Christopher Reich - The Runner

“Stop!”

Then he heard a stifled cry, two heavy thuds, and the jeep careered dangerously left, crashing head-on into the intractable trunk of a hundred year-old oak.

He walked now, his step sobered by what he knew he would discover. Ingrid Bach arrived at his side, breathing heavily, eyes wide with fright. Two of the nurses had been expelled from the Jeep and lay in the road, their bodies twisted unnaturally. The wire had hit both below the eyes, snapping their necks even as it slashed through their noses deep into the skull and lifted them forcibly out of the Jeep. Judge guessed they had been sitting in the back seat. The two in the front had suffered a quicker death. Both were slumped against the dashboard, headless, blood pumping from their necks like water from a hydrant.

Ingrid fell to a knee, her scream dying stillborn in her throat, then buried her face in the lee of her arm.

Judge tore his eyes from the grotesque panorama, helping Ingrid to her feet and rushing her to the Jeep. Whoever had strung the wire might well be waiting nearby to insure their job was carried to fruition. He implored Ingrid to hurry, but she was half frozen with shock. With every step, he expected to hear the whiplash crack of a bullet fired in their direction.

“What is it?” Ingrid asked him, when they were back in the Jeep. “What’s going on?”

But Judge was not ready to give an answer. Either to himself or Ingrid Bach.

Slamming the gearshift into first, he stepped on the accelerator and drove the Jeep up the hill.

“Rum,” Sergeant Den Savage whispered to himself. “Very rum indeed.”

Savage, a licensed civil engineer who had enlisted with the King’s Own Hussars in September of 1939 liked to think he’d had a decent war. Tobruk, Sicily, Normandy. Just the whisper of such storied names earned him an appreciative glance from the most hardened warrior. If he was lucky, it even got him a pint gratis at the local NAAFI pub.

But Savage was no soldier. There’d been no storming of enemy parapets for him. No jumping from a plane behind enemy lines or braving a foreign beach under a hail of fire. Beau Geste, that was the next man. At five feet, two inches tall and one hundred and three pounds dripping wet, Savage was the mouse who didn’t roar. “A bloke should know his place,” he liked to say, “and mine is to the rear, thank you very much.”

The entire world knew about the “Desert Rats”. Well, Den and his team called themselves the “Pack Rats”. It was the job of this particular engineer of King’s Own Hussars to collect, label, and store all weapons confiscated from the enemy. He’d taken potato mashers from the Afrika Korps and Schmeissers from the SS, rocket launchers from the Hitler Youth and pocket knives from the Volksturm . He knew every gun, rifle, and grenade used by the German Army and the ordnance to go with it. Still, for everything he’d seen and done, today’s job bothered him.

“Rum,” he whispered to himself. “Very rum, indeed.”

Savage strode down the center aisles of warehouse E392 in Dortmund, Germany, whistling for his men to gather round. The warehouse was packed to its gills with small arms and ammunition confiscated from Hitler’s baddies. Most had been taken by Monty himself, Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, that is, England’s highest ranking soldier (who Den liked to point out was no heavyweight himself). And Savage made sure the weapons were stored like with like: pistols with pistols, rifles and rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers, mines, grenades… well, he could go on forever, couldn’t he?

“Alright, lads, listen up,” he shouted when his thirty-five man platoon had drawn close. “We’ve a bit of work ahead of us and I don’t want to hear any complaining from the pews. Church mice, lads. Follow?”

“Ah, shut up, Sarge, and let us hear the bad news,” shouted Jimmy McGregor, a mealy mouthed little bugger from County Antrim. You could always count on the Irish for a bit of lip.

“Right then, McGregor. If you’re so keen, I’ll let you have it right off, won’t I?”

And for the next fifteen minutes, Savage outlined in excruciating detail the work order that he had received earlier that morning — the order that had his stomach growling with uncertainty. Savage’s men were to remove every weapon in the warehouse — all of which they had previously catalogued, cleaned, greased, and packed — strip them of their protective cosmoline coating, re-insert the firing pins and return them to their wooden crates. Worst, though, was the final instruction. The crates were not to be nailed shut.

“But Den,” asked McGregor, in his sheepish Antrim brogue, “without grease the guns will rust quicker than tin in a rainstorm.”

“Don’t you go worrying about rust and the natural order of things, Jimmy McGregor,” said Savage. “The order’s from Monty himself. You have any questions, you’re to take it up with him. Now get to work.”

Savage dismissed his men and returned to his office. He knew he’d been short with McGregor but, damn it all, he couldn’t help it. Something about the order just didn’t sit right with him. You see, for once, Jimmy McGregor was right.

You only stripped guns of their grease and re-inserted their firing pins if you expected to use them. And very soon at that.

Rum, thought Savage,very rum, indeed.

“I need to speak with General Patton now!” Judge said for the second time, his frustration bound and balled into a tight fist. “It cannot wait. I repeat, it’s a matter of grave importance.”

It was eleven o’ clock at night and he was standing inside the headquarters of the 705th Field Artillery battalion in what used to be the Rathaus , or city hall, of Griesheim, a quaint hamlet twenty miles south of Frankfurt. Three hours he’d been driving, anxious to put as much distance as possible between himself and his “last known whereabouts.” Satisfied that he and Ingrid were for the time being safe, he’d stopped at the first spot where he could contact the one man who might put an end to this nightmarish situation.

“Major, I don’t doubt you for a minute,” came the reply. “But the general is in Berlin visiting Ike and the President. All communications to him are routed through Third Army HQ. Anything you want him to hear, you’ll have to tell me. I’ll pass along the news first thing in the morning.”

Judge held the phone away from his ear, biting his lower lip to keep from shouting. It hurt trying to be polite. “Excuse me, but may I ask with whom I’m speaking?”

“Colonel Paul Harkins,” came the gruff voice, the emphasis very definitely on colonel.

“Excuse me, Colonel, I should have told you that this is a matter pertaining to the ongoing search for Erich Seyss. General Patton asked me to contact him no matter what the time if I had any news. Once he hears what I have to tell him, I am certain he will applaud your initiative in allowing me to give him the news personally.”

It hurt!

Harkins’s laugh felt like a slap in the face. “Nice try, Major. Listen, if it’s about that brouhaha in Wiesbaden a couple nights back, let me put you through to General Everett’s staff. That’s his bailiwick. What’s the big deal, anyway? I thought Seyss was dead.”

Suddenly, Judge found his patience had abandoned him and his powers of persuasion, as well. “I must speak to Patton.”

A tired sigh smothered the line. “Okay, Major, that’s it for tonight. You’re wearing me out.”

“You’re wearing me out, too, mac!”

Judge hung up before Harkins could have the satisfaction. For a second he stood still, staring at the dead receiver as if it were the mitt that had dropped the game winning ball. A pimply clerk sat at a table marked “reception”, a few feet away. At every mention of Patton’s name, he’d twitched as if given a couple of hundred volts. Now, he was staring at Judge with wide eyes, as if Judge were the general himself. So much for keeping a low profile.