Greg Iles - Black Cross

He had perhaps thirty seconds before the roller wheel reached the next pylon, smashed the porcelain insulator there and shorted out the entire system. Then his “Christmas ornament” would roll the remaining distance down to Totenhausen, crash to the ground and detonate with him aboard, filling his lungs with deadly nerve gas — if he had not already been killed by the fall. The mission would be blown, his friends hunted down and killed. All he could hear was his own voice saying something he had told the Achnacarry recruits a thousand times: No matter how well we train you, lads, there will always arise a situation for which you cannot be prepared. It is then that the men separate themselves from the boys. . .

Steeling himself against pain, Munro clutched the suspension bar in his hands and swung both legs up and over the conductor wire to try to slow his descent. The friction of the wrapped steel wire burned right through his woolen trouser legs and his skin. The cylinder slowed, but not enough. When the wire sliced though his calf muscles to the bone, Munro screamed, and he knew then that he did not have the courage to mutilate his hands the same way.

He was less then forty feet from the second pylon when he remembered his toggle rope. With his left hand he reached behind him and snatched it off his belt. Then he swung the wooden handle over the wire, just ahead of the roller wheel.

The wheel snapped the handle like a twig, but the toggle rope itself tangled in the aluminum forks and began to foul the roller mechanism. The cylinder skidded for two yards, then began rolling again. This final motion jerked the remainder of the toggle rope up into the mechanism.

The rope took Colin Munro’s arm with it. His hand went under the wheel and snapped with a louder crack than the wooden handle had made. Roller and cylinder skidded down the last ten feet, dragging the flailing commando behind it.

Just before it struck the crossarm, the wheel jerked to a stop. Colin Munro did not. His body was flung up over the pulley and onto the crossarm, closing a circuit between the live wire and the earth.

From two hundred feet up the hill, Ian McShane saw a bright yellow flash with a sizzling blue core. Then he saw the distant lights of Totenhausen dim once, twice . . . and come back on.

McShane “burned” the pole in his haste to get to the ground. Creosote and splinters raked his arms and face as he slid earthward. When his boots hit the snow, he raced down the hill, leaving Cochrane and Lewis to tie off the rope holding the final cylinder in place.

At the foot of the next pylon, McShane found his friend’s body. Munro was lying on his stomach. His right hand was mangled, the arm torn and broken, and his tattered trouser legs were soaked in blood. The air smelled of ozone, as if a bolt of lightning had struck here. Munro himself smelled of burnt hair and cooked flesh. McShane dropped to his knees and felt for a carotid pulse, knowing it was useless.

He crouched there thinking until Cochrane and Lewis appeared.

“What the hell happened, Ian?” Alick asked breathlessly.

“Damn damn damn !” McShane cursed. “The auxiliaries energized. Shocked me blind. I accidentally jerked out one of the pins. My rubber gloves must have been dirty, and let the current bleed up to my arm. The cylinder got away, but Colin jumped out onto it. By God, he stopped the bloody thing.”

McShane stood and peered into the darkness high above them. “That looks like what’s left of a toggle rope up there. Colin managed to foul the wheel with it.”

“Damn me,” muttered Cochrane, looking closer at Munro’s body.

“He grounded himself on the pole,” said McShane. “He was dead before he hit the ground.”

“What the hell happened to his foot?” asked Lewis.

Munro’s right foot was bare and split open at the ankle, as if it had burst from within.

“The current must have come out there,” McShane said. “Blew his damn boot off. Either I didna catch the full current, or it must have traveled down an arm and a leg on the same side. Missed my vitals. Colin wasn’t so lucky.”

“No,” Cochrane murmured. “But he saved the mission, Ian. He saved us .”

“That he did, Alick.” McShane waited until he knew his voice was steady. “But we’ve still got two cylinders to hang. The one back there and the one over our heads.”

“What about the Germans?” asked Lewis. “I saw the lights flicker down below.”

McShane walked over to the nearest support pole and jammed one of his spikes into the wood. “Either they noticed or they didn’t. If they come, it’s a fight we’ll be givin’ them. If not, we’ll finish the job. Give me your rope.”

Lewis handed over a long coil.

“I’m going to cut Colin’s toggle rope free. Then we’ll use this rope to tow the cylinder back up and pin it beside the others.”

Alick Cochrane stared. It was something to witness the kind of determination that could block out a dead comrade and push on with an impossible mission. But he knew his friend wasn’t thinking clearly. “Ian,” he said gently, “if we try to tow the thing, we’ll be electrocuted ourselves.”

“I dinna think the auxiliary wires are live anymore,” McShane said. “Whatever shorted the main lines was temporary, because Colin shorted the auxiliaries and the lights are back on below.”

Cochrane considered this. “Colin’s body may only have faulted the backups for a second, Ian. They could still be live.”

“Well then . . . I’ll just jump clear out onto the cylinder, like Colin did, and pin the bastard right where it is. I’ll use something easily breakable, like a heavy twig. The momentum of the other cylinders will knock it free when the time comes.”

Cochrane began scouring the snow for a suitable stick.

“What about Colin?” Lewis asked. “You want me to bury him while you’re up there?”

McShane had already driven both spikes into the pole and started climbing, but he stopped and looked down, finding Lewis’s eye. “By God, if we can break our backs to haul gas cylinders, John, we can haul Colin to the beach. He’ll be buried in Scotland or I’ll die gettin’ him there.”

Cochrane handed two twigs up to McShane. “It’s sixteen miles to the beach, Ian.”

The big Highlander’s eyes narrowed. “Then we’ve no time to waste, have we?”

26

Sergeant Gunther Sturm strode with great satisfaction through Totenhausen Camp. It was a fine morning with fine prospects. The arrogant bastard who had been riding him since September had finally made a mistake. He had taken a fancy to the bald Jewess who strutted around the camp like a princess. And that made him vulnerable.

Schörner had been tolerable up until the night Himmler came, allowing Sturm to run the camp as he had before the major’s arrival from Russia. There had been some misunderstandings in the beginning, but once Sturm realized it was a matter of principle with Schörner not to profit from the prisoners’ bad luck — and not simply a matter of greasing his palm — Sturm had kept a low profile and limited his looting to easily concealable and highly profitable items. Like diamonds. The two men had never gotten along personally, but who ever said officers and noncoms had to be friends?

It was all the old Dutch Jew’s fault. He had shoved the diamonds into Sturm’s hand just as Schörner blundered up to see it. And of course the major had reminded him of their previous misunderstanding, holding his past mistakes over his head just like every officer loved to do. The bastard wanted Sturm to know he could be cashiered for looting anytime Schörner chose.

But the major had made his own mistake now. Sleeping with a Jewess! Raping one in the heat of action was one thing, but this was something different. Three times already Sturm’s men had reported seeing the Jansen woman leaving Schörner’s quarters late at night. The only question had been how best to respond.