eyeglasses on.

A woman in a blue dress and brown shoes with fat Cuban heels walked casually about, chatting and smoking. A second woman, dressed in the flat brown uniform of the Wehrmacht women’s auxiliary was sitting on the edge of the well casing, her head tilted back into the sun. The only man in full uniform was a youngish-looking officer in a black SS uniform.

The shirtsleeved soldiers cleaning the windshields carried no weapons. Nobody except the SS officer had a sidearm. The sergeant turned his attention to the abbey tower. The small opening at the top of the tower looked dark and empty, but that didn’t mean anything. Snipers were good at keeping in the shadows.

The sergeant turned and spoke quietly out through one of the rear observation ports. “You catching any of this, Reid?”

“Yeah” came the faint response from outside the tank.

“Whadya think?”

“Not army, not military. I dunno who they are,” said the disembodied voice.

“Take a guess.”

“Civvies.”

“What do you think of the women?”

“They’re women. What am I supposed to think?”

“Why would they have women along?”

“Why does anyone have women along.”

“Gotta be more than that.”

“Why?”

“Something pretty strange going on, you ask me.”

“Is anyone asking you?”

“Don’t be an asshole.” The sergeant was silent again. He looked back through the front port. “What’s east of here?”

“Mountains, bunch of castles.”

“West?”

“Lake Constance. The Krauts call it something else. Switzerland’s on the other end.”

“South?”

“Austria.”

“Who’s there now, any idea?”

“Forty-fourth. The Russkies, I think.”

“Germans don’t like Russkies-am I right?”

“How the fuck do I know, Sarge? Why are you asking me all these questions? I’m just a redskin off the reservation, remember? ‘Ugh, How, Kemosabe, ’ like that.”

“Hey, Reid, how come your name isn’t Running Bear, or Moon Blanket or something?”

“My father was a garage mechanic in Kansas who like fucking squaws when he got drunk, okay?” He almost laughed. “Where you come from it was ‘Nigger in the woodpile.’ Where I’m from it was ‘Choctaw in the cornfield.’ ”

“You know what? You’re okay, Reid.” The sergeant shifted gears. “They had to come from the east, or else they would have had to get those trucks around the tank and there’s no sign of that. They’re not going north, ’cause that’s where the war is, and the Russkies and us are in Austria, so they’re not going there.”

“So they’re going to Lake Constance.”

“Yeah. The Bodensee or something, that’s what the Krauts call it. I wonder if they got some kind of ferry service or something that would handle six trucks like that.”

“Probably.” There was silence from Reid for a moment. The sergeant turned his glasses on the courtyard again. If the sniper was up in the tower he was their only line of defense. If the machine guns in the tank still had ammo he could probably do pretty much of a clean sweep. He reached down and opened the big ammo bin and saw enough belts to keep the guns going steady for ten or fifteen minutes. The only problem was you’d have to have the engine going to power the turret; with the sight gone it would be dead reckoning. Still…

“You cooking up some kind of plan, Sarge? It feels like you’re cooking up some kind of plan.”