“Good.”
“Ah, Steven, but it will remind everyone of the possibility of another Dunkirk. As you are well aware, there is a large antiwar movement in Britain, and this will fuel their fire. It may even cost Churchill his job.”
“Unbelievable how much trouble you’ve gotten into while I was gone.”
“Ike, however, is pushing for a second alternative. He wants the British to link up with the Germans and fight alongside each other instead of contemplating a humiliating withdrawal while our ex-enemies cover our backsides. It is causing an absolute uproar in London.”
Godwin smiled wickedly. “On the other hand, perhaps we’ll get lucky and Montgomery will be relieved of his command.”
Burke was shocked. He had known that Montgomery was not held in high esteem by the American command, but was Godwin speaking heresy about the hero of El Alamein?
“Charles, I thought he was your best general?”
“Then God save Britain. No, Monty is an adequate general who can perform well when he is given time to plan an act accordingly. When he has to create, he fails. He won at El Alamein because he had two months to plan the battle and he outnumbered and outgunned Rommel. He failed at Arnhem because it was too ambitious and novel, and he made it work too slowly. Personally, I thought it ludicrous that he wanted to be the overall ground commander and lead a narrow-front drive to Berlin. It would have been disastrous.” He smiled his ghastly smile. “I will never admit such heresy in public, of course.
“And when I said Monty was in a bit of a snit, I said so with typical and elegant British understatement. The shock of the Russian attack has brought him to a state of near hysteria and collapse. He is scarcely able to function, and General Crerar, another second-rate intellect who doesn’t get along with Monty, is in effective control of Monty’s 21st Army Group, which now includes the First Canadian Army and what’s left of the British Second Army. If he doesn’t get control of himself, Monty may be evacuated to England.”
Burke was stunned. Yet another reversal for the Allies, who had been in almost continuous retreat since the first week of May. It was now the end of June and it looked like the Allied defensive lines were beginning to crumble. He knew few Englishmen, but if the typical soldier was anything like Charles Godwin, he must be a truly formidable fighting man, and the British, too, were giving ground.
“What happened to the idea that the Reds were too low on fuel for an attack against Montgomery?” Burke asked.
Godwin laughed. “It appears there was sufficient for Rokossovsky to knock my beloved England out of the war with his sudden and unexpected attack.”
“What shall we do?” Burke asked.
“Well, since both of us are too unimportant to be involved in anything significant at this point, let us go and renew our acquaintance. I believe it is your turn to provide refreshments.”
Burke chuckled. Perhaps it wasn’t the end of the world after all. “I managed to salvage some cognac on my travels. Had I not taken it, it might have fallen into evil and irresponsible hands. Will it be adequate?”
“Beggars can’t be choosers, Steven, although I will beg if I have to. Cognac sounds marvelous. Lead on, Colonel Burke, and I do hope it is a large bottle.”
Tony lay on his belly in the tall grass and peered through his binoculars at their intended target. Joe Baker, the OSS man, was beside him with Vaslov and Anton waiting farther away at their camp.
“What do you think?” Baker asked.
Any sort of request for an opinion from Baker pleased Tony. The man obviously knew a lot about how to wage war on a small scale, and usually the shoe was on the other foot with Tony asking the questions. He also thought Joe was testing him. Tony refocused the binoculars. It was only one tanker truck, but it wasn’t very well guarded. One sentry outside and one in the cab who looked asleep. The outside sentry didn’t appear to be paying much attention to the world and stopped every now and then to take an unsteady sip from his canteen. Tony chuckled. It sure as hell wasn’t water.
Tony looked around at the deepening shadows. It was getting darker with every moment. “Let’s go get it,” he said.
“Look again, Tony.”
“At what?” Tony was chagrined. He had missed something important and Joe was now going to tell him exactly what it was. He hated this part of their relationship, but it was making him a better soldier.
“Look at the tires on the truck. What kind of shape are they in?”
“They look fine to me, nice and round.”
“That’s right, nice and round and full of air. If that tanker was full of fuel, don’t you think it would flatten out the tires just a little bit?”
“Shit, Joe, that fucker’s empty.”
“That’s right, and this place is a trap.”
Tony swore silently. It had been his fault that the sentry had gotten away the other night. He could have sworn the man was dead. After all, his throat had been cut and he was bleeding like a pig the last time Tony saw him. Joe had sliced him, but it was Tony’s job to make sure that the man was dead and he had failed. There should have been two corpses in the burning cab that night, not just one. Now it looked like the Russians were on to them.
“Sorry, Joe.”
“Don’t worry. It was only a matter of time before they did something like this. Look, we still don’t know if the guy died and told them about the uniform. All that’s certain is that the Russians are getting tired of us blowing up their tanker trucks. That was bound to happen.”
The comment made Tony feel a little better. “So what do we do now?”
“Follow me.”
Tony did as directed and the two men circled around the truck, always maintaining their distance from it. They quickly found three places where a full squad of Russians soldiers lay in wait. “Too dangerous,” Baker said in understatement, and Tony heartily concurred.
It was now very dark and they had no difficulty exiting the area without being seen. “Well, what the hell do we do now?” Tony asked.
“Are you up for some adventure?”
What the hell have we been doing? he wanted to ask. “Sure.”
It turned out that Joe Baker’s idea of adventure consisted of prowling through the Russian encampments and looking for targets of opportunity. With a dozen men waiting to ambush them at the truck, he concluded that the security might be lax elsewhere. He was right.
As on the first night they had met, they located several small motor pools and truck parks and this night they entered them stealthily. Unwilling to risk an explosion, they satisfied themselves by pouring dirt in the gas tanks. Tony killed a Russian who, apparently drunk, had wandered into a grove of trees, while Joe sliced the throats of two men who had fallen asleep too far from their comrades.
As Tony wiped the blood from his knife, it occurred to him that he was a far different animal than had lived in New Jersey. At first, he found that taking a life was awful. Now it was awful because it was so damned easy. He wanted to talk to someone, a priest, for instance. His big brother Sal was a priest. When he got back home he would have to talk to him and find out whether he was committing some sort of sin. In the meantime, killing Reds helped provide a slim chance that he would get home to go to Confession.
If he didn’t stop thinking about home and stuff and stay alert, he reminded himself, he might not make it away from these Russians, much less home. Neither man had any doubt regarding their fate if the Russians should capture them. A quick death would be fortunate.
It was the middle of the night before they called a halt and returned to where Vaslov and Anton waited. They quickly packed their gear, buried the uniform, and commenced to move. It was also time to get a long way from the Russians. Whoever had set the ambush at the truck would be very angry and just likely to start a manhunting sweep that would uncover them. Vaslov and Anton had told them just how ruthless the Russians could be when dealing with partisans or irregulars. Anyone they caught who might be a suspect, they would simply execute and hope they got the right person in the crowd of deaths. He realized their actions might cause innocent men to suffer if the Russians did start sweeping up people, but he couldn’t help that. He had a war to fight and war was hell.