While, in the port of Brest, the convoy, minus one merchantman and one of its destroyer escorts, was docking, Gen. Douglas Freeman, beside himself with frustration, was raging against his immobility, which prevented him from being at the front during the attack. “Here I am trussed up like a mummy, and my boys are dying like flies.” Increasing his sense of failure, Freeman’s headquarters received a message via a ham operator, using an antiquated radio set that, operational because it used vacuum tubes instead of up-to-date printed microchip circuit boards, picked up a BBC broadcast of the nine-o’clock news reporting that a strike of dockworkers was under way in several of the French Ports, including Brest. Freeman ordered Norton to grab the nearest F-16 pilot at Krefeld to take a message to Brest that the French strikers were to be shot on the spot.
“You threaten that, General,” Major Norton advised him, “and we could have one hell of a problem with France. They’re allowing us to use—”
“Allowing us nothing,” snapped Freeman. “They’re allowing us and the British and Germans and every other poor son of a bitch in that pocket to die. Only dying they’ll do is to protect France. And if the NATO commander in Brest is too cowardly to do it — I’ll order air strikes on French forces and make it look like the Russians hit them. You see how quickly things’ll loosen up then. I want those supplies and I want them now.”
Norton was appalled, staring wide-eyed at the general, convinced that when Freeman had been thrown out of the Humvee, he’d lost some of his marbles as well. “We can’t do that, General. I mean, there’s no way—”
Freeman, his face contorted with pain, eyes smarting, nevertheless managed to fix Norton in his stare. “Watch me! If I’d had my way, I’d bomb the sons of bitches myself to get them into the righting. Now, are you going to transmit that order or do I have to shoot you!”
As the general’s Apache helicopter rose to ferry Norton to Krefeld, its rotor slap momentarily drowned the noise of battle, but he knew it was an illusion and that, like it or not, the general had a point. If they lost Western Europe, it was all over.
Freeman called for the doctor.
“Yes, General?”
“I want another shot of that painkiller.”
The doctor tried but couldn’t hide a smirk of satisfaction that said, So you’re human after all?
“I may be—” Freeman began, but for a moment he couldn’t go on. “I might be stubborn, Doc, but I’m not stupid.” He turned to his logistics aide. “Charlie — you got a manifest for the convoy that’s due in Brest?”
“No, sir, but—”
“Get one.”
“I know there are twenty-four merchantmen, all over twenty thousand tons. There’s a hell of a lot of stuff — if it got through.”
“Well, if it did get through, I don’t want any screw-ups down there. Ammunition and fuel, Charlie. Ammunition and fuel. Onto the Hercules and up here. At least we’ve still got fighter cover. Bring me a map of North Rhine-Westphalia.”
“Fox 1… Fox 1…” Shirer was calling, the nose of the MiG plainly visible in the flash of an exploding Tomcat, then he was falling. Gradually he became aware of someone holding his hand and a rush of sensations all at once, the stink of a boat’s diesel fumes and a stringent antiseptic smell and perfume, the hand holding his warm and reassuring, the woman’s face indistinct, warping in and out of focus as if through a glass tumbler, swaying to and fro with the motion of the boat. And somewhere in the distance, above the rhythmic throbbing of the marine engine, the chatter of machine-gun fire, and other wounded all around him. The perfume was a memory to him, and he couldn’t quite match the face in his mind, but it awakened a desire in him that transcended everything else around him.
“How’s he doing?” a man’s voice asked.
“He’ll be all right,” she said. “He was in a coma at first and we thought his arm was broken. But he was lucky. The marines who brought him in said his chute was a little twisted, but he came down all right, and the snow helped.”
“Can’t keep a good man down.”
“No,” she answered, smiling. Now Shirer could see her clearly.
“You know him?” the man asked.
She turned to look up at him as she answered, and Shirer knew the profile at once. “Lana?” He was grinning like a schoolboy.
“Well,” said the man, straightening up, arms akimbo, “I guess that cuts me out!” It was a tone of good-natured resignation. “And here I thought I’d hit pay dirt with a pretty navy nurse. If you’ll pardon me, I’m going to try my luck elsewhere — surely there’s one nurse who’d take pity on a lonely sailor.”
