One tank after another rolled past. Steiner shivered as the singing grew louder than the rumble and clank of the advancing machinery.
God, it was an entire mechanized battalion.
Another surprise dawned on him. The draugr retained enough of their minds to operate weapons. That changed things considerably for him.
Please let them go, he prayed. Don’t make me fire at them. Just let them keep going.
But that wasn’t the Fallschirmjäger style. They couldn’t abide a force like this in their operational rear, where the wounded were still being brought forward by the three-tons they’d captured in the Grunewald. They had the Soviet column in an ideal ambush condition. Their operational motto was, “Die beste verteidigung ist der angriff.” Attack is the best defense.
Yes, they were going to attack.
A panzerschreck team set up among a tangle of dining chairs. The loader slammed an 88 anti-tank rocket into the stove pipe and tapped the back of the gunner’s helmet. The gunner raised the launcher and waited.
A whistle blew at the last unit in line, followed by others in a chain all the way up to the vanguard.
“Glück ab!” somebody cried the Fallschirmjäger war cry. Good luck!
“Feuer frei!” Reiser screamed. Fire at will!
The ghouls’ heads swiveled toward the sound as the Fallschirmjäger opened up with a rain of hot metal. The T34 ground to a halt, bullets pinging off its thick hull. The squads in the upper floors fired panzerfaust anti-tank grenades down at the tank. The shots exploded or ricocheted off the tank’s sloped armor in showers of sparks. Around the metal beast, ghouls jerked and danced as rounds struck them. One fired back with his drum-fed submachine-gun, the rounds buzzing past Steiner’s ear like wasps. The surviving window panes exploded in a cloud of glass. Draugr poured from the other side of the tank and lurched into the guns.
Steiner squeezed the trigger in seven-round bursts that cut a Russian soldier in half. Dust filled the room as the building shook from the impact of a tank shell.
“Aimed fire, goddamn it!” Wolff roared.
“Jawohl,” the men called out. Steiner used iron sights to decapitate another soldier, screaming every obscenity he knew while inventing a few he didn’t.
The T34’s turret swiveled to aim its high-velocity gun directly at him.
The most popular guy in the room, Steiner thought and closed his eyes.
Then the panzerschreck team fired their launcher with a cloud of smoke.
The shot struck the T34 under the turret and exploded inside. The tank shrugged at the blast then sagged. Smoke poured out of the hole. On fire, the tank commander heaved himself out of the hatch and tumbled to the ground.
“Cease fire, cease fire!” Wolff said.
The gunfire trickled off to single shots. Oily black smoke poured energetically out of the dead T34. A gray haze filled the air. Steiner patted the machine-gun that had gotten him through another brush with death.
The squad went outside to regroup. Third Platoon had gotten hammered by two T34s before destroying both tanks, but otherwise the regiment’s casualties appeared to be minimal. Everywhere Steiner looked, there were burning armored vehicles and piles of Russian dead under their red flags. The paratroopers roamed among them, finishing the writhing wounded with single shots to the head.
“Fucking communists,” Animal said and spat. “Ivan just met his match.”
“Sieg heil!” somebody called out.
The paratroopers grinned at their handiwork and clapped each other on the back. They were alive, and the Russians were dead. Victory.
Steiner sagged, exhausted.
He wondered if the entire world had gone insane, or it was just him.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE OBJECTIVE
Eagle took over as lead company in line, with Second Platoon as the tip of the spear. Oberfeldwebel Wolff marched with a fresh sense of purpose.
This war, this objective, felt right to him. No longer was he training eager young men to die like flies for a patch of rocky ground. The Fallschirmjäger were here to save Germany from itself. In such a conflict, dying meant something.
And his boys were again living up to their reputation as the best of the best. They respected the draugr but no longer feared them.
As they neared Tiergarten, signs of war were everywhere. A splintered tree scattered across the autobahn among a cluster of motorcars chewed up by machine-gun fire. Ladders abandoned around a bombed tenement. Carts with half-eaten horses lying next to them. Volkssturm, mostly old men and boys who should have been in school, lay dead around sandbag positions. Snow blanketed everything.
In the distance, a jarring rumble as a large building collapsed. A cloud of dust rose over the red rooftops. Muffled booms and splashes of gunfire rolled from the southwest, the Tommies defending the airport they’d taken by force. The squads leapfrogged down the autobahn, two providing over watch while the rest bounded forward.
“Help us!”
Civilians filled the windows of a tenement, waving white sheets at them.
“We have nothing!”
“Are the traitors gone?”
“Are you here to say?”
The platoon slowed, waiting for the order to stop and provide aid.
“Keep moving,” Leutnant Reiser snarled.
“My children need milk!”
“Arm yourself and join us,” the lieutenant shouted back. “Otherwise, shut up.”
The men’s faces darkened. Misery seemed to settle across the entire platoon. Chivalry was ingrained into the Fallschirmjäger psyche.
The huge boost in morale they’d gained by destroying the Soviet battalion, they’d lost by ignoring German women and children in need.
Wolff veered to march alongside Reiser. “Herr Leutnant—”
“Wer zwei hasen auf einmal jagt bekommt keinen,” the lieutenant snapped. He who chases two rabbits at once will catch none. “I would have thought a soldier of your experience would remember that.”
Wolff swallowed shame and anger. “Verstanden, Herr Leutnant.”
“The best way to help our countrymen is to stop the plague.”
The platoon reached the edge of Tiergarten, a welcome relief for eyes made sore by the ravaged urban landscape. Dense with trees, the park appeared peaceful, offering sanctuary to the paratroopers.
The squads continued their leapfrogging progress into the park. Wolff spotted the white dome of the Army Research Center and called it out to Reiser. The lieutenant placed a squad to wait for the next platoon and led the remainder into the woods. They crossed the frozen lake, cut the wire, and approached the building.
The heavy steel entry door stood wide open. Bloody boot prints led away to the north. The paratroopers eyed the cavernous doorway with trepidation. A warm, hellish stench steamed out into the cold air.
Wolff looked at Reiser, who said, “Das glück hilft dem kühnen, Herr Wolff.” Fortune favors the bold.
The sergeant turned to his squad. “We’re going in. I’ll lead the way. I want good trigger discipline in there. You shoot me in the back, I’ll kill you.”