Troll in the Cellar
Late that afternoon, Von Lutzow and Macurdy filled the auxiliary tank. Then, stinking of aviation gas, they ate supper in the visiting officers' mess at the airfield, and took off after dark, headed east. The sky was clear-a break in the weather- but the moon wouldn't rise till well after two, and only a sickle moon then.
They scarcely spoke, all the way up the Adriatic. Macurdy dozed much of the time; he didn't know when he'd have a chance to sleep again. And dozing, dreamed of Corporal Trosza. They were walking along a beach below chalk cliffs, and he was trying to tell Trosza something. Meanwhile Trosza had severe stomach cramps. Macurdy could see inside him-the Voitu's abdomen was half full of blood-and he tried to distract him so he wouldn't notice.
Trosza put an arm around Macurdy's shoulder and squeezed him light. "I'll be all right," he said, "I'll be all right."
It was Von Lutzow's voice that wakened Macurdy. "We're crossing the north shore," he said. "Venice is off west a bit. If you've had any further thoughts, now's the time to talk them over."
Macurdy straightened in his seat, contemplating the dream still vivid in his mind. It was not, he thought, one that would slip away and be forgotten. He'd have no qualms about killing Kurqosz or Greszak, or even Landgraf, for whom he felt affinity. This was war, and they were the enemy. But Trosza? The Voitik corporal had had no part in this war. He'd even been friendly.
He shook free of the dregs, but not of the dark mood the dream left him with.
Von Lutzow's comment seemed an invitation to cancel, but he wasn't about to do that. Mentally, Macurdy reviewed his plans and gear: He'd never jumped with a freefall chute before, but felt comfortable about it. What he didn't feel comfortable about was the predicted wind; his preflight optimism had died in his sleep. The Air Corps' meteorological office in Naples had told him to expect winds of fifteen to twenty-five mph in southern Bavaria, and he worried about trusting his gear to a supply chute which might get lost in the night.
So far the drop bag contained little except his musette bag, fuse, and blasting caps. It was lashed to the pack frame and didn't weigh much. Now, given the wind, he decided not to drop it with a supply chute. Instead, he'd tie it to his web belt with a length of nylon cord, and toss it ahead of him when he stepped out the door. It would hang about a dozen feet below him, hitting the ground a fraction of a second before he did.
The blasting caps were in a small drawstring bag, and originally he'd planned to carry it in one of his numerous pockets. But he'd thought better of it. He had a thing about caps-they were touchy-so instead he'd packed them in the drop bag, with the fuse. Now he had third thoughts. Suppose he came down on the bag?
He knew from his OSS training there'd be small orange drift chutes aboard, used before making supply drops. Leaving his seat, he took one from an equipment chest, and digging caps and fuse from the drop bag, stuffed them into the chute's small ballast bag. He'd jump with it, then toss it three or four seconds before he hit the ground.
By the time he had everything repacked and ready, the Dolomitic Alps loomed in front of them, peaks snow-covered in the starlight, and he sat back down with the drift chute in his thigh pocket. His next concern was Von Lutzow finding the jump site.
He was prepared to jump in any open field though, if need be, and find his way to the schloss as best he could.
Von Lutzow found der Kiefersee without difficulty. Like MacNab, he bypassed it at a distance, then approached it from the north. It was dark enough that Macurdy could distinguish nothing except lake, forest, and open ground. There remained the problem of the wind, which Von Lutzow estimated at 20 miles per hour.
Macurdy knew the drop site he wanted-a pasture near the lake's south end, less than a mile from the schloss. Between pasture and lake lay a stretch of woods where he could hide the chute. Crouching by the door, he peered out, pack frame in one hand. Von Lutzow had cut power and lost altitude; despite the wind, they were to be at 1,000 feet when Macurdy jumped. He'd have preferred 400 to reduce wind drift, but they'd agreed that Von Lutzow should glide in on reduced power till after he was well past the schloss, and that required more elevation.
Macurdy's eyes strained at the blackness. He forgot to breathe, made out the shoreside woods and jumped, tossing the pack ahead of him, and counting aloud-"one thousand two thousand"-pulled the ripcord, felt the silk and lines pull from the chute pack, felt the shock as the canopy popped open, felt the tug as his plummeting pack jerked on his web belt.
