As Milo leaned back against the shot-out tire, ejecting the spent magazine and replacing it with a fresh one from Chamberlin’s pouch, Jethro, now sitting propped against the side of the auto, extended a hand to grip his arm … very weakly.
He opened his mouth, then closed it long enough to feebly spit out a mouthful of blood. In a voice so faint that at times Milo could not hear it at all, he said, “… long, long road, for me. Martine and you … the last few years of it much happier … more real happiness than I ever deserved.
“… see things now, Milo, You, you …like us but not really us … ageless, timeless, immortal. You and … people like you … rule an empire … different world, then. You will keep … promise, see you keep … ing it. Then fight a … nother war … many other wars. Savior of a race … little children. New world … talk to … cats, horses, other animals.
“Be good . . , Martine, Milo, buddy … know you will… .”
Then the rifle was firing again and Chamberlin shouted, “Keep that Kraut bastard down, Milo, he just got Jackson in the leg. Medic!”
Again taking his position behind the boot of the Mercedes, Milo feathered the trigger, firing bursts of three or four shots each at the window. By the time the magazine was empty, Master Sergeant Chamberlin and four other men were crouching behind the bulk of the automobile— three, with Garands, one with a BAR, the sergeant bearing another Thompson and a bag of grenades.
“Foun’ two M7s, Milo, but not one fuckin’ grenade cartridge in the whole fuckin’ pl’toon. Would you b’lieve it? Shit!”
Before Milo could speak, First Sergeant Bernie Cohen came crawling out from the company CP, a carbine slung across his back and a bazooka in his arms, with a rocket for it in each hand.
Milo set aside the Thompson and grabbed the rocket launcher, but Chamberlin protested, “Jesus Christ Almighty, Milo, you’ll blow that whole rickety place down, even if you don’t burn it down. A fuckin’ bazooka?”
Ignoring the admonition, Milo said, “Bernie, the minute the first one’s clear, load the second one. There’s snipers both up and down, looks like. Even if we do blow the whole house in, they’ve got it coming for hanging out white sheets, then firing on us the way they are. Okay, I’m set. Load!”
Three bodies were dug out of the tumbled wreck that once had been a house. Milo felt sick at first when he saw them, saw the faces; the eldest could not have been any more than thirteen or fourteen. But one of them—the one with a big-bore bullet hole between his neck and shoulder with the scapula brown away on that side—was still gripping in his dead hand a Mauser HCs pistol with three shots gone from its magazine. Seeing this helped him to recover quickly. In addition to the smaller pistol, they found a P38 9mm pistol, a K98 rifle and an Erma MP38/40 with a burst cartridge case in the chamber. There were in addition to the firearms two SS daggers, about two dozen more rounds for the rifle, another magazine for each of the pistols and one for the Maschinenpistole.
“Just a bunch of fuckin’ little kids.” Chamberlin shook his head in clear consternation. “Hell, the way they were shootin’, I thought we was up against SS or Wehrmacht, anyhow. Where did three little boys get aholt of stuff like that, you reckon?”
“Fuckin’-A right they was good shots,” exclaimed First Sergeant Bernie Cohen. “I’ll lay you dollars to doughnuts these three here was Hitler Youths and been learning to shoot and fight since they was five, six years old. As for the guns and all, you can bet on it that them fuckers was hid by a coupla blackshirts what all of a fuckin’ sudden come to think they didn’t want to be in no POW eamp and that they’s ackshu’ly been innocent civilians at heart all along. And you can bet its a whole lotta fuckin’ Krauts just like them in thishere town and from one end of Germany to the other end, right now.”
As he stood looking down at the body of his old friend, Milo said to no one who could hear him, “What a waste, old buddy. You got through almost all of it without a fucking scratch, only to be shot down by a fanatic little kid who wasn’t even old enough to shave, right at the tail-fucking-end of the fucking war.
“I was wrong, you Were right about knowing you were going to die soon. But, hell, if you hadn’t come up here to give me those fucking stupid envelopes, that little Kraut-ling would never have had a fucking chance to get you in the sights of that fucking rifle, either. But who’s to say, Jethro, who really knows? You could have run over a stray antitank mine on your way to or from wherever you were going after you decided not to come here today, too, or Sergeant Webber could’ve plowed that car into a half-track loaded with explosives and you’d both be just as dead. Goodbye, Jethro, goodbye, buddy. Yes, I’ll do my best for Martine and your kids … but, then, you knew I would, didn’t you?”
Old Colonel John Saxon looked his near-fifty years, every bit of that and far more, but for all his aged appearance, he still was the same tough, profane old soldier that Milo first had met back in ‘42. By May 5, 1945, with Hitler dead and the Russians fully involved in their savage, barbaric rape of the stricken, shattered capital and its surrounding areas, a staff NCO rang up Charlie Company and Milo dutifully reported to the onetime town hall, now the battalion CP.
“Milo,” said Saxon, after they two had each partaken of the powerful schnapps that the American troops called liquid barbed wire, “you ever heard tell of a Colonel Eustace Barstow, a fuckin’ counterintelligence type?”
Milo nodded. “Yes, John, he was a major back then, but he was my section chief at Fort Holabird, before I transferred down to the battalion at Jackson. Why?”
Saxon snorted. “Well, the fucker’s the full bird now. He’s runnin’ some operation down Munich way and he wants you some kinda fuckin’ bad. Was you his angelina or suthin, huh?” He grinned evilly, mock-insultingly.
The Colonel Barstow who warmly welcomed Milo was not very much different from the Major Barstow who had grudgingly approved his requested transfer to a combat-bound unit. He was become a little chubbier, perhaps, but still was very active and fit-looking in his well-tailored uniform, which latter was the old-fashioned one of long blouse, pinks and low-quarter shoes.
“Had God intended me to wear an Ike jacket and combat boots, He’d have had me born in them,” he chuckled merrily. “But sweet Jesus Christ, old man, did you try to win the fucking war single-handedly or something? The only thing you’re lacking from that collection on your chest is a Purple Heart and the Croix de Guerre. Don’t worry about the Purple Heart—you want one, I can see that you get one. They hand them out now for bleeding piles and ingrown toenails, you know. Another thing—you give me a few good months of work, in my chaotic little hashup here, and you’ll have a pair of gold oak leaves to replace those tracks, that’s a promise, old buddy.”
“Exactly what are you doing down here, colonel?” asked Milo warily. “Or is that restricted information?”
Barstow’s eyes twinkled as he laughed. “Of course it is, Milo. It’s restricted as hell, it’s so fucking restricted that every swinging dick—American, British, French, German, Russian, Pole, Czech and, for all I know, Tonkinese, too—knows exactly what me and my boys are up to here … or so they think. But there are wheels within wheels within other wheels. I’m a fucking devious son of a bitch, Milo.
“Milo, we’ve got an unbelievably fucked-up mess in Germany just now. The Krauts brought in hundreds of thousands of so-called voluntary workers—slave laborers, actually, a page they took from the Russians— from all over the European continent. Every nationality and every race native to Europe and Russia is represented, many of them speaking outré languages we can only guess at.