As the ghouls grew near, they let out a moan. Of joy or despair, he didn’t know. Probably both for these creatures that embodied schadenfreude. He took hold of the angled pistol grip and nestled the ribbed buttstock against his shoulder. Then he aimed at one of the ghouls using iron sights.
He exhaled and squeezed the trigger. The first draugr pitched back and toppled. The second quickened its pace, growling now with arms swinging as it dragged its mangled leg behind it.
“I almost feel sorry for the poor bastards,” Beck said.
“You should,” Wolff said. “Enough pity to kill them. It’s an act of mercy. See how he hurries so I can stop his suffering. So he can finally rest in peace.”
He fired again and heard the slug punch through the thing’s helmet with a metallic sound, as if it had been struck by a hammer.
The ghoul fell on its face and lay still.
Wolff stood patting his rifle. “Take your time. Aim carefully, firing prone when you can from a distance and with somebody watching your back. Conserve ammunition. Stay close together, covering 360 degrees around you.”
He imagined the ideal formation in a pitched battle against the draugr would be something like a Napoleonic square, as long as it was mobile, had more ammunition than there were ghouls, and had an egress path in case they needed it.
“Now then,” Wolff said, “who wants to be next?”
Everybody did. Over the next hour, the men lay in the snow and slew draugr. At first, the paratroopers hesitated at shooting unarmed men, especially Germans. Schulte balked at shooting a civilian woman who capered at them across the snow. It had to be done, and they all had to do it, as it was first and foremost an act of mercy. Every kill rewired their tactical instincts and renewed their confidence. They were taking heart. They could do this. It might not even be that difficult.
Wolff knew better. When they reached the city itself with its buildings crowding all around, the balance of power would shift to the infected.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TIERGARTEN
The sun was coming up as the C-53 howled over Berlin’s red rooftops. Heavy with eighty pounds of gear, Sergeant Wilkins shambled to the door.
The light turned green.
Wilkins grunted as he bent his knees, but he was too heavy to jump. His gear snagged in the doorway, holding him fast.
He’d seen men towed by a plane in the air, battered beyond recognition until his comrades pulled him back inside. “Wait!”
Lieutenant Chapman shoved him into the wind. “Tally ho, Wilkie!”
His canteen, bayonet, and God knew what else ripped away as he tumbled forward. He remembered to twist in the air as he plummeted toward the earth like a three-hundred-pound bomb.
The parachute deployed with a crack. Slammed by the jerk, he swayed under the canopy. His general-purpose bag dangled below him like a ball and chain.
Wilkins worked his shroud lines to steer into the wind. Then he set his eyes on the ground, looking for his landing point. The Brandenburg Gate loomed to the east. The landmark oriented him.
The pilots had done their work well. He wouldn’t be coming down a chimney like old St. Nick. Right now, his biggest worry was trees.
Which were everywhere in the vast city park.
The ground rushed up at him perilously fast. He spotted one of the amber lights the pathfinders had placed to mark the drop zone. Brace for impact!
The bag struck first, followed by the rest of him in a practiced roll.
The ground broke under him, following by an electrifying shock.
He’d landed on a frozen pond. The fall had broken the ice. Freezing water covered his back and soaked into his rucksack, making it heavier. He struggled and floundered as he tried to gain purchase.
Another para hurtled out of the sky and struck the ice, going straight through.
“Bloody hell!” Wilkins screamed.
The ground appeared to swallow the paratrooper, leaving only the parachute canopy. Then the hole sucked that down too.
The ice around Wilkins crackled. He stopped moving. The freezing water burned his numbing back. That Yank paratrooper song grated through his mind, repeating the line, “Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die!”
“Hello?” he gasped. “Help!”
The rest of the team was landing, thankfully on solid ground.
“Hang on!”
The voice belonged to Davies, who’d shed his parachute and rucksack and now crawled toward him on all fours.
“Can you take hold of my rifle, Sergeant?”
“A tad closer, if you please, Corporal,” said Wilkins, who’d had five years of maintaining a stiff upper lip drilled into him.
He grabbed the rifle. Davies heaved.
Wilkins rolled out of the hole. The corporal dragged him far enough for comfort and helped him shuck his waterlogged ’chute and pack.
The other paratroopers gathered around.
The lieutenant grinned at him. “Close shave, eh, Wilkie?”
“We lost a man in the ice.” Wilkins’ teeth chattered as he surveyed the team. “Brown, sir. He’s gone.”
The grin evaporated. “Damn. Well, let’s not lose you too. Dry off.”
The sergeant stripped to the waist, dried himself, and put on fresh thermals. The rest he wrung out as best he could and put back on. The men rubbed his back to get his blood flowing. Pins and needles followed by fire.
“Any sign of the Pathfinders, Lieutenant?”
“No,” Chapman said. “They laid down their beacons and lights as instructed, but there’s otherwise no sign of them. No sign of a struggle. Not even footprints.”
“It’s eerie, sir,” Davies said.
Wilkins chafed at the attention he was getting. He hated anybody babying him except Jocelyn. He shrugged off their hands. “I’m good to go anytime, sir.”
The team moved out. Wilkins snatched up his jungle carbine, a lighter, more compact version of the Enfield rifle, and followed. West, into Tiergarten.
They were nine shooters, all veterans and very capable men. The colonel had told Wilkins he could pick his men, but he couldn’t choose men for this type of operation. They had to come to him.
He’d quietly sent around a call for volunteers. To his surprise, he’d received far more volunteers than he had seats on the plane, and had chosen carefully until he’d sorted a crack squad for Chappie’s approval.
They were the best of the best.
With its woodland scenes, monuments, lakes, and pathways, Tiergarten must have been a beautiful sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of Berlin. Now windswept garbage rustled along the ground, the trees bare, the monuments broken by bombs, massive impact craters scarring the once pristine landscape.
Aside from nationalist tinkering by the Prussians and then the Nazis, Tiergarten stood pretty much as it was originally designed in the 1800s, and modeled after English gardens at that.
They found numerous tracks in the snow, both animal and human. Still no sign of the American Pathfinders, however. No ghouls, either. Smoke rose in the distance from a downed plane. The eastward wind brought a smattering of gunfire from the German drop zones. Booms resonated from the east; the British paras were assaulting Tempelhof Airport.
Phase one of the operation, it seemed, was proceeding apace. Wilkins considered it a bloody miracle they’d all made it this far.
They passed a broken statue of Adolf Hitler, hand raised in classical oration like a Roman senator, headed tilted toward the heavens. Now the Leader lay on his side facing the mud, his marble feet turned into rubble. Ahead, a pillar soared into the air, still proud and intact. The Victory Column, topped by the goddess Victoria, built to commemorate the nation’s victory in the Danish-Prussian War. To the south, damaged statues of Prussian kings framed Victory Avenue cutting into the park.