But Germany had been losing the war. Hitler was about to gamble everything on Autumn Mist. The scientists didn’t have time. They cut corners, jury-rigged what they needed, experimented on prisoners in Poland.
And produced this malevolent bug that took over its host and reprogrammed it to kill, eat, and destroy.
The squad jumped to its feet. Oberst Heilman had entered the center, trailed by his staff. The British sergeant remained on the floor, scooping up sheets and reading them before either discarding or shoving them into his jacket.
Hauptmann Werner snapped his fingers. Another squad of Fallschirmjäger set a series of steel vacuum flasks on the floor.
“It is time to meet the enemy,” Heilman said.
What was left of the Wehrmacht and Allied armies wasn’t at war with the dead, not really. They were at war with a bacterium, one of the tiniest forms of life on the planet. A mindless aberration of life carefully engineered to organize in a host and control its behavior.
Werner unscrewed the cap on one of the thermoses. Dry ice fogged into the air. He reached inside, gingerly extracted a sealed test tube, and handed it over.
Heilman held it up to inspect in the waning daylight. The mottled solution glowed a faint green that made the officers look like ghouls themselves.
Muller winced in disgust. Burn it, he thought. Kill it.
The bug was a work of profound, diabolical genius. It was also evil.
“Your company is to be commended for securing it,” the colonel said.
Werner raised his chin in pride. “Danke, Herr Oberst.”
“At dawn, we will proceed to the airport on schedule. You will deliver these samples to the plane. You will guard them with your life. Ist das klar, Herr Werner?” Is that clear?
“Klar, Herr Oberst.”
“All of us are expendable from this moment on. These materials are not. They must be returned to England. The future of the German nation depends on it.”
“Jawohl! Leutnant Reiser, come with me.”
The officers left while the rest of Eagle Company filed into the facility to bivouac on the lower levels.
Muller glared up at a portrait of a stalwart Hitler gazing down at him wearing a glowing white lab coat, surrounded by symbols of technologies the Nazis claimed to have invented, highways and rockets and medicines. Hitler portrayed as greatest scientist who ever lived, just as the war propaganda always proclaimed him as the Greatest Field Commander of All Time.
“Expendable,” Muller snarled. The whole country was expendable. The whole world, all to feed one man’s infectious vanity.
Schulte lay on his paper nest and rested his head on his helmet. “Ja, ja. Like we weren’t expendable before?”
The paratroopers shared grim smiles at the gallows humor.
“You know who’s expendable—the rest of the regiment that has to camp outside in the woods,” Beck said. “Glad I’m in here. Safe and warm.”
Steiner produced his steel Esbit stove, which looked like an animal trap and was about the size of a pack of cigarettes. “Ivan put us behind schedule. The whole regiment should be sleeping in apartments on the other side of Tiergarten.”
He unfolded the stove, inserted a little chemical brick into the base, and struck a match. The tablet ignited with a barely visible blue flame. The machine-gunner keyed open a few cans filled with K rations and dumped them into a mess tin, which he set on the burner to heat up for the squad’s supper.
Muller’s stomach roared at the rich aroma of meat. Another canned dinner, but he didn’t care. He was starving.
“Better to camp here anyway,” Wolff grunted.
“How do you figure, Herr Oberfeldwebel?” Muller asked him.
“Fewer ghouls in the park, and less chance of a big swarm walking up to us. If one does show up, the men outside won’t be trapped in a building with only one exit.”
Muller looked around at the research facility’s concrete walls. Suddenly, being outside, with the ability to retreat in almost any direction, looked better to him.
Leutnant Reiser returned wearing a rare happy smile. “Achtung, Fallschirmjäger. Hauptmann Werner commended our platoon on securing the facility without loss.”
Muller smiled too. The rest of the squad stared back at the lieutenant with taciturn stares. He wiped the smile from his face to imitate their cool.
The British sergeant turned away with a wince. In his view, securing the facility had come at an enormous loss.
The lieutenant set three steel canisters on the floor. “The hauptmann ordered us to safeguard the samples. Each squad will receive three.” His piercing blue eyes roamed Muller’s squad. “Oberfeldwebel, you will carry one. Your machine-gunner another. And…” His eyes lighted on Muller. “Ah, Jäger Muller.”
Wolff stood and scooped up the vacuum-sealed canisters. He gave one to Steiner then set Muller’s in front of him. “Guard it with your life, jäger.”
“Jawohl, Herr Oberfeldwebel,” said Muller.
He’d wanted to prove himself to Reiser and apparently had. As a result, the officer now more likely to assign him difficult tasks.
Scheisse, he thought.
Reiser surveyed the tired squad still wearing his smile. “Eat well, heroes. At dawn, we will complete our mission.” With that, the lieutenant left again, never tiring nor seeming to need food himself.
Muller looked at the canister and shuddered with loathing, his appetite gone.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
LIONS AND DEVILS
A splash of gunfire outside. The Fallschirmjäger bristled, cocking their ears.
The firing stopped. The men relaxed.
“Ring ding, jägers,” Steiner said. “Supper is served.”
The men held out mess tins to receive their share of the beef stew. They filled their canteen cups and took out their metal silverware to eat.
The machine-gunner blinked when Wilkins held out his tin. “I forgot you were here. Every time I see you, I want to grab my weapon. Old habits.”
“I’ll try to be less British, mate,” Wilkins said drily.
Steiner snorted. From his red beret to his stiff upper lip, Wilkins couldn’t be less British no matter how hard he tried. “You’re fine the way you are. I like having you on my side. I’d rather fight the draugr than you. The average Tommy is tough as hell.”
“Lions led by mules,” Beck laughed.
“And whatever do you mean by that?” the British sergeant wondered.
“It’s how we view the British Army,” Wolff chimed in. “Your average soldier is brave. But your tactics are outdated and clumsy, and your officers aren’t very creative. They don’t adapt to circumstance.”
“It’s how an army works, Master Sergeant. An officer must follow through on his orders until he no longer has practical means of doing so.”
“In our military, independent initiative at the lower ranks is valued as much as obedience. We’re much more flexible in the field as a result.”
Steiner let out another snort. “Ironic, wouldn’t you agree?”
Wilkins nodded, getting it. Great Britain was a democracy, but its military operated with rigid top-down decision-making. In the Reich, you could barely take a dump without written approval by the Nazis, but the Wehrmacht permitted broad latitude in independent thinking from the ground up.