Mark Frost - The Second Objective

Preuss jumped down after Ellis from the jeep, a knife in his hand. They landed with a heavy thud, Ellis underneath giving a groan as Preuss’s full weight compressed him.

Anderson turned at the gate to see the driver with a machine pistol in his hand, ten feet away, closing fast. Anderson raised his rifle. They fired simultaneously: Anderson squeezed off two shots; the driver emptied his magazine.

Von Leinsdorf fired once more at Mallory as he toppled over, then turned casually away as if bored with a conversation. Preuss had his knife buried in Ellis’s ribs, bearing down on him, using his left hand to push the barrel of Ellis’s rifle away from his chest. Grunting with effort, Ellis stubbornly held the gun with both hands, trying to inch a finger toward the trigger. Eyes wild, Preuss looked up at Bernie, standing a few feet away.

“Das Gewehr!” he said. “Erhalten das Gewehr!”

Bernie didn’t move. Von Leinsdorf marched over, pointed the pistol, with a long steel cylinder attached to the muzzle, at Ellis’s head, and fired twice. Once the American went slack, Preuss slapped the rifle away and rolled off the body, breathing heavily.

Bernie felt shock stun his system. He’d never seen anyone die before. He couldn’t think; he couldn’t move.

“What the fuck?” whispered Bernie. “What the fuck?”

“Get hold of yourself,” said Von Leinsdorf; then he turned to Preuss and pointed. “Drag the bodies into those woods.”

Von Leinsdorf jogged back toward the gate. Private Anderson lay dead, sprawled facedown in the dirt, bleeding from half a dozen wounds. The driver-merchant seaman Marius Schieff, from Rostock-had propped himself up against the base of the gate, pistol still in hand, looking down at a dark stain spreading across his field jacket.

Von Leinsdorf knelt down beside him and spoke to him gently. “Marius? How bad is it? Can you walk back to the line?”

Schieff smiled grimly. “Walk five miles?”

“We can’t turn back, my friend,” said Von Leinsdorf.

“Ich weisse,” said Schieff. “Go on, leave me here, maybe someone finds me-”

Von Leinsdorf stood up and without hesitating fired twice into Schieff’s head at close range. He unscrewed the silencer as he glanced into the guard house, then holstered the weapon and walked back to the jeep. Gunther Preuss was already on his feet, grunting with effort as he dragged Ellis’s body toward the nearby woods. Bernie hurried toward Von Leinsdorf.

“Jesus Christ, what the fuck did you do?”

“I told you to be quiet. Collect their tags, get the bodies off the road-”

“You know the orders, god damn it, we’re not supposed to engage, somebody must’ve heard those shots-”

Von Leinsdorf walked past him to Mallory’s body, flicked open his lighter, and fired up a Lucky Strike as he looked at the dead American. “Who’s married to Betty Grable?”

“Betty Grable, the movie star? Fuck if I know-”

“Mickey Rooney?”

“No, it’s not him-wait a minute, let me think a second-it’s that bandleader, Harry James-what difference does it make?”

“I gave him the wrong answer. He was about to do something heroic.” Von Leinsdorf picked up Mallory’s legs and glared at Bernie. “Are you just going to stand there, Brooklyn?”

Bernie grabbed Mallory’s arms, and they carried him toward the woods. “But how did you know that? How could you possibly know that?”

“There’s no radio in the shed,” said Von Leinsdorf.

Gunther Preuss, the overweight former bank clerk from Vienna, stomped past them on his way from the woods back toward the guard gate.

“Was sollten wir mit Schieff tun?” asked Preuss.

“Take his papers, empty his pockets, put him with the others,” said Von Leinsdorf.

“Kann ich seine Aufladungen nehmen?”

“For Christ’s sake, Preuss, the body’s not even cold-”

“Mine…they fit no good,” said Preuss elaborately.

“That the best you can do?” asked Bernie. “You sound like fucking Frankenstein.”

“Then take one of the American’s boots,” said Von Leinsdorf.

“Danke, Unterstürmführer - ”

“And speak English or keep your mouth shut, you fat, fucking, useless piece of shit.”

Preuss dropped his shoulders and broke into a harried trot. Von Leinsdorf looked over at Bernie, with a sly smile. “What do you think? My slang is improving, yes?”

Bernie glared at him. “You said ‘kit.’”

“What about it?”

“It’s not a ‘kit,’ it’s a toolbox.”

“You’re right,” said Von Leinsdorf. “Kit’s British. Fuck all.”

“And you’re on Preuss’s case? You’re fuckin’ nuts, you know that?”

Von Leinsdorf laughed, blew smoke, enjoying himself. Twenty yards into the woods, they dropped Mallory’s body beside Ellis under a thick stand of evergreens. A gust of wind stirred the branches overhead, dropping clots of wet snow on them.

“Why’d you have to kill Schieff?” asked Bernie.

“He was gut shot, he wouldn’t have lasted an hour-”

“We could’ve treated him, taken him for help-”

“He knew the risks. Besides, you heard what our friendly sergeant said back there,” said Von Leinsdorf, tapping Mallory’s boot with his. “Americans ride three men to a jeep. You’d think our fearless leaders might have picked up that little detail, eh, Brooklyn?”

Von Leinsdorf leaned down, opened their shirts, and slipped the dog tags off Mallory and Ellis.

“Cover the bodies,” he said, tossing the tags to Bernie. “Take their ID, jackets, weapons, anything else we can use. You’re driving.”

Bernie caught the tags and dropped them into his pocket. His nightmare had come to life; American blood on his hands. Four men dead in less than five minutes. And Von Leinsdorf seemed to like it. He was practically humming as he walked away. But how long now before they became the hunted?

He saw Mallory’s foot twitch once as he rifled through the man’s field jacket. He leaned down and realized Mallory was still breathing.

Once Von Leinsdorf was out of sight, Bernie took a sulfa packet, bandages, and an ampule of morphine from his pocket, and knelt down beside the gravely wounded sergeant.

Southwest of Liège, Belgium

DECEMBER 14, 9:00 P.M.

Earl Grannit leaned out the window of the engine car and looked back along the length of the U.S. Army transport train, eleven freight cars trailing behind them as they rounded a broad turn. He gazed out at the smooth moonlight glancing off the Meuse River as it flashed through the trees, then at his watch under the bare bulb of the cab. He shoveled more coal into the firebox while he waited for his engineer to finish a call on the radio, talking to dispatch.

“How close are we?” asked Grannit, over the roar of the engine, when the call ended.

“Four miles,” said the engineer. “Next station’s Clermont.”

“What about our backup?”

“Says they’re all in place. Ready to go.”

“Famous last words,” said Grannit.

“Think they’re gonna make a move, Earl?”

“I’ll take a look.”

Grannit swung outside on the handrail, found his footing, and inched back along the ledge rimming the coal car. He stepped across to the first freight car, climbed the ladder to the roof, set himself, and looked ahead down the tracks. He could already make out the Clermont station lights piercing the night in the distance. Then he spotted a crossing in the foreground, where two cars were flashing their headlights toward the oncoming train. The engine had already started to slow; he heard the whining steel grind of the brakes.