Blake’s three men checked for outriders and saw none. It wasn’t a surprise. There had been no outriders yet when the battalions changed positions, as they did every Tuesday at this time. When this battalion reached the encampment a few miles up the road, the one currently out there would return down the same road to the dubious comforts of Brooklyn.
The head of the column reached the bridge and crossed without breaking stride. It didn’t take long. It was such a little bridge.
Blake waited until the officers and the first company of infantry were completely across. The lead squad was near the red-leaved bush he’d arbitrarily designated as the end of the target area. “Now,” he ordered himself aloud and pushed down on the plunger. For the barest second nothing happened. There was the inevitable momentary fear that the device had failed, then the bridge lifted into the air and seemed to come apart, stone by stone, soldier by soldier. Before the Germans had a moment to even blink, lines of additional explosions walked down the dirt road in both directions from the now-atomized bridge structure. Almost immediately, the sound of the explosions and the shock waves engulfed them. Then there was silence.
It was several seconds before the screaming started. Because of the slow-settling clouds of dust, Blake couldn’t actually see what he’d done, but he was fairly certain the battalion no longer existed.
Later, he would meet up with the crew sent to Brooklyn. If all had gone according to plan, a score of the German warehouses had gone up in smoke and flame. His only regret was that they were not ammunition warehouses. Those were kept under tight guard within the inner German perimeter. What he had been able to gain access to were the stores of food and uniforms; thanks to his other crew, these had doubtless been dynamited as well.
The fucking Krauts wouldn’t starve or go cold any more than they would stop coming down the road and crossing the stream. But it would make them think every time they took a step or opened a door.
Tonight when he slept, maybe his wife would come to him and nod her approval. He smiled.
If there was anything more boring than guard duty, Ludwig Weber couldn’t think of it. Even peeling potatoes was more rewarding. Unless, of course, he had to work with Kessel. However, as a corporal and the captain’s aide, he really didn’t have to perform kitchen police and usually got out of pulling guard duty as well.
But this, as Sergeant Gunther calmly explained over Ludwig’s mild protests, really wasn’t guard duty. It was a roadblock and, because of the recent incidents of sabotage and worse, the idea was to check on who was coming up and down the road. So it was that he and a handful of others watched a dusty and largely untraveled route behind the German lines in Connecticut. At least, thanks to his exalted rank of corporal, he was in charge of the little group. Better, Kessel was not with them. Thank you, Sergeant Gunther, for that small favor.
Although not all of the men at the roadblock had been with him during that fateful stay in New York, they all had been touched by it. As far as he and his men were concerned, the whore who had murdered Ulli had not been found. Of that he was certain, even though a woman had been executed for the crime. Perhaps even worse than Ulli’s murder and castration was the fact that some poor woman who fit the general description of the prostitute had been arrested, shown to them, and, over their protestations, shot.
Ludwig shuddered. He hadn’t seen the woman who seduced Ulli, but the Schuler boys had, and they had tearfully insisted that the retarded-looking slattern with the greasy dark hair whom the military police had picked up wasn’t her. The German police simply insisted that she had to be because she had been found in the area and fit the general description. They had the company watch as a firing squad pulverized her with bullets. The poor thing had been wide-eyed and slobbering with terror. Her mouth was deformed and she wasn’t even able to speak, only grunt. It was then that Ludwig realized with a chill that the police were more concerned with closing the case than with solving the crime. Bastards. The event had seared them all. The death of dumb Ulli was such a waste, such a shame. What bothered him more than anything, except the attitude of the police, was the fact that some of his men, speaking in whispers, blamed the German military for having them here where they could be killed and not the slut who’d cut off Ulli’s cock.
And Ludwig had a hard time disagreeing with them.
“Hey, Ludwig, wagon coming.”
Ludwig shaded his eyes with his hand. Yes, it was a wagon. One lone wagon with two German soldiers in it, and it was pulled by one slow, old horse. Yes, it was a real threat. He rose slowly and started to walk the score or so strides from the shade to where the sun shone on the hastily improvised roadblock. This consisted of a length of wood on a stone stretched across the road, and a hand-painted sign that read “Halt.”
One of the Schuler boys offered to go with him, but Ludwig told him to go back to sleep. He could handle this massive threat to their security all by himself. It was only the third or fourth time anyone had come down the road all day. Ludwig stood in front of the sign and held his hand palm outward, and the wagon stopped. He could see that the two men were a little older and their uniforms didn’t fit that well, which made him fairly certain that they were reservists. Ludwig may have hated the army, but he took pride in the way they looked. This pair looked like slobs in comparison with the regulars. Perhaps he was being too harsh. Ludwig also didn’t recognize their unit, but that wasn’t surprising either. With all the reservists about, he hadn’t heard of half their regiments. After all, he thought, stifling a yawn, he was a teacher, not a soldier.
One of the men in the wagon was a sergeant; the driver was a private. Well, Ludwig thought, reserves or not, the sergeant has more stripes than I do and that makes him God if he wants to be. The sergeant didn’t want to push it, however. He smiled amiably and asked what the matter was.
“Nothing much.” Ludwig grinned back. “This is the most important road in America and we’re watching it for the Reich.”
The two men laughed and agreed. They knew make-work when they saw it. Funny, Ludwig thought, he didn’t quite recognize their accents, and he thought he knew all the regional nuances. “Where to?” he asked.
“Just going in to the supply center,” the sergeant replied. “We got a shopping list and specific directions from our captain. Jesus, what an old lady.”
Ludwig grinned and looked around. It wasn’t proper to criticize an officer that harshly. He and his friends did it privately, but not to a perfect stranger. He asked them what unit they were from and was told they were with the 141st Infantry, a reserve regiment. Well, that confirmed his guess and was probably why they were so critical of their commander. Rumor had it the reserves were not overwhelmed with joy at being here. For that matter, neither was he.
As he looked in the back of the wagon, Ludwig idly asked the sergeant where his hometown was and was given the name of a village he didn’t recall. It didn’t matter. He was getting bored again. The only things in the back of the wagon were a steamer trunk and the soldiers’ rifles, which lay flat on the floor. He noticed that the trunk was unlocked and the hasp had worked its way open. A piece of paper was protruding. He decided to do them a favor, so he pulled out the piece of paper and opened the trunk to reclose it properly.