He’d best watch his step if he wanted to return to base, and he needed to do just that. He’d found very interesting Overman project documents, which he’d stuffed in his jacket. They explained the characteristics of the bacterium. Plenty of scientific mumbo jumbo he didn’t understand but that seemed important.
The gunfire melted away, becoming even more distant.
“The regiment is retreating,” Corporal Steiner whispered.
He had no need to whisper. The ghouls couldn’t hear them, and the only trooper sleeping was the insufferable sniper named Schulte. Still, it somehow seemed the right thing to do.
“There must be a million of those things out there,” said Private Muller.
“More bullets than our comrades have,” the machine-gunner agreed.
“Are we trapped here then?”
“Not necessarily,” Wilkins grunted.
Colonel Adams had shared intel with him that he’d gained from Wolfensohn. There was another way out of here.
Muller perked up. “What do you mean?”
Wilkins eyed Captain Werner conferring with his staff in a corner of the room. “I believe you’re about to find out in just a moment.”
As if on cue, Werner called out, “Achtung, jägers.”
The men sluggishly rose to their feet, all of them exhausted.
“The regiment has withdrawn to the south,” the captain said once he had their attention. “We will be going east, through an underground tunnel.”
Back at Martlesham Heath, Colonel Adams had explained the tunnel led east under Tiergarten clear to the Reichstag.
At one time, the proud old building housed the Weimar Republic’s parliament, the central institution in Germany’s fledgling democracy, and before that the Imperial Diet. Then it caught fire in 1933, which led to the Nazis blaming the Communists and suspending the Constitution with the Reichstag Fire Decree. Mass arrests of Communists followed, which fed the policy of appeasement in the capitalist West. Hitler may have been an authoritarian buffoon, but at least he wasn’t a Red.
The German parliament next formally surrendered its powers with the Enabling Act, which set up Hitler as dictator. Since the war began, the Nazis began to use the Reichstag for military purposes.
Which meant the 3FJR’s Eagle Company might be marching directly into a bombed-out ruin, another research facility, or another bunkered SS unit.
No way to know until they got there. Wilkins grabbed his gear.
“We will move out in ten minutes,” Werner said. “Be ready, jägers.”
Reiser roamed among his platoon, encouraging his men to greater zeal with stinging rebukes and well-placed kicks.
“Get up,” he fumed at Schulte, who’d slept through the captain’s speech. “You can sleep when you’re dead.”
Wilkins looked down at the handful of dog tags he held in his clenched fist. He thumbed Lieutenant Chapman’s, which flared in the lantern light. Maybe the Jerry sergeant was right, and the average British officer fought in a box. Chappie wasn’t a bad sort, though. He was one of the good ones.
He pocketed his dog tags and shrugged his pack onto his broad shoulders.
“We have volunteered to take point.” Reiser smiled at Wilkins. “Since we will surely bungle it, the English will lead the way to show us how it is done.”
The Brit looked from the pill-popping lieutenant to the burly Sergeant Wolff, who looked formidable as a one-man platoon. Any barbed rejoinder that crossed his mind died on his lips.
“With pleasure, Herr Leutnant,” he said.
“The pleasure is all mine, English.” Reiser surveyed his paratroopers, tough sons of bitches the lot. “We’re going quiet, jägers. Fix bayonets.”
The Fallschirmjäger riflemen obeyed, though they didn’t look happy about it. Wilkins had cut a few throats in Arnhem, but he doubted many of these men had. It was bad enough to shoot a man, a terrible thing to stick him like a pig.
Muller turned so green one could mistake him for a ghoul. Having killed men with a knife himself, Wilkins couldn’t say he blamed the kid.
But smart thinking, if they wanted to get out of this alive. These men were cocky, but they were learning to respect their new enemy. Despite all their firepower, and training some of the world’s best infantry had just been routed outside. A single company could be destroyed piecemeal on Berlin’s terrible streets. If they could keep moving and dispatched any draugr they ran across quietly, they could avoid a pitched battle they might not be able to win.
Sergeant Wolff directed his taciturn stare to the big man the squad called Animal. “Schneider, I want you up with the English. Now we need you.”
Schneider grinned at Wilkins. “Be sure to stay out of my line of fire.”
Wilkins glared back. He’d take it from the lieutenant and even Sergeant Wolff, but not these rankers. “If that weapon winds up aimed anywhere near me, I will shove my boot so far up your arse you’ll have to cut my laces to sing the ‘Horst Wessel.’ Understood?”
Schneider’s face turned scarlet. He glanced at his sergeant, but Wolff just scowled. The big soldier turned away. “Verstanden, Herr Feldwebel.”
“There’s a good fellow,” Wilkins said. “Carry on.”
Wolff’s mouth, ever a hard straight line, curled into a slight smile. He nodded with something like respect. Whatever it was, Wilkins would take it.
A bang on the steel entrance door. A voice calling to them.
The paratroopers looked at each other in wonder.
“What’s he saying?” Steiner said.
Schulte stood by the door. “He keeps asking for ammo. Over and over.”
The men winced. The ghouls had an unnerving way of latching onto a tiny shred of their memories and identity, repeating the same phrase over and over.
“Fallschirmjägerzug, gerade aus,” Reiser said. “Langsam und stille.” Parachute platoon, move out. Slow and quiet.
The platoon took the stairs one level at a time until reaching the bottom. The atmosphere was oppressively cold and damp, even for an Englishman. And it stank, saturated with a musky, rotting animal odor radiating from a series of cages. The Nazi scientists had kept a monkey house on part of the level. They’d experimented on the animals, which had torn each other apart in their cages.
Wilkins switched on his angle-head electric torch, an RAF variant of the American TL-22 flashlight. The incandescent beam spilled down a concrete passageway that turned into an earthen tunnel crudely buttressed with timber. The air was completely still here. The tunnel felt ancient, like it didn’t enjoy being disturbed.
The platoon tramped after Wilkins and his torch’s beam, which barely dispelled the inky blackness. Behind Second Platoon, the rest of Eagle Company was stacked in the research center, waiting their turn to go in. The clomp of boots and rattle of gear echoed down the passage, impossibly loud.
Wilkins hoped he wouldn’t find himself at the front end of a firefight down here. In a passage like this, sustained gunfire would blow out his eardrums. A lot of men would be shooting behind him, and it’d be all too easy to catch a bullet in the back, threat or no threat to put his boot up someone’s arse. And retreat would be no simple feat.
The Red Devil motto, utrinque paratus, came to mind. Ready for everything.
Fortunately for him, the way ahead looked clear. Just empty tunnel stretching into gloom. It inclined on a slight uphill angle, each step taking him closer to the surface. He lost track of time as minutes and hours become entangled. His breath fogged in the dead air. The air smelled like minerals and mold.