“Was the other man Stahl?” she asked.
Dunn pulled the sheet back over the dead man’s face. “We think so. The bastard got lucky again and got away, although he didn’t kill Morgenthau. Stahl may just be all alone now, and that might just make him desperate.”
“Where did they get the police uniforms?”
“Easy as pie. They bought them at a shop that sells them to cops. Nobody even asked to see their ID. The badges they made out of cardboard covered with tinfoil and the guns they either already had or they stole."
“So where is Stahl now?”
Dunn grimaced. “I wish to hell I knew. He plans ahead, so he probably has changed out of his uniform and into something else, so I don’t think the manhunt is going to net us anything. This Stahl guy has to be stopped. He’s come too close to really damaging this country.”
Detective Sam Lambert walked down the street with Sherry Piper on his arm. He hoped they looked like two lovers out for a stroll, which, in a way, they were. Their relationship had ripened and they were starting to use words like love and even discuss long range plans. Neither of them was quite ready to use the marriage word, but that was likely inevitable.
First there was a war to win and a nation to be freed from the clutches of Nazi Germany.
They stopped and joined the crowd watching a long line of trucks and ambulances bringing German wounded back from the fighting at Niagara and the Port Maitland beachhead. Even though sedated, many wounded still moaned and cried out in pain.
“They really aren’t supermen, are they?” Sherry said. “Some of them look like lost little boys.”
“Don’t even think of feeling sorry for them until after they’ve surrendered. Some of the ones crying the loudest might be guilty of some of the worst crimes.”
“I keep forgetting you’re a cop,” she said, squeezing his arm. “And sometimes I almost succeed in forgetting what the Germans did to my brother and me. But I really don’t want to lose track of the fact that I am a human being and not an animal like the Nazis.”
“That’ll never happen,” he said gently. It warranted another arm squeeze along with the pleasant feel of her breast against him.
“So what do we do next to help destroy the Nazis?”
“I’m to meet with some people, probably OSS types, and we’re going to talk. There’s a bunch of cops like me who’d like to hit the Germans, but we’re primarily concerned with freeing the people they’ve taken prisoner so they can’t be used as hostages.”
“And that includes American POWs?”
“Of course. After what the Gestapo tried to do with shipping Jews to Germany, the krauts are capable of anything, so we’re going to have to act quickly.”
Downing was scheduled to go back to the Pentagon, which did not disappoint him in the slightest. Grant, on the other hand, was surprised and dismayed by his orders.
“I thought I’d seen the last of German occupied Canada. The next time I went, I thought it would be with Alicia and as a tourist.”
“I can’t blame you, but the army works in mysterious ways. Actually, it isn’t very strange at all. You know the area around Toronto and you’ve actually met with some interesting local types who are very sympathetic to us.”
“Am I going in as a civilian so they can hang me if I’m caught, or can I wear my uniform and maybe stay alive?”
“Don’t be such a pessimist. You can wear your uniform or civilian clothes or even pajamas as you think appropriate. You’ll be parachuted in where you will meet up with a small Ranger detachment that’s managed to place itself north of Toronto. Once you link up with them, you are to make contact with local talent and make plans to do whatever damage is possible, and that includes freeing prisoners before the krauts can kill them.”
“Colonel, you used the word parachute. I’ve never jumped in my life.”
“Then try to do it right the first time. Look, I wish we had time to send you to Benning for airborne training, but we don’t. I understand it’s as easy as falling off a log, only it’s a very high log.”
“Colonel, sir?”
“Yes, Tom.”
“Say hello to Alicia and Missy for me and would you very much mind if I invited you to go screw yourself?”
Neumann was depressed by the news from several fronts. Given their enormous numerical advantage, the defeats inflicted by the Americans were not totally unexpected. Worse was the news coming from Europe. The German army was being badly mauled by the resurgent Red Army and was in retreat. Von Paulus had crossed the Ural River on his way to the mountains and had then been attacked by the Reds. It was almost a given that Stalingrad would either be re-taken or surrounded with the German army under siege. Von Paulus had been given a stand or die order by Hitler. Neumann hoped the field marshal had enough balls to die for the Reich, but doubted it. Paulus was a clerk, not a fighter.
More important, the Soviet attacks meant that whatever flickering hopes he might have had that German forces in the North Reich would be rescued had just been extinguished. Hitler had also declared Canada a fortress and forbidden surrender, but Neumann had few hopes that Guderian would do the right thing and die fighting. No, he was a coward who would try to save himself by surrendering his army. He would fight a few more battles to show that he was serious, but he was already withdrawing his troops. The men facing Patton in the west were in the process of pulling back a good twenty miles to their next defensive position. Soon they would run out of Canadian real estate. Therefore, it was up to him to see to it that Guderian and the army did fight on to the last man.
Neumann felt that he had few trump cards to play, and he would indeed play them. The first thing to do, he decided, is to fill the prison camps with Canadian civilians, and it didn’t matter at all whether or not they were Jewish. At the same time, his Gestapo units would be directed to converge on Toronto and most especially the farm and the prison camps. The Gestapo could be trusted to carry out their assignments no matter how bloody and brutal they might be. He was not so certain of the remnants of the Black Shirts. Those rats were abandoning the sinking ship. Munro now had a hard core cadre of perhaps fifty men and Neumann wondered how long that number would hold. There were close to a thousand American soldiers and airmen who’d been captured and they too would have value when the time came to negotiate a safe trip back to the Reich. He knew that the Americans would not permit their people and innocent civilians to be slaughtered.
Downing threw Grant a bone and Tom grabbed it. Master Sergeant Farnum would be coming with him. Farnum had once been a paratrooper and took it on himself to give Tom a primer on how to jump out of an airplane and survive.
“Anybody can jump,” he’d said without a hint of sarcasm, “it’s the landing that creates problems.”
“Sergeant, I’d already figured that out.”
Farnum had laughed and then gotten on with training. He had Tom jump from stacked chairs and taught him to land properly by collapsing and rolling over. They did this a couple of score times in a few hours until Tom actually thought he understood what was expected of him.
They flew in a C47 and were escorted by a pair of P51s. They didn’t think that the Germans would waste their diminishing number of planes on a lone transport, but nothing was certain.
They flew from Buffalo, looped over the lake and on to an area west and south of Toronto. It was night and both men hoped the very young pilot could find his way in the dark. The pilot wasn’t worried. He put his faith in radar and his co-pilot’s skill at finding the fires that were supposed to be set as signals.