The light from the blazing car let the other guy recognize Lou. “Well, you got it right, Captain,” he said-he was the driver who’d thought this whole exercise was a waste of time. “Goddamn krauts were down there.”
“Oh, maybe a few,” Lou said dryly, which startled a laugh out of the driver.
Another German let fly with Panzerfaust or Panzerschreck. This one missed the armored car it was aimed at. It blew up when it hit something else a hundred yards beyond. Shrieks said it hurt people, too. But the armored car kept blasting away at the enemy on the mountainside, which counted for more.
“How long till the cavalry gets here?” the driver asked.
That made Lou think of Sitting Bull again. It also made him cuss some more. The first thing he should have done-well, maybe the second, after killing the lights-was to tell the radioman to scream for help. Dammit, he wasn’t a front-line officer. He didn’t think that way. He could hope the radioman had done it on his own. For that matter, he could hope the radioman had stayed alive to do it. But he should have made sure of it himself.
Combat was an unforgiving place. How many lives would one small mistake cost? And the more immediately crowding question: will one of them be mine?
Reinhard Heydrich spoke into a microphone: “German Freedom Front Radio. Code Four. German Freedom Front Radio. Code Four. German Freedom Front Radio. Code Four.” He pushed the mike away. “All right. They know it’s an emergency. If we get away, we get away. If we don’t…” He made himself shrug. “Peiper’s a solid man. He’ll carry on.”
“Hell with him,” Hans Klein said. “I don’t plan on dying now, any more than I did when those Czech bastards tried to bump you off.”
“Good.” Heydrich didn’t plan on dying, either. That might have nothing to do with the price of beer, worse luck.
Faintly echoing down the corridors and shafts from very far away, gunfire said the diversionary force was punishing the Americans. In the short run, that would make them stop excavating. In the very slightly longer run, it would show them they needed to tear everything in this valley to pieces, the mountainsides included.
The move, then, was to take advantage of the short run and not to stick around for the very slightly longer run. Now, to bring it off. Heydrich pulled a panel off the wall. Behind the panel was a red button. Heydrich pushed it. “Let’s go,” he said, a certain amount of urgency in his voice.
“Right you are, sir.” Klein grabbed a different microphone, one hooked up to the PA system. “Achtung!” His voice echoed through the mine. “Get your lanterns and torches. Lights going out-now!”
Logically, they didn’t have to do that. As long as the last few hundred meters of the escape passage were dark, nothing else made any difference. But sometimes logic had nothing to do with anything. If you were leaving forever a place that had served you well for a long time, it was dead to you after that. And, being dead, it should be seen to die.
The generators sighed into silence. The lights went out. For a split second, the blackness was the deepest Heydrich had ever known. Then good old reliable Klein flicked on his torch. The beam speared through the inky air. When God said “Let there be light!” He must have seen a contrast as absolute as this. Reinhard Heydrich never had, not till now.
He turned on his own torch. That was better. Somebody not too far away let out a horrible yell. Probably a poor claustrophobic bastard who thought the darkness was swallowing him whole. If he didn’t cut that out quick, they’d have to knock him over the head and leave him here. One way or another, he shut up. Heydrich was glad he didn’t have to find out how.
When he went out into the corridor, more torch beams flashed up and down it. He wondered if all the men gathering there recognized him. He’d left his usual uniform and Ritterkreuz behind. His outfit said he was a Sturmmann-a lance-corporal. So did his papers.
But his voice…Everyone down here knew his voice. “We will use Tunnel Three,” he said crisply. “As some of you will know, the diversion on the far side of the valley is going well. The undisciplined Americans will surely rush every man they have into the fight against such a large, obvious enemy grouping. And that will clear the escape area for us. Any questions?”
No one said a word. Kurt Diebner stared owlishly through his thick glasses. He wore a sergeant’s uniform, though no one could have made a less convincing soldier. Wirtz played another lance-corporal, and seemed slightly better suited to the role. They’d been told the other physicists were evacuated earlier. Maybe they believed that, maybe not. What they believed counted for little now.
“Some of you don’t have greatcoats,” Klein said. “Go get ’em. It’ll be cold on the mountainside.” Diebner was one of the men who needed a coat. Heydrich might have known he would be. A real SS noncom went with him as he got it, to make sure he didn’t try to disappear.
“When we get over the mountains, there will be people to take us in,” Heydrich promised. “We’ll split up, we’ll stay hidden, and before too long we’ll be with our friends again. Once we are, we’ll give the Amis the horse-laugh. For now-let’s move!”
They moved. The only ones who seemed uncertain of the way were the physicists. The others had been down here longer than Wirtz and Diebner. And, unlike the slide-rule boys, the SS personnel were encouraged to explore their underground world. They might have needed to try an escape far more desperate than this one. Heydrich thought he could have done it in absolute darkness, without even a match to light the way. If you knew where to run your hand, shallow direction markers on the walls would guide you along. He was glad he didn’t have to try it, though.
Like the other escape tunnels, Three was carved out of the living rock. It wasn’t prettied up the way the main body of the command center was. It didn’t resemble barracks and offices. Heydrich’s boots thunked off stone as he hurried along. He led from the front. He might be dressed as a Sturmmann, but he didn’t act like one.
Heydrich grunted in satisfaction when his torch showed the stairs ahead. They led to the camouflaged mountainside doorway that would let him slide out of this trap as he’d slid out of the one the Amis set when he rescued the German physicists.
He climbed the stairs. There it was: the underside of the stainless-steel escape hatch. It would have dirt and grass on top of it. It also had a periscope beside it. If someone needed to come out here by daylight, he could make sure it was safe. Heydrich pushed up the periscope now, too, but he couldn’t see a goddamn thing. Either the diversionary party’s attack had knocked out the Americans’ lights or the Amis had had the sense to turn them off themselves.
Well, it wouldn’t matter. “Kill your torches,” he said. When the others had, he undogged the escape hatch and pushed up. It was heavy. He felt and heard roots and shoots tearing as he shoved. Then the hatchway swung open. Cold, grass-scented outside air poured into the tunnel.
“Come on!” he said. “North and west once we’re out!”
“How will we know which way that is?” Diebner asked plaintively.
“I can steer by the stars, if there are stars. And if there aren’t, I have a compass.” Heydrich didn’t bother hiding his scorn. “Now up! Move it!” He might have been a drill sergeant at physical training-except a drill sergeant wouldn’t murder a man who couldn’t keep up, while Heydrich intended to.
One by one, the Germans emerged. Heydrich looked around. No moon, but some stars. Once his eyes got used to nearly full dark again, he’d be fine.