He'd estimated time to the ground at about 40 seconds, and picked up the count again at six thousand. He'd begun at once to oscillate in the wind, and looking downward, discovered he had little sense of how far he was from the ground. Meanwhile the wind was carrying him backward, and he couldn't spill air from his chute to turn himself, because he had to get the drift chute from his thigh pocket, which occupied his hands. At about 25 seconds he smelled grass and cow manure, and taking that to mean he was very near touchdown, tossed the drift chute with its small cargo of fuse and blasting caps, then reached back and gripped his risers, anticipating impact.
It took much longer than he'd expected. Another dozen seconds elapsed before he hit, heavily, swinging backward. And his risers were twisted; the wind in his chute dragged him along the ground until he pulled it to him. Scrambling to his feet, h e wadded the canopy and briefly knelt on it. While dragging, he'd run into and over the pack frame and drop bag; now, taking the tether in his hands, he pulled it to him. When he couldn't see it even at his feet, he felt a foreboding about the drift chute with its small but important cargo.
The wind in his face told him the direction from which he'd been dragged, and he had some sense of the distance, so after stuffing his chute into the drop bag, he slung the packframe over one shoulder and backtracked. The drift chute had had 10 or 15 seconds to drift on its own. Its course shouldn't have differed from his, but it might have descended more slowly, thus drifting longer. And worse, if it had blown along the ground after landing, where might it be now?
He wished it were white instead of orange.
At his guessed point of impact, he stopped and peered around. It could be right in front of you, afoot away, he told himself. Best stay where you are till the moon rises, and then hunt for it. Even a sickle moon will help.
Meanwhile he realized, to his disgust, that the smell of manure was too strong to come from his surroundings. The wind must have dragged him through a fairly fresh cow plop, presumably smeared down the back of his jumpsuit. He was also aware that the wind was chilly, so he tapped into the Web of the World for warmth, then laid back on the ground to wait the necessary hour and a half for moonrise.
"Macurdy," he muttered, "this better not be an omen, that's all to hell I've got to say," then sat berating himself for not putting the fuse and caps in the bag with his other gear. You should have known better, he thought glumly. If you don't find the sonofabitch, you've got a serious problem.
After a few minutes of futile cycling through failure, imagined consequences, and blame, he took himself by the figurative scruff, and sitting up, began the meditation Varia had taught him: breathing with his diaphragm, inhaling through his nose and exhaling through pursed lips. Given the circumstances, it took awhile, but after a bit his mind smoothed out, and he let the occasional vagrant thought drift past and disappear.
One of those thoughts was the realization that as he'd blown along the ground, there'd been a thudding of hooves nearby.
Cows, he knew, saw better in the dark than humans; apparently he'd spooked some.
Even before it rose, the moon paled the night a bit, and when it cleared the ridge east of the lake, it made more difference than he'd expected. But still he could see no drift chute. Vaguely he discerned cows grazing in a loose band some distance away.
It was light enough now to orient himself. He was about halfway between the road on the east, with its bordering trees, the lakeside woods on the west, and a bit farther from the forest at the pasture's south end. He'd come down perfectly on target, despite the wind and visibility. If you're going to believe in omens, he told himself, that's the one to believe in.
Meanwhile he needed to be out of sight before daylight; he and his chute. Someone would arrive grout sunup, perhaps earlier, to drive the cows to the barn for milking. And while his invisibility cloak might hide him from a farmer, whoever came for the cows might have a dog to help them, and he wasn't at all sure the cloak would hide him from a dog.
In less than an hour, dawn paled the sky, its thin gray light exposing details. Cloaking himself, Macurdy started toward the lakeside woods, going out of his way to approach the cows. They looked up as he came, poised to run, so he veered off. They saw through his spell; dogs would too.
The lakeside woods, he discovered, consisted entirely of old trees, mostly beeches fire-scarred and hollow, standing above thin grass speckled with violets. Browsing had eliminate brush and young trees, except for ground juniper, which grew in scattered patches, prostrate and dense. He selected a patch, and lying on his belly, shoved the white chute as far as he could beneath the sprawling evergreen shrubs, shoving his helmet after it. Then, shouldering his packframe, he sat waiting on a rock, still cloaked, thinking he'd have to do something about the stink on his jumpsuit. Close up or in a closed space, he might be unseen, but hardly unnoticed.
He didn't wait long. His watch read local 0512, and the sun was up, when he saw the herd girl walking up the road. Reaching the pasture gate, she swung it open and yodelled.
The cows started briskly toward her, ready for the relief of being milked, and the grain that went with it.
