The explosions shattered the peace of the night and Rommel was instantly awake. He was no longer a young man, but his body remembered the lessons from the trenches of the Great War; in event of attack, get down and stay down. Reaching instinctively for his weapon – he’d been denied a personal sidearm – he rolled out of bed and crouched at the side of the bed as the entire building shook. Dimly, he heard shouts in German; the SS team attempting to repel the attack. From the screams, it didn’t sound as if they were succeeding; a thousand orders came to his lips.
He thrust them down as the door was kicked in. He lay still as… someone, a man dressed in a strange black outfit and weird helmet entered, swinging a rifle that was of a very strange design around the room. He listened as the man called for him, rifle not quite pointed in his direction.
“I surrender,” he said wryly, rising to his feet. Up close, he could see closely; the man wasn’t one of the 7th Panzer attempting a rescue, as he’d half-hoped and half-feared. “Who are you?”
“Captain Dwynn, SAS A Troop, Field Marshall,” the man said. Rommel blinked; he wasn’t a Field Marshall and didn’t seem ever likely to become one. “It’s a honour to make your acquaintance, sir, but we must be going before the bastard SS react.”
Rommel was used to making quick decisions, but this one stunned him. The monumental feeling of relief was… new, to say the least. “I’m coming,” he said.
“Good,” Dwynn said. “Follow me and stay low.”
Rommel said nothing as they retraced their steps and left the Chateau. Dead bodies, dressed in black, lay around the ruins; the barracks were a burning mess. There was something… unwholesome about such destruction; the entire SS force had been slaughtered without a care in the world. He didn’t see Skorzeny; the big SS man seemed to have vanished. He didn’t think that he had been killed; the big man was too mean to die.
“Excuse me,” Dwynn muttered, and lifted an earphone to his head. Three more men, dressed in the same black outfit, materialised out of the darkness, their weapons on alert. A shot rang out; Rommel spun around to see an SS man falling over backwards, half of his head missing.
“They’re going to pick us up from here,” he said. “The SS regiment nearby, ah…”
“SS Deutschland,” Rommel murmured. Skorzeny had hoped for a transfer to the combat formation, one slated to move into the Balkans.
“Has been diverted,” Dwynn said. “The RAF struck it several times and then took out a bridge. They’ll be rather late for the party.”
Rommel blinked. “There’s no airstrip here.”
Dwynn grinned. “We don’t need one,” he said, and pointed. Rommel could hear a throbbing in the air, and then a strange black autogiro floated into view and down to the ground. “Come on,” he said. “There’s a lot of people who want to talk to you.”
“My wife,” Rommel said. “What about her.”
Dwynn ignored him. “I’m calling the RAF,” he said. “They’ll destroy the remains of the Chateau. Hopefully, the SS will think you were assassinated directly.”
Rommel doubted it, but climbed into the strange aircraft anyway. Already, his mind could see interesting possibilities for employing them in the service of 7th Panzer, before his mind reminded him that there would never be another combat command. The strange aircraft shuddered and lifted off the ground into the darkness, and Rommel closed his eyes. There was nothing he could do, so he slept. There would be time for action later.
Skorzeny pulled himself up from the ground, feeling once again the pain of the broken leg. Only his dogged determination not to faint had kept him conscious against the pain, dragging himself along the ground. He looked up as the aircraft landed and saw Rommel step into it, and then a stream of other men flowing into the aircraft. Skorzeny felt envy; he wanted to be like them.
Himmler said I would be, he thought absently. Himmler had called him into his office and shown him documents of the future, proving that he would become a commando leader. He’d been promised a chance to form his own unit, but first he had to guard Rommel. Now, there was no doubt; the man he’d admired was nothing, but a traitor. He reached for his sidearm with his damaged hand, his rifle having long since vanished, and cursed; the weapon had been crushed by something.
He giggled, trying to find some method for standing up as the aircraft took over, and then a scream split the sky as one of the super-fast aircraft swooped overhead. He looked up, trying to see it, and then the remains of the Chateau exploded in a blast of fire. The blast picked him up and tossed him into the woods; Skorzeny screamed and passed out, hoping that reinforcements would arrive before he died. The Fuhrer had to be warned; the SS had to take action.
Darkness…
Chapter Thirty-One: Alliances
RAF Lyneham
Wiltshire, United Kingdom
13th September 1940
Erwin Rommel opened his eyes and gazed up at a clean white ceiling, lit by a glowing strip of light. Wonderingly, he sat up and reeled; his body felt as if he’d been drinking the night before, except for the missing hangover. Carefully, he glanced around, examining the room that he found himself suddenly inhabiting. It was small and neat, a small typewriter-like device sat on one table. Swinging his legs over and out of the bed, he noticed that he’d been undressed and then dressed in striped pyjamas.
“Where the hell am I?” He asked, as he stood up. The room spun around him – he wondered suddenly if he’d been drugged – and he grabbed onto the table to steady himself. Staggering over to the sink, he turned on the tap and drank a sip of lukewarm water. It reminded him that he was thirsty and he sipped more, discovering that the other tap poured cold water.
As soon as he had quenched his thirst, he tried the door. Not entirely to his surprise, it was locked; banging produced no results. Quickly searching the rest of the room, he found a full set of clothes – although civilian rather than army – and a small bookshelf. Studying the selection of books, he was astonished to note that one of them was called Rommel, with a publication date of 2001.
They are from the future, he thought, as he skimmed through it. Up to a point, it was accurate; his service in the Great War – referred to as World War One – and his married life were covered in detail. He blushed to realise that the men of the future knew about his affair; he smiled with pride to realise that his son had made him proud. Then it changed, and he read on, growing more and more puzzled.
His career in France was as he remembered, but then it changed. Instead of the war with the suddenly super-powerful Britain, he went to Africa, aiding the Italians and coming to the gates of Egypt. He waged war until two German armies were lost, one in Russia, one in North Africa. He commanded the defence of France, hampered by the Fuhrer, and then he gave support to a plan to remove the Fuhrer. His role in the plan was discovered, he was offered a fatal choice… and then he was dead.