Lana laughed easily in reply, and in that moment Shirer knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that if he did nothing else in this damned war, he’d take her, hold her, and never let go.
“Captain—” Lana called out, “thank you for all you’ve done. If you and the others on that beach hadn’t got us off-”
“Ah—” he said, waving aside any thanks. “No problem, Lieutenant. Fish weren’t running yesterday anyways — and don’t call me Captain. Makes me feel like I’m in the navy.”
Shirer watched her effortless laugh, as entranced by her beauty as when he’d first met her. Only she was more mature-looking now — more confident than the girl he had known before the war. And if he could, he would have made love to her right then and there. Her hand was still in his and he said, “My God, I never thought I’d be glad to be shot down.”
“Neither did I! You are feeling better, aren’t you?”
“More than you know.”
Soon they were talking as if they had never parted.
“Where are we headed?” he asked her.
“To Atka,” she answered. “It’ll be about five hours. From there they’ll probably fly us back to Dutch Harbor and you’ll—” Her pause conveyed more to him than she realized. Both of them pretended that they would have more time together once they reached the safety of Dutch Harbor, but both of them had seen enough of the war to know that as soon as he was able, he would be flying again, as every effort would be made to gain air superiority over Adak as a prelude to retaking the island in order to protect Shemya, four hundred miles east of Adak, before it was permanently cut off and overrun by the Russians.
The head nurse, coming down the companion ladder from the wheelhouse, where more of the wounded had been crowded in, noticed Lana was still with the same patient. “Lieutenant Brentwood — could I see you a moment please!” Her tone was admonishing. “We need help on deck.”
Lana rose, taking her hand from his. “Uh-oh. I’m in trouble. I’ll see you at Dutch Harbor.”
“Lana?” he asked.
“Yes?”
“Are you still afraid of pirates?” For a second she didn’t know what he meant.
“They wear eye patches.” He grinned.
She was buttoning up her parka before going on deck. Her
voice was subdued, yet quietly joyful. “I love them,” she said.
“You were very palsy-walsy with that pilot,” the head nurse commented sharply. “Do you hold hands with all your patients?”
“He’s an old friend.”
“So I gathered. But I’d appreciate it if you could spare time to attend to some of the other patients. We have several cases of—”
“Yes, of course,” replied Lana. “I’m sorry. It was selfish of me.”
Surprised and mollified by Lana’s apology, the head nurse put Lana’s lapse of duty down to the battle fatigue they were all feeling. Adopting an equally conciliatory tone, she asked Lana if she would help her secure all the medical supplies they’d had to put on deck to make room below for the wounded. “We’d better hurry,” she told Lana. “Captain Bering says we’ll likely run into some squalls before we reach Atka.”
On the other side of the world, Major Norton, bearing Freeman’s message to Brest, had just finished a terrifying flight with zero visibility in a storm sweeping in over the Ardennes. He had sat, white-knuckled, in the electronic systems operator’s tandem seat in a Luftwaffe Tornado out of Krefeld, eyes closed throughout the 530-mile flight, which the Tornado made in thirty-eight minutes, often flying less than five hundred feet above the ground, courtesy of its contour-scanning radar.
As Norton deplaned, his legs almost buckling under him, the Luftwaffe pilot apologized effusively, telling him, “I am sorry we took so long. But you see, Major, the STO”—by which the pilot meant the Smiths/Teldix/OMI head-up display—”is a little off, you understand, so it was necessary for us to go a little slow.” Adding insult to injury, when Norton arrived at NATO Brest HQ with Freeman’s threat, he discovered that there had been such an uproar from the French public about the dockside strike that the unions were back at work within the hour and the convoy’s supplies were already en route to NATO’s beleaguered Northern Army.
“You wish to go back now?” asked the tired but eager young Luftwaffe pilot.
“No,” said Norton. “I think I’ll sit a while.”
