"What about Malin? Remember, I'm obligated to relieve him as soon as he reaches Bremerhaven and bring him to Washington to stand court-martial."
Lewis dropped his hand and let a slight chuckle slip. "Yes, I know. And I've noticed that he has not been seen by anyone, especially the media, since his corps started re-entering friendly lines."
Not having made any special effort to track him, Wilson pondered this for a moment. "Do you suppose he's trying to skip out, escape or hide?"
"No, no need to worry about that. He's just waiting until all of his units are safe. When the last of the rear-guard units make it back safely, he'll turn himself over to the most senior commander on the scene and come back here to face his court-martial, just as we agreed to."
"But then the nice little story about a renegade commander will be exposed as a lie."
Lewis shook his head. "No, not at all. He'll ask for a trial by a military judge only, which will eliminate the jury. Since much of the evidence that will be brought against him deals with national security issues, the session will be closed-door. And his defense attorney will be able to present only that information that Malin himself provides. So the trial will be quick. General Malin will be found guilty, sentenced, and after a few weeks forgotten. After all of his appeals have run out and the trauma of this crisis has been replaced on prime time news by another hot issue, you will pardon him."
"Do we have to go through this charade?"
Shrugging his shoulders and clapping his hands together, Lewis sighed. '"Fraid so, Abigail. The German Parliament, which is on the verge of gaining control in Germany, is watching your every move. They are looking for anything that will allow them to bring this affair to an end. You see, the German Parliament, through their own little staged trial, will bring Ruff to justice, as they see it, just as you will bring your renegade corps commander to justice. Ruff, who took the nuclear weapons from us and placed unreasonable demands on you, will be gone. Malin, who violated German territorial integrity and started the German crisis, will be gone. Since neither the German Parliament nor you had any direct control over those events, the ones that precipitated the actual shooting war, there'll be no barriers to open and free negotiations. Resolution of outstanding issues will be quick, and everyone will trip over themselves as they rush to re-establish the prewar normalcy, whatever that was."
Though she knew Lewis was a tough character, she had never viewed him as being a cynic. Unfortunately that happened to anyone who worked too long within the Beltway. She looked at Lewis. "Who's number four? I thought there were only three of us?"
"Number four, Madam President, is Colonel Scott Dixon."
"The same Dixon that's married to Jan Fields, the correspondent on WNN?"
"The very same. Malin insisted that Dixon, whom he considers one of the brightest minds in the Army, be in on the initial discussions when we were considering the feasibility of this whole escapade. Dixon made a quick study, came up with some initial planning guidance, and turned it over to Malin so that it appeared that Malin had done it on his own. The plan I brought back from Prague and that Malin executed was Dixon's."
"And how will he react when Malin takes the fall for this whole affair?"
"Scott Dixon, Madam President, is a professional soldier. He will do what he is told. Before I left Prague over two weeks ago, General Malin, in my presence, asked Dixon to promise that he would never divulge any of the conversations that Malin and I had."
"Dixon will adhere to that promise?"
"Abigail, Dixon's a soldier, not a politician. Of course he'll keep his word. Besides" Lewis stopped.
"Go on, Ed. You were about to say something?"
Lewis looked down at the floor a little sheepishly before he answered. When he did, there was a hint of remorse in his voice. "You know, of course, that the rear-guard detachments from the 4th Armored Division are part of Dixon's brigade?"
Cocking her head, Wilson tried to remember if she had been told about that, but in the blizzard of military briefings she had been given, she was sure that she had never made the connection. Finally shaking her head, she responded, "No, to tell you the truth, I really didn't. But what has that to do with this?"
Slowly Lewis explained himself. "The 2nd Panzer has not been stopped by naval or Air Force aviation from Britain. They're the ones that took a hammering back in central Germany, and if reports are to be believed, they're out for blood, anyone's blood. Since that unit is mostly easterners who have remained steadfastly loyal to Ruff, we expect that they'll make one more effort."
"But why? I mean, it's over. They have no more nuclear weapons. Most of the Tenth Corps has made it to the sea. What possibly is there to gain from one more battle?"
Lewis stood up and looked over to Wilson. His face was a mask betraying no emotions. "The 2nd Panzer Division will attack for exactly the same reason that Scott Dixon will keep his mouth shut. A sense of duty that even soldiers can't explain."
It suddenly dawned upon Wilson what Lewis had left unsaid a moment ago. Dixon, who was still out there exposed to danger, might not make it, leaving only three people to share — their secret. Standing upright, Wilson was about to call Lewis a bastard, but then held herself in check. Not that she had to, for the look on her face told Lewis what she was thinking.
Lewis said nothing. There wasn't anything more to say. Whatever happened in Germany in the next twelve to twenty-four hours was out of their hands. The fate of Dixon and the soldiers who rode with him was back where it probably always had been, in the hands of tired and exhausted men and women, armed with the best weapons their nations had to offer, lurking about under leaden gray skies in search of each other.
With the roads leading west finally cleared of wreckage caused by ceaseless air strikes and hordes of refugees that always seemed to be in the way, Major General Erich Dorsch was free to unleash his 2nd Panzer Division. Though there was little chance of his division's doing serious damage to the American 4th Armored Division, Dorsch felt a certain amount of satisfaction that the little chunks of that unit he was about to scoop up and crush were the same ones that had frustrated his operations a week before in central Germany. The attack of the 4th Armored Division's 1st Brigade into his exposed flank had slowed and then stopped his advance, denying him a great victory. For that he intended to make every soldier in that unit pay. So with the same ruthlessness that he had driven his motorized rifle regiment in the old East German Army, he drove the soldiers of the 2nd Panzer Division on. The final fight, he promised himself, would be his alone.
Far removed from the command post of the 2nd Panzer Division, the weary soldiers of the 2nd Panzer prepared for one more effort. In the gathering darkness, under cloudy and forbidding skies that told of a new winter storm coming, Captain Friedrich Seydlitz grimly led the pitiful remains of his company forward one more time. That this would be the last battle, there was no doubt. Already the word had filtered down throughout the division that the bulk of the Americans they had been pursuing across Germany were already safe and out of reach. Only a few stray rear-guard units remained to be eliminated. Though Seydlitz had no idea why these units needed to be dealt with, he'd said nothing when he had been given his orders.
The attack, scheduled to commence just before dawn, would be a difficult one. The rash of warm weather had softened the ground and restricted cross-country maneuver to a few patches of solid ground, trails, and hard-surfaced roads. Were it not for the low cloud ceiling that was preceding the new weather front, this restriction on maneuver would have meant an end to the attack. For the Americans controlled the air. Even German Army aviation no longer was available, as it had been in central Germany. There would just be a handful of panzer and panzergrenadier battalions, backed up by field artillery, for the morning's fight.