When they were gone, he spent half an hour quartering the pasture in the sunlit morning, protected by his cloak, looking for anything orange. In the downwind direction, he went all the way to the pasture fence; to hunt upwind made no sense. While searching, three ways occurred to him of bypassing his need for the missing fuse and caps; two were iffy, the other suicidal. Iffy meant possible failure, but he wasn't at all sure he was ready for deliberate suicide, even if it saved far more lives than the one he'd lose.
Then another thought occurred to him: Suppose the drift chute had come down on a cow, and caught on a horn? Although the odds of it happening were minute, it was possible. On the other hand, any cow he'd ever known, and he'd known many, would have bolted, run to the woods if a chute had settled on its head. And he'd surely have noticed when it came out to answer the herd girl's call.
Nonetheless, for a while he wandered about the woods, looking, because if it had happened that way, the cow would have tried to rid herself of the chute, and perhaps rubbed it off against a tree. After a bit, though, he gave it up and went down to the shore, where he ate a K ration, topped off his canteen, then removed his jumpsuit and used moss and icy lake water to scrub off the cow manure. Most of it had been on his chute pack, but there was some on a shoulder and one pants leg. When he'd finished, they remained stained, but the manure was gone, and after it dried, it wouldn't smell nearly as strong.
As far as he could see, there was nothing useful left to do there, so he started for the schloss, hiking along the lakeshore to avoid sharp eyes that might otherwise penetrate his cloak in the bright sunlight.
Avoiding the road, Macurdy approached the schloss through the forest. On this lovely, if chill and breezy spring morning, the SS platoon was doing morning exercises on the large front lawn, shouting cadence, young voices strong and vigorous. So he crossed the lawn behind the building, to the end of the near wing and the cellar's rear entryway. Presumably the whole platoon was in front. No one would be in a position to see him unless they were on duty in the stable, perhaps feeding the colonel's horses.
Moving quietly down the entryway steps, he tried the door to the cellar. It was Thursday, and he didn't really expect to find it unbarred, except perhaps on Friday and Saturday evenings when guardsmen would bring party girls from town. But to his surprise, it gave. Opening it a few inches, he listened hard, and hearing nothing, peered in. The long corridor was empty, so he entered, closing the door behind him, beginning toy eel optimistic again. Someone, he noticed, had put fresh bulbs in two fixtures that had been lightless before. It was still poorly lit, but lighter than it had been.
Though his initial business was not in this wing, he paused to pick the lock of the first explosives magazine, to make sure the TNT was still there. It was. He checked the second with the same result, then moved on into unknown territory, the cellar beneath the south wing, the Voitar's wing. It seemed indistinguishable from the wing he knew, except that it had a back entrance. Nor did it open into the sacrificial chamber at the base of the tower.
From its end, he worked his way back toward the main section, doors. None that he checked were locked. Three were half full of furnishings protected by large sheets. The others had nothing more than some bugs and a damp earthy smell until, halfway to the ell, he found the one he'd use.
It appeared to have been a machine shop, and later, storage for old plumbing and other junk, most of it since hauled away, probably melted down for the war effort. What remained was non-metallic, except for small odds and ends: pipe caps, tee joints, short cut-off pieces of pipe, rusty bolts, a corroded brass hinge, cuttings from threading pipes… Beside the door was a light fixture with its bulb burned out.
The room's most important feature was a long dining table, lying on its side near the back wall, shoulder high. When it had graced some dining room, it would have seated 20, he thought. Now its veneer was warped and curled, but for him it looked ideal-a bonus he'd never imagined.
This is the room, he thought. Taking the dead bulb from its fixture, he went into the corridor and exchanged it with one of the good bulbs there. Back in the room, he installed and lit it, then digging the towel from the drop bag, blocked the space beneath the door so the light couldn't be seen from the corridor. Next he moved the heavy table some 10 feet from the wall, and emptied the drop bag on the floor behind it.
Finally, taking the towel, packframe and drop bag with him, he went back to the SS wing, to one of the magazines, closed the door behind him, turned on the light, and put the folded towel against the crack.
So far, so good, he told himself, now the work begins. Taking the packframe from his back, he went behind the large pile of TNT and began loading half-kilo blocks into the drop bag till it was full. After hoisting the now-heavy packframe onto his shoulders, he peered up and down the corridor, then lugged the explosive to the south wing and unloaded it behind the concealing table top. Cat-footed and quick, he repeated the procedure, trip after trip without a break, till he'd transferred 800 blocks, almost 900 pounds of the powerful explosive, none of it visible from the door.
