“Okay, I think I’ve got it.” Griffin pulled the CVC helmet on, plugged into the communications system, then pulled himself into the commander’s seat of the Bradley. I’ll never get used to all this mech stuff, he said to himself as he surveyed the columns of tanks and armored fighting vehicles lined up around him. He looked first at his watch, then down at his map. It would take them two, maybe three, days to get to Kriegspiel, not counting any resistance the Germans put up. He chewed his lip as he thought of Guterman and his brigade. In their year of working together, he and Joel had grown close. He couldn’t imagine Guterman siding with whoever was in charge of the coup, yet Cooper had told him Panzerbrigade 11 was mobilizing and assisting the new German government. Funny, he thought to himself, how old friends can so quickly become enemies. If we have to fight them, Joel will do well. If it were anyone else, I wouldn’t worry so much, but Joel’s awfully good. Too bad we can’t take him out.
He cursed himself for even thinking about killing a friend and a comrade, but there was no more time to feel guilty. Ahead of him the lead tanks creaked forward.
“Crank it up — sirens, lights, horns, everything,” Saunders ordered the MP next to him. “Keep it going until I tell you to stop.” They stood by the two MP sedans and the Bradley and tank at the kaserne’s main gate. A half minute later the din grew so loud it drowned out the sounds of the 195th Brigade as Lawson’s tanks picked up speed, heading straight toward the track-park fence. Saunders picked up his binoculars and watched the German parked outside the gate watch him.
They were awake before the agent shook them, the sirens and horns having ended their sleep. The groggy men climbed out of their sedans and peered through the fog at the flashing lights at the kaserne’s gate.
“Crazy Americans, what are they doing?”
“I don’t know, I don’t see anything moving. Should we report this?”
“No, just keep your eyes on that gate. We’ll wait and see what happens.”
“Okay, Keats, pick it up a little,” Corporal Shelley said through the microphone. He felt the tank gain speed, and then the chain-link fence caught the tank’s front fender. Three-Four’s crew didn’t even feel a bump as the tank ripped out a twenty-foot section of the track-park fence and then chewed it up with its treads. In a few seconds they were crossing the foggy field, headed straight for the road and the German sedans. Then Lawson’s tank, dragging a six-foot length of fence, pulled alongside. The rest of the tanks took their places in a wedge formation. Shelley looked back at the green mass of vehicles behind them, then out at the sedans about a kilometer to their front. Head straight for them, Sergeant Lawson said. At twenty miles per hour, they would reach the dull shapes in about three minutes.
The six Germans kept staring at the kaserne gate, the sirens and horns ringing in their ears, mystified at the Americans’ behavior. The agents stamped their feet in the dawn cold.
“You keep watching. I have to get rid of last night’s coffee.”
“Go do that in the field. We have to stay here, and I don’t want to smell piss all day.”
The man trudged off into the wet grass to relieve himself, keeping his eyes on the ground so he wouldn’t trip. Thirty yards away he stopped, unzipped his trousers, then looked up at the sun just sticking its head up over the horizon. Perhaps it will be warmer today, he thought. Then, through the thick morning mist, he saw the dim outlines of four hulks moving toward him. Over the sirens and horns he heard the high whine of the tanks’ turbine engines. He stared in disbelief and terror as the vehicles closed the distance and grew larger. Then he stared behind them at the hazy forms of the other vehicles that followed. He turned his gaze on the flashing lights at the gate, then back to the tanks, then back at the gate. Then he turned and ran.
“They’re coming! The American tanks are coming!”
His companions still stared at the gate. “What do you mean? They haven’t moved.”
“Over there!”
The five others turned to look. Six hundred yards away, Lawson’s four vehicles churned up dust as they closed, only partially obscuring the brigade behind them.
The Germans gaped for a long time before any of them moved. “Use your weapons, shoot them!” Three of them grabbed Uzi submachine guns, took up positions behind their cars, and sighted at the two lead tanks.
“Fire! Fire!” The men emptied two magazines each.
At three hundred yards an Uzi isn’t very accurate, but the tank platoons’ drivers still ducked down when they saw the muzzle flashes. A few rounds ricocheted off the turrets.
Lawson hit a switch on his radio and a message sped up the chain to his company commander to battalion to brigade: “German polizei have committed an overtly hostile act. Tango element receiving small-arms fire. Request permission to engage.” Just as quickly, Stern’s approval—“Take immediate actions to protect friendly forces, neutralize the threat, continue mission”—£ame back.
“Driver, increase speed.” Lawson spoke deliberately into the microphone of his CVC. “Head straight for the center car.” He flipped the switch to talk to the platoon. “Tango, this is Tango Zero-One. Move out, tighten up the wedge, follow me. We’re about to neutralize these turkeys.”
“Get on the radio, call headquarters, get the cars started, let’s get out of here!” The men jerked open the car doors and yanked the keys from their pockets. But they had waited too long; Lawson’s platoon was less than two hundred meters away.
An M1 tank weighs in at about sixty tons. A Mercedes-Benz sedan totals about 3,000 pounds. The men in the lead car managed to start it in time. With screeching tires they turned around and screamed down the road toward Baumflecken, the agent in the passenger’s seat shotgunning his fearful report to their headquarters. The trail sedan lurched forward, the driver rear-ending the middle car and locking bumpers in his panic. Lawson needed only a quick look to recognize the face in the middle car.
“Driver, move out! Roll over him, do it!”
“But Sarge…”
“Go, go, goddammit, go!”
Lawson’s driver gave a what-the-hell shrug and shoved the throttle forward.
Lawson swore to himself that he wouldn’t look back, but he did. The man had fired his machine pistol until Lawson’s tank had crushed him. A last great act of defiance, thought Lawson, or a last exercise of ego? I wonder if he recognized me? Probably not. Too bad. Two cars and a couple of bodies lay where the tanks had flattened them. No matter. Lawson returned to the business of being a tank platoon leader. They were moving cross-country, heading east for Autobahn 5. Lawson checked his map. The first contact and the first kilometer had been easy, but Kriegspiel lay many miles in front of them. Oh well, thought Lawson, deal with what you have. He keyed the microphone to broadcast to his platoon. “Tango, this is Tango Zero-One. Pick up a column formation once we reach the road. The MPs should get in front of us in about ten minutes. Orient main guns left and right. Be ready…” Lawson hesitated, “for just about anything. Stay alert. A lot of people behind us trust us. Zero-One out.”
Mark Griffin didn’t have much time for reflection; he was too busy kicking ass and taking names. The 195th’s deputy commander enjoyed his role as mechanized cowboy, rounding up stray vehicles and units and herding them into formation. As the deputy commander he could be wherever he decided he needed to be. That part of his job suited the maverick in Griffin, the part of him that liked to be on his own, out from under the watchful eyes and annoying demands of bosses and brass. It was the same part that had led him to years of Special Forces work, the same part that had led him to live alone, even with Maggie close by, to put a distance between himself and the rest of humanity. Only now and then — with her in Platzdorf, with the dead child — did he show any emotion other than carefully shaped rage. Mark Griffin kept his world simple and tightly closed.