“Wilco, Sir.” Cooper beckoned to a chair at his table. Maggie walked over and sat.
“Coffee?”
“Please.”
When she had swigged down half a cup, Cooper began.
“Major O’Hara, let me tell you a story…”
An hour or so later, Maggie waved goodbye to Griffin as he, Guterman, and twenty-six handpicked German and American NCOs boarded their commandeered civilian travel bus and rolled out of the kaserne gate. Once the bus was out of sight, she drove to the LZ, getting there just in time to see Stern’s command ship clear the trees.
As the helicopters skimmed away over the treetops toward Baumflecken, Maj. Margaret O’Hara’s mind drifted to Griffin, thinking of how they had met by chance and of how the many chances they’d taken had both kept them together and apart.
When we’re together again, Griffin, we’re going to make this permanent. I’m tired of relying on chance.
Maggie looked down at the dark ground beneath her. I wonder, she thought, if he feels the same after all this? Then it hit her.
He called me “my love.” His love. My love.
Bingo.
In the front of the bus Mark Griffin and Joel Guterman pored over the hand-drawn diagrams of the detention facility, command center, and connecting streets and back alleys. In the seats behind them, their soldiers did what soldiers always do on long bus rides. For the first few miles, there was a heavy silence, then awkward coughs. A few feeble attempts at breaking the ice led to the inevitable “Didn’t I meet you at such and such a school?” or “Where in hell did we serve together?”
“Your outfit pulled joint border duty with the 18th Cav,” said an American sergeant to the German unterofizier seated across from him, “down in Hugersfeld in ’89, right?”
“Ja,” came the German NCO’s reply, “the winter was bad. I remember it. The cold was very bad that year.”
“Yeah, it was cold, I remember, but the goddamn snow, that was the thing. Six feet deep in places.”
“Ja, the snow was two meters deep. More in some locations.”
“Say, weren’t you on the liaison team to 18th Cav?”
“From Reconnaissance Regiment 3. You were in the operations section of the cavalry, correct?”
“Ja, I mean yeah. Say, do you remember that gasthaus with the really good Jtiger schnitzel and the waitress with the big bazoongas?”
“Vat are these ‘bazoongas’?”
Sometime, many miles and many lies later, twenty-six sergeants from two countries decided that they shared enough to be allies, and so executed the final actions of soldiers on long bus rides. First they decided that these other guys might be okay, then that they could be trusted, then that they might be worth fighting for.
Finally, snoring the snores of tired soldiers, they fell asleep.
Griffin and Guterman, meantime, were wide awake. While their soldiers shot the bull and caught some rack time, the two leaders tried in vain to come up with a plan.
“I don’t know, Mark. Any way I look at it, getting into the detention center is impossible. It is heavily guarded, and I know from visiting it that there are multiple locked, steel-barred doors.”
“Could we blow our way in from the top?”
“That is possible, but once in we would have to fight our way through each of the gates. There is also the small matter of fighting our way out.”
“How many guards are there?”
“Normally only about a hundred prison guards, but Jung told me that Blacksturm personally detailed a company of the Special Security to reinforce them. He is taking no chances on the prisoners’ escape.”
“So even if we get in, there’s ten of them for every one of us?”
“Yes. Not good odds.”
“Not at all. Who’s this Jung character? Is he reliable?”
Guterman looked out the window. “He is a captain in the Special Security. His company was flown into the depot to reinforce the initial attack on it. Still, I have no reason to doubt his word. He was a good soldier once. I knew him when he was an infantry lieutenant in my old battalion. He did well, perhaps too well. The Special Security worked hard to recruit him. He could not resist the prestige of being in an elite unit and, of course, at that time the special troops were not political instruments.” Guterman frowned as he looked down at the floor. “Perhaps he will be a good soldier once again.”
“You really have a problem, Joel. I don’t envy you.”
Guterman looked up. “What is that?”
“When this is over, you and your government will have to sort out who the good guys and bad guys are. Good luck, buddy.”
“Indeed,” Guterman sighed. “But let us sort out the problem at hand. How do we rescue the chancellor and the other politicians?”
“Well, hmm.” Griffin thought a moment. “The detention center is almost physically impregnable, right?”
“Correct,” responded Guterman.
“The combined forces of the enemy number over two hundred— ten times what we can muster?”
“Correct.”
“So it would take several hundred, if not several thousand, armed troops to storm the place.”
“Correct.”
“Even if we could get them out, the street demonstration that Shror told you about will block any key roads away from the detention center.” “That demonstration is not scheduled to take place until tomorrow morning, but, yes, it is only a few blocks away, and traffic will be tied up in every direction because of it.”
As Griffin thought, Joel Guterman again stared out the window, this time in frustration.
“It is no use, Mark, it would take a thousand armed men and perhaps Blacksturm himself to get their release.”
Griffin’s head snapped up. He slowly turned to Guterman.
“Joel, you are absolutely right. We need a thousand armed men, but we’ll only get a hundred or so. They’ll have to be enough.” He dug out pad and paper and began to scribble. “Let’s see,” Griffin mumbled, “a team to hit the armory, another to secure our place near the demonstration headquarters, a small team to secure the clothing, what else?” “Mark, what are you up to?”
“Do you know where Blacksturm’s quarters are?”
“Yes, but I’m sure he’s not there. He’s in the sleeping quarters off the commanding general’s office. Shror said so. But why?” “Anybody in those quarters?”
“No, he lives alone. Orderlies must go for his things. Why?” “How do you know?”
“Shror told me.”
“He didn’t seem like a guy who would cooperate by remembering details.”
Guterman rubbed his fist. “I helped him remember.”
“Oh.”
“Mark, what is it you are planning?”
Griffin sat back in the seat, still writing. “You said it yourself, we need a thousand armed men. So what if we only get a hundred? They’ll do. And we need Blacksturm himself. We can’t get to Blacksturm because his headquarters, I assume, is better protected than the detention center.”
“That is correct. But why do you want to know?”
Griffin nodded his head as he glanced down at the paper. “A hundred armed men we’ll get, courtesy of the Special Security arms room.” Griffin looked at his watch. “We’ll have to move fast. It’ll be after midnight when we roll in. We’ll have to go into action almost immediately.” He looked back at the sleeping men behind him. They’ll get about an hour’s more worth of rack time while we sort out the details, Griffin thought, then it’s time for wake up and briefings.
“Mark, I don’t understand.”
Griffin turned to his friend. “You will in a moment,” he smiled, “Herr General.”