In the magazines, he'd taken only from the back of the stacks. From the door, they looked undisturbed. Far more remained than he'd taken.
There'd been no interruption, no guard patrol, no one at all but himself. Clearly the SS considered their building security satisfactory, for who but they and the Voitar knew the magazines existed? Besides, there was always a guard outside the main entrance, and another in the foyer.
Phase two of his plan had to be carried out that night, Thursday, because the guardsmen would probably have party girls in on Friday and Saturday nights. One squad would be given passes on one night, another on the other, while the other two would have theirs the following week. So it was important he rest now, by day. He looked for a mattress in one of the rooms where furniture was stored, and settled for three large sofa cushions, which he lay as a bed behind his stack of transplanted TNT. Taking a K ration from his musette bag, he ate, then drank from his canteen, turned out the light, and removed the towel from the bottom of the door. Finally, using his GI penlight, he went to the cushions and lay down.
For a minute or two he lay awake thinking: He still didn't know how to blow the building, short of suicide, but he'd come up with something. Meanwhile first things first: He did know how he'd blow the gate. The problem there was the timing; if it wasn't just right, it wouldn't work.
He awoke having to relieve himself. Taking the toilet paper from the K ration he'd eaten, he cloaked himself, checked the corridor, returned to the unbarred entryway and left the building. It was still daylight but the sun was low, the side yard mostly shadowed by bordering trees.
Even so, crossing it made him twitchy. This was the SS wing, and if someone saw him through a window… His jumpsuit didn't look remotely like an SS uniform, or anyone's uniform except the American airborne.
Macurdy, he told himself, quit your damned worrying. It's worked every time. Even Hansi didn't see you till you fumbled that file folder.
After relieving himself in the forest, he walked to the lake, and in the early dusk, refilled his canteen. Then he returned to the building, to one of the magazines. Once more he filled the drop bag with TNT, this time taking it not to the stack behind the old table, but out the back entryway. He packed it about 500 yards, including a couple hundred feet up the four-wheel-drive road that climbed the Witches' Ridge. There he stashed it behind a patch of fir saplings, cloaking the stash. He marked the place-it would soon be too dark to find it otherwise-by breaking off a dead fir sapling and laying it across the truck trail. Using the pen light would be risky, so near the county road.
That trip too he repeated, till he'd transferred some 300 half-kilo blocks, and had started back for more. By that time it was fully night, and moonless. When he'd almost reached the graveled road, he heard footsteps walking in the direction of the schloss. Motionless, he listened while the person passed, invisible to him in the moonless, tree-shadowed dark. Even after he could no longer hear the sounds, he waited a couple of minutes before following. Sound could betray him.
But he did take something for granted. In the entryway he opened the door-to find two SS men coming toward him down the corridor, talking! One glanced toward him, stopped and stared, then swore. "That damned Josef! The fool left the door wide open! If Mueller or Lipanov find it like that, it will ruin everything!"
"It could have been the woman."
"That's beside the point! It's Josefs responsibility!" He strode toward Macurdy, who backed away, holding his breath. Grabbing the door, the soldier closed it in his face. Chagrined, Macurdy climbed the dozen steps to the yard and retreated to the forest's edge. The person who'd passed on the road had been "the woman," it seemed to him: some farmer's wife or daughter whose husband or boy friend was fighting in the Ukraine, or sitting in a bunker on the Channel coast. A woman feeling desperate with life, and perhaps short of money.
How long would she be in there? He'd planned to take twice as much TNT to the hill, then perhaps start packing it up the ridge, if it wasn't too damned dark.
But hell, even with his tiny pen light, it was too dark. The best thing to do was resign himself to patience. He still had a few days.
Or did he? What if they decided to transfer the Voitar early? With a muttered curse, Macurdy moved back to the entryway and down the stairs, to try the door. It was not barred, and he opened it a few slow inches. No one was in the corridor, so he slipped inside, moved quickly to the nearest magazine, picked the lock and entered. Again he blocked the space beneath the door and turned on the light. Working faster than before, he filled the bag with blocks, shouldered it, turned the light out again, removed the towel, and listened hard with an ear against the door. The party room was just a few yards away across the corridor.