As he headed farther away from the trucks, following the line of the ditch parallel to the road, David Brentwood heard the swishing noise increasing, and now there seemed to be more than one source of the noise. Skis? He crawled up the sharp incline of the embankment but slid back, a hump under his foot giving way. Looking down, he saw it was a child’s body. He hesitated, held the child’s frozen hand, a little boy. Though not expecting a pulse, David checked anyway. There was none. Realizing he could do no more but unable to leave the tiny corpse, he turned the body facedown, the savagery of it all overwhelming him. Unmarried, no children of his own, he found it difficult to judge how old the little boy might have been, but he guessed no more than five or six.
The swishing noise was louder now, and he thought he saw a flashlight through the thick curtain of the blizzard. He touched the boy’s head, the hair frozen stiff, eyes closed, and was about to make his way up to the top of the embankment again when he noticed several more humps in the snow, scattered along the shoulder of the road. One body, a woman’s, was covered by that of a soldier who had obviously fallen on top of her, trying to protect her. The soldier’s uniform was that of the Bundeswehr. Why the advancing Soviet forces had perpetrated such a massacre, he had no idea. Perhaps it was nothing more than that civilians posed inconvenient delays.
Looking back down the road, he saw four figures with flashlights, the black barrel of their slung weapons in contrast to the falling snow. Sliding back down toward the ditch, he ran for another twenty yards or so, and when, glancing back, he could not see them, he quickly crossed the road, ready to slide down the ditch on the other side. There was none, and so he kept running into a snow-covered field. The unexpected, he told himself again. They would not think of looking for him on the dump side of the road.
He saw the dim shapes of trees about a hundred yards ahead of him, a wood, and at the edge he crawled beneath the snow-laden branches. Looking back across the field, he watched as the search party, four of them now, continued down the road. One of them stopped — looking down at what David guessed must be the child’s body. Damn! He shouldn’t have touched the body, disturbed its blanket of snow, because now they knew—
But then they began moving again, stopped, and turned back. Jesus Christ! he admonished himself. You dumb bastard! You stupid, dumb bastard—
They had seen his footprints, and given the heavy fell of snow, they would know he must have crossed the road shortly before. Heaving himself up under the weight of the coat, he began moving through the woods, then paused. Calm down, he told himself. So they were better-equipped, better-armed— and they were already starting to cross the field, following his footprints toward the wood. But he realized it would be much easier for them to pick up his footprints inside the wood where the snowfall was not nearly so windblown. He turned back toward the edge of the wood, unslung the AKM, thought about himself and Thelman on the range at Parris Island, and eased himself into the prone position, seeing the DI, not shouting for once but calmly telling them, “You’ve got time. Relax. Get your breathing under control. You’re going nowhere — and the enemy’s advancing. Don’t panic and start spraying everything in sight. Waste your ammo. Deep breaths! Stumble-Ass, I said deep breath. Exhale, not all of it. Hold — that’s it. Now squeeze the trigger — not your cock, Thelma. Fire, and don’t keep looking at the target. You’re not at the county fair. No dollies or box of chocolates. Move your aim straight to the next one or he’ll move you. You got that, Stumble-Ass?”
David cupped the barrel in his hands, letting what warmth he had in them thaw the snow that now might be ice inside. He’d come too far to kill himself. If he was to die, they were going to have to do it for him. Far over on his right, down the road, he heard the trucks starting up, the convoy, he expected, warming up, getting ready to head back to the front as soon as loading was completed. He flipped up the rear tangent sight, set it for fifty meters, aligned it with the front protected-post sight, and moved the bayonet scabbard from where it was digging into his belly.
When the first man filled the sight, David squeezed off a burst. Snow fell from a branch overhead from the air vibration and he shifted the AKM to the right, firing again. The first man was already down, the second thrown back till the safety bindings gave on the skis and he toppled into the snow. The other two were down, returning fire, bullets thwacking into the timber above and around him, but so high and wide, he doubted they had any precise idea of his position. Getting up behind the cover of the branches, sticking a twist of handkerchief into the barrel, he headed through the wood toward the dump — if he was still within the dump’s precincts. He was making much better time now, the snow in the woods nowhere as deep as in the field behind him.