Listened with worry and self-anger. What he'd just done was foolhardy, had endangered his whole mission for no adequate reason. The best thing to do now, he told himself, was catch a few hours sleep behind the stack of TNT
But hearing nothing, and driven by a sense of urgency, he held his breath, opened the door, and peered out. No one. Quickly he stepped into the corridor, closed the door silently behind him, and without locking it, went to the entryway and left. Then, crossing the lawn, he hiked to his stash by the ridge road, where he unloaded the bag and considered. He decided to go back for one more load, but not go inside till after the woman came out. When she left, the guardsmen would surely go up to bed.
But waiting for her by the entryway, the question again became how many she'd serve, and how long it would take. He'd assumed there was only Josef and the two he'd seen, but there might be more. And would some demand seconds?
After a bit he grew sleepy. Rather than fight it, he drank as much water as he comfortably could, then went a few yards into the forest and lay down, ordering his mental alarm clock to waken him in two hours. If it failed, his bladder would remind him.
He awoke as intended, rolled quickly to his feet, slung the pack frame on one shoulder, relieved his bladder, then padded to the schloss. The corridor was clear, and listening at the party room door, he heard nothing. Working steadily, he packed two more loads of TNT to his stash in the woods, before stopping to rest.
Was it enough? Was it possible to destroy the gate with any amount? "Wrong damn question, Macurdy," he muttered. The operating assumption had to be that it was possible. And as for how much it would take, the only rational response was to use all he could while still doing it that day, that morning at 0857, when the weather office had said the moon would cross the local meridian. The explosive had to be there at the gate, waiting-he had to be there waiting-before it opened.
And it was doubtful he could even lug what he had up the mile of truck trail to the gate between dawn and 0857. Yet to start lugging it now, in utter darkness, would be stupid, even coming a slow, groping 200 feet up the ridge road had involved stumbling, straying off the rocky road, even bumping into trees. And he would not risk it all by using the pen light. He'd wait for dawn.
Still driven by the urgency of his mission, he went back to the schloss and hauled more TNT to his new stack beneath the Voitar's wing, till he had 1,800 blocks stacked there-nearly a metric ton. For good measure, he loaded another sackful to take with him, then returned to his stash in the forest. There, with the deadly burden still on his shoulders, he sat back against his pack to doze, with the strict admonition to be on his feet at the first dawnlight that reached him through the trees.
He half-wakened various times over the next hours, till he became aware that the darkness was thick gray, not black, and he could make out, vaguely, the tree trunks around him. With a lurch he got to his knees, then his feet, found the rough road, and started uphill for the gate. Twice he stumbled, not quite falling, but charged hard nonetheless, jogging on the easy stretches, sweating profusely in the chill morning. By the time he reached the crest, it was light enough to see that the SS had no guards there. He recognized the gate itself by memory, and by a psychic buzz so faint, he'd have missed it had he not been concentrating.
He unloaded his burden, not taking time to stack or cloak it, then shouldered the pack frame again and started back down at a lope, not concerned with falling or the noise of his descent. Subsequent trips were even faster, Macurdy drawing energy from the Web of the World to keep up his furious pace. The Last load was less than full, and he made it in a shambling run, driven by the fear that the gate would activate before he arrived, yet unwilling to leave any of the explosive behind. When he arrived at the loose heap of TNT at the gate, he dumped his load, then ran back to the place he'd chosen earlier in passing. Facing the heap, he looked at his watch: 0854.
Within a minute he felt activation begin, and concentrated on the TNT 120 feet away-close enough that he could see it clearly, sharply, but far enough that the gate wouldn't suck him in. If he didn't time it right-if it blew too soon it seemed unlikely he'd survive. That was an awfully big stack of explosive.
He raised both arms in front of him, palms forward, level with his shoulders, saw the margins of the heap begin to waver, blur, made himself hold back for brief seconds. Then the heap shimmered, and he pumped plasma spheres at it, almost too swift to see in the morning light.
Abruptly the field collapsed and was gone, as if it hadn't been, leaving not even a psychic echo. There was no shock wave, and to his eyes, nothing had changed-except that the heap had disappeared. There wasn't even a hole where it had been.
He collapsed on the ground, and for several minutes lay exhausted, unseeing, numb with relief. He'd timed it right. But there was nothing resembling jubilation. For one thing, he couldn't be sure-not really sure-that he'd actually destroyed the gate. He might simply have interrupted it, or altered the timing again.
At any rate, the more dangerous task remained.