In a few more minutes, having left the sporadic fire well behind him, he saw the trees were thinning. He was out of the wood.
“Halt!”
The Stasi trooper had his rifle up. David dropped to the ground as he fired a wide, sweeping burst. The man’s legs buckled, snow flicking up around him, and David felt his left shoulder stinging like crazy. He heard a loud panting noise coming out from the wood — too close for the other two to have caught up with him.
Then he felt the hot rush of air, a flurry of snow. Instinctively his left hand flew up, but the Doberman had it between his teeth, fangs crushing through the thick coat, crunching to the bone. David reached for the AKM but couldn’t find it. He tried to roll the dog over, but the Doberman had him pinned. His left arm bleeding profusely, David shoved his right into the coat’s right hand pocket, felt the lighter, and grasping it with all his strength, flicked the flint. The blue-orange propane flame shot up, and David pushed it at the dog’s eyes. Astonishingly, the Doberman hung on, jaws still clamping down on David’s arm, trying to shake the life out of him. Then suddenly the dog jumped back, skittering a short distance away, his paws frantically wiping his eyes. David saw the stock of the AKM and pulled it toward him. Its barrel was jammed with icy snow. Getting up, he flipped the butt down, lifted the gun by the barrel, and felled the dog.
The voices in the wood behind him were getting closer now. Stumbling through the snow, David reached the dog’s handler, who was making a noise as if he were snoring, something wrong with his breathing. David, almost passing out from the pain in his arm, removed the two M42 screw-threaded stick grenades from the man’s belt, as well as two banana clips of 7.62 millimeter, stuffing them into his coat’s pocket, then headed toward what looked like a barn fifty yards away, a horse trough nearby congealed with ice.
Then, beyond the barn, he saw what he’d been after from the moment he’d seen the Englishman dead in the snow and had asked the oberst permission to bury him. For once the snow was helping, firm underfoot, packed down, presumably by the boots of prisoners as they’d marched in from the trucks. The huge, snow-laden, camouflaged canvas-and-netting roof formed a strikingly beautiful and symmetrically scalloped pattern like the awning of some vast, expensive garden party marquee. Behind him he could hear the two men crossing the field and was about to turn to see if he could spot them when, seventy yards in front of him, away to the left, he heard a truck slowly coming to a stop, and the sound of more dogs. Without hesitating, he fired the whole magazine at the truck, the barrel so hot, the steam rose all around him. The truck’s engine was now in the high whine of reverse. He knew that now was his only chance. The AKM slung over his right shoulder, he ran the fifty yards toward the black wall of fuel drums. Kneeling, unscrewing the stick handle from two grenades, screwing them together, forming a demolition charge, he pulled both pins and threw them as far as he could into the gap between the canvas roof and the stacked fuel drums.
Running fast through the blinding snow, he estimated he would have five seconds. He was wrong. On a three-second fuse, the grenades blew, and the next instant he was lifted off the ground, the force of the explosion throwing him forward at least twenty feet, behind him a mountain of orange fire and dense, black smoke, the air like a desert wind, fantastic shadows playing across the snow, men running farther down the road from rivers of lighted fuel spewing out into the snow like molten lava. David dragged himself up, stumbled and fell, rose again, not knowing where he was heading so long as it was away from the fire. He heard screams and the futile spinning of truck tires trying to grip on snow that in seconds had become a bubbling sludge. More men somewhere off to his right were running, throwing weapons down, clambering aboard what looked like half-tracks in a desperate exodus as more and more of the drums exploded, adding to the towering flames, leaping hundreds of feet into the air, visible to NATO positions as far south as Bielefeld.
Hauling himself to the wood’s edge, it was not until about a quarter hour later that David realized the back of his head had been singed and the coat covered with the burns of airborne cinders. He knew he could run no more. If they got him — the best he could hope for was that he’d make them pay. He put the AKM across his lap and felt for the other two grenades, making sure no snow had iced up on them. Last thing he needed was the pins